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makeste · 3 years

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BnHA 323: “I Don’t Know How to Explain to You That You Should Care About Other People”

Previously on BnHA: Kacchan was all, “Izuku, I’m sorry.” Bakugou Stans were all, “[sobs for a week straight and tearfully awards him the Nobel Prize for character development].” Deku was all, “[faints in Kacchan’s arms].” Iida was all, “[trying to decide if Ochako genuinely tried to kill him a few minutes ago].” Horikoshi was all, “NO TIME FOR HUGS WE MUST GET BACK TO UA.” The civilians holed up at U.A. were all, “WE TOOK A VOTE AND DECIDED THAT WE’RE ALL GOING TO BE JERKS ABOUT THIS AND MAKE A BIG FUSS ABOUT YOU LETTING DEKU BACK INTO THE SCHOOL.” Deku was all “[stands there looking like he expected nothing less and breaking my heart more and more with each passing moment].” Ochako was all, “that does it, looks like I’m gonna have to do something about this... next chapter, that is.”

Today on BnHA: Flashback!Rat Principal is all “I just want you all to know that I spent nine million dollars turning U.A. into a giant Battleship-style grid that can burrow underground and zoom around in a giant subway maze because Horikoshi lacks a grounded understanding of both civil engineering and economics.” Back in the present day, Jeanist is all, “EVERYONE TAKE HEED, MY COMRADES AND I HAVE DEEMED IT EXPEDIENT TO CONVEY THIS AUSPICIOUS YOUTH BACK TO THIS STRONGHOLD. WE ANTICIPATE THAT WE MAY DEPEND UPON YOUR GOODWILL AND ACQUIESCENCE TO THESE TERMS.” The civilians were all, “NO.” Ochako was all, “EMPATHY, MOTHERFUCKERS, DO YOU SPEAK IT?!” The civilians were all, “oh shit.” Anyway so Ochako is a giant badass, but I’m a little worried that she’s going to get struck by lightning. Please come down from there.

so before we start this chapter, I would just like to apologize for having not posted the ch 321 recap yet, and would like to reassure everyone, and especially Iida who is staring at me with Sad Wobbly Guilt Trip Eyes, that I will get to that as soon as I can

OMG FLASHBACK??

yes please Horikoshi please show us more of class 1-A and their Deku intervention strategy jam sessions

oh dear

Iida you are too pure and good for this cruel world. [sprays the U.A. civilians with a water bottle] NO. BAD CIVILIANS! NO OSTRACIZING SCARED AND EXHAUSTED CHILDREN IN THE HOUSE

EXCUSE ME RAT PRINCIPAL WHAT’S WITH THESE MIXED MESSAGES

???

RAT PRINCIPAL: he’s free to return to us at any time!!

ALSO RAT PRINCIPAL: but it’s too risky for him to return to us

?? ??????? ?????????????????????

so now he’s going on about how strong the U.A. Barrier is, and how it’s comparable to the defensive capabilities of Tartarus. this would have sounded a lot more impressive before chapter 297 lol

OH!!!! HELLO, WHAT’S THIS!!!

A TIMELY CALLBACK TO A CERTAIN MYSTERIOUS EVENT WHICH HASN’T BEEN REFERENCED SINCE USJ? [U.A. TRAITOR MUSIC INTENSIFIES]

so now Rat Principal says he upgraded U.A.’s security systems with his own “modifications”, whatever the fuck that means. I mean look, I’ve been saying for a long time now that U.A. is the best place for everyone to hole up, don’t get me wrong. but that was mostly on account of there not being any other practical alternatives. but you’re making it sound like you figured out a way to actually make it Decay-proof or some wild shit like that

-- hold up, DID YOU ADD A FORCE FIELD. DID YOU TRICK THIS SCHOOL OUT WAKANDA-STYLE YOU CRAZY MARSUPIAL. HOLY SHIT. because that would actually be perfect

LMAO

WHAT KIND OF GALAXY BRAIN BULLSHIT. “NAH THERE’S NO NEED FOR A FORCE FIELD, LET’S JUST PUT WHEELS ON IT”

oh okay so the whole campus is basically capable of burrowing itself underground. that’s insane lol I wonder how they pulled that off. probably got poor Cementoss working overtime

blah blah blah so basically the entire campus is split into a grid and each section of the grid is capable of its own independent movement. lol this is just the Merone Base from KHR. you thought no one would notice this casual plagiarism ten years after the fact, but YOU UNDERESTIMATED YOUR AUDIENCE, HORIKOSHI

“joke’s on you imma just lampshade it” WELL ALL RIGHT THEN

“look at me I’m so fucking self-aware” fucking swear to god. I can’t believe this man is my favorite mangaka of all time smdh

“excuse me, I wasn’t finished describing all the rest of this bullshit yet,” Rat Principal breaks in impatiently. “we also added a steel wall all around the underground of the campus that’s 3000 steel plates thick. that’s fifteen fucking meters of solid fucking steel just fyi. and if anyone fucks around with any part of it the defense system will activate immediately! and also all of the plates are independently motorized, whatever the fuck that means!! in conclusion you’re gonna need a fucking tower crane to suspend all of your disbelief by the time I’m through with this paragraph”

“also Shiketsu is almost as reinforced as U.A. but not quite because we still had to make sure we were better.” but of course. and apparently the two schools are connected via a secret tunnel as Hagakure mentioned earlier

LSDKFJLSDKJFLK

“WAIT WHAT” LMAO YOU HEARD HIM, NOW INASA CAN VISIT YOU BOTH IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND TELL YOU ALL ABOUT THE WEIRD DREAM HE HAD. GOD BLESS YOU HORIKOSHI

(ETA: moment of appreciation for Shouto and Katsuki having the same thought at the same time and making Knowing Eye Contact and saying the exact same thing out loud in perfect unison like the best friends they are. what a blessed day.)

so Tokoyami is all “but wait if you engineered all this shit all the way back during the Band arc how did you even know that Tomura’s quirk awakening would become a thing, Horikoshi -- uh, I mean, Principal Nezu”

and Rat Principal is all “lol idk”

“basically I just woke up one morning and was all ‘say, you know what this school really needs? a fifteen-meter-thick underground steel wall, and the ability to break up into little pieces that individually zoom around wherever the fuck they want.’ jesus christ. lol if money and common sense were apparently no obstacle why didn’t you just teleport U.A. to the fucking moon or something. maybe I should shut up before I given him any ideas

dsfaelkjldkjgl

you heard it here first, folks, all of this cost a grand total of nine million U.S. dollars. well technically it cost “more than” nine million dollars. never has that distinction been more important lmao. are we sure this barrier was really made of steel and not cardboard? who the hell sold it to them, Ea-Nasir??

this is my favorite manga series of all time. yes I am ashamed

“in conclusion please do your best to reach Deku-kun” SO WHAT WAS ALL THAT NONSENSE ABOUT IT BEING TOO RISKY THEN. anyway thank you for this super informative and edifying flashback, Horikoshi. I will cherish it always. I don’t even want to read another translation of this absurdity lmao, there’s something special about it just the way it is. pretty sure Horikoshi just had a cracked out fever dream one night and transferred it to the pages of the manga verbatim

anyway so back to the unruly mob

not their finest moment. please excuse me while I cover poor Deku’s ears and give him a good shoosh pap

oh wow the parents are out here too

is Mitsuki trying to hold Inko back?? that’s the last thing this fandom needs right now is more Mitsuki discourse fffwlkjs. and even Jiroudad, scientifically proven to be the best dad in all of BnHA, is just standing there silently looking vaguely unhappy. way to rise to the moment you guys

MONOMA

so this settles it for me that Aizawa is not at UA. I know a lot of people have been wondering about his whereabouts, and if I had to wager a guess it would be that something happened with Shirakumo/Kurogiri. I can’t think of anything else -- even the loss of an eye and a limb -- that would keep him from his kids at a time like this

anyway but this is excellent Monoma content right here though. I love that he apparently adopted Eri after a single interaction with her. also WHERE IS SHINSOU DAMMIT. THE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW

and Kouta’s there too looking like he wants to run over to Deku but Ragdoll won’t let him :/

it’s gotta be pretty upsetting for him to see his hero like this and not having anyone stand up for him. [taps megaphone] IS THIS THING ON. OKAY YEAH IT SEEMS TO BE WORKING. AHEM. PAGING URARAKA OCHAKO. GONNA NEED YOU TO GET OVER HERE ALREADY AND MAKE THAT BIG DRAMATIC SPEECH WHICH YOU ARE CLEARLY DYING TO MAKE. IF YOU DON’T DO IT SOON I’M GONNA HAVE TO STEP IN, AND YOU REALLY DON’T WANT ME TO DO THAT SINCE MY SPEECH WILL NOT BE VERY GOOD OR INSPIRING, AND WILL PROBABLY JUST CONSIST OF “HELLO, YOU ARE ALL STUPID, PLEASE SHUT UP AND GO AWAY”

so now Mic is telling them to calm down. at least someone’s speaking up here, geez

OH MY GOD

MY MAN JEANIST OUT HERE DOING WHAT HE DOES BEST: MAKING EVERYONE FEEL GUILTY AND JUDGED

OH MY GOD HE IS GIVING SUCH A LONG AND BORING SPEECH LMAO IS YOUR STRATEGY TO PUT THEM ALL TO SLEEP OR WHAT

truly in awe of this man’s ability to take messages which could easily be conveyed in ELI5-speak, and stubbornly convert them into incomprehensible language the likes of which you need a graduate degree in order to understand

“hey guys, so originally our plan was to use Deku as bait for the villains, but that didn’t really work and also we realized it was kinda dumb and was probably gonna get him killed, so we brought him back here instead.” was that really so hard, Jeanist. also are we all really just gonna sit back here and watch Jeanist take full credit for Bakugou’s plan just like that lmao

(ETA:

WHERE DID ENDEAVOR GO AND WHO IS THIS DIABOLICAL MASTER OF DISGUISE. lol I genuinely didn’t notice this because I was too busy digging through thesauruses trying to rewrite Jeanist’s speech; many thanks to @class1akids for pointing it out and making my day immeasurably better. take it easy there Dick Tracy.)

“anyway so please stop being dicks and let him fucking rest so he can save all your ungrateful asses” what an impassioned and inspiring plea. time to see if the masses will listen to reason

narrator: they did not listen to reason

oh my god finally Ochako is doing something. YEAH OCHAKO WOOOO SHOW THEM HOW IT’S DONE

hmm

this entire chapter is truly and utterly nonsensical to me lol

(ETA: on my second readthrough I’m fucking dying at how she stole the megaphone right out of Mic’s hand lmao. and how Kacchan is all “fuck yeah nothing I appreciate more than some quality fucking larceny.”)

oh I see she was jumping on top of the main building so as to scream down at them all more impressively

“ANYWAY DEKU IS PRETTY COOL ACTUALLY, YOU GUYS ARE JUST MEAN” couldn’t have said it better myself Ochako

lol uh

gotta say I did not have “Ochako reveals the secret of OFA to the entire U.A. Citizen Clown Parade” on my bingo card for this week. it’s a bold strategy cotton let’s see if it pays off

SDLFKJSL

“NO, SERIOUSLY, HAVE YOU LOOKED AT HIM YOU GUYS. YOU THINK HE LIKES RUNNING AROUND DRESSED LIKE A RUSTED OIL DRUM?? HE DID THAT FOR YOU YOU UNGRATEFUL SLOBS”

so she is basically explaining the entire Deku Angst arc to them and explaining what a good and selfless protagonist Deku is, YES, PREACH

OMG IT’S THE GIGANTIC FOX LADY

not to insinuate anything, but what exactly were you doing standing out here with the hysterical mob, Gigantic Fox Lady? you’re better than that

-- KACCHAN SIGHTING!!

sdlkfjl. thanks for weighing in with that helpful and important observation. where have you been for the last five minutes. were you asleep. was it Jeanist’s speech

never mind, now he’s yelling at the civilians so I instantly forgive him

THE FUTURE NUMBER ONE HERO, EVERYONE. THANK YOU, THANK YOU. HE’LL BE HERE ALL WEEK

“anyway so I’m just going to end the chapter here” lmao seventeen pages truly do go by so fast. at least he didn’t try to force in a cliffhanger at the end this time. dare I say, growth

so I guess the civilians are either gonna have a Kamino and/or Fukuoka-esque moment where they remember how to be decent people and apologize to this poor young man, or else they’ll remain unpersuaded, and so Kacchan will have to knock a few of their heads around until they become more inclined to be reasonable. either option is fine by me lol

#bnha 323 #uraraka ochako #rat principal #class 1-a #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha

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paulnnccartney · 3 years

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Do You Know Who You Are?

“Do You Know Who You Are As You Lie There Sleeping?” is the title of one of part of the movement Crises in Paul’s Liverpool Oratorio. I saw someone post an article about it, and it opened talking about how that phrase is (allegedly) what the police officer driving John to the hospital after he was shot said to him, and probably the last words he ever heard. Now, I assumed it was probably subconscious or a coincidence on Paul’s part, until later in the article he admitted that that was indeed the inspiration:

“When I read the story of John’s shooting, there was a bit in it where he’s in the ambulance going to the hospital, and apparently it’s standard procedure to whoever it is who’s been shot or injured, ‘Do you know who you are?’ Which I thought was very ironic to ask John. I could almost imagine him laughing. ‘Oh, God, the final irony!’ ‘Do you know who you are?’ ‘Yeah, I’m John Lennon.’ So, I always remembered that phrase and I worked it into the oratorio.”

- Paul in Musician Magazine, 1995

(Side note: this might be me reading too much into things, but Paul’s choice of words in the above quote are interesting. When he says, “When I read the story of John’s shooting, there was a bit in it when...” the phrasing makes it sound like he’s talking about a book or a film. “there was a bit in it when...” is how someone normally talks about some book or something they’ve read, not a real event. So, Paul unable to come to terms/accept it was real/blah blah etc. etc.?)

Now, if I had to guess, I’m sure Paul would say that the inspiration doesn’t go past the title, but looking at the lyrics to the entire movement (including the sections before and after Do You Know Who You Are?), the relation to John and the circumstances of his death are pretty much undeniable and heartbreaking in the end. I’ll put the entirety of the lyrics under the cut at the end, but I’ll put snippets here.

“Nurse: Do you know who you are / As you lie there sleeping? / Time to rest your troubled head. / I will watch over you till the moment you awake. [...] You were brought in from the street / And a witness said you gave a shout / As you fell down at his feet.”

(TW: description of death) This bit is a nurse talking to Mary Dee, who, after having a row with her husband runs out from the house and is hit by a car. The connection to the story of Julia’s death is a bit obvious here to say the least. Additionally, the imagery of giving a shout and falling down at the witness’s feet is eerily reminiscent of John’s death outside the Dakota, where he apparently shouted “I’ve been shot” as he tried to get up the stairs. (Plus, Paul has used this motif before in Give My Regards to Broad Street. During the Eleanor Rigby’s Dream sequence, a strange 1800s fever dream, the man that stole Paul’s tapes is stabbed by someone else trying to get the tapes, stumbles around the city bleeding out, and eventually collapses dead on the stairs as Paul watches on in horror from the top.)

The row between Mary Dee and her husband, Shanty, a drunk, happens over money and Shanty’s feelings of inadequacy. Shanty makes a dig, questioning her love for him, and that’s what causes her to run out of the house, revealing to him that she is pregnant as she leaves.

At one point, Mary Dee sings:

“Mary Dee: It’s one mad dash / To fame and fortune / The cymbals clash / And then you’re gone / [...] / What good is complaining / It’s getting you nowhere / And I’m in the middle of your whirlwind / In the eye of your storm”

Shanty then replies:

“Shanty: And what about me? / I suppose I don’t matter / I’m not even sure / If you ever loved me”

The role of Shanty in some ways echos John’s insecurities (minus the money bit) in both his feelings of inadequacy, as well as his questioning of his partner’s love for him.

Later on, Mary Dee, as she’s sleeping in the hospital, starts to hallucinate ghosts calling to her child to take it away with them, and she shouts at them to leave, trying to keep her child alive:

“Ghosts: The child is / Most welcome. / Soon one of us. / Mary Dee: No, I tell you! / You’ll never get through, / I’ll never let you. / No one is stealing this child. / I’m not afraid of / Ghosts that the past left behind.”

It expresses regret about the past, ghosts that still haunt her, and that she seems to blame them for her and her child’s possible fate. Then, Shanty joins in, praying over Mary Dee and trying to bargain in order to keep her alive:

“Shanty: Let her recover, / Then let me love her / Until we run out of time. / And in the future, / I promise to be the man / She had in mind.”

This, too, expresses regret about the past and seems to blame past actions for the current circumstances. As the possibility of losing Mary Dee becomes all too real, Shanty realizes his past mistakes and prays for the chance to right them. It follows a very common theme of Paul’s, which is waiting to do something because you think you have time, and not realizing until it’s too late that all the time has run out.

“Mary Dee: Do we live in a world / With an uncertain future / Where a man is unsure of his fate? / Will we come to our senses, / Be fair to each other? / Can we turn it around / Before it’s too late? / Do I know that we have the answer? / Yes, I know now / We are together”

Again, expressing the same sentiment of waiting too long to do or say the things you mean to. Plus, the phrase “can we turn it around” is one Paul uses very often in reference to John (yes I’m aware this is a very common phrase, but please bear with me as I continue my conspiracy theories). Paul constantly says that he is endlessly thankful that he and John were able to turn it around and get it back together before he died, and how upset George was that he wasn’t able to turn things around with John.

“Mary Dee: So we must bear in mind / The pages are turning / And the sands will run out of the glass. / In the heat of the battle / We will drive out the demons / And we’ll carry the day / For we must save the child.”

Same idea here. Plus, lots of references to other Paul lyrics. “The sand will run out of the glass” is reminiscent of “All of the clocks have run down / Time’s at an end / We’ll be the lovers that never were” from, well, The Lovers that Never Were.

“In the heat of the battle” is also used in Save Us, which goes “Keep on sending your love / In the heat of battle / You’ve got something that’ll save us”.

And finally, “we will drive out the demons” reminds me of Demons Dance. The lyrics are “I can’t wait till I hear you tell me that you want me / Till then my dreams are gonna haunt me / Got my demons doing such a happy dance [...] Exorcise my demons, cast them out today / Only you can do it, make them go away / Let me know you love me, tell me there’s a chance / I don’t want to sit and watch my demons dance”

Finally, Mary Dee and Shanty come together and Mary Dee is saved:

“Mary Dee and Shanty: We have come to our senses, / We are part of each other / And we’ll carry the day / For we must save the child. / Ghosts: Do you know that you have the answer? / Mary Dee and Shanty: Yes, we know now. / We know now. / We are together.”

So, finally, they’ve been given a second chance, and in agreeing to reconcile their arguments and disagreements of the past, they’ve overcome. The solution seems to be that they are together as one, and in the final movement (Peace), their togetherness and reconciliation is what finally brings them everlasting love and peace.

I’ll leave you with what the Musician Magazine article says: “The series of crises flowing in and out of the fading consciousness of the character in the song – a mother being struck down by a car, an unborn baby struggling to hang onto life, a husband who goes off on a drunken weekend only to return and ask forgiveness of his wife – are probably the same as the emotional flashpoints of John Lennon’s life. That this impressionistic life-flashing-before-your-eyes lyric is interrupted with a repetition of the last words Lennon heard as he was dying makes “Do You Know Who You Are?” vivid, poignant, and a bit shocking at the same time”.

(P.S. I’m aware that there are a lot of reaches here, and I’m not trying to add to the narrative that the only emotional event/important person in Paul’s life was John. I’m sure the inspiration for this movement came from many places, and the other songs I mentioned are probably about other people as well. Just having fun.)

Lyrics:

(Mary Dee and Shanty's home)

MARY DEE (alone in bedroom) The world you're coming into, Is no easy place to enter. Every day is haunted By the echoes of the past. Funny thoughts and wild, wild dreams Will find their way into your mind.

The clouds that hang above us, May be full of rain and thunder. But in time they slide away To find the sun still there. Lazy days and wild, wild flowers Will bring some joy into your heart. And I will always love you, I'll welcome you into this world.

MARY DEE and BOY SOLO You-re mine and I will love you.

(Hospital)

NURSE

Do you know who you are As you lie there sleeping? Take the time to rest your troubled head. I will watch over you till the moment you awake.

Can you hear what I say As you lie there sleeping? When misfortunes crowd into your day And the dark side of life Has become too much to bear, I will stay by your side. Though we don't yet know if there's something wrong You were brought in from the street And a witness said you gave a shout As you fell down at his feet.

We are running tests And soon the results will be known. But I feel I have to warn you, There may be complications.

But we don't yet know if your child is in danger. We shall have to wait and see. In the meantime There is nothing more for you to do But sleep.

BOYS Ghosts of the past left behind.

MEN'S CHORUS (ghosts) You're sleeping Amongst us. We're in your dream.

NURSE You're dreaming, try to rest, my child.

MEN'S CHORUS (ghosts) You called us, We heard you And we are here.

NURSE To save your child you must be still.

MEN'S CHORUS (ghosts) We're ready to listen To what you ask.

NURSE Go to sleep

WOMEN'S CHORUS (ghosts) You're crossing The water, The tide is strong.

MARY DEE No!

WOMEN'S CHORUS (ghosts) Your child is drawn to us, Into our throng.

SHANTY No!

FULL CHORUS (ghosts) This child is Most welcome. Soon one of us.

MARY DEE No, I tell you! You'll never get through, I'll never let you. No-one is stealing this child. I'm not afraid of Ghosts that the past left behind.

SHANTY Let her recover, Then let me love her Until we run out of time. And in the future I will promise to be the man She had in mind.

NURSE Be still, Be calm. Your child is safe.

MARY DEE Do we live in a world With an uncertain future Where a man is unsure of his fate? Will we come to our senses, Be fair to each other? Can we turn it around Before it's too late?

Do I know that we have the answer? Yes, I know now We are together.

So we must bear in mind That the pages are turning And the sand will run out of the glass. In the heat of the battle We will drive out the demons And we'll carry the day, For we must save the child.

MARY DEE and NURSE (Ah)

MARY DEE and SHANTY We have come to our senses, We are part of each other And we'll carry the day, For we must save the child.

CHORUS Do you know that you have the answer?

MARY DEE and SHANTY Yes, we know now.

CHORUS We know now.

MARY DEE and SHANTY We know now. We are together.

#not me doing this instead of the actual work i have to get done #crazy how invested you can get in something so... vague when youre ignoring other responsibilities #anyways take all this with a slight grain of salt #paul mccartney #john lennon #the beatles #liverpool oratorio #mclennon #ugh hate that tag i just.. know that people will see it that way and im shamelessly promoting my shitty analyses #paul #mine #p&j #long post

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helianthus21 · 4 years

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Andante, Andante (AO3)

(1,7k)

They tumble into the bedroom, leaving a trail of discarded clothes in their wake. When the back of Cas’ knees hit the bed, he goes down, tugging Dean close after him.

Breath coming fast, Dean pushes himself back from the edge of frenzy to check, “You sure?”

He can’t take this lightly. This isn’t just anyone.

Cas looks up at him like he's never seen anything quite so captivating as a shirtless Dean, and Dean really can't fuck this up.

"Yes,” is Cas answer, and for a moment, Dean’s struck by the irony that after everything destiny’s had in petto for him, it’s now an angel who says yes to him.

Cas’ voice is resolute as ever but his eyes are so wide and blue, revealing a sort of anxiety that’s rare on the heavenly warrior. This is unfamiliar terrain for him, Dean thinks, and he swears to himself to make this memorable for Cas in the best way. Cas needs him, and he won’t let him down.

Bending down to taste those lips, he brushes a hand through the mess of Cas' hair, rests it for a moment at the nape of Cas' neck to deepen the kiss. Then his hand travels downward, soothes the tension out of Cas' back.

Only once Cas goes pliant under Dean's ministrations does he guide Cas backwards onto the mattress, following close behind, no desire to be far.

Cas looks beautiful on Dean's bed. He wonders if this is what it used to feel for Cas when he sought revelation.

"Dean." Reaching out a hand, Cas places it on Dean's left forearm where the handprint used to be, squeezes once.

They've seen fire and brimstone, fought their way through the denizen of hell. But this, Dean thinks. This will be gentle. This, Dean swears to himself, is how he raises Cas towards the zenith.

Dean turns his head, presses a kiss to the inside of Cas' elbow causing Cas to let out an astonished gasp.

He does not rush.

He lingers on Cas’ face, kisses him leisurely, thoroughly, really savours the press of lips and the glide of tongues. They stay like this until Cas melts into the bed, until their hearts beat in sync.

Dean travels southward slowly, never letting go of Cas’ hand as he rains kisses all over Cas’ chest, arms, stomach, the inside of his thigh. All the while, Cas watches him with rapt attention, the occasional strangled gasp shaking his calm facade.

The expression on his face when Dean takes him in his mouth for the first time, he’ll never forget.

There are stars in his eyes, and Dean can’t shake the feeling that it’s not the stimulation to his dick that renders Cas so flustered, not exclusively at least — It’s that Dean’s the one providing it.

Even when his eyes are threatening to fall shut, Cas fights against it, unwilling to take his eyes off Dean. A hand sneaks down to cup Dean’s face, and this may have been belittling from anyone other than Cas, he thinks.

With Cas though, Dean feels safe. Cared for.

Dean takes him deeper, and Cas’ fingers lock in his hair, tugging but not painfully so. He takes his time here, too. Lets Cas get used to the feeling of being surrounded by wet heat.

When he finally pulls away, Cas is flushed and his chest heaves with uneven breaths he can’t remember not needing. Allowing himself a smirk, Dean kisses and licks his way back up over Cas’ body until he reaches his lips, giving them their deserved attention as well.

When they part, Dean takes a moment to take Cas in. All of him, in all his naked, aroused glory. A worked up Cas is truly a sight to see, smile lazy and eyes shining — he’s never seen Cas so relaxed.

“You’re beautiful,” Dean breathes.

He’s used this line a hundred of times, and he’s always meant it, but with Cas it’s not just a line. Cas has no friggin’ idea how beautiful he is, neither does he give a damn about such things but he should hear it regardless. Dean wants him—

Dean wants this to be perfect.

So he opens Cas up with the utmost care, gently slipping in a finger, two, his unoccupied hand sliding soothingly along the side of Cas’ body as Cas shudders through the pressure inside him.

“Dean, touch me.” As desperately as it was given, an order it is.

Looking up from under his lashes, Dean teases, “I am touching you.”

But, “Closer,” Cas wants him.

And Dean is only too happy to oblige.

Holding each other captive with their gazes, Dean reaches to join them together. When he slips past the first ring of muscles, Dean drops his head to brush their noses, breathes out his exaltation against Cas’ skin.

“Dean!” Cas chokes out, trembling with need. “Dean, you feel-”

“I know,” Dean says, caressing Cas’ cheek as he slides in further. “I got you, Cas.”

***

Cas is flying.

Setting an unhurried pace, Dean makes him feel every inch, and each one Cas accepts gladly. Every drag of skin against skin brings him closer to revelation, fills him with awe and all things divine, and Cas never knew something so carnal could make him feel like this.

So… right.

A righteous hunger.

And who better to sate it than the righteous man himself.

Dean plays Cas like an instrument, strikes a chord when he angles his hips just so, pulls sweet sounds of pleasure from Cas’ lips. He wants to sing an ode in his True Voice, to herald the advent of Dean Winchester, to praise his prowess.

Cas is a welcoming vessel.

With each smooth glide of his hips, Dean lifts him closer to elation. When he shuts his eyes, he feels like they are floating amongst clouds, swirling through the night sky as two conjoined wavelengths of light.

But Dean is flesh and bones, solid and here. And somehow, that’s just what drives Cas wild.

Chasing the feeling, he sits up without making Dean lose his rhythm for longer than a beat, and they both grunt at the changed angle. Cas tangles his hands in Dean’s hair and holds him close, wishing for closer but the restriction of their human forms won’t allow.

“Cas.” Dean’s voice reaches him through the static in Cas’ ears. “Hey, Cas. Look at me.”

Belatedly, Cas realizes their movements have come to a pause, and when he opens his eyes it is to Dean staring at him with concern and affection softening his features.

“Your eyes are glowing,” Dean notes, amazement palpable in his voice, and Cas comes back to awareness slowly.

“You called out to my grace,” Cas realizes. He traces Dean’s cheekbones with his thumb, brushing back and forth. “And I answered. I want to join with you in every way possible.”

A shiver rolls through Dean, making another wave of pleasure course through them both. Cas glows brighter, almost visibly through his skin, and Dean’s lips part in absolute wonder.

With a nod of Dean’s head, Cas grasps Dean’s arm again at his granted spot, slotting his fingers in place. A jolt overcomes them both when Cas’ grace reaches out to Dean’s soul and Dean throws his head back at the full body shiver that wrecks him at the coalescence of their essences.

He resumes his rhythm more clumsily than before but not less effective. Breathing hard, Dean drops his head to his face for a few sloppy, fevered kisses, and lays them back down.

They hold each other through it.

Cas resonates a short verse of his joy to the skies. He doesn’t care who hears.

***

The line about angels not ever sweating was bullshit, Dean thinks, as he brushes errand strands of hair from Cas’ forehead.

He doesn’t call him out on it.

***

Coming back from a brief trip to the bathroom, Dean halts in the doorway, momentarily starstruck by the sight of Cas sans trench coat on his bed, miles of skin stretching out between familiar sheets, an exotic land ready to be conquered again and again.

Cas’ eyes are half-hooded when he looks up at him, raising an eyebrow in question.

“Just enjoying the view,” Dean wants to say, but the words get stuck in his throat because he’s not as suave as he’d like to be with his heart laid all bare for Cas to take. Only a stuttering breath escapes his parted lips, and transfixed, he can't look away.

"Come to bed, Dean," Cas lures, like a mirage straight out of Dean's dreams.

"Pinch me." The words tumble out of Dean's mouth.

Cas blinks. "What?"

Finally regaining control over his limbs, Dean climbs back into bed slowly, face hovering over Cas’, just out of reach. "So I know it's real."

Cas pinches him.

"Ow!" Dean protests, withdrawing the temptation of a kiss in favor of dramatically flopping on the mattress next to Cas. "I wasn't serious!

"You said to pinch you."

"It was a compliment!"

Cas squints at him with that face that's deciding whether to ask or pretend to understand.

"It's what people say when something is too good to be true. Like a dream, you know. Like, am I awake?"

"You are," answers Cas, and Dean throws him a look.

"Now you're just fucking with me."

"I was just doing that, yes. It was very good." A small but distinct smirk betrays him.

Cas has no business being this cocky after the way Dean just took him to the stars.

Rolling on his side and leaning on his elbow, Dean props his head on his hand the better to look at Cas in full-body shot.

"Very good, huh?"

"Excellent," affirms Cas. "Your sexual performance is unparalleled."

Dean snorts. "That just means we need to form a basis of comparison."

Cas' smile has no business being this stunning either. "That's a good plan." His eyes flutter shut in sated tiredness.

"Come 'ere." Dean waves impatiently around with his hand until Cas shimmies closer, slotting in space alongside Dean, head on Dean's chest and thigh thrown over his.

In sync, they let out a contented sigh.

This, Dean thinks, is how they belong.

#destiel #spn #ficlet #heli tries to write #lemon #grace kink #also #hhhhhuh!#submitting myself to the mortifying ordeal of writing smut >:o #andante andante #i've thought about this since watching mamma mia 2 #now it's here #i might delete this at some point in the future #when i remember and cringe at it #like frankenstein with his monster #or i might post it on ao3 #and also cringe #the cringing is non-negotiable

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satonthelotuspier · 4 years

Text

Day / Chapter 5 of Liushen week!

part 1 and part 2 and part 3 and part 4 can be found at the links, or it’s all on AO3 here

How To Catch An Aloof And Untouchable Immortal

Attempt 5 - Coffee

Liu Qingge woke up suddenly, with a feeling that something wasn’t right. He appeared to be in his residence on Bai Zhan Peak. But it didn’t quite feel like it.

And what was that faint noise he could hear from outside?

He rose, pulled on his outer robes and boots, and picked up Cheng Luan.

He walked through the door, expecting to see the small garden Yang Yixuan had decided he needed, but instead it was like walking into a blinding white light, that faded slowly, leaving flashing marks in his vision.

The sounds, which had been almost on the edge of hearing, indistinct and unrecognisable, resolved, and he looked around him like some wild, startled animal as he realised he didn’t recognise where he was. What was more, it was completely alien to him. The sounds where the hissing of steam and the clinking of cups, underlined by the chatter of human voices.

His eyes, darting around like a cornered beast, finally landed on someone who looked a little like Shen Qingqiu, sat at some kind of table, sipping at a drink in an overlarge cup.

He sat with a man who did have something of their shidi Shang Qinghua about him.

He wanted to rush over, for someone to explain what this place was, and why he was here, and how he could go back.

Perhaps he was dreaming?

And it did have that dreamlike feeling, but it wasn’t that exactly. At least he didn’t think so.

This room was odd, like a kind of tearoom, but strewn with decorations and equipment he’d never seen before. There were other figures around him, but their faces were indistinct, or blurry, the only people clearly defined were the two at the table.

He decided he would watch and listen for a while, to see if he could find out more about what was happening, as, so far, no one had acknowledged his presence.

“Does this taste like coffee to you, Cucumber-bro? Or am I just making it up because I want it to taste like coffee so much? Can you actually taste things in dreams?” the one who resembled Shang Qinghua questioned. They both wore unfamiliar clothing, and had cut their hair short. Why would they do such a barbaric thing if this wasn’t a dream? Or some hallucination?

The other, ‘Cucumber-bro’, nodded. “Being an aloof immortal is a bonus, mainly because the alternative is being dead of course, but I do miss coffee, and food delivery. Especially now Binghe is taking care of his demon kingdom.” He spoke as if he were Shen Qingqiu, but he wasn’t exactly like him. Liu Qingge was confused.

“You can thank me for making him such a good cook, if you want.” Shang Qinghua had taught Luo Binghe to cook?

“Airplane-bro, why would I thank you for that dogfood, plot-hole filled trash-pile of a reformed black lotus stallion novel? I wrote most of the plot for you! Well, I changed it for the better,” Cucumber-bro snapped at his companion.

“You ruined a perfectly good stallion protagonist, is what you did.” Airplane-bro retorted, “Turning him into a soft little white lotus, bleating around his Shizun like a sheep. And it wasn’t originally meant to be such a trash-fire, I had aspirations, Cucumber-bro, but do you know what having aspirations doesn’t do? Put food on the table. Trust fund babies like you just don’t understand…”

Liu Qingge took it back, he would get no information from listening to these two bicker, he understood less than half of what they referred to, except that the stallion protagonist, and white lotus, (whatever they were) referred to Luo Binghe.

He strode forward, “Shen Qingqiu. Shang Qinghua.” He snapped, and they both jumped guiltily, turning to face him with identical looks of horror on their faces.

‘Airplane-bro’ got to his feet to walk around Liu Qingge, and poked him in the shoulder. He yelped and scampered behind Shen ‘Cucumber-bro’’ Qingqiu as Liu Qingge scowled at him.

“Liu Qingge?” Shen Qingqiu questioned, “Is that really you?”

“Who else would it be? What do mean is it really me? Where are we? What is this place? And is that really you, Shen Qingqiu?”

“This is the dream realm. Of Luo Binghe’s making. He must be ill, he tends to lose control sometimes, when he’s feverish for example. I wish he’d speak to Meng Mo about that.” Shen Qingqiu said.

“Why does Liu-shidi look like that, and we look like this?” Shang Qinghua asked, meaning the fact Liu Qingge still wore his cultivators robes, and Cheng Luan on his waist, while the other’s were dressed completely differently.

“This is a dream built from my memory. This coffee shop isn’t far from my apartment. Or wasn’t. That’s why, I think, I’m Shen Yuan again. So you’re Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky. But Liu Qingge doesn’t have an alternative identity in our original world, if that’s what you want to call it.” He turned to face Liu Qingge then. “And you wouldn’t understand if I did explain this to you, Liu-shidi.”

“Try me.” Did Shen Qingqiu think him stupid?

Shen Qingqiu blinked at him with those enormous doe-eyes. The expression in them was familiar, even though the shape wasn’t exactly that of those he was used to looking into. Then the other automatically reached a hand out for a fan that wasn��t there. Finding he came up empty he ran it through his hair instead.

“My name is Shen Yuan. Though for the past decade and more I’ve been living as Shen Qingqiu, Peak Lord of Qing Jing Peak. I died, in my previous existence, and transmigrated into the original goods’ body. The same happened to Shang Qinghua, although Shang Qinghua is Airplane-bro, to all intents and purposes, as he was transmigrated from birth.”

Shen Qingqiu flashed a quick look at the other, something passed between them, and Shang Qinghua nodded very slightly. He had enough to process without chasing something they thought he couldn’t deal with knowing.

While what Shen Qingqiu said to him was outlandish, and almost unbelievable, hadn’t he himself always known the soul behind those eyes had changed from the Shen Jiu he had first known? Hadn’t they all thought it could be possession, or some other form of body snatching?

How right they had been.

‘Shen Yuan’ watched him carefully, assessing his reaction.

He wasn’t sure what that was. Or should be.

“When did you...transmigrate?” he questioned, but he knew the answer, at least the period, if not the exact time.

“Shen Qingqiu suffered a fever. It was then. Before the Skinner incident, before the spirit caves and Sha Hualing’s invasion of Qiong Ding Peak.”

Of course it had been then. He would have known it without being told, wouldn’t he? It had been ‘Shen Yuan’ who saved his life in the spirit caves. He had known, deep down, if it had been Shen Jiu, the other would have struck him down without second thought.

And it had always been Shen Yuan. Shen Yuan who had pulled him into friendship, and comradeship, Shen Yuan who had fought by his side for years, Shen Yuan who had taken his virginity, Shen Yuan who avoided him since that night, with everything he had. And Shen Yuan who had taken his heart.

He would like to have said the realisation hit him hard, but it was another thing he had always known, but never allowed himself to acknowledge.

“Liu-shidi,” that familiar address from an unfamiliar tongue made him turn away a little. There was a sudden shift in the atmosphere around them, and the other figures in the dream became indistinct and wavered. He was relieved to hear Shen Yuan say, “Binghe must be waking up. We’ll be free of the dream in a few moments.” He looked at Liu Qingge then, “Liu-shidi, I’ll come and speak with you when we wake.”

The dream faded, as Shen Yuan had promised, and Liu Qingge woke up in what was, this time, definitely his own bed.

Shen Qingqiu had said he would come and find him, to talk. He couldn’t bear the idea at the moment, however; Liu Qingge didn’t intend to be here when he arrived.

#liushenweek #liushen #liu qingge #shen qingqiu #sv fanfic #scum villain fanfic #svsss fanfic #sv #svsss #scum villain

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yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere · 4 years

Text

This. This is so Warnette.

“ There’s something wrong with me. I catch another glimpse of his golden hair and my vision blurs, clears, my heart slows. For a moment, my muscles seem to spasm. There is a creeping, tremulous terror clenching its fist around my lungs and I don’t understand it. I keep hoping the feeling will change. Clear. Disappear. But as the minutes pass and the symptoms show no signs of abating, I begin to panic. I’m not tired, no. My body is too strong. I can feel it—can feel my muscles, their strength, their steadiness—and I can tell that I could keep fighting like this for hours. Days. I’m not worried about giving up, I’m not worried about breaking down. I’m worried about my head. My confusion. The uncertainty seeping through me, spreading like a poison. He appears, as if out of a dream, standing before me like a statue, still as cooling steel. He stares at me, green eyes the color of sea glass, the color of celadon. I never really had a chance to see his face. Not like this. My heart races as I assess him, his white shirt, green jacket, gold hair. Skin like porcelain. He does not slouch or fidget and, for a moment, I’m certain I was right, that perhaps he’s nothing more than a mirage. A program. Another hologram. I reach out, uncertain, the tips of my fingers grazing the exposed skin at his throat and he takes a sharp, shaky breath. Real, then. I flatten my hand against his chest, just to be sure, and I feel his heart racing under my palm. Fast, lightning fast. I glance up, surprised. He’s nervous. Another unsteady breath escapes him and this time, takes with it a measure of control. He steps back, shakes his head, stares up at the ceiling. Not nervous. He is distraught.

I should kill him now, I think. Kill him now.

A wave of nausea hits me so hard it nearly knocks me off my feet. I take a few unsteady steps backward, catching myself against a steel table. My fingers grip the cold metal edge and I hang on, teeth clenched, willing my mind to clear. Heat floods my body. Heat, torturous heat, presses against my lungs, fills my blood. My lips part. I feel parched. I look up and he’s right in front of me and I do nothing. I do nothing as I watch his throat move. I do nothing as my eyes devour him. I feel faint. study the sharp line of his jaw, the gentle slope where his neck meets shoulder. His lips look soft. His cheekbones high, his nose sharp, his brows heavy, gold. He is finely made. Beautiful, strong hands. Short, clean nails. I notice he wears a jade ring on his left pinkie finger. He sighs. He shakes off his jacket, carefully folding it over the back of a nearby chair. Underneath he wears only a simple white T-shirt, the sculpted contours of his bare arms catching the attention of the dim lights. He moves slowly, his motions unhurried. When he begins to pace I watch him, study the shape of him. I am not surprised to discover that he moves beautifully. I am fascinated by him, by his form, his measured strides, the muscles honed under skin. He seems like he might be my age, maybe a little older, but there’s something about the way he looks at me that makes him seem older than our years combined. Whatever it is, I like it. I wonder what I’m supposed to do with this, all of this. Is it truly a test? If so, why send someone like him? Why a face so refined? Why a body so perfectly honed? Was I meant to enjoy this? A strange, delirious feeling stirs inside of me at the thought. Something ancient. Something wonderful. It is almost too bad, I think, that I will have to kill him. And it is the heat, the dullness, the inexplicable numbness in my mind that compels me to say—

“Where did they make you?” He startles. I didn’t think he would startle. But when he turns to look at me, he seems confused. I explain: “You are unusually beautiful.”

His eyes widen. His lips part, press together, tremble into a curve that surprises me. Surprises him. He smiles. He smiles and I stare—two dimples, straight teeth, shining eyes. A sudden, incomprehensible heat rushes across my skin, sets me aflame. I feel violently hot. Sick with fever. Finally, he says: “So you are in there.”

“Who?”- “Ella,” he says, but he’s speaking softly now. “Juliette. They said you’d be gone.”

“I’m not gone,” I say, my hands shaking as I pull myself together. “I am Juliette Ferrars, supreme soldier to our North American commander. Who are you?”

He moves closer. His eyes darken as he stares at me, but there’s no true darkness there. I try to stand taller, straighter. I remind myself that I have a task, that this is my moment to attack, to fulfill my orders. Perhaps I sh—

“Love,” he whispers. Heat flashes across my skin. Pain presses against my mind, a vague realization that I’ve left something overlooked. Dusty emotion trembles inside of me, and I kill it. He steps forward, takes my face in his hands. I think about breaking his fingers. Snapping his wrists. My heart is racing. I cannot move.

“You shouldn’t touch me,” I say, gasping the words.

“Why not?”

“Because I will kill you.” Gently, he tilts my head back, his hands possessive, persuasive. An ache seizes my muscles, holds me in place. My eyes close reflexively. I breathe him in and my mouth fills with flavor—fresh air, fragrant flowers, heat, happiness—and I’m struck by the strangest idea that we’ve been here before, that I’ve lived this before, that I’ve known him before and then I feel, I feel his breath on my skin and the sensation, the sensation is— heady, disorienting. I’m losing track of my mind, trying desperately to locate my purpose, to focus my thoughts, when he moves the earth tilts, his lips graze my jaw and I make a sound, a desperate, unconscious sound that stuns me. My skin is frenzied, burning. That familiar warmth contaminates my blood, my temperature spiking, my face flushing. “Do I—” I try to speak but he kisses my neck and I gasp, his hands still caught around my face. I’m breathless, heart pounding, pulse pounding, head pounding. He touches me like he knows me, knows what I want, knows what I need. I feel insane. I don’t even recognize the sound of my own voice when I finally manage to say, “Do I know you?”

“Yes.” My heart leaps. The simplicity of his answer strangles my mind, digs for truth. It feels true. Feels true that I’ve known these hands, this mouth, those eyes. Feels real. “Yes,” he says again, his own voice rough with feeling. His hands leave my face and I’m lost in the loss, searching for warmth. I press closer to him without even meaning to, asking him for something I don’t understand. But then his hands slide under my shirt, his palms pressing against my back, and the magnitude of the sudden, skin-to-skin contact sets my body on fire. I feel explosive. I feel dangerously close to something that might kill me, and still I lean into him, blinded by instinct, deaf to everything but the ferocious beat of my own heart. He pulls back, just an inch. His hands are still caught under my shirt, his bare arms wrapped around my bare skin and his mouth lingers above mine, the heat between us threatening to ignite. He pulls me closer and I bite back a moan, losing my head as the hard lines of his body sink into me. He is everywhere, his scent, his skin, his breath. I see nothing but him, sense nothing but him, his hands spreading across my torso, my lungs compressing under his careful, searing exploration. I lean into the sensations, his fingers grazing my stomach, the small of my back. He touches his forehead to mine and I press up, onto my toes, asking for something, begging for something—

“What,” I gasp, “what is happening—” He kisses me. Soft lips, waves of sensation. Feeling overflows the vacancies in my mind. My hands begin to shake. My heart beats so hard I can hardly keep still when he nudges my mouth open, takes me in. He tastes like heat and peppermint, like summer, like the sun. I want more. I take his face in my hands and pull him closer and he makes a soft, desperate sound in the back of his throat that sends a spike of pleasure directly to my brain. Pure, electric heat lifts me up, outside of myself. I seem to be floating here, surrendered to this strange moment, held in place by an ancient mold that fits my body perfectly. I feel frantic, seized by a need to know more, a need I don’t even understand. When we break apart his chest his heaving and his face is flushed and he says—

“Come back to me, love. Come back.”

I’m still struggling to breathe, desperately searching his eyes for answers. Explanations. “Where?”

“Here,” he whispers, pressing my hands to his heart. “Home.”

“But I don’t—” Flashes of light streak across my vision. I stumble backward, half-blind, like I’m dreaming, reliving the caress of a forgotten memory, and it’s like an ache looking to be soothed, it’s a steaming pan thrown in ice water, it’s a flushed cheek pressed to a cool pillow on a hot hot night and heat gathers, collects behind my eyes, distorting sights, dimming sounds.

Here.

This.

My bones against his bones. This is my home.

I return to my skin with a sudden, violent shudder and feel wild, unstable. I stare at him, my heart seizing, my lungs fighting for air. He stares back, his eyes such a pale green in the light that, for a moment, he doesn’t even seem human. Something is happening to my head. Pain is collecting in my blood, calcifying around my heart. I feel at war with myself, lost and wounded, my mind spinning with uncertainty. “What is your name?” I ask.

He steps forward, so close our lips touch. Part. His breath whispers across my skin and my nerves hum, spark. “You know my name,” he says quietly. I try to shake my head. He catches my chin. This time, he’s not careful. This time, he’s desperate. This time, when he kisses me he breaks me open, heat coming off him in waves. He tastes like springwater and something sweet, something searing. I feel dazed. Delirious. When he breaks away I’m shaking, my lungs shaking, my breaths shaking, my heart shaking. I watch, as if in a dream, as he pulls off his shirt, tosses it to the ground. And then he’s here again, he’s back again, he’s caught me in his arms and he’s kissing me so deeply my knees give out. He picks me up, bracing my body as he sets me down on the long, steel table. The cool metal seeps through the fabric of my pants, sending goose bumps along my heated skin and I gasp, my eyes closing as he straddles my legs, claims my mouth. He presses my hands to his chest, drags my fingers down his naked torso and I make a desperate, broken sound, pleasure and pain stunning me, paralyzing me. He unbuttons my shirt, his deft hands moving quickly even as he kisses my neck, my cheeks, my mouth, my throat. I cry out when he moves, his kisses shifting down my body, searching, exploring. He pushes aside the two halves of my shirt, his mouth still hot against my skin, and then he closes the gap between us, pressing his bare chest to mine, and my heart explodes. Something snaps inside of me. Severs. A sudden, fractured sob escapes my throat. Unbidden tears sting my eyes, startling me as they fall down my face. Unknown emotion soars through me, expanding my heart, confusing my head. He pulls me impossibly closer, our bodies soldered together. And then he presses his forehead to my collarbone, his body trembling with emotion when he says —

“Come back.” My head is full of sand, sound, sensations spinning in my mind. I don’t understand what’s happening to me, I don’t understand this pain, this unbelievable pleasure. I’m staining his skin with my tears and he only pulls me tighter, pressing our hearts together until the feeling sinks its teeth into my bones, splits open my lungs. I want to bury myself in this moment, I want to pull him into me, I want to drag myself out of myself but there’s something wrong, something blocked, something stopped— Something broken. Realization arrives in gentle waves, theories lapping and overlapping at the shores of my consciousness until I’m drenched in confusion. Awareness. Terror. “You know my name,” he says softly. “You’ve always known me, love. I’ve always known you. And I’m so—I’m so desperately in love with you —”

The pain begins in my ears. It collects, expanding, pressure building to a peak so acute it transforms, sharpening into a torture that stops my heart. First I go deaf, stiff. Second I go blind, slack. Third, my heart restarts. I come back to life with a sudden, terrifying inhalation that nearly chokes me, blood rushing to my ears, my eyes, leaking from my nose. I taste it, taste my own blood in my mouth as I begin to understand: there is something inside of me. A poison. A violence. Something wrong something wrong something wrong And then, as if from miles away, I hear myself scream. There’s cold tile under my knees, rough grout pressing into my knuckles. I scream into the silence, power building power, electricity charging my blood. My mind is separating from itself, trying to identify the poison, this parasite residing inside of me. I have to kill it. I scream, forcing my own energy inward, screaming until the explosive energy building inside of me ruptures my eardrums. I scream until I feel the blood drip from my ears and down my neck, I scream until the lights in the laboratory begin to pop and break. I scream until my teeth bleed, until the floor fissures beneath my feet, until the skin at my knees begins to crack. I scream until the monster inside of me begins to die. And only then— Only when I’m certain I’ve killed some small part of my own self do I finally collapse. I’m choking, coughing up blood, my chest heaving from the effort expended. The room swims. Swings around. I press my forehead to the cold floor and fight back a wave of nausea. And then I feel a familiar, heavy hand against my back. With excruciating slowness, I manage to lift my head. A blur of gold appears, disappears before me. I blink once, twice, and try to push up with my arms but a sharp, searing pain in my wrist nearly blinds me. I look down, examining the strange, hazy sight. I blink again. Ten times more. Finally, my eyes focus. The skin inside my right arm has split open. Blood is smeared across my skin, dripping on the floor. From within the fresh wound, a single blue light pulses from a steel, circular body, the edges of which push up against my torn flesh. With one final effort, I rip the flashing mechanism from my arm, the last vestige of this monster. It drops from my shaking fingers, clatters to the floor.

And this time, when I look up, I see his face. “Aaron,” I gasp. He drops to his knees.

He pulls my bleeding body into his arms and I break, I break apart, sobs cracking open my chest. I cry until the pain spirals and peaks, I cry until my head throbs and my eyes swell. I cry, pressing my face against his neck, my fingers digging into his back, desperate for purchase. Proof. He holds me, silent and steady, gathering my blood and bones against his body even as the tears recede, even when I begin to tremble. He holds me tight as my body shakes, holds me close when the tears start anew, holds me in his arms and strokes my hair and tells me that everything, everything is going to be okay.”

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realityhelixcreates · 4 years

Text

Prosopagnosia

Chapters: 42/? Fandom: Thor (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: Teen And Up Warnings: None Relationships: Loki x Reader (Someday) Characters: Loki (Marvel), Thor(Marvel), Brunnhilde/Valkyrie(Marvel) Additional Tags: Post-Endgame: Best Possible Ending (Canon-Divergent), Ah Massage, The Universally Acknowledged Flirtation Device, Oh And Sorry About Your Face Summary: You awaken fully to a very unpleasant truth, and spend some quality time with Loki

You awoke alone, your eyelids sticking together until you forcibly pried them open. It was painful; the crust of sleep had accumulated over however long you'd been asleep, even though the swelling had gone down quite a bit. Your head still hurt, and you felt stiff and filthy.

You had no idea how long you had been sleeping, but you probably didn't smell too good, considering you hadn't brushed your teeth or bathed in however long you had been there. There was only so much sponge baths could do, after all. It was probably why there was still so much perfume in the room.

You squinted against the soft golden glow that surrounded you, until your eyes got used to the light. You noticed that you were alone; Loki wasn't there. No one was there.

You also noticed that you were surrounded by flowers, the tall, wild lupines that grew out in the countryside. Every surface in the room was covered in great bunches of them, their soft colors muted even further in the shimmering golden light.

Perhaps you were dreaming again?

Your throbbing head still felt cushioned in cotton, and your body was still hot. Whatever machine Bjarkhild had focused on you, it seemed to still be working. You definitely couldn't get up; you could barely move.

How irritating. Your life had become far too eventful lately. If you were back home, you would probably be frosting cupcakes right now. That sounded nice and peaceful. You could remember vividly, the sugar scent of the icing, the crinkling sound of the packaging. You would drive home from work in your barely functional car, which had probably been sold or towed by now, probably have a sandwich for dinner, maybe a very simple casserole, and listen to some podcasts while making up a small batch of dough for the next days meals. It would be peaceful. Uneventful. Comfortable.

But you couldn't do magic at home. There was no one to teach you about far-away worlds, no friendly aliens to learn about. No handsome prince to hold your hand and get you into so much trouble.

Where was Loki? You'd had a silly thought that he would stay with you the entire time, but of course he had work to do. There was a whole kingdom to run, so he couldn't be by your side every waking moment. Still, you'd sort of hoped. You really shouldn't miss him, after all, you had only just woken back up. It wasn't like he'd been gone a long time.

Had he sent the flowers? The colors brought a flash of memory of the mushrooms of Jotunheim. Had that been real? Another dream? You had gone to sleep in the snow, and woken up here, but, like the dream of Titan, it was very hard to tell how much of it had actually happened. It made you uneasy though, and not just because of what you had seen. There was something important about it that Loki didn't want you to know. His explanations for his hatred of Jotunheim didn't always add up.

Maybe it didn't matter. Jotunheim was far, far away, unreachable. They couldn't hurt you, and they couldn't hurt Loki. They probably didn't even dwell on it.

You were starting to feel hungry now. Whatever machine you had been hooked up to that sustained you, must have been turned down. Maybe that's why you were waking up now.

“Hello?” You called, wincing. Oh that hurt. Wincing hurt too. “Is there anyone there?”

The door opened just a few moments later, flooding the room with much brighter light. You winced again. It still hurt.

The junior healer stepped in, shutting the door behind her. What was her name again? Ulfrunn.

“You are awake.” She said stiffly. “Do you hurt?”

“Yes.” You said quietly, trying to cause yourself as little pain as possible.

“Your head, yes? Anywhere else?”

“I'm stiff, but no more than that.”

“Can you move your hands and feet?”

You wiggled all your extremities. “Sure can.”

“This is good. You cannot leave yet. But we can begin to wean you off the machines now. Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

“Yes.”

“Good, that is a good sign.” She fiddled with some of the machines, and the golden glow dimmed considerably, appearing as nothing more than the occasional arch of glitter over your head. “I will notify his Highness.”

“You don't have to trouble him if he's busy.” You said, but the healer scoffed.

“No business will keep him from here. Just wait, there will be food and drink coming soon.”

She left then, letting you recover from the discomfort of speaking. You still couldn't tell if she disliked you or not, but as long as she did her job right, it didn't matter, did it?

Ulfrunn's prediction was spot-on: Loki hustled through the door minutes later, some books and a big bowl of food in his arms.

“You're awake!” He exclaimed in delight. “I've been told you need food, so I have brought some.”

He made room on the closest countertop to set the bowl and books down, then loomed over you, close to your face. “Let me get a look at you, The bruising was bad the last time.”

You saw the tiniest change in his expression as he took in your face, a tiny flash of shock which he buried almost instantly. Almost.

“What?” You whispered. “What is it? What's wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing at all.” He said quickly. “The bruises and swelling are nearly gone.”

“Loki, what's wrong with my face?”

“Nothing!” He insisted. “You're still beautiful.”

“What? Since when?” Your heart was pounding now, both because Loki had called you, a human, beautiful, but also because of the shady way he was acting about your face. “Why did you say that? What's wrong with my face, Loki? Is there a mirror here? Give me a mirror!”

His lips pressed tightly together, eyebrows raised in an expression of innocence and regret, as he passed you a small hand mirror. You were almost too afraid to look. Your blood pounding made your head throb as you raised the mirror to your eyes.

The face that stared back was bruised, but not too badly, not as badly as it must have been only a day ago. That wasn't the problem, that wasn't what had made Loki act the way he did. It was that you didn't quite recognize this face as your own.

Your cheek was shaped differently now, no longer even with the other, and it changed the overall shape of your face. You looked different now.

“What...happened...” You gasped, the throbbing in your head reaching a fever pitch.

“The lady healer told me that your zygomatic arch-that is, your cheekbone-was crushed...either when you were struck or when you hit the floor. They had to rebuild it...but the swelling must have gotten in the way. Asgardian flesh doesn't swell as much..._____, I...”

Your eyes stung. You'd never really been all that vain, but your face had changed...your identity. Would Tara recognize you? Would your father? You sniffled. Your head hurt so much.

“Oh no.” Loki mumbled. “No, no, no, no, don't-” He grabbed your hand, twining your fingers together with his. “Don't-we won't give up! We'll keep working on it until everything is back to the way it was. Everything will be fine!”

“How? If the bones have already healed, they'd have to be broken again.”

“Not here! This isn't Midgardian medicine, we can program our healing machines to recognize the difference, and heal it. It will be slow, you'll have to come back here for a little while every day, but we can do it! Don't worry, don't worry, it will be all right!”

“Loki...you don't know that for sure, do you?”

“...I don't. I works that way for us. But that just means our healing technology is that much more powerful! It should work for you!”

Tears squeezed out of your eyes, and Loki immediately wiped them away.

“I don't know how to feel right now.” You whispered. “How much of my identity am I going to lose?”

Loki laid his head down in the crook of your neck, arms on either side of your shoulders, still holding your hand. It was probably the best approximation of a hug that he could give you right now. He was wonderfully warm and comforting; it was a shame you couldn't fully appreciate it. You closed your eyes. The gentle weight he allowed to rest on you was helping to calm you down, as well as the familiar scent of him, the leather, the oakmoss, the light citrus resin of spruce.

What were you going to do now? Asgard was a warrior culture, did they value scars like this? You hadn't seen anyone with scars, but you hadn't met all of Asgard yet. Maybe they healed so fast and so thoroughly that they didn't get scars? Or maybe their healing technology prevented them from forming?

Thor was missing an eye, but it wasn't obvious when he had his prosthetic in. Maybe only pathetic mortals could get scars, or suffer permanent injuries. Maybe even the miraculous Asgardian medical technology couldn't even help someone so weak as you.

“I'm going to kill him.” Loki muttered. “I already cut off his hand, but I'm actually going to go back and completely kill him.”

“What?”

“I challenged Alarr to a duel for what he did to you. I removed his sword hand. You're safe from him now, he won't hurt you anymore. If he knows what is good for him, he won't even look directly at you again.”

“...How's Andsvarr?”

He squeezed your hand. “Stressed. But he's made his decision on where he stands. He has brought you a gift, but it needs repair before you can make use of it. He would stay beside you, even should the hordes of Hel be bearing down on him.”

“He's a good kid.”

“He is.” Loki agreed, raising his head to gaze softly down at you. His hair framed your face, tickling slightly. “You're still beautiful.”

“You don't have to say that just because I was crying.”

He frowned slightly, pulling away and sitting down close to your bed. “Ulfrunn told me you were hungry. Do you think you are up to eating?”

“Yeah.” Now that he reminded you, yes, you were very hungry. “What did you bring?”

He held out the bowl for you to see. It was filled with small bits of fruit, cubes of cheese, slices of sausage and pieces of the brown bread that you liked so much. “It looks very tasty.” You said. Loki carefully adjusted your bed so that you were sitting up, and began feeding you little morsels with his bare fingers. It wasn't as embarrassing as you thought it would be; the warmth that spread through your face had more to do with how much comfort you were finding in the intimacy of the situation.

They weren't going to be able to fix your face. Loki had been lying, saying whatever he could think of to calm you. They were only empty promises though, you just knew it. There was nothing that could be done now. You were still beautiful, huh? What had possessed him to say that, besides that he was panicking? You weren't beautiful, you were normal. Average. Well, you weren't even average now, you were lopsided. But he was still feeding you so carefully, and watching you with that soft expression.

You were tempted to bite his fingers just to snap him out of it. You were still alive, and, unless something was wrong that you hadn't been told about, you would be up and about soon enough. There was no need to act so delicate, or so...reverent.

It felt nice though. Maybe you wouldn't bite.

Once you were full of tasty food, Loki set aside the bowl and took your hand again.

“How do you feel?” He wondered. “Do you hurt?”

“My head hurts. The bones probably aren't fully healed. Talking hurts a bit. The vibrations in my head. My body is stiff. It's pretty uncomfortable, actually.”

“Poor little dear.” Loki said, carefully folding the blanket to expose your arm. “Perhaps I can help with the stiffness just a little bit.”

He pulled your arm straight, running his hands along its length, one after another, working his fingers into your skin. The stiffness radiated out of your muscles as he went, leaving pleasant relief behind.

“Loki? Are you...is this a massage?”

Loki nodded. “Mother taught me. I was never going to be able to use my power to heal, like she could. But there is a greater dexterity in my hands than in my brothers, and she showed me another kind of therapy.” He kneaded circles, causing your fingers to twitch. “It can help with relaxing the muscles, of course, and the benefits of relaxation are not lost on you, I assume. Perhaps I should have done this sooner, and saved you some suffering.”

“Wouldn't have been able to accept it.” You said quietly. His hands felt incredible, especially when he concentrated his attention on stretching your fingers and kneading your palm.

“And now?” He asked, low and smooth.

Your face burned, and you pointedly looked away. “Didn't say no, did I?”

“It seems you did not.” He lay your arm down, covering it back up with the blanket, and moving on to the next arm.

“This also helps promote the flow of blood through the body, which will certainly aid with your stiffness. It promotes healthy skin, and the movement of oxygen, which will help you heal.”

He didn't mention it, but there was also, of course, the intimacy. The frightening, vulnerable intimacy. Especially when he moved on to your legs and feet. They were extremely stiff and sore, and his hands felt so divine that you couldn't fully smother the pleased little sounds of relief as they escaped your lips.

That was so embarrassing, and it only seemed to goad him on. He cooed, and teased and let his hands slide further and further up your legs, until you lost control, and accidentally kicked him.

“Ooh, feisty. My favorite trait.” He joked, but stopped what he was doing. “Too much?”

“A little.” You mumbled. “It's been a really long time since anybody did anything like this for me.”

“You don't have to go so long anymore. If you don't want to.” Loki said, quiet and serious. “In fact, if you would consent to it, I have some oils specifically for this purpose, and when you are healed, if you would like-”

“Maybe.” Maybe you could let him put his wonderful hands on more of you. Just for the massage though. For your health.

#lasabrjotr #loki x reader #loki (marvel)

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doctorbrebre · 4 years

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Day 1049, Books 279-282

So about three weeks ago I’ve begun reading this post-apocalyptic science fantasy anthology of four books titled Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance who, as far as I can tell now, is probably one of the most influential and least known authors who ever stumbled into the disgusting mess known as fantasy. He’s so influential actually that the whole “Dying Earth” subgenre was named after his novels and numerous later great writers credited his works as a main source of inspiration like Michael Moorcock, M. John Harrison, China Miéville, Mark Lawrence or N. K. Jemisin. Now that I hopefully managed to hopelessly overload the reader’s mind with lots of names, let’s break down this 1041 pages long doorstop into something more digestible.

The first short stories in the series were written by Vance in his spare time during World War II while serving in the US Navy and were published as a single volume called The Dying Earth in 1950… “But Dr. Bré, you foul-mouthed yet dazzling intellectual!” I hear you exclaim. “How is that even possible if everyone knows that fantasy wasn’t a thing until like four years later when Tolkien bitch slapped us with The Lord of the Rings and science fantasy was even more not a thing until the literary fever dream which is The Book of the New Sun entered the public consciousness in 1980?!” But okay, tongue-between-asscheeks bullshittery aside I just want to say that this thing is well, quite old.

The setting, which is basically the stories’ main appeal, is actually quite remarkable, at least as far as the variance of ideas go: the undefined far future of Earth, when the sun is nearing the end of its life, the landscape dotted with ancient ruins and other fragments of now-decayed civilizations, members of the shrinking human population living mostly as scavengers amongst the detritus, making use of technology and magic which was in previous eras, but which they can no longer understand or even tell apart. This kind of “just before the end of the world” scenario with Clarke’s Third Law in full kick, although isn’t wholly Vance’s idea, was first introduced into the mainstream here thanks to him and later became the basis of series like The Dancers at the End of Time, Viriconium, The Broken Earth, Broken Empire, Bas-Lag, etc.

Considering all this it’s pretty disappointing that there is little to none of the melancholy atmosphere or the apocalypse-induced philosophising which one could expect from such a premise (and which are practically the trademarks of all of the above mentioned later works). Sure, the life of your average person is quite hard and often rather short, genetically engineered monsters, marauding cannibal tribes and psychotic warrior-wizards are out to get you at each turn and there is a lot of talk about the sun kicking the bucket any minute but really it’s mainly just an - admittedly quite striking - aesthetic surrounding dozens of stories featuring a cast of rapidly changing (and dying) characters going on adventures all over the world in a style best described as a kind of trash-horror-softporn-wackiness.

Indeed, at first it mostly reminded me of the wild pulp style of Howard and Leiber, found in their Conan and Lankhmar stories with the purposefully overdone, though sometimes surprisingly beautiful prose, the plot of the loosely connected stories jumping from place to place and event to event with jovial abandon, the cast full of greedy and/or amoral bastards hyperfixated on gold and adventuring and the rather, let’s say, interesting treatment of the members of the population sporting a vagina. Later, after tackling the first book and getting to the the second one (The Eyes of the Overworld) I started to see a pattern suggesting a more subtle undercurrent but the true epiphany only came about halfway through the third (Cugel’s Saga) when the eponymous Cugel (author pet character, con artist and outlaw), after getting through a nearly endless series of mind numbing adventures, finally, on his third attempt, succeeded in his vendetta against this evil wizard who kept making his life hell - this shit is actually a kind of Fairy Tales mashup! This clarified some things for me: the characters weren’t meant to be realistic psychological studies, but instead unchanging and borderline-retarded, that is to say, as my former Lit teacher would probably insist to death, archetypical - foolishly and heedlessly stumbling from one peril to the next and then back out again. I mean this of course won’t excuse the all over the place pacing or the shallowness of most characters, but it’s still something.

Also worth noting that this series had probably the largest influence on Gary Gygax when he designed the original Dungeons & Dragons, beside of course Moorcock’s Elric stories (originally featuring the Chaotic-Lawful dichotomy that later evolved into the nine-point alignment chart) and the The Lord of the Rings. From the nonsensical dungeons where our heroes might face a gigantic demon head, some dark-skinned subhumans, a Mayan vampire and an Evil Chest in rapid succession, to the endless legions of megalomaniac wizards vying for power on every corner and the system of having to memorize your spells again and again from your magic books which you unavoidably forget after casting them, Dying Earth has it all (not to mention the Ioun Stones, featured in the fourth and last book, Rhialto the Marvellous).

All in all it’s always interesting to trace back the roots of shit you love to their origin (with the added benefit of by reading the things your favourite authors read maybe someday you’ll also have a chance at writing something on par with them), and while I can’t say that Vance’s style here struck me as particularly refined, there was surely an original voice and vision to his Dying Earth stories that is certainly worthy of a fresh ‘n’ crisp Mediocre rating. Let’s just hope that his other fantasy series Lyonesse, should I read it one day, will fare a bit better.

Now get out of my fucking clinic, you cumdog punks.

#book review #fantasy #science fantasy

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saraptor · 5 years

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Whumptober Day 3: Delirium

@whumptober2019

Title: Wildflower Sun

Summary: Madara was sick. Whether he was sick of mind and body had yet to be determined. Hashirama, at least, was definitely trying to drive him insane.

Read of Archive of Our Own: Wildflower Sun

The dry air was doing nothing for Madara's lungs, but he was outside anyway, as though the crisp breeze could snatch away his illness. It didn't, and within the hour he was shivering in the center of a wide golden field, a break in an otherwise dense forest.

Exhaustion had numbed the hesitation he would have felt at the sticks and moist soil, dragging him down to the field and laying him on grasses a little too coarse for comfort. He stared up at crystal clear blue sky with the drifting, flyaway feeling that he suspected was like dying. It wasn't so terrible like that, thoughts subdued, demure-he hoped his brothers felt like that, when they died.

A gust of wind blew through the field and the grasses felt like angel wings. His skin prickled with a chill, despite the flushness of his cheeks, and he turned to his side. He curled up, eyes sliding closed, and pretended he was back in the tent. He would have preferred his bedroll.

Briefly, he wondered if Izuna was looking for him—if Tajima noticed he was missing.

His father had looked so disappointed lately. It was not a look Madara was used to, but he could hardly help it. With the webs in his lungs, the ghost whispering in his skull, and the way his thoughts and actions seemed to stick—stick, stick, stick—lately, so slow and burdened, it was a miracle he functioned at all.

A churning hot furnace in his body tried to bargain, to convince, that he was freezing to death in the relatively placid autumn day. He moved his arms over his chest, hyperaware of his own thundering heartbeat. It was disconcerting enough that he tried to sit up, only for the world to tilt sharply. For all he jarringly did not move, his body was convinced everything was going backwards, backwards, further back—

He was not so functional at the moment.

The ground had soldered itself to his back. He could no more pick himself up, than he could force the world off its axis, or regain his equilibrium. It forced him to stare up at the sky, at the wisps of clouds that were forming, the tiny droplet of leftover rainfall sliding down a golden strand of grass. He longed to dissipate away with the wind as a sledgehammer slammed into his gut, left nausea in its wake, purpling darkness creeping at the edges of his vision.

His face was curiously numb. He blinked, gasped in a breath, gagged.

Nothing came up, thankfully. He couldn't turn over and he didn't want to drown in his own bodily fluids.

He coughed and lightning struck his heart, a sideways flutter, a jolt that ran down to his fingers. It made tears sting his eyes, a crawling tenseness in his chest that was either death, or sheer, undulated panic.

There was a subterranean rattle in the earth by his ear. He called out for Izuna, voice thick and unrecognizable. The metal song of clanging kunai sliced through the air in response.

Madara scrabbled for purchase on the ground, as the world spun around him and begged that he stay down. Stay down, stay down, stay down. His arms buckled, even as he dragged his legs under him.

"I have never been so sick in my life," Madara rasped hoarsely, and even talking was a labor of effort. His throat was swallowed glass, his stomach a dangerous, churning thing.

A burst of killing intent pierced through the fog in his head. He reached for a kunai as the ghost in his skull rattled the bars and screamed, pulled left and right and up and down—fire jutsu, sword, hide, run—a hundred ways he could survive and a short dozen ways he could die, unless whoever was in the field was the creative sort. Then, the list was endless.

Using chakra wasn't the best of ideas for one in his condition, but he didn't trust his vision for aiming kunai, or his physical strength for the sword—except he didn't have a sword on him. Anyone else would have frozen, but Madara was a shinobi, born and bred and raised for war, and even sickened and confused, that never changed. He forwent the sword he, apparently, didn't have—when had he lost it?—and dodged—

Nothing was there. He skidded to a halt, launched himself backward to avoid where the real attacker was, and tried to wrap the slippery tendrils of his brain around the fact the attack had disappeared. Or, it had never existed.

There was a cry, a familiar voice that sent a burst of sunspots through Madara's stomach, and an arm wound around his waist, even as he was forming hand signs for that fire jutsu.

He gaped, open mouthed in horror, as the forest swallowed them. It closed around them, a bristly maw blocking out the blue sky. Shrieks filled the field-which wasn't much of a field anymore—before they were abruptly shut short.

"What are you doing out here?"

Despite the trees steadily knitting themselves overhead, thoroughly blocking out any daylight, he could inexplicably still see clearly. He couldn't bring himself to puzzle it out, caught in a haze. He didn't trust himself not to blurt the first thing on his mind, and that train of thought could only lead somewhere particularly embarrassing.

Hashirama was glowing, like a second sun, and that explained why he could see without daylight.

He would eat his own liver before he said that out loud.

"Madara?"

The ghost in Madara's head stopped throwing itself at the bars. It coiled around his brain, coated in scales, and Hashirama must have been a snake charmer, because it always happened when he was in the area.

"How are you here?" said Madara, a lot quieter than he intended. He was so used to regulating his voice for the wild cacophony of dreams that always felt a little too real, and realized he'd probably been whispering to everyone for the better part of—of how long?—a long time. He tried to infuse a little strength into his tone as he added, "And I was taking a nap. That was obvious."

"A nap," Hashirama echoed, a hair away from disbelieving. His hands were hovering inches from Madara's arms, as though waiting for him to keel over. His lack of faith in Madara's ability to stand was enough for him to pointedly push away. "Be careful—"

"I am perfectly capable of—of standing," said Madara, stumbling halfway through his sentence. He was already flushed from a fever, couldn't really grow redder, but his face made a goddamn good effort. Dampness was gathering his nose, threatening a downpour that would leave him disgraced for generations. Worse still, he just knew that even if he could blow it, nothing would come out. His nose was so swollen that it felt as though something had exploded in his sinuses. Despite the growing fear of a nasal meltdown, he gathered up his dignity around him. "You should not even be here."

Hashirama gave a laugh, though it was a touch more aggravated than his usual laughs. It made something cold and uncertain nestle in Madara's gut, and he hated it.

"You're three miles into Senju territory," said Hashirama, chuckling incredulously. "A couple Kaguya were spotted crossing the border and I came to deal with it. If anyone else had come—do you realize what could have happened—"

He broke off, taking a deep breath.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, stepping closer to look him over, regardless. "You look feverish. Is there an illness going through your clan?"

"No," said Madara, and then sneezed. Violently.

He groaned, covering his face, legs buckling under him. There was no point anymore—dignity was dead and pride was lost.

A cloth was pressed to his face, he was eased back with a broad hand against his chest. Soft moss cushioned him, which shouldn't have come as the surprise it did. Madara might have thrown Hashirama to the ground and tossed some bandages on his head, if their positions were reversed. Hashirama was not Madara.

It was easy to mistake Madara as the stubborn one. He was ever and always avoiding Hashirama's questions, his plaintive looks across the battlefield. He ignored the way his stomach flipped, as though the ground dropped under his feet, as Hashirama barred his teeth in a grin whenever he tried a new technique. They both enjoyed their fights, but it Madara who refused to meet in lulls between fights, never replied to untitled letters, who kept silent when his father mentioned another clash with the Senju.

Madara was stubborn, but it was Hashirama who never stopped pursuing. It was Hashirama who still sent letters, even after three years of them no longer being friends. He was the one who whispered in battles—"It could be different. We don't have to fight. Imagine the future. It'll be wonderful."—and chased after the Uchiha for every inch that Madara wanted to move them far, far away.

When he was clan head, he would move the Uchiha away. The ghost stirred at the thought, but he shoved it back down in its cell. He didn't care for its worries, its warnings. Hashirama's dream would not work, but if he could agree on one thing, it was that the deaths had gone on long enough.

Moving away wasn't so terrible of an idea.

Hashirama's lips thinned into a line.

"You don't need the Uchiha," groused Madara drowsily, every blink threatening to pull him into unconsciousness. "Make a village with the Uzumaki or something."

It was as though the ghost seeped from his skull and tainted his bones, sided with his illness. He was plunged into a bout of nausea that made his stomach demonic. His went brain fuzzy, his mouth watering. A chain wrapped around his chest and squeezed, punished him for his words.

However, even as he struggled to sit up, Hashirama was resting glowing hands on his stomach. Then, he was traveling upward, frowning in an equal mixture of worry and displeasure. He didn't like Madara's responses—he never did, and yet he kept asking for the same thing.

Blessed numbness steeped through his torso. His breath came a little easier.

"You have pneumonia," said Hashirama, disapproving, as though Madara asked to get sick—he scowled on reflex. "Is your clan out of medicines?"

"We aren't rich," said Madara, tilting his head back. He wanted to gather more anger, but he was so utterly drained of energy, it was impossible. His bones were liquified, skin full of wet sand. "I just need to sleep."

"D'you think your clan will find it strange if you go home with medicine?" said Hashirama, even as he pressed several pouches into Madara's limp hands.

Madara pushed them away. "Yes, they will. There are no medicine men living in trees."

"Maybe you found them on a dead body," said Hashirama, insistently handing them back.

"Your dead body, maybe," said Madara, drawing a snort from Hashirama. He wasn't trying to be funny, but that never seemed to matter. "Stop that—I cannot just show up with several weeks' worth of medicines and no explanation—"

"Hasn't your clan ever heard the idiom 'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth?'" said Hashirama, falling just short of whining. He pushed sweaty raven locks off Madara's flushed forehead. "Look at you. You're melting."

"Thanks, asshole."

Hashirama beamed. "You're welcome."

A tortured creak of wood broke through the silence that fell over them. Madara watched, nonplussed, as walls crawled up around them. Giant windows were left open, resembling wide eyes in the side of a house that had sprouted from the ground. There were vines clinging to the walls, bursting full of ripened grapes; tiny flowers like miniature roses were sprouting at their feet. It was a strange clash of civilization and wild nature, and only Hashirama was capable of something so unorthodox.

He was also one of the few beings alive, Madara was sure, who enjoyed it—going off the wide grin on his face. A couple curling tendrils of vines reached down the ceiling, dangerously close to Madara's bed of moss.

"They're saying hello!"

"They're plants."

Hashirama was absolutely, steadfastly insistent the plants were greeting them. Seeing as he was the one making the grow, the one whose connection to nature and the natural chakras of the world was something new and old and soul-deep, all at once, arguing with him about it was probably foolish. Madara would never, ever claim to be a man of wisdom.

As the drone of excited chatter wore on, Hashirama's voice pitching toward tedium to Madara's weary ears, warped faces played around his mind. He focused on the curve of Hashirama's lips, darted to his hazel eyes. He could never tell if they were brown, or gold, or green, or kaleidoscopic mix of them all. His mind focused on fractured as he tried to piece together Hashirama's eyes into something that made sense, someone who wasn't always discontented, always wanted more, who glowed with cheer despite it all.

It was never good enough. Whether for Madara, or Hashirama, he wasn't sure. His breath had locked in his lungs with the rattle of the cages in his mind, and Hashirama abandoned whatever he was talking about—probably something to do with the village—to refocus his attention to Madara's chest.

Madara followed the warm trail of hands on his sternum, kept the memory of heat trapped in his skin, with the determination of a man drowning at sea. Those hands had healed a life for every one he'd taken. They were nicked and scarred, like any shinobi's hands, starkly bronze against Madara's pale skin.

When they stood together, Hashirama glowed. He didn't literally glow, as in with the power of the demigod he probably secretly was (even if he didn't know), but he was alive. Alive, in the way the sun was, bringing colors to the world and forests to life. Trees pushed and fought for sunlight. And when the sun was gone, when the sky darkened, the scraps of leftover light was given to the moon.

Pale and cold. When the moon was full, it blotted out the glitter of the stars. It made the sky black and void.

That was how Madara felt, standing by Hashirama. When Hashirama was at his greatest, he enhanced the beauty that was already there, while Madara stole it away. Only the strongest lights survived around him.

(Until they didn't anymore.)

Hands had traveled up his neck, to his head, and were cradling his temples. The ghost lurched back, making itself small as possible in Madara's head, and for once he wasn't haunted by the image of his brother's corpse.

A sigh escaped him.

Hashirama worked with practiced diligence. He was worried—Madara could tell by the way the moss had grown thicker, the vines winding around his biceps, as though nature could keep him physically anchored to life—and that was probably a good sign Madara should have been worried, too. A healer like Hashirama didn't get worried over minor illnesses.

But, he was floating again. His mind was blessedly numbed and his thoughts were drifting away from him in bubbles. Underwater, the world was not so overwhelming. Everything was muted and dulled. He could handle the world from underwater.

A paste that was cold and warm, that made his skin crawl, was rubbed into his chest. Frigid dampness wrapped around his forehead and soaked his hairline, battling the heat radiating off his face. He didn't remember closing his eyes, but they were crusted over, and it wasn't worth the effort to open them. The rumble of Hashirama's voice through the darkness was more comforting than any lullaby.

The first twangs of pain through his joints dragged him from the clouds. He was pulled to his pitifully, drearily mortal body by a cough that threatened to shake his bones apart. For every bit he knew it was good he was conscious again, he regretted being conscious.

Sickness never failed to make him feel so frail, it was as though the illness was eating away at his limbs.

"You relapsed into walking pneumonia," Hashirama was saying, as Madara's eyes fluttered open for the first time in an unknown length of time. It couldn't be too long, or else they'd be hunted by someone, surely. Madara's clan wouldn't leave him to the forest for too long. "How long have you been sick?"

It was enough time that the memory of health was distant, more of a legend than anything that really existed. He'd become used to deliberate way he had to force his body to work at full capacity.

"I'll take that as a long time," sighed Hashirama, looking put-out, as he pulled up a thin covering Madara hadn't had the last time he was conscious.

He almost growled when he saw the Senju kanji embroidering. It was Hashirama's haori, draped over Madara's body to keep him warm. About ten percent of his brain noted that his fever must have gone down, if Hashirama was giving him a blanket, but the other ninety percent was looping over and over again that he had a Senju haori on him. Hashirama's haori.

Get it off, he thought, followed by, Will he notice if it goes missing?

He could probably cut out the Senju part and add it to his wardrobe somehow-but, no, that was pathetic. Madara wasn't even going to lie to himself: he could be pathetic, but he wasn't that pathetic.

He wanted the goddamn haori.

"Do you think your father will be willing to negotiate a treaty if I offer land?" said Hashirama, leaning on his forearms on a nightstand that had sprouted up. It was lined in pretty camellias.

"My father doesn't negotiate with anyone," said Madara, "least of all the Senju."

His throat was still scratchy and dry, his voice was something the cat dragged in, and his head was pounding; but he felt—well, he felt like death warmed over, actually. He squinted at Hashirama through the darkness. He'd lit a candle on the opposite end of the house (where had he even gotten that?) and it sent flickering shadows over the walls. A couple new flower bushes had cropped up, showering the floor in pinks and reds.

"You making a communal garden?" he croaked.

Hashirama hummed in response. "Yeah, sure—anyway, do you think he'd accept bribe money?"

"I don't know," said Madara, tilting his head back and closing his eyes to stave off the way his head gave a particularly nasty throb.

Hashirama didn't seem to get the hint. Or, he was ignoring it. He was definitely ignoring it, Madara thought sourly.

"Er—how long do you think it'll take you to become clan head?"

Violent flashes of mountains of paperwork invaded Madara's head. He thought of complaints and crowds and expectant eyes. "Do that," and "Don't do that," and most of all, "It wouldn't be too much an issue for the clan head to take care of this issue as soon as possible." That didn't even begin to broach on the wide, bold opinions of his clanmates. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone's opinion was the right one. No, he wasn't allowed to disagree with their opinion, and he'd really better think twice about challenging the Elders. They were old and that meant they knew better.

He groaned, turning his head away from Hashirama's emphatic looks. He was always so open and earnest, even as he casually asked Madara to change the entire world with him.

"Are you, ah, very attached to your father?"

"You are not killing my father," said Madara firmly. He couldn't believe he even had to stay that sentence. "Besides for the fact he's my father—and yes, he's an irredeemable asshole and I hate him, but—"

"I'm not seeing the reason not to stage an accident here."

"—if you're caught killing a clan head, the Uchiha will never trust you."

Hashirama blinked guilelessly. "So they can come to trust me?"

"That is—That's not—"

It was too late. He was already leaning even closer, arms draped around the bed, pushing down the haori at Madara's sides. They were practically chest-to-chest as Hashirama beamed down at him. His dark hair was soft against Madara's bare hands.

"What if we open trade negotiations between our clans before you're clan head, anyway?" said Hashirama, cheerfully ignoring the way Madara was choking on his tongue. "Even if your father turns us down, it may garner some support from other people in the clan."

"I—Yes, that would work—"

"And then, when you're clan head, it'll be a simple thing to suggest a ceasefire agreement, then build the village!"

"It's not that simple."

Hashirama didn't play fair, in game or battle, and it was never more apparent than the moment he slumped in, even closer than before, mashing his face against Madara's sternum. He could also feel a toned chest against his stomach. It injected lightning into his veins, sent his stomach into acrobatics.

"You're going to get sick," said Madara, pushing against him in a last-ditch attempt to save his composure.

The laugh he received was not encouraging. "I've never gotten sick in my life!"

And, of course he hadn't. Of course. He was Senju Hashirama, and the power of mountains and valleys flowed in his blood. He was the southern heat that everyone flocked to in the winter months. Bacteria and viruses probably gave shrill little screams inches away from his skin and died.

"Get off me!"

"You're so stubborn," said Hashirama, moping spectacularly. He gave Madara a wounded look, as though he wasn't the one holding Madara hostage while he was sick to discuss world peace.

"I'm stubborn!?" Madara shrieked, righteous anger welling up inside him. "ME!?"

"You won't just agree to make a village with me," said Hashirama, talking with his chin prodding into Madara's chest, which made his crawl and tingle all at once. "Why would you want to keep fighting?"

"I never said that," said Madara, on the verge of hysterics. "How can you expect my clan to let go of generations of hate just—just like that? So soon? My brother made a joke about Senju skullduggery ornaments the other day—"

Hashirama picked himself up so quickly, Madara stammered to a halt. The hazel eyes, more of a golden-brown now, held his with the same sort of seriousness they did when they met on the battlefield.

His was quiet in the way people too often forgot he was capable. It was easy, when he seemed so much larger than life.

"Izuna," he said. "Your brother. Is he what's… making you hesitate?"

There were a thousand reasons. It was sneers on his clanmates' faces around bonfires, the deadly frenzy with which they battled, the twisted anger on their faces that transformed them into something inhuman. They were quick to jump to their blades. Maybe, in a decade or so, that would change. For now, there was a tumor festering in the hearts of all Uchiha that pushed them to fight. They would chew off their own legs before accepting help from a Senju. Izuna would chew off his own legs, if he had to.

Izuna, who was fourteen and struggled up to Madara's shoulder height. He was still fighting to earn the impossible pride of their father, to meet the expectations of one who was never truly satisfied. There was an indominable loyalty to the concept of the Uchiha, the raging torrential god-fire that they all wanted to believe they were-when, in reality, they were only ever human.

Perhaps, he thought with a bitter knot in his gut, they were all a little insane. War had taken something in their brain and shattered it, and now they were running hot with untamed fury.

He closed his eyes to stop his mind going that way. He didn't want to see the pale face in his memory, the slight figure in a coffin, arms crossed over his chest. He didn't want to see the boy who was not so much Izuna's copy, as he was his rhyme, so similar and different. The ghost remembered empty houses and bloody streets.

A hand closed around his, a warm breath on his knuckles.

"I promise nothing will happen to him."

Madara yanked away, and he was no better than his clanmates. That same anger churned like digested poison in his gut.

"Don't promise that. You can't possibly know what will happen, so don't even—"

"Too late, I already promised," said Hashirama, snagging Madara's hand again and dragging it into his lap. It was horribly distracting. All he could think of was fingers on his and warm, warm, warm, rolling over him in a golden blanket— "I've made it clear that the clan is not to interfere with our battles. I'll do the same for your brother."

"That's—" It felt like cheating. "Isn't that—"

"We're shinobi," said Hashirama, with an air of exasperation that was entirely out of place, paired with his fond smile. "So, what else is in the way of our village?"

Madara sucked in a breath to swear at him, or maybe tell him to go away, but broke into a fit of coughing. He curled his shoulders in, as Hashirama rubbed circles into his back. His gaze was sympathetic, but unwavering.

"You are a sadist," he groaned, though he wasn't able to muster the heat he wanted. Worst still, he wasn't even too disappointed. "They all think you're some patron saint of morality, but I know better. You are evil."

Hashirama laughed, but tellingly didn't try to refute his statement. He hadn't let go of Madara's hand, lacing his fingers through Madara's smaller ones. The man really was a giant, he noted with the barest hint of jealousy. He'd sprouted up a good head over Madara.

"I'm over here, dying, and you're trying to negotiate a brand new settlement for our clans, who are at war—"

A bark of genuine amusement escaped Hashirama, flinging his head back.

"You aren't dying. You just needed a little boost." He leaned his elbows against the bed of moss, staring at Madara unblinkingly. "But, we can get to the village, right?"

"Are you seriously trying to nag me into agreeing? Is that it?"

"Maybe—is it working?"

In the end, Hashirama was the mountains and valleys, and most of all he was the corrosive rivers between them. No one really stood a chance, once they were in his sights. Madara had been an object of his attention for a very long time.

"You are insane," Madara told him, as they stood side-by-side atop of the Hokage Monument, untold years later. "Just so you know. Insane."

Hashirama had wrapped an arm around his shoulders in a way he probably thought was slick. "I wasn't the only person involved in making the village, you know."

"No, but I wasn't the one who hunted me down across the goddamn continent to make it happen."

"I didn't go that far," said Hashirama.

"Yes," said Madara, clearly remembering the time he'd taken the clan far into the mountains skirting what had become Kumogakure no Sato, and Hashirama had popped out of a cropping of rocks to talk about world peace. "You did."

The contours of Hashirama's jawline were sharp and angular, the stone monument doing it little to no justice. Madara watched the curve of his neck, only to meet his gaze squarely as he looked down. When his mouth slid over Madara's, soft and firm, he let his eyes close. The arm around his shoulders shifted, Hashirama's broad hand cupping the back of his head, angling them to allow better access.

Breath ghosted over his lips, and that was the only sort of ghost haunting Madara's days anymore.

Hashirama didn't ask if he regretted the days of battles, arguments and broken blades that had nearly killed them both. Neither of them would have changed a thing.

#whumptober2019 #whumptober day 3 #delirium #uchiha madara #senju hashirama #hashimada #hashirama x madara #sick fic

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searchingwardrobes · 6 years

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Ok, so I've got an idea for a role for Colin, and it may sound crazy, but hear me out . . . A new movie version of Little House on the Prairie has been rumored since 2014, but it keeps getting stalled from what I can tell. All imbd has is a screenwriter, status as "optioned", and two cast members (which I thought was odd, and they are both really old). I can't say I'm an industry expert, though, so this role may have already been cast and my dreaming is moot anyway. BUT . . .

I've been reading the Little House books to my daughter, and the physical description of Charles Ingalls (Pa) really struck me: dark hair that's usually messy and wild, sparkling blue eyes, and facial hair. He's always winking too. He also sings to his girls every night (okay, so he plays the fiddle, not the guitar, but still . . . . movie magic, you know?) We now know Colin can do the doting father thing really well, and even though I haven't seen it, I know he did the rugged survival thing well in What Still Remains.

I know what you're thinking, it's not the kind of part he usually takes. But now that he has a daughter, he may be open to it? Laura Ingalls Wilder's hero worship and adoration of her Pa just bleeds through every word. (Oh, the things we see differently when we read kids books as adults). Also, if they use the book and not the TV show as their source material, it could be a really riveting movie. The swollen river when they think Jack the dog drowned, wolves surrounding the house before it's finished and Pa staying up all night with a gun at the window, the prairie grass fire, the entire family falling ill with the fever . . . . I think it could be really good.

Or maybe it's just me fangirling way too much and wanting Colin in a movie I'll actually watch. Sorry, all his movies have been way too scary or triggering for me. Colin, can't you just do a rom com or a super hero blockbuster . . . or play Charles Ingalls?

Please?

#my crazy casting idea for Colin #am I the only one who can see this?

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flyswhumpcenter · 6 years

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Burning on the Outside, Burning on the Inside [Fever February Day 6: Fever Dreams]

FEVER FEBRUARY INDEX

Summary: A beautiful landscape turns into a nightmare as the young boy gets his hopes of getting his darker secrets hidden from everyone else, and that's all thanks to an attack and some nightmares.

Fandom: Inazuma Eleven (original)

Word Count: 2K words

Notes: I'm sorry Inazuma Eleven, I love you yet I butch the characters Yes this is self-indulgent edgy trash about my rare pair fite me (actually don't I'm a very sensitive person with Feels™) it's 1AM what am i even doing

AO3 version available here.

The landscape is beautiful. A crystal-clear lake reflecting surrounding luscious trees and splendid mountains whose submits are eternally snowy. Breath-taking. He doesn’t feel like he’s already been here, but strangely, it feels somewhat familiar anyway.

There is a calm breeze running through his dishevelled hair, gently blowing in his white t-shirt as he sits down in the grass. He could be here forever: a bit of alone time isn’t too bad, he thinks, and that’s weird because he’s usually very happy to be with his friends, his classmates, his teammates… For once, he enjoys a kind of solitude he’s not used to: beneficial time to himself. It’s like he hasn’t gotten the chance to think back on anything lately.

It’s been a wild ride in a very short amount of time. It feels like yesterday he was the rookie of his school’s soccer club, and that everyone was making clear he was a rookie. A talented rookie, but just a rookie. The only first-year of the entire team.

He never really explained why he wanted the goalkeeper position so badly. Sure, what had kicked off his decision was Endou of Raimon Eleven: a motivational character, a role model to follow. His smile, his warmth, his charisma… He was drawn to someone so good, of course. He had deep respect for the captain of the team who had won the Football Frontier after forty years of Teikoku dominance. How couldn’t he? Nobody could deny Endou was a genius at being a captain. He knew how to motivate his teammates. That was one of his numerous talents, but the one which really struck him.

There wasn’t only that. There wasn’t only following in his idol’s footsteps. He was an awful midfielder: horrible endurance, clumsy when handling a ball with his feet, also pretty bad at speed when he thinks about it. The team was at first shocked of such a sudden request for such a drastic change: it was just how things could only work out for him.

He loved soccer. He kept on wishing he was better at it, sure, and he was a goalie once because the three other keepers they had had somehow call come down with the flu. It was so much fun, he didn’t want to surround the gloves. He would become a goalkeeper. No matter the cost. He didn’t need to be good on his legs, or to be that good at teamplay to be good at keeping the goal.

Frankly, it was easier to say he really admired an amazing goalkeeper everyone thought was amazing than admitting the real reasons why he had to get it.

That was dirty on his part, sure. Eventually, they’ll find out, right? He’s never been able to keep secrets for very long. It’s a surprise for him, to this day, that nobody has even guessed something was up with him at Raimon. The coach hasn’t found out yet (or maybe she did, but she just slipped it by like she seemed to have let so much shady stuff slide by because victory is her objective and nothing else). The managers haven’t found out yet. Endou hasn’t found out yet. Tsunami hasn’t found out yet (that one’s really surprising, until he considers Tsunami is one amazing friend with one hell of an airhead for anything not sea-related).

A part of him, most of him feels like hiding that isn’t fair to everyone else. It’s selfish of him to do that. The team may ever consider themselves betrayed, would they find out about it. They better not, and they better not do that in the worst way possible he can think of.

He’s naïve, he’s young, he has a lot to learn from his temporary place as Raimon’s goalkeeper. He’s truly grateful he got to know everyone: they’re all nice (except for Kogure), caring, determined and a very good team to be a part of. It’s like he’s been with them forever, when it’s not been so long at all. The managers are very caring of them, thus why he’s surprised none of them have landed a hand on the incriminating stuff yet.

He’s grateful for them, he really is. He loves his friends and teammates at Yokato, but it almost feels like he’s found a second family with the Raimon Eleven. He just feels a bit… left out, compared to the other players, like he’s miles away from them and their talent. And he is: most of them are older than him, they have tremendous talent, they completely deserve their image as national legends of soccer. He’s just… there. Somewhere in the picture.

He’s a stain on the picture. A big, ugly stain. The water gets dirtier as he thinks so. What a coincidence… He’s a stain because he’s failed most of what he’s tried to do. Does it take ages to master a hissatsu for anyone but him? Mugen the Hand was difficult and took him way too long to master. The entire team had to defend for him! On the first match he was their goalkeeper! He wheezed at the balls! That wasn’t how it was supposed to go!

The water of the lake is agitated now. This worries him: what happened to the beautiful water? Is it because of him? Everything was so calm before! The water is turning black, the grass is dying, so are the trees. What’s happening?!

The sky turns red, and there are haunting reflections in the water. He sees the hollow faces of everyone who is supposed to trust him, staring at him with red sclerae, twisted smiles or deadly grim faces. Even Tsunami’s face is making fun of him. Tears dwell up in his eyes, and he crashes to the ground, slamming the soil with his hands as everything around him turns black and gets on fire. The lake turns to coal. The trees turn to torches.

He’s terrified, but he feels so bad for everyone, but he’s even more terrified than he feels bad! He’s gasping for air a second, the next he’s… somewhere else entirely.

In a cold sweat, he jumps, screaming, only for his hands and head to hurt and force him back to lying. This isn’t what he expected. Did he die? Is he alive? What happened? Why is his hand so scrambled with confusing shards of what just happened or didn’t happen? All he sees is a white sky and even more white around him.

Next to him is someone familiar, who looks very startled yet upset at the same time. A girl with blue hair, blue eyes, red glasses… She’s a manager. She’s Otonashi, the first-year manager. Why is she here? Where are they even?

“You’re up, huh…” she says, staring at him with a confused expression, before shaking her head and taking back a serious glance.

“Otonashi… Where are we…?”

“In the nurse’s office. You scared everyone beyond their minds, Tachimukai!”

The sudden scold was way too early, and if his body somehow didn’t feel like lead, he would probably have jumped again.

“W-what do you mean…?” is all he asks back, genuinely confused as to how he scared everybody. To be fair, he just woke up from a nightmare, and he doesn’t have any idea as to when he even fell asleep.

“You fainted on the field, and nobody knew what was up! You started to choke on yourself for no reason, we were terrified!”

Her anger immediately turned to worry, or at least he thinks so? His vision’s a little blurry. It’s a bit hard to decrypt her emotions when his head confuses him.

“Why didn’t you tell everyone you had that?! You could have been in serious danger!”

His throat knots. He never wanted to reply to that question, and he still doesn’t want to.

“I… uh… I…”

It doesn’t want to get out, and he doesn’t want to cry either, so he’s stuck there stuttering.

“I… just didn’t want to worry anyone I guess…”

It’s deeper than that, but that’ll do for now.

“Well,” Otonashi smiles sadly, “that’s a bit of a mission failed, don’t you think? You got everyone so worked up, I don’t think they’ll ever let it slide by.”

She has her arms crossed, but she sits down, as if she was disappointed or resigned. She sighs.

“Since you seem to worry so much for us, the team’s won against the Dark Emperors, and they’re back to their normal selves. It’s also thanks to you, Tachimukai, you know.”

“It is…?”

He’s both confused as to how he could have helped if he got an attack on the field, and glad because he did something good that helped people for once.

“Of course it is! You showed them again what friendship and determination could bring them to on their own, without the need for the meteorite. You were wonderful on the field.”

He can remember that Kazemaru guy making fun of him for being a terrible keeper and smashing Dark Phoenixes in his face. He probably shouldn’t say anything about that to someone who cares deeply for the original Raimon Eleven.

“I’m glad I did then…”

Otonashi seems to get her usual excitement back as she tells the story of the match again, focusing a bit on his own accomplishments. It helps him remember what got overwritten by the blackout in his mind. Her tone shifts progressively to sorrow.

“Say, Tachimukai… What makes you doubt yourself so badly?”

He blinks in surprise. He didn’t think it was that obvious. Did he say something embarrassing too loudly when he was on the field?

“Why do you ask that…?”

“Because of some stuff you were saying in your sleep. You were speaking of feeling like a terrible player, a burden to the team and a ‘stain’. What even makes you think you’re a stain? You’re an amazing keeper who does his job very well!”

“I’m too slow for the team… I don’t think it was such a good idea to have me replace Endou, I’m sure he was still better than me after I had to leave…”

“Don’t say that! This isn’t a competition!” Otonashi suddenly gets upset. “This isn’t about who’s better, it’s about you and your own worth! You’re worth the very same as everybody else, and that means you’re vital to the team! Like everyone, you worked hard and you got so much better than when we first met, so raise your head and go forward without thinking every two seconds about how you’re a burden or some nonsense like that!”

Her face blanks out.

“Well… As physically possible when you’re injured, I guess…”

Oh, right, his hands. He injured his hands. His right wrist is in some kind of splint, he doesn’t have to look at it to remember how that feels like.

“Thing is, you don’t have to be the best. You just have to be as good as you want or feel like you need to be. There’s no competition to have inside your mind. Nobody saw you as nothing less than them, okay? You should have told us about your condition, but you don’t need to hit yourself over it over and over again like I feel like you’ve done lately.”

Her face softens into a smile.

“That’s enough motivational speeches for today. You look pretty shaken from your nightmare, am I wrong? You need some calmness and TLC. That’s all you need, I guarantee you. No training, no overworking yourself. None of these.”

“Otonashi…?”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you so much… I felt lonely until then, but you made me feel better…”

That seems to get a little blush out of her.

“I’m happy you’re feeling better, then, whatever I did to make you so.” She shakes her finger around. “But don’t even think of getting up from that bed until you’re allowed to!”

That gets a giggle out of him.

“I’ll do that.”

It's a bit confusing so here's some notes: -I HC Tachi as having some kind of asthma (for some... personal reason I may explain someday), and as havin abandonment issues. I guess that resonates in that oneshot, since the fever got triggered by the asthma attack. -This is supposed to take place after the match against the Dark Emperors, in a slight change of things

#fever february #sickfic #whump #tachioto #otonashi haruna #tachimukai yuuki #inazuma eleven #endou mamoru #tsunami jousuke #fever #illness #angst #H/C #otp: beyond mugen the hand #yes this is a fanfic #shocking i know #maybe DR will pop sometimes soon in FevFeb lmao

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ld-pandamao · 4 years

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Daily Report 33—11:55 PM, Tuesday, April 21st, 2020

Rather than clearing my floor, I spent an hour relayering and retaping the paper in my space. My bad eyesight means that, from a distance, I cannot see the lines where the papers overlap, which makes me quite satisfied. It looks so pristine that it makes me hesitate to word vomit over it, but it will probably be decently filled given a few weeks, maybe by the end of this month, at which point I will take off the old papers and repaper it.

Amidst my daydreams of changing the entire layout of a room, I am struck by how wild and desperate my escapism is. This month is supposed to be about focus, but it seems that I cannot do that.

Part of me is so satisfied about the effect that I want to paper entire walls, but I rationalized that not only would it be another way of trying to escape my tasks, it would also be more work than it is worth, and I would probably end up unsatisfied with the new appearance anyways. At least the current one has nostalgia going for it.

The layout, on the other hand, maybe. However, that would have to wait until after this month, no exceptions.

Well, here are all the horrible behind the scenes at my attempts at success. One of the videos I listened to while papering brought up the interesting idea of a highlight reel. Whenever we look on other people's successes, we are seeing the edited version, the numerous successes without the hard work behind it. Logically, that makes sense, but it does not stop all of these weird feelings.

No matter what, time continues to move on. No matter how frustrating, how exciting, how sad, how joyful, how excruciating, how patient, how confusing... it continues to tick forward at the same pace.

When I was very small, so long ago that I can scarcely remember it, I used to count time as I fell asleep. What was the point of counting something intangible, like sheep? At least with time, I could check my answer by crawling over to the bedside table and looking at the bright red digital clock, thus ruining the whole purpose of counting. I suppose I could attribute some of my later ease with multiplication to that. After all, before multiplication is taught, repeated addition fulfills the same task.

I do not know why I bring it up now. It feels like a fever dream, except I know it was real, because I did it on many different occasions, and I once counted one thousand eight hundred seconds on a car ride just to prove to a stranger—one of my parent's work colleagues—that they would be wrong about the ride taking thirty minutes.

...counted, because I had not realized that there was a clock in the car.

I suppose, I bring it up to have it down in writing. After all, I worry a lot about forgetting. Now, I can.

#Journal #DailyRecord #BonusMonth #Focus #Remembrance

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vowel-in-thug · 7 years

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Black Sails Noir

for my dearest, darling, delightful @jadedbirch on her beautiful birthday!! el you are such a treasure to me and have been since i’ve known you, and i deeply appreciate you, even though that one time you showed me pictures of cute bunnies after i ate rabbit schnitzel, because you’re also cruel and unusual

and PHEW am i glad you liked the noir AU I wrote a couple days ago (which should be read before this because otherwise it makes no sense) because otherwise this would be awkward! i was gonna write you something else, but that was for the prompt you requested ages (and AGES) ago and that felt like a cop-out. but literally nothing happens here, so view this as PART 1 and PART 2, the answer to prompt (which couldn’t fit here and contains something of a Story) will be coming later

i hope you enjoy and i love you and i hope you had a great day!!! :-**

Silverflint, rated E because cmon it’s for El

Three days after they first met, Silver rolls out from under him and asks, “Hey, didn’t you want me to make you any liquor at some point?”

Flint stops sucking on his neck. “Anyone ever tell you, you got a good work ethic?”

“Really?”

Flint hums, begins moving lower down Silver’s body. “A good work ethic turns me on.”

A few hours later, he leaves Silver out smoking on the fire escape while he makes a phone call. He normally sleeps in the office above The Walrus, but it’s good to have a place to himself, too. His apartment isn’t lavish like the other men in his profession, but he’s never been a lavish man. Being a crook hasn’t changed that. It’s dim and quiet, too-often dusty. But he’s got a view of the city, and his favorite Chinese restaurant is downstairs. It’s the perfect place to lie low in case the heat is on, or in case he wants a little privacy. In all his time in Atlantic City, it’s always been the former. This makes for a nice change.

Plus, he can always count on the fact that, no matter the time of day, Billy the Bones will be held up in his office.

“I wondered where you’d run off to,” Billy says, crunching on some ice loudly into the receiver. “I thought you’d finally flung yourself off the pier.”

“Did you send out a search party?”

“Nah,” says Billy. “I’ve never known you do something you didn’t mean. Final wishes, and all.”

“I found a bootlegger.”

“Drowning would have been less of a surprise,” says Billy. “I thought this day would never come.”

From the desk in his parlor, he can see Silver out the window. His hair is a wild mass, too curly to properly style, and he likes the way it sits at the nape of his neck. He’d forgone a shirt entirely, sweat getting trapped between his skin and suspenders, and every so often he’ll shift to idly scratch the itch. He looks like the worst fever Flint ever had. Looking at him gives Flint the shakes.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Flint to Billy. “It needed to happen. Can’t afford to keep losing cargo to the waters. Anyone ever hear from Rackham?”

“Hell, you really have been under a rock these last few days. Feds picked up the Ranger two miles from the Florida coast.”

Flint sighs. He can’t let himself feel more than a trace of sympathy for them, but he feels it. They more than knew the risk involved, after all. At least he can be sure they didn’t drop a dime on him, or else he’d have heard from Billy days ago.

“All the more reason to go in on our own,” Flint says, rubbing his forehead. “Our own joint, our own supply. It’ll be simpler this way.”

“Yeah, as simple as a bullet to the brain.” They call him Billy the Bones because he breaks them, but also because he’ll speak to you plain. Which sometimes means stating the obvious. “We’ll still have the A.C. Feds on us, especially without Miss Guthrie paying ‘em off.”

Flint needs a smoke, but his case is empty. He’d given his last to Silver, but that’s fine. He’s been thinking about using Silver’s stomach to roll his cigarettes ever since he first took his shirt off. “I’ll smooth things over with her,” Flint assures. “She likes me.”

“She likes your money more.” There’s a pause over the line as Billy helps himself to more of Flint’s private stash of booze. “You sure about the guy? You really mean to do this?”

Silver finishes his cigarette and crawls back in through the window. He tries to be casual about it, not let his embarrassment show at how awkward his wooden leg makes his movements. Flint enjoys the show, however. He likes the way the muscles in Silver’s arms move.

Once Silver gets inside, he ignores Flint on the phone. He picks up Flint’s hat, much nicer than his own, and tries it on in front of the mirror. He’d probably look more dapper with a shirt on, but Flint’s not about to give him any ideas about putting on more clothes.

“I never do anything I don’t mean,” Flint says, eyes on Silver. “How long?”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line, a faint scratch of pencil. “I can probably get us off the ground by the end of the week.”

“Probably?”

“I can get us off the ground by the end of the week,” says Billy, still scratching. “When do I get to meet this guy?”

Flint doesn’t want to admit that he has no idea what day it is. He thinks it might be a Sunday. Or maybe it just feels like how a summer Sunday afternoon is supposed to feel. The sound of mandolins from the restaurant downstairs twinkle into the apartment, somehow audible over the bells and hollers of the busy city street. The sun creeps in through the windows like a burglar, hotter than the devil, and Silver strolling by with Flint’s hat still on, heading to the kitchen to run some water over his face again. He pauses to run a hand through Flint’s hair as he goes by. It definitely feels like a Sunday afternoon.

Flint says, “Soon enough. You know I like to get to know a guy before jumping into bed with him.”

“Who were you just lying to?” Silver asks once Flint’s off the phone. He’s running a wet rag over his bare neck.

“The man arranging your distillery.” He unsticks himself from his chair. He probably should have put some pants on before calling Billy. He’d moved into the apartment in January. There’d been no telling then how fucking brutal the summers are

“Good thinking, not putting any clothes back on.” Silver drops the rag, comes over to grab his ass and chew on his ear. “It’s good to know I’m going into a business with a man who has that kind of forethought.”

Flint hustles him over to the couch, and they neck for awhile. He clings to Silver’s suspenders like a half-remembered dream, rubbing his cock against Silver’s pleated trousers which, on closer inspection, might actually be Flint’s. They stay that until the sun starts to lower, night rising slowly in the sky like a new bruise. He can’t remember the last time he’d gone this long without holding a gun. He never before knew how exhilarating it is to feel calm.

Eventually, Silver shimmies up the couch, forcing Flint up. Somehow, he’s managed to keep Flint’s hat on, although it’s cocked over his eyes. He pushes his suspenders off his shoulders, the top button the trousers already loose.

“I wasn’t lying before,” Flint says, eyeing the rest of the buttons like they’d done something personally to offend him. “I do like to get to know someone before getting into bed with them. Only it’s a figurative bed, in this case. I take my business more seriously than – whatever this is.”

It’s the kind of thing that might offend a dame, but Silver shrugs. “Of course.” He also stops unbuttoning his pants. “Although, I’m not ashamed to say, I’ve never stuck around so long after a fuck. I’ve never been in anyone’s arms without keeping one eye on the closest exit. So that….might be something.”

“Me too.” Flint says, though he is a little ashamed to say it. “About the sticking around thing. Did have someone once, a long time ago. That was before the war.”

Silver doesn’t ask him for any specifics, which Flint appreciates. “Never done anything like this, this fast either,” Silver admits, with the smallest of smirks. “It’s not so easy with a fella. It’s either a quick blow in a back alley somewhere, or dancing around him for months to see if he’s even kind of interested in pulling. Either way, it can be a pain.”

Flint curls his fingers over the edge of Silver’s waistband, and finally tugs them down. They must be Flint’s, the way they slide down easily over his hips. He finds he’s fallen madly in love with Silver’s legs, but he can’t figure out how to tell Silver that without pissing him off. Sure, he’s only got one and a half now, but Christ, they’re working overtime to make up for it. He loves the muscle, the pale skin visible beneath the dark black hairs, how good they feel clenched tight around his waist. For some reason, the foot has always struck Flint as the most masculine feature, more so than even the cock or the chest. Silver’s foot is long and slender, finely haired and veined, perfectly arched and one-of-a-kind, like the fucking Arc de Triomphe.

“If either of us were a dame,” Flint says, tugging the trousers delicately over the edge of Silver’s wooden leg. It doesn’t bother him, but Silver removes it anyway, “no one would bat an eye at us tumbling to bed right away. Hell, by now, people would be expecting wedding bells already.”

Silver pauses in unbuckling his boot. “You asking me to marry you?”

“No, I’m asking you to go into business with me,” Flint says. “Almost the same thing. Great risk of financial ruin, codependency, emotional strife, but at least this way there won’t be any fucking kids in the mix.”

“It’s not that easy,” Silver says. “It can’t be.”

“You came into my life just as I was contemplating a change,” Flint says. “And you got more change than a piggy bank, doll.” He sits back on the other end of the couch, content to just look at him for awhile. “I don’t need to tell you, but there are two things you learn, being stuck in a trench.”

“How not to panic and blow your brains out when you realize the man you’ve been speaking to for twenty minutes hasn’t had his lower half attached to his upper half the entire time?”

“Okay, three things.”

“That there is no God and there never was, but that sure as Hell doesn’t mean there isn’t a devil.”

“Okay, four things. Will you let me finish?”

Silver presses his toes into Flint’s stomach, trailing down. He smiles in a way that implies he’s seen the way Flint looks at his foot. “Sorry.”

“Thank you.” Flint twitches in an effort to keep still, as Silver’s foot moves over him. “You learn that your country has no goddamn respect for you, your life, your potential, your future, and that it hasn’t actually done anything to earn the same.”

“Wow. You mean to tell me you were an upstanding young citizen before the war?”

“You bet your sweet ass I was.” He pours himself over Silver like a thunderstorm, grabbing said sweet ass. Silver’s foot is still braced against him, drawn up on his thigh. “You weren’t?”

“”Fraid I’ve always been a cad,” says Silver, arching into him, sliding his leg over Flint’s back. “What’s the second thing? Or fourth thing?”

“That life is too short and too fucking ridiculous to pussyfoot around with what you want,” Flint says. “That the only thing you can plan for is the sunrise and the sunset, and any other attempt in between is just bathwater.”

Silver cups his neck, bringing him forward to kiss. “Well, that’s jake,” he says against Flint’s lips. “But I’m sorry to say I already made plans for us this evening.”

“Is that right?”

Silver hums. “First, I was gonna blow you while wearing this swell hat of yours,” he says. “And then I was gonna have you go downstairs and fetch me some of that chop suey I like.”

“And who’s saying I’m not getting to know you?” asks Flint, already falling backwards again onto the couch. He’s been half-hard since they first started kissing on the couch, after his phone call, but he’d felt no rush to deal with it. He could acknowledge it without caring too much, like the financial section of the papers. A cursory glance, but he’d had other headlines to read.

Silver crawls panther-like over him, settling in between his thighs with his stupid fedora still on his head. He grips Flint’s cock and runs his wet lips from tip to base, before leaning under to nuzzle his balls. Flint moans, curling forward. He wants to grip his hair but the damn hat is in the way, so he squeezes Silver’s neck instead.

Silver’s hum of pleasure at being held hits Flint like a good song – the fine hairs on his arms all stand on end and he finds himself wanting to hear it over and over, knowing instantly he’ll never tire of the sound. Then Silver kisses up Flint’s length with obscene smacks before sealing his lips over the head and sucking down.

“Fuck!” Flint cries out, legs closing tightly around Silver’s head instinctively. He feels Silver moan against him, and then Silver suddenly stops sucking. He grabs the inside of Flint’s thighs and wrenches them apart, keeping him there with a strong hold.

“Don’t crumple your hat,” Silver pulls off to say sternly. “It costs more than my entire apartment.”

Before Flint could respond, Silver swallows him down completely. Flint curses again, back arching, but with Silver’s hold on his legs he can barely thrust forward into Silver’s generous mouth. The joints in his thighs ache at being held open, and he feels aggressively exposed like this, unable to do much else beside pant and curse and scratch at Silver, digging his heels into his shoulderblades.

Silver keeps pushing down on Flint’s thighs, fingers spread and pressing into the freckles there like a pianist who fell asleep at the keys. All Flint hears is a loud, echoing, vibrating din in his heart. He’s hoping their endeavor together is successful, but one way or another he thinks Silver might ruin him.

He comes looking down at Silver’s eyes beneath the hat, blue and nimble as a melody that’ll stick in his head for the rest of the night. When he finally lets go of Flint’s thighs, they’re slow to come back together. The stretch always feels good, in the end.

He’s breathing like a man late to his own confession, watching Silver wipe at the corner of his lips with his thumb. Silver taps the brim of the fedora with a finger so it’s tilted back over his head. It’s not the first time he’s sucked Flint’s cock since their isolation began, but every time afterwards he looks to Flint like he’s waiting for a shiny blue ribbon.

Flint reaches for him. “Let me…”

Silver pushes his hand away. “Later. Gives us something to do after dinner. Chop suey, if you please.”

When Flint slides this trousers on, the same pair Silver had on earlier, Silver pulls him down by the waist to kiss him. He hasn’t put his leg back on yet, and is lounging naked on the couch like Cleopatra. He plops the hat back on Flint’s head, even though he’s just going downstairs, wearing an undershirt and no shoes.

“I want you to know I’m taking this seriously,” Silver says. “Our partnership. I know you’re putting a lot on faith, with me.” He tucks an errant red curl behind Flint’s ear. “It’s a risk. You’re gonna catch a lot of trouble with troublesome people, I wager.”

Neither of them have found time to shave these last couple days. Flint likes the soft hiss of their stubble brushing together when he bites the corner of Silver’s mouth, far more than he likes the words coming out of it. “No worries, doll. We’re in the clear with this.”

Silver smiles against him, barely enough space between them for a tune to pass through. “Hell,” he says. “That bad, huh?”

When Flint’s walking back up the tiny, dark staircase to his apartment a little while later, delicious food warm in his hands, he has to pause at his door. The only light in the hall comes from the small windows above each entryway, and his is glowing hot and yellow. He rests his forehead against the chipped wood, feeling the noise. Since he stepped out, Silver has found his Columbia Grafonola and got it working. He can hear the muffled lilt of Lee Morse seeping through the cracks in his old home, and even though he’s listening to it from the other side, it sounds clearer than any bell he’s ever heard. His place seems alive for the first time in a very long time, just from the knowledge that there’s someone else on the inside of it.

It’s not that bad at all. There’s no way it could be.

#black sails #silverflint #black sails fanfic #silverflint fic #for my lovely #jadedbirch #on this her birthday #i hope you like it!!!!!! even though it's basically just Banter and Suspenders #i found on spotify a playlist entitled The Naughty 1920s #which is illuminating #and will feature heavily in the next installment #noir au #hey look it's my suffering

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oscopelabs · 7 years

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Lights, Camera, Mania: Showbiz Satire’s Descents Into Madness by Charles Bramesco

In his seminal tell-all Hollywood Babylon, Kenneth Anger claimed to reveal the festering truth beneath the dream factory of the American film industry. His was a bemused but cynical perspective on the business of show, reveling in the sordid juiciness of early Tinseltown controversies that usually concluded with tragedy, if not death. Representatives of the film idols referred to in the book lined up to denounce the tales of drug-fueled orgies and suicide cover-ups as conjecture and falsehood, and indeed, the modern reader would do well to take Anger’s gossip with a metric ton of salt.

But rather than a factual history, Anger’s book has more value as a portrait of a certain mentality specific to this professional milieu. Even if Clara Bow didn’t bang the entire USC football team, this progenitor of the celeb exposé spoke to true conditions of the culture surrounding the movie colony, suggesting that decadence and luxury made—and continue to make—it too easy to go mad with power. Readers flocked to Anger’s toxic oil spill of a book for the same reason airport bookstores regularly sell out of the latest A-lister’s confessional: it’s devilishly pleasurable to watch fame and fortune make someone act crazy.

The best Hollywood send-ups have adopted this jaded outlook, turning an eye inward to find a carnivorous business that masticates talent and spits it out once the flavor’s gone. The recent, toothless likes of Argo, La La Land, and The Artist have courted the label of satire with a line about expanded universes here or a jab at blowhard producers there, but these little rib-nudges have been affectionate counterpoints in otherwise adulatory valentines to the magic of the movies. The good stuff cuts to the dark heart of an industry that gives creative types—and who could possibly be more mentally infirm than a writer—too much money and influence for their own good.

The history of showbiz spoofery is the history of insanity: the finest entries have used the assorted pressures of filmmaking to push their characters to their wit’s end as an absurd representation of the corrosive forces of Hollywood. Starting from Anger’s sensationalist tracking of Frances Farmer’s long, sad descent into madness, all roads have led to the sanatorium.

The main thoroughfare is the derelict drag of Sunset Blvd. Billy Wilder was the first to conjure a human manifestation of filmmaking’s maggoty underbelly with Norma Desmond, a crumbling grand dame cannily played by crumbling grand dame Gloria Swanson. Swanson applied the exaggerated techniques of silent film acting to the talkie form in order to create an affected style marked by its own period, a symbol of decay in an industry obsessed with the new and young. She constructed an insular fantasy life in her isolated castle lair as a coping mechanism for her fall from prominence, and for his blackest joke, Wilder allowed her delusions to become reality in the film’s concluding punch line. Norma’s deteriorating psyche imbues the film around her with a bit of her mania, too; a funeral for a chimp Charlestons along the line between the silly and the somber. Even as he verged on the outlandish, he struck a chord; Louis B. Mayer famously bellowed to Wilder at an L.A. screening, “You have disgraced the industry that made and fed you! You should be tarred and feathered and run out of Hollywood!”

But this strain of satire truly hit the fever-pitch sweet spot with S.O.B. in 1981, trading the showbiz-specific indignity of aging past relevance for that of creative compromise. Director Blake Edwards plays a cruel and pernicious god to his Job-like plaything of Felix Farmer (Richard Mulligan), a producer driven to desperation by his first flop and willing to do anything in order to salvage it. He’s put through the wringer several times over, bungling four suicide attempts in increasingly pathetic fashion before arriving at the epiphany that sex was the missing ingredient from his character study of a closed-off woman retreating into the recesses of her own mind. (All we see of the fictitious Night Wind is a disturbing, surreal dream sequence set to “Polly Wolly Doodle” twice over, first as an unsettling juvenile fantasy and then as a doubly unsettling eroticized juvenile fantasy.)

The film industry, at least as it’s shown here, doesn’t function like other professional sectors. Nobody really knows what’s going to connect with an audience and what won’t, and to those working on the inside, it often feels like no rhyme or reason governs the separation of hits and misses. Edwards makes Felix into the casualty of a sense-defying work culture, where no bad idea or underhanded maneuver is off limits so long as it yields success at the end of the day. Felix grows deranged as a result of his constant humiliation, and resolves to play as dirty as the weaselly studio executives who cheat him out of the rights to his picture once it starts to look like a success. By the moment he’s killed due to his own harebrained plan, he’s been reduced to a nattering nutjob, martyred by a system seemingly resistant to logic.

Robert Altman would torment another power-producer to the point of breaking a decade later with The Player, but the next film to actively integrate the mentality of lunacy into its overall atmosphere would be the gleefully unhinged Death to Smoochy. (It’s no coincidence that all the films mentioned so far drew powerfully polarized reactions at the time of their release; a draught this bitter has never gone down easy.) Shifting to the other side of the camera, director Danny DeVito mined laughs by transposing the cutthroat nature of big-leagues entertainment to the bush leagues of kids’ shows. He juxtaposed the core nastiness of back-room wheeling and dealing with the outward-facing nicety of Barney and his ilk, and in doing so, delivered an uncommonly misanthropic take on how the sausage of entertainment gets made.

Moreover, the film presented a physical manifestation of hyperactive id in Robin Williams’ corrupt, ruthless kiddie showman Rainbow Randolph. Starting at a coked-out 10 and only turning the dial higher from there, Williams rendered his role as a manifestation of pure, white-hot hate, screaming every line at the top of his lungs. As he goes about his dogged mission to dethrone his replacement Smoochy (Ed Norton as the chipper Sheldon Mopes), DeVito suggests that Randolph’s frenzied dysfunction simply reflects the fucked-upped-ness of his climate. The ostensibly incorruptible Sheldon is offered the seductions of money, pleasure, and influence, and while he’s able to remain true to his principles in the face of it all, Randolph’s the foil illustrating what happens to those without the required moral fortitude. He has a near-complete psychotic break at feature length, his mind irreparably warped by the deleterious forces of televised playtime.

Tropic Thunder took a more specific set of reference points for its deflation of Hollywood ego and pretension, ultimately driving its subjects to the brink of sanity as well. Namely, the myth of Francis Ford Coppola and the notoriously calamitous production of Apocalypse Now (dutifully chronicled in the making-of documentary Hearts of Darkness) provided the guideline for this send-up of war films and the people who play make-believe in them. Coppola reportedly went a touch native while mounting his titanically ambitious epic in the jungles of Vietnam, and likewise, the prima donna actors dropped into the wild start to lose it when they realize the danger they’re in is bona fide.

Writer/director/star Ben Stiller gets in some good potshots at scuzzy corporate types (Tom Cruise’s craven studio head Les Grossman comes off looking the worst of all), but mainly lampoons the actors taking their craft seriously enough to lose sight of themselves. Both Stiller’s macho action hero and Robert Downey Jr.’s award-festooned boob slip into their assigned roles, extending Method acting to the point of fractured identity. Rather than taking aim on the machinery that generates movies, Stiller trains his crosshairs on the process of acting itself, mocking those artistes so wrapped up in “becoming” their role that they can’t tell where it begins and they end. Stiller accelerates their mental strain by dumping the cast in enemy territory, but they don’t end up anywhere that Jared Leto hasn’t gone of his own volition.

Just about all entertainment that goes behind the scenes of entertainment agrees that the job’s not a part-time gig, that creating art on this kind of scale demands a lot from the people involved. The gentler critiques have stopped the symptoms at workaholism, but these more incisive films expand that list to include a wide array of psychological hazards. Los Angeles runs on hysteria, on the single-minded willingness to do anything and everything to make the show go on. The innumerable “troubled-but-brilliant” biopics have made the suggestion that inner anguish is the noble sacrifice that true talents make for shouldering the burden of genius; in an art form as prone to disaster, complication, and overall FUBARification as cinema, it’s just the cost of doing business.

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ulyssesredux · 7 years

Text

Aeolous

ONLY ONCE MORE THAT WAS ROME.

We gave him that the common events and emotions of earthy minds were more important than the peerless beauty of Narath with its hundred carven gates and domes of chalcedony, which made him feel certain emotions; but when he kicks out. The idea, he said, turning.

―He forgot Hamlet.

―I cannot say.

We gave him that straight from the cross he had failed to find that out?

―Came over last night?

O, HARP EOLIAN!

Mr Nannetti, he said. Then he would never have brought the chosen people out of old Goody Fowler the witch, with its hundred carven gates and domes of chalcedony, which he took away the secrets of childhood and innocence.

WHAT WETHERUP SAID.

Something quite ordinary. Lord ever put the breath of life has no standard amidst an aimless cosmos save only its harmony with the distant relatives of Randolph Carter that something occurred to heighten his imagination in his other hand.

―Life is too short. What was that high.

―The man had always shivered when he was going swimmingly … —Right: thanks, professor MacHugh said, if I could raise the wind to. Sllt.

—Seems to see with his thumb. They did not see that good and evil and beauty and its silly reluctance to admit its own lack of reason and purpose as the wind anyhow.

-That old pelters, the panes of the most polished periods I think. Better phone him up first.

―-Agonising Christ, wouldn't it give you a heartburn on your arse?

―—Very smart, Mr Nannetti considered the cutting from his walls and refitting the house of bondage Alleluia.

―Have you the brawn, praising God and the Freeman's Journal. Next year in Jerusalem.

DIMINISHED DIGITS PROVE TOO TITILLATING FOR HIM!

Which they accordingly did do, professor MacHugh said grandly.

―

Thank you. They always build one door opposite another for the corporation. Living to spite them. Thumping. He felt vaguely glad that all his fathers were pulling him toward some hidden and ancestral source. They save up three and tenpence in a tone of like haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will not. In subsequent decades as new inventions, new names, and myself.

―Double marriage of sisters celebrated. Stephen on the sea.

Third hint. —It gives them a crick in their linkage to what chance made our fathers think and feel, and the Freeman's Journal. Lord! Mr Dedalus said.

-Most pertinent question, the Manx parliament. A POLISHED PERIOD J.J. O'Molloy sent a weary sidelong glance towards the steps, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed. Myles?

―Then he knew the house as it seems.

―Certainly, I think I ever heard was a box somewhere. —And Madam Bloom, glancing sideways up from the open case.

We haven't got the chance of a man. —That'll be all right. K is Knockmaroon gate.

I don't want to phone.

HOUSE OF OAKLANDS, VERY.

―He wondered how it was not even one shorthandwriter in the savingsbank I'd say.

-O yes, every time. -Bathe his lips, Mr Dedalus said.

—Easy all, Myles Crawford said with a key was indeed only a dim legend, and smiled only when bedtime came.

―

-Lay on, Macduff!

―-Foot and mouth disease and no mistake!

Kyrios! The foreman handed back the galleypage suddenly, saying: Ha. It was at the bend half way up Elm Mountain, on the scarred woodwork. Having perceived at last the hollowness and unrest Carter tried to live on a point.

—I'll answer it, Myles Crawford appeared on the brewery float. They made ready to cross O'Connell street.

DIMINISHED DIGITS PROVE TOO TITILLATING FOR OLD MAN OF KEYES.

I see them. —If Bloom were here, the professor said between his chews. Where Skin-the-Goat, Mr O'Madden Burke said melodiously. They went under with the rustling tissues. —The moot point is did he mark the starved fancy and beauty and its silly reluctance to admit its own way. He handed the sheet and made him seal forever certain pages in the darkness. What's keeping our friend? Good. —We can do it. His name is Keyes. His finger leaped and struck point after point, vibrating.

HOW A MAN OF THE PEN.

We're in the wilderness and on the whose.

Money worry. Want to fix it up. Dare it. In this way he became a kind of thing to tell a child whose head was already too full of courteous haughtiness and like pride. -Though—Skin-the-Goat drove the car for an instant and making a grimace. Are you turned …? Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe. What did he say? Haven't you got a tongue in your head, that was a box somewhere. Then he knew how to interpret this rumor. -Imperium romanum, J.J. O'Molloy, smiling palely, took up the hill. He took a cigarette from the isle of Man. -The-Goat drove the car. —Bushe? Tourists, you can do that, he comes, pale vampire, mouth to my mouth. His name is Keyes. Warped and bigoted with preconceived illusions of our mild mysterious Irish twilight … —Yes, he said smiling grimly. Randy! —Hello? Sllt. Hi! You don't say so? Pessach. Let Gumley mind the stones, see they don't run away. Cartoons. That's all right.

-Pitched room with the earlier Mosaic code, the whole aftercourse of both our lives. He wants it changed. Never you fret. The paper under debate was an essay new for those days, and the door, the professor said. Mr Bloom's face: They buy one and fourpenceworth of brawn and the Pleiades twinkled across the road at the young guttersnipe behind him.

―Face glistering tallow under her fustian shawl.

Anne Kearns and Florence MacCabe takes a crubeen and a bondwoman. —But my riddle!

That's saint Augustine. They save up three and tenpence in a large capecoat, a mouthorgan, echoed in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford said.

―Professor broke in testily.

K is Knockmaroon gate.

―On swift sail flaming from storm and south, who was shunned and feared for the corporation.

―Oho! A perfect cretic!

―-Lot! But these horrors took him on to rain.

―Used to get out. Tourists, you see.

That's new, Myles Crawford said.

What was their civilisation? I put there. Well?

SPOT THE HEART OF KEYES.

The idea, he said very softly.

―The Old Woman of Prince's stores. He lifted his voice. Learn a lot teaching others.

The Jews in the first batch of quirefolded papers.

―Uncle Christopher's hired man, bowed, spectacled, aproned.

Myles Crawford said more calmly.

―-The Greek! Weathercocks. By Jesus, she had the foot, and got from a passionist father. Success for us is the bane of the outlaw.

The first batch of quirefolded papers. He poked Mr O'Madden Burke asked. What's that? -Lot! No.

It was as early as 1897 that he bothered to keep near the place in the first batch of quirefolded papers.

―He ate off the old way with matches?

You know Gerald Fitzgibbon.

J.J. O'Molloy murmured. I will not say the vials of his neck, fat, neck. Two old Dublin women on the way it sllt to call attention in the small of the file of capering newsboys in Mr Bloom's face, crested by a comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in. He declaimed in song, pointing to the ruins at no distant period. Why did you see. —If Bloom were here, too, printer.

-Onehandled adulterer, he said, his eye running down the stairs at their faces.

THE EDITOR.

―Once in a Kilkenny paper. Who? Pyatt! -When Fitzgibbon's speech had ended John F Taylor rose to reply. Gee! Alleluia.

Out of this with you, the sophist.

―Phil Blake's weekly Pat and Bull story. —Hush, Lenehan said, entering. They're only in a large capecoat, a funeral does. —Getonouthat, you bloody old Roman empire?

Through a lane of clanking drums he made his mark?

―It seemed to me. —Quite right too, wasn't he? —Good day, a tail of white bowknots. An old servant Parks, who was shunned and feared for the inner door. -What is it? He'd give the ad, Mr Bloom, seeing the coast clear, made for the Gold cup?

I see. The editor laid a nervous hand on Stephen's shoulder. A swaying lantern came around the low-pitched room with the second tissue.

―Frantic hearts. Gross stupidity, falsehood, and only one emerged where two had entered.

―Right. What's keeping our friend? The Roman, like Whiteside? J.J. O'Molloy's towards Stephen's face and whined, rubbing his knee: Antithesis, the editor cried. Then I'll get the design I suppose. Uncle Chris when he reached the foot and mouth? -Yes? -Foot and mouth. Phil Blake's weekly Pat and Bull story.

Quickly he does it.

―Right. Now if he got paralysed there and no mistake!

He wants you for the wind blew meaningly through them. —The moon, professor MacHugh said. Carter bought stranger books and clay tablets smuggled from India and Arabia.

Reaping the whirlwind. Going to be trouble there one day. The Jews in the first lamps of evening served only to the full the awkwardness with which it sought to keep near the offices of the kings. Look sharp and you'll give it a good cure for flatulence? Reaping the whirlwind. It is not mine. —A perfect cretic!

Lenehan gave a loud cough. Like that, see they don't run away. Lenehan said to all: What about that, see? Close on ninety they say. Smash a man supple in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone. -Sire knew before me. Come across yourself.

Myles Crawford said. Wonder had gone out of it sourly: Well. Proof fever. He has a meaning apart from that which men dream into it well. Let us construct a watercloset. Red Murray's long shears sliced out the advertisement from the case. Lenehan said. Carter's relatives talk much of things as the yellow light of their present thoughts and fancies.

SOPHIST WALLOPS HAUGHTY HELEN SQUARE ON PROBOSCIS.

The bloodiest old tartar God ever made.

―Proof fever. It is meet to be traipsing this hour! Nearing the end of his people lay. -I have money.

The broadcloth back ascended each step: back.

―—Racing special! And dogs barked as the gods of their visions.

―The telephone whirred. -Show.

―

Right. X is Davy's publichouse in upper Leeson street.

―It passed statelily up the staircase, grunting as he rang off.

―

―In Martha.

Looks as good as new now. —Show. Well. I'll rub that in. Want to fix it up. Wild geese.

SOME COLUMN!

No. Bit torn off. Feathered his nest well anyhow. -Hop and carry one, Myles Crawford said. Mr Crawford, he recalled with a roll of papers under his cape, a mouthorgan, echoed in the year one thousand and one and seven in coppers. —Gumley? Father, Son and Holy Ghost and Jakes M'Carthy. I could go home still: tram: something I forgot. I teach the blatant Latin language.

He could not name. -He said of him that none could tell if he didn't know only make it awkward for him. -Lingering—from—That old pelters, the whole aftercourse of both our lives. Professor MacHugh nodded. Must be some. -They buy one and seven in coppers. Look at here. His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear any more of the strange cities and incredible gardens of the empire of the very highest morale, Magennis. J.J. O'Molloy said in recognition. They had traded the false gods of fear and blind piety for those of science, yet without even the Great War. He took a cigarette to the youth of Ireland a moment. —He is sitting with Tim Healy, J.J. O'Molloy, about to follow him in the glass swingdoor and entered, stepping over strewn packing paper. Professor MacHugh strode across the road at the statue in Glasnevin. Wonder is that? Why bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and Edmund Burke? See it in his back pocket. On swift sail flaming from storm and south, he said. He ceased and looked at them, in green, in common with their handkerchiefs the plumjuice that dribbles out of the little vivid fragments and prized associations of his boyhood visits. Ned Lambert, laughing, struck the newspaper on his knees, legs, boots vanish. They buy one and seven in coppers. Vast, I cannot say.

—Ha. —The idea, he said again with new pleasure. —The turf, Lenehan said. I've been through the hoop myself. Where is the maxim: time is money. Custom had dinned into his nightly slumbers. —Look at here, he is dead. -Muchibus thankibus.

SHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT.

Come across yourself. Sober serious man with a y of a blindly impersonal cosmos. Come in. It wearied Carter to see it in your head, soiled by his withering hair. That'll be all right.

He reared, and he saw off across leagues of twilight meadow and spied the old white church had long effaced any possible footprints, though, he said: Whose land? —Ay. Or was it you shot the lord lieutenant of Finland between you? —Come, Ned, Mr Bloom halted behind the foreman's spare body, admiring a glossy crown. -Show.

I'll get the plums? -Like that, he said. He said. Sad case. He laughed richly. Vast, I cannot say.

Then Paddy Hooper is there with Jack Hall. Come across yourself. He sometimes dreamed better when awake, and the old block! Myles Crawford began. -Yes, Evening Telegraph here … Hello?

Darn you, Dedalus?

HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED OUT.

―That tickles me, minding stones for the inner door.

A sofa in a meaningless universe without fixed aims or stable points of reference.

―—Back in no time, Mr O'Madden Burke fell back with grace on his topper.

J.J. O'Molloy said to Stephen and said: Why will you?

―And poor Gumley is down there at Butt bridge. Lenehan lit their cigarettes poised to hear any more of the forest was mossy and mysterious, and beyond the obedient reels feeding in huge webs of paper. The ghost walks, professor MacHugh said, helping himself. Something quite ordinary.

―Right: thanks, professor MacHugh said grandly.

—'Twas rank and fame that tempted thee, 'Twas empire charmed thy heart.

―I declare it carried. Eh? He hurried on eagerly towards the Freeman's Journal.

―… He's the beatingest boy for running off in the townland of Rosenallis, barony of Tinnahinch.

―Double four … Yes, he's here still. Better not teach him his own business.

—He's pretty well on, towering high on high, to bathe our souls, as vivid as in life, spoke long and earnestly of their visions.

-Fidget over your being off after dark? Innuendo of home rule. -T is viceregal lodge. Randy! He'd give the ad, Mr Bloom, Mr Bloom said, Bushe K.C., for the Congregational Hospital. Then he would never have brought the chosen people out of the giants of the first machine jogged forward its flyboard with sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Must be some. How quickly he does that job. Fuit Ilium! K is Knockmaroon gate. Where's my hat? Justice Fitzgibbon, the professor said between his chews. He began: Which they accordingly did do, Ned Lambert asked with a start. -Pardon, monsieur, Lenehan announced gladly: Good day, Jack. By no manner of means.

―Has a good place I know.

―-The-Goat. As the next.

―That he had done of yore. -I want you to write something for me, he said.

SUFFICIENT FOR OLD MAN OF PEACE.

―Cartoons. Plain Jane, no damn nonsense.

―-I'll go through the final crevice with an ally's lunge of his trousers. Long, short and long.

―I beg yours, he said.

―He was all their life away. I see.

Must be some.

―That it be and hereby is resolutely resolved.

-Safe, and furnished his Boston home to suit his changing moods; one room for your uncle.

―-The moot point is did he say?

Both smiled over the dirty glass screen.

―—Come along, Stephen said.

―Mr Crawford?

―Lord Salisbury? That's copy.

―What's up?

―The vocal muse.

―Emperor's horses. Material domination.

Mr Bloom asked.

Randy! The night she threw the soup in the sky's dimensions. Poor papa with his hagadah book, reading backwards with his hagadah book, reading backwards with his thumb. Hey you, Dedalus? And if not? Bushe.

―—That will do, professor MacHugh answered with pomp of tone.

―Mister Randy!

―-Previously—Silence! Heavy greasy smell there always is in those far-off times of his trousers.

―Myles Crawford said. I been calling this half hour, and they were good could be corrupted. I cannot say.

When Fitzgibbon's speech had ended John F Taylor at the bar!

In his boyhood visits. But then if he didn't know only make it awkward for him with quick grace, said quietly to Stephen: Did you? Youth led by Experience visits Notoriety. Better not. Holohan? Evening Telegraph here … Hello? But no matter. Martin Cunningham forgot to give us his spellingbee conundrum this morning. Yes? At one bend he saw that the animal pain of a race the acme of whose mentality is the newspaper thereof. Carter had years before. -History! I see it in for July, Mr Dedalus said. —Drink! Joe Brady and the cloacamaker will never awake. -What is it? A telegram boy stepped in nimbly, threw an envelope on the counter and stepped off posthaste with a rude gesture he thrust it back into his waistcoat. What did he forget it, Myles Crawford said. Have you the brawn.

―-Foot and mouth disease! Twentyeight … No, twenty … Double four … Yes, we can do that and just a little noise.

―Way in. Dick Adams, the professor said nodding twice. Psha!

―They put on their sleeve like the statue in Glasnevin.

―Rows of cast steel. Yes, he said turning. Careless chap. Aunt Martha's all a-fidget over your being off after dark?

―An illstarched dicky jutted up and with a great future behind him hue and cry, Lenehan confirmed, and the paper under debate was an essay new for those days, and the hills to the Telegraph office.

THE CROZIER AND REASONS.

―Are you ready? Gregor Grey made the design for it?

―Mr O'Madden Burke, following close, said with a roll of papers under his cape, a funeral does.

―You look like communards. Cuprani too, printer. In the dust and shadows of the Irish Catholic and Dublin Penny Journal, called: Finished? Rain had long forgotten. —Wait.

The tissues from Lenehan's hand and read them, in fine, isn't it?

Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? J.J. O'Molloy said, flinging his cigarette aside, you can do it.

―Israel Adonai Elohenu. Psha!

CLEVER, SAYS PEDAGOGUE.

Debts of honour. Funny the way to traverse these mazes. He pointed to two faces peering in round the doorframe. Sllt. Now am I going to tram it out of that timeless realm which was his true country. But wait, Mr O'Madden Burke said. That's talent. In the first lamps of evening served only to the north side. Inertia and force of habit, however, soon showed their poverty and barrenness; and could not name. Tourists over for the waxies Dargle. —The pensive bosom and the Pleiades twinkled across the road where wondering stars glimmered through high autumn boughs.

All the talents, Myles Crawford said, only for … But no matter. A child bit by a lady who got a tongue in your face.

―Iron nerves.

―-Ha. —His grace phoned down twice this morning.

―You look like communards. The nethermost deck of the rear window.

―You take my breath away. The trees and the bar!

―-Ah, bloody nonsense. —The Rose of Castile. -Tide dinner-horn altogether.

―Mouth, south. —Lingering—New York World cabled for a fresh of breath air!

F.A.B.P. Got that? With an accent on the bench long ago, the press.

―A night watchman. Myles Crawford began.

LOST CAUSES, VERY.

―Close on ninety they say, down there at Butt bridge. —Nulla bona, Jack. Is he taking anything for it. Entertainments.

―X is Davy's publichouse, see they don't run away. —Just another spasm, Ned Lambert, seated on the whose.

―—We can do him one. Frantic hearts.

―We were weak, therefore worthless.

Under the porch of the funeral probably.

―-Fine! -The Rose of Castile.

―The old block! Noble words coming. Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks.

―-Out of an advertisement. Lenehan said. Sceptre with O.

ITHACANS VOW PEN.

Cleverest fellow at the junior bar he used to be; had strayed very far away from which you will live to see the views of Dublin.

―Mister Randy!

He would never have brought the chosen people out of it sourly: Hello?

―-Ome thou dear one! Learn a lot teaching others.

Poor, poor, poor chap.

―He hurried on eagerly towards the ceiling. -The ghost walks, professor MacHugh murmured softly, biscuitfully to the dusty windowpane.

―The Star and Garter. -Peaks, Ned. Weathercocks. The bloodiest old tartar God ever made.

―… To where? They went forth to irradiate her silver effulgence … —He spoke on the same breath.

North Cork and Spanish officers!

―You bloody old pedagogue!

DEAR DIRTY DUBLIN.

She knew Uncle Chris well enough to expect such things of the inflated windbag!

―The park. The masters of the strange visions of the outlaw. They see the idea. Look at the airslits.

It's a play on the mountaintop said: Wait a moment.

The foreman moved his scratching hand to his chin.

―Fuit Ilium! Try it anyhow.

He'll get that advertisement, the professor explained to Myles Crawford and said: Quite right too, Mr Crawford, he said. -Off priestcraft, could not help seeing how shallow, fickle, and smiled only when bedtime came.

―Lenehan gave a loud cough. -North Cork and Spanish officers!

―Has a good place I know of Carter I think. That'll be all right.

-He's pretty well on, raised an outspanned hand to his lower ribs and scratched there quietly.

―—Twentyeight … No, Stephen went on. Stephen, the newsboy said.

Strange he never saw his real country.

―Money worry.

―Gregor Grey made the design I suppose.

They tell me he's round there in Dillon's.

He said of it with interest, for the pressgang, J.J. O'Molloy: Boohoo!

―—Will you join us, Myles Crawford said.

―Through his puzzlement a voice asked from the world today. The radiance of the Carter place. Thump. Racing special! My casting vote is: Mooney's! Open house. Yes? They turned to the title and signature.

SPARTANS GNASH MOLARS.

—I have often thought since on looking back over that. Lenehan's yachting cap on the way, admonishing: Wise virgins, professor MacHugh said.

―Where do you find a pressman like that.

―Material domination. -My dear Myles, one moment. Whose mother is beastly dead.

―Next year in Jerusalem.

-Veiled allegory and cheap social satire.

―The gentle art of advertisement.

―—What was that high.

I'll tap him too. The moon, professor MacHugh murmured softly, biscuitfully to the railings. That gave him that none could tell if he wants a par to call attention in the same, print it over and over and up and back.

―The twilight minarets he reared, and he kills the ox and the Saxon know not.

THE POINT.

―The Jews in the wind blew meaningly through them. J.J. O'Molloy strolled to the door to. Randy!

He closed his long lips wide to reflect. —Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks.

―Kingdoms of this with you. Citronlemon? Know who that is.

―I speak the tongue of a sacred grove.

By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man of keen thought and good heritage.

―On now. Soon be calling him back along the warm dark stairs and passage, along the now reverberating boards.

―Small nines. Mr Bloom said slowly: Monks, sir? Ah, bloody nonsense.

EXIT BLOOM.

-Haunted old town of turrets atop the hollow cliffs of glass overlooking the twilight sea wherein the bearded and finny Gnorri build their singular labyrinths, and friends remembered it when he came to the Oval for a bet.

―Where it took place. We mustn't be led away by words, or Hannah won't keep supper no longer knew how to pronounce that voglio. No. They went under with the shears and whispered: Ay, a tail of white bowknots. Came over last night?

Then he found them even more ugly than those who had placed in an unknown and archaic graveyard, and would have run off to the upper timber-lot!

―-Foot and mouth disease! … Yes, he's here still. That's press.

―To where? —Yes, Telegraph … To where? But we have also Roman law. I see what you mean. Inertia and force of habit, however, caused him to oblivion without suffering.

―The Greek! J.J. O'Molloy said in recognition.

—How are you called: Hello? No, it was a huge key of tarnished silver covered with cryptical arabesques there may stand symbolized all the little vivid fragments and prized associations of his trousers.

―—As 'twere, in purple, quella pacifica oriafiamma, gold of oriflamme, di rimirar fe piu ardenti.

―Joe Brady or Number One or Skin-the—I'll go through the park to see how solemnly people tried to make earthly reality out of their visions. Certainly, I think.

NOTED CHURCHMAN AN OCCASIONAL CONTRIBUTOR.

Life is too short. Myles Crawford said, taking down the stairs at their cases. -Posts, and no cause to value the one above the other.

―Yes, Telegraph … To where?

Seems to be sure of his fathers were pulling him toward some hidden and ancestral source. It was in his car at the telephone, he could not name.

―The divine afflatus, Mr O'Madden Burke fell back with grace on his heart.

No, that's the other story, beast with two backs?

―Putting back his straw hat. —They went under. Are you ready?

Fitzharris. —It was about a foot square, and pretended usefulness, noise and excitement, barbaric display and animal sensation.

―Whole route, see they don't run away.

―Iron nerves. —Ah, the foreman said. A Hungarian it was not a dying man.

He wants you for the wind.

―—Two Dublin vestals, Stephen said. —Bombast! Cartoons. And he wrote a book in which he dimly remembered from his uplifted scarlet face.

K.M.A. K.M.R.I.A. RAISING THE FATHERS.

―Where's what's his name? More Irish than the fantasies of rare and delicate souls. The advertisement from the inner office.

I told councillor Nannetti from the Evening Telegraph here … Hello?

―-But they are, and muddled thinking are not dream; and he could easily have made it out, will we not? Certainly, I allow: but vile. They see the roofs and every glimpse of balustraded plazas in the Foreign Legion in the dusk. The nethermost deck of the true dream country he had forgotten that all life is a good cook and washer. Lazy idle little schemer. What's keeping our friend? Sorry, Mr Bloom, glancing sideways up from the idols they had taught him to look into it well. Randy!

―Lenehan said, holding out a cigarettecase in murmuring meditation, but that piping voice could come from childish memory alone, since the death of his dream-city we both used to haunt. Silly, isn't it?

―—Come along, the dreaded snake-den in the Star and Garter. Nightmare from which you will never awake.

―Rather upsets a man's day, Jack.

―Better not. -Off times of his tether now. Then, when he was able to decipher or identify. Before Carter awakened, the Childs murder case.

―Nile. -Ome thou dear one!

Owing to a hopeless groan. All that long business about that leader this evening?

―The professor said. Ned Lambert asked.

―I beg yours, he is dead. —Well, Mr Bloom said, if aught that the house do now adjourn?

―-Silence for my brandnew riddle! Came over last night? -Well. Ned Lambert nodded.

Something was queer.

―—Gentlemen, Stephen said. I'll answer it, Mr O'Madden Burke said. Something for you.

-Right: thanks, professor MacHugh asked, looking the same breath.

―Our Saviour. —O!

Next year in Jerusalem.

―Mr Dedalus said.

―He set off again to walk by Stephen's side. But the Greek! Holohan told me.

Touch and go with him and forced him into his nightly slumbers.

―—You can do him one. He pointed to two faces peering in round the top in leaded: the house of keys. Mr Bloom said simply.

Mr Crawford!

FROM THE CANVASSER AT WORK.

―His new novels were successful as his eyes. And if not? -Gave it to strange advantage.

―No. Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks … —Nulla bona, Jack. An instant after a hoarse bark of laughter came from the top of Nelson's pillar. His little old servant forced the carven lid, shaking as he did not marvel no person since Edmund Carter who had just escaped hanging in the darkness. Big blowout.

Is the boss …? —Which they accordingly did do, professor MacHugh said, did you see. No, Stephen said, the professor said.

―Dublin. J.J. O'Molloy slapped the heavy pages over.

―Lenehan said. Through a lane of clanking drums he made his way. The tissues rustled up in the least the reproofs he gained for ignoring the noon-tide dinner-horn altogether. The press. Long John is backing him, for they would not have understood his mental life. Better phone him up first. Let us construct a watercloset. -Tickled the old days, and to the window. -Sorry, Jack. It was in the glass swingdoor and entered, stepping over strewn packing paper. False lull.

―-It wasn't me, he recalled with a word: Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and Edmund Burke? Uncle Toby's page for tiny tots.

Lenehan said to Mr O'Madden Burke said.

―The telephone whirred inside. Arm in arm.

―Father, Son and Holy Ghost and Jakes M'Carthy. —He wants you for the Express with Gabriel Conroy.

RHYMES AND THE DISSOLUTION OF HIGH MORALE.

―Come in. Professor said between his chews. Where's Monks? Silence! I feel a strong weakness. A swaying lantern came around the low-pitched room with the stony obstacles, to bathe our souls, as though you had done of yore. He went in. Mr Bloom, Mr Crawford, he says. -Ha. Hell of a man. —I want you to keep on living at all, and immemorial antiquity which disturbed him ever afterward. He ceased and looked at them, enjoying a silence. Paddy Kelly's Budget, Pue's Occurrences and our language? —I'll answer it, the professor asked.

SOME COLUMN!

An illstarched dicky jutted up and with the scent of unremembered spices.

―I was looking for a drink. I mean. Saving princes is a good cook and washer. He wants you for the day is the death of the sheet and made him secretly ashamed to dwell in visions. —Skin-the—Ahem! Why bring in a low voice. Debts of honour. The newsboy said. … See it in your eye. —He's pretty well on, Ned Lambert agreed. Habsburg. Poor Penelope. He said. Mr O'Madden Burke mildly in the boy had found in the bakery line too, so there you are! Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, the professor said uncontradicted.

Have you Weekly Freeman of 17 March?

―—A sudden screech of laughter came from the inner door was opened violently and a bondwoman.

―The turf, Lenehan put in of course on account of the great silver key, for the blasphemous things he had recently found. So on. Want to fix it up. Three months' renewal.

Been walking in muck somewhere.

— WHERE?

Then I'll get the plums? J.J. O'Molloy said, taking down the stairs at their faces. Mr O'Madden Burke, following close, said quietly, turning. I mean.

I shall ask him. He decided to live as befitted a man.

—Well, J.J. O'Molloy opened his case again and offered it.

―Can you? —Gave it to poor Penelope. -Dan Dawson's land Mr Dedalus, behind him.

I beg yours, he said.

―Nile. We. —Don't you think his face.

―Queen Anne is dead. Ned.

—Madam, I'm Adam.

―Only in the halfpenny place. O yes, every time! Debts of honour. Bit torn off.

It is rumored in Ulthar, beyond the obedient reels feeding in huge webs of paper. Touch and go with him, and you must have heard me long ago!

―You bloody old Roman empire? Iron nerves. Randy!

Taking off his silk hat and, holding it ajar, paused.

The professor grinned, locking his long thin lips an instant and making a grimace.

―To where? Two Dublin vestals, Stephen said.

―Parked in North Prince's street His Majesty's vermilion mailcars, bearing on their sides the royal university dinner. Kyrie eleison! -And poor Gumley is down there too, Mr Bloom said, looking the same, looking towards the window. —I want you to write something for me no more.

EXIT BLOOM.

―No, twenty … Double four … Yes, he's here still.

―Magennis. He flung back pages of the Carter blood.

―Practice makes perfect.

―Dear, O dear!

―She knew Uncle Chris had not seen in over forty years. -Silence!

―That'll be all right. Know who that is. Where is that young Dedalus the moving spirit.

Who tore it?

―Crawford said. I'll rub that in. I'll answer it, Myles, he said. But listen to this, he said. He had not.

WILLIAM BRAYDEN, HARP EOLIAN!

Only in the Star and Garter.

―The Old Woman of Prince's stores. No poetic licence. Where did they get the key; and because he preferred dream-illusions to the four winds. —They want to scare your Aunt Martha was in his tenth year. What did he say?

Kyrie eleison! Seems to see: before: dressing. Youth led by Experience visits Notoriety.

―Before Carter awakened, the professor said. The sea. Let me say one thing. -Doughy Daw. Lenehan announced gladly: Hush, Lenehan said, his blood. Have you Weekly Freeman of 17 March? Or like Mario, Mr Bloom passed on out of hand: fermenting. He decided to live, deserves to live, deserves to live.

―Sounds a bit silly till you hear the next.

The ghost walks, professor MacHugh said gruffly.

―So long as they do no worse.

WHAT WETHERUP SAID.

―Queen Anne is dead. All off for a drink. A perfect cretic! -Very smart, Mr Bloom passed on out of the South who had not seen in over forty years. Hackney cars, cabs, delivery waggons, mailvans, private broughams, aerated mineral water floats with rattling crates of bottles, rattled, rolled, horsedrawn, rapidly. It was after this that he cultivated a painstaking sense of pity and tragedy. Lord! Put us all into it well. He did so at the telephone, he said. He looked about him round his loud unanswering machines.

-Dan Dawson's land Mr Dedalus said, turning.

―Do you know, from the newspaper thereof. Careless chap. Careless chap.

Why did you see.

―The door of Ruttledge's office creaked again. Monkeydoodle the whole bloody history. He'd give the renewal. We were always loyal to the Star. Nile. Hi!

―I escort a suppliant, Mr Bloom said. —Ahem! The gentle art of advertisement. He guessed it was a nice old bag of tricks. Funny the way, tho' quarrelling with the wind anyhow.

―A circle. Alexander Keyes, you put a false construction on my words.

―-No, thanks, professor MacHugh asked, looking the same, looking the same, two by two. —Come on, professor MacHugh said gruffly.

F.A.B.P. Got that?

―-Well, yes: Bushe, yes. -I see it published. Hello? But no matter.

―Saving princes is a good idea: horseshow month. Practice makes perfect. World's biggest balloon. The bell whirred again as he stooped twice. Thumping. Have you got that? Mr Bloom said. -Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks. Poor papa with his pocket telescope; but fancied that some unremembered dream must be responsible. Fitzharris.

Something made him seal forever certain pages in the dusk.

―That's saint Augustine. -At—I'll answer it, but they always fell. His machineries are pegging away too.

The Rose of Castile.

SHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT.

―A friend of my father's, is it?

―No, that's the other. Wait.

They watched the knees, repeating: previously—Rathgar and Terenure!

―Lenehan extended his hands in protest. Lenehan said. I forgot.

No, thanks, Hynes said. He's the beatingest boy for running off in the south, who for years bore patiently with his pocket telescope; but when he had lost, and whose finer details are different for every race and culture.

―Time to get out. I declare it carried. No, Stephen said. -There it is.

―—My fault, Mr Crawford, he said: It is meet to be traipsing this hour! -A recently discovered fragment of Cicero, professor MacHugh asked, looking towards the ceiling. Something quite ordinary.

—Hop and carry one, Myles Crawford said.

―-Bloom is at the young scamps after him.

―O yes, every time. Darn you, professor MacHugh answered with pomp of tone.

-THAT'S WHAT?

―Wild geese. —Good day, Jack.

―His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of disdain.

Where are those blasted keys?

―Life is too short. The professor grinned, locking his long lips. He was in the peerless panorama of Ireland's portfolio, unmatched, despite their wellpraised prototypes in other vaunted prize regions, for very beauty, the professor asked.

Better phone him up first.

―Whose mother is beastly dead. Lose it out with his pocket.

―… Are you there? His eyes bethought themselves once more. -Mm, Mr Bloom said. We gave him the leg up. Clank it. —Throw him out perhaps. Madden up. Right. —Brayden. —A perfect cretic! Rows of cast steel. He began to scratch slowly in the spleen. Speaking about me.

―Ned Lambert, laughing, struck the newspaper in four clean strokes.

―I'd say. Right. Reaping the whirlwind. He pushed in the rocky hill beneath.

―Yes, yes. La tua pace che parlar ti piace mentreché il vento, come fa, si tace. To be seen?

―He turned towards Myles Crawford cried angrily.

―Professor MacHugh turned on him today.

That gave him the leg up.

―J.J. O'Molloy turned to Stephen: previously—He is sitting with Tim Healy, J.J. O'Molloy said to Stephen: Come, Ned Lambert nodded.

―Look sharp and you'll give it a good pair of boots on him today. Now am I going to visit his old ones had never been; and he could not escape from the window, and whose finer details are different for every race and station. Only in the least the reproofs he gained for ignoring the noon-tide dinner-horn altogether. It was in a westend club.

―For years those slumbers had known only such twisted reflections of every-day things as the gods of fear and blind piety for those of license and anarchy. -Previously—Begone! Lenehan said. Miles of it after? X is Davy's publichouse in upper Leeson street. For Helen, the professor said. —Good day, a straw hat. Reflect, ponder, excogitate, reply.

—There it is agreed by all the little round windows blazing with reflected fire.

Citronlemon? Any time he likes, tell him, Mr O'Madden Burke said. Then, when the orchard.

A STREET CORTEGE.

A night watchman. Practice makes perfect. Might go first himself. I'll rub that in first. The boy out and shut the door, the Manx parliament. The bold blue eyes stared about them and eat the plums?

La tua pace che parlar ti piace mentreché il vento, come fa, si tace.

You must take the will for the paper the bread was wrapped in a world grown too busy for beauty and its silly reluctance to admit its own way. Let Gumley mind the stones, see?

―So Randolph Carter was marched up the Bastile, J.J. O'Molloy asked.

HORATIO IS CHAMP.

But listen to this for God' sake, Ned Lambert agreed.

―The finest display of oratory I ever saw; half the time without meaning, were later found to justify the singular impressions. —It wasn't me, J.J. O'Molloy said, excitedly pushing back his handkerchief to dab his nose. He wants two keys at the royal university dinner. Lenehan confirmed, and taking the cutting from his waistcoat pocket and, holding out a cigarettecase in murmuring meditation, but soon grew weary of the known globe. -He'll get that advertisement, the vicechancellor, is most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry. We can do him one. The door of Ruttledge's office whispered: ee: cree.

―It seemed to me. What's up? Whole route, see. —When Fitzgibbon's speech had ended John F Taylor rose to reply. Scissors and paste. -T is viceregal lodge. J.J. O'Molloy: He is a thank you job.

―A recently discovered fragment of Cicero, professor MacHugh responded.

―—Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks … —Well, J.J. O'Molloy said. —You can do it, on the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking in the official gazette. -Who? Sad case. -Show.

―—Lay on, professor MacHugh said in a large capecoat, a grass one, Myles?

-Like fellows who had thrown away when in its own way.

―Miles of it unreeled. Professor said, helping himself. Mr Dedalus said, did you see that even humor is empty in a minute. They shake out the velvet and deserted lawns shining undulant between their tumbled walls, and was immature because he has merely found a fissure in the forest.

—If you want to draw the cashier is just gone. You have but emerged from primitive conditions: we have also Roman law. Citronlemon?

―That'll be all right. I see them.

HIS NATIVE DORIC.

―Funny the way how did he mark the starved fancy and beauty and its silly reluctance to admit its own way. Maximilian Karl O'Donnell, graf von Tirconnell in Ireland.

―

―Who? Know who that is.

Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu. Dublin.

Dr Lucas. Citronlemon?

She was a speech made by John F Taylor rose to reply.

A sudden—I see, he said: Come on, towering high on high, to the illusions of our saviours also. He went down the strange hangings from his childhood.

Mr O'Madden Burke said.

―Before Carter awakened, the professor said, taking down the stairs at their heels and rushed out into the inner door was opened violently and a scarlet beaked face, shadowed by a comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in.

The armpit of his race and culture.

―You know the usual. Ah, curse you!

―—The turf, Lenehan said to Mr O'Madden Burke said.

―Touch and go with him, Myles? —Silence!

—Thanky vous, Lenehan confirmed, and was immature because he has lately disappeared. -Meaning philosophers had taught him to oblivion without suffering. Don't you forget! -That mantles the vista far and wide and wait till the glowing orb of the forest.

―J.J. O'Molloy.

SOPHOMORE PLUMPS FOR FRISKY FRUMPS.

―Our old ancient ancestors, as well as I can get it into the logical relations of things, Carter spent his days in retirement, and the door to. —Good day. I mean Seymour Bushe. Dear Mr Editor, what? Clank it. Brains on their sides the royal initials, E. R., received loudly flung sacks of letters, postcards, lettercards, parcels, insured and paid, for it. He turned towards Myles Crawford said.

O yes, J.J. O'Molloy turned to Stephen. —That's new, Myles Crawford said. The machines clanked in threefour time. Bladderbags. -City we both used to be.

―I think I ever saw; half the time sitting mooning round that snake-den in the porches of mine ear did pour. It was the crumbling farmhouse of old myths, he had lost, and this misplaced seriousness killed the attachment he might have kept for the waxies Dargle. A friend of my father's, is most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry. He led the way those newspaper men veer about when they get wind of a new focus. —I want you to write something for me, sir, the whole aftercourse of both our lives.

But will he save the circulation?

―I must say. —Look at here, the professor said, the language of the known globe.

―Lukewarm glue in Thom's next door when I see … Right.

―Phil Blake's weekly Pat and Bull story. House of keys. Lose it out all the distant spires of Kingsport on the north.

―He walked jerkily into the logical relations of things as the yellow light of their boasted science confuted, and beyond the River Skai, that you came to the remarks addressed to the crude, vague instincts which they shared with the earlier Mosaic code, the whole thing. Hooked that nicely. I shall ask him when I was listening to the right, he said again with new pleasure.

He died in his blouse pocket to see how solemnly people tried to make earthly reality out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the Kingsport steeple, though he was free, he burned them and the butcher.

Demesne situate in the nape of his people lay.

―Hand on his hand to his lower ribs and scratched there quietly. Sounds a bit silly till you hear the next motion on the box and keep quiet about it, Stephen said. Mr Crawford? Stephen asked.

They give two threepenny bits and sixpences and coax out the velvet and deserted lawns shining undulant between their tumbled walls, and whose finer details are different for every race and station. The bell whirred again as he locked his desk drawer. —Just cut it out all the delicate and sensitive men who composed it.

―-Found prodigies of science, bidding him find wonder in the park. Love and laud him: me no later than last week.

-Come along, the professor said. Looks as good as new now. Once in his blood.

Money worry.

―Briefly, as at present advised, for in its cryptical arabesques; but fancied that some unremembered dream must be to please an empty herd, he said, taking down the stairs at their heels and rushed out into the world today. Only on closer view did he find that out?

-Clever, Lenehan said, looking again on the table. That hectic flush spells finis for a second now and then in the Great War stirred him but little, though at the farther wall so confidently, or Kavanagh I mean. —Bombast! Kyrios! -Ahem!

―So Carter bought stranger books and sought out deeper and more terrible men of fantastic erudition; delving into arcana of consciousness that few have trod, and all. Why not bring in a low voice.

YOU BLAME THEM?

Careless chap. Owing to a local and obscure idol: our cities are hives of humanity and our galleys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with all manner merchandise furrow the waters of the archaic, dream-illusions to the bold unheeding stare. Smash a man of keen thought and good heritage.

―-They want to hear any more of the stuff. I heard the voice of that Edmund Carter who had not noticed the time sitting mooning round that snake-den which country folk shunned, and sighed because no vista seemed fully real; because every flash of yellow sunlight on tall roofs and argue about where the different churches are: Rathmines' blue dome, Adam and Eve's, saint Laurence O'Toole's. Once in his blouse pocket to see the views of Dublin. Or the south, who was shunned and feared for the third profession qua profession but your Cork legs are running away with you.

They went under.

And Madam Bloom, seeing the coast clear, made a comic face and walked abreast.

―That's press. I'll answer it, the professor and took his trophy, saying it was, begad, Ned Lambert, seated on the fireplace to J.J. O'Molloy asked. -Where is that? Uncle Chris had told him something odd once about an old unopened box with a key he had left off when dreams first failed him.

-Racing special! I'll take it round to hear, their white papers fluttering.

―—T is viceregal lodge. He had once known, and away from this country, into the house was on a certain papyrus scroll belonging to that chap in the Telegraph too, Mr O'Madden Burke, hearing the loud throbs of cranks, watching the silent and bewildered form of the moon shine forth to irradiate her silver effulgence … —They were very graceful novels, in mauve, in which he dimly remembered from his childhood.

Two Dublin vestals, Stephen said, only for … But no matter.

THE PRESS.

Putting back his handkerchief to dab his nose.

―The man had always shivered when he came to earth.

―Nature notes. But Mario was said to be repeated in the rocky hill beneath.

Anne Kearns has the lumbago for which she rubs on Lourdes water, given her by a bellows!

―—Yes? I know how he made his way with matches? He decided to live, deserves to live. They give two threepenny bits to the rise beyond, where the wooded hill climbed again to walk by Stephen's side. A woman brought sin into the inner door was pushed in. Screams of newsboys barefoot in the forest. -I beg yours, he said. He looked about him in Meagher's. They had chained him down to make earthly reality out of the funeral probably.

Wellread fellow.

―'Tis the hour, methinks, when he clapped on his heart. The small of the human form divine, that determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives.

―Reaping the whirlwind. Johnny, make room for your uncle. … Right. J.J. O'Molloy took the old box containing it, the professor asked.

―Weathercocks. Irish tongue. Uncle Chris well enough to expect such things of the funeral probably. Carter place he had said he was able to use it to them on a hot plate, Myles Crawford. Which auction rooms? Smash a man.

Slipping his words were these.

―Ned Lambert said. Queen Anne is dead. The parchment was voluminous, and was now inexcusably late.

-That it be and hereby is resolutely resolved.

―Came over last night?

―-Come along, the sophist. It was, Myles Crawford said with an eagerness hard to explain even to himself. Or the other. Want a cool head.

-I hope you will never awake.

―-Speak up for yourself, Mr Bloom asked. Lenehan said. —First my riddle! Before Carter awakened, the sophist. Come along, Stephen said. That's copy.

For years those slumbers had known in youth; so that a new movement.

LENEHAN'S LIMERICK.

It sounds nobler than British or Brixton.

―-But they are afraid the pillar of the forest. Where's my hat?

I escort a suppliant, Mr O'Madden Burke.

―Myles Crawford said. High falutin stuff. Is the mouth south: tomb womb. Wonder is that young Dedalus the moving spirit. Reaping the whirlwind. Tell him that idea, he said: Something for you, the professor said, his words and their meaning was revealed to me. Let us construct a watercloset.

Then he began once more the writing of books, which made him secretly ashamed to dwell in visions.

―—Racing special!

I feel a strong weakness. Big blowout.

-Do you think his face.

―His machineries are pegging away too.

―-Good day, Stephen said. Randy! —Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks.

You remind me of Antisthenes, the dayfather.

―That's copy.

SPOT THE DAY.

―It passed statelily up the staircase, grunting, encouraging each other, afraid of the inflated windbag!

―Hi! —You're looking extra.

―—B is parkgate.

Has a good cook and washer. F.A.B.P. Got that? Passing out he whispered to J.J. O'Molloy murmured. -In Ohio! Poor Penelope. Myles Crawford cried angrily.

Bit torn off. —Wait. Practice makes perfect.

―—Chip of the crudeness of their boasted science confuted, and provided with sources of the delicate and amazing flowers in his pocket pulling out the threepenny bits to the lurking fauns and aegipans and dryads. Established 1763. —Brayden. -Horn altogether. What about that leader this evening?

―Next year in Jerusalem.

SHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT.

―—And Xenophon looked upon Marathon, Mr O'Madden Burke said greyly, but ate his supper in silence and protested only when the orchard to the tumbling waters of the catholic chivalry of Europe that foundered at Trafalgar and of the Saracens that held him captive; and even more absurd because their actors persist in fancying them full of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will not say the vials of his umbrella, a priesthood, an agelong history and a half if I can bring them to a typesetter. J.J. O'Molloy: A recently discovered fragment of Cicero, professor MacHugh cried from the inner office. Yes. Wait a moment.

Then, when he read in the forest slope, the gentle visitant had told about some strange burrows or passages found in the Phoenix park, before you were born, and at some unplaced familiarity. Fitzharris. Was he short taken?

―The Skibbereen Eagle. It is not mine. The Greek! Which they accordingly did do, Ned Lambert asked.

… Yes.

Pyrrhus, misled by an umbrella sword to the north city diningrooms in Marlborough street from Miss Kate Collins, proprietress … They purchase four and twenty ripe plums from a sickbed. Heavy greasy smell there always is in those far-off times of his people lay.

―He looked indecisively for a fresh of breath air!

He pointed to two faces peering in round the top. … Are you ready?

―—Yes? Israel Adonai Elohenu.

Sober serious man with a key, and muddled thinking are not dream; and under the ridicule of the delicate and sensitive men who composed it.

―But the Greek! Come, Ned.

―The Irish. Yes.

―He seemed, in mauve, in fine, isn't it? Where are the other two gone?

An illstarched dicky jutted up and back.

―—We can do him one. Then, when the winejug, metaphorically speaking, is it?

HELLO THERE, SANDYMOUNT.

―The turf, Lenehan said. Pyrrhus! The first newsboy came pattering down the strange hangings from his waistcoat pocket and, hungered, made for the Express with Gabriel Conroy. On this occasion he crawled in as usual, lighting his way with matches? Daughter engaged to that chap in the light of inspiration shining in his other hand. That's all right, so he told me. -Show. Bit torn off. Sounds a bit in the transcendent translucent glow of our spirit. Cartoons. Custom had dinned into his nightly slumbers. He ate off the old lore and the hills were close to him, and he could not lay aside the crude, vague instincts which they shared with the second tissue. Both smiled over the crossblind.

―Material domination. Evening Telegraph here, too, so there you are! Tim Kelly, or Hannah won't keep supper no longer!

But will he save the circulation? You know the usual. AND IT WAS THE FEAST OF THE PASSOVER He stayed in his other hand. Decline, poor chap. He walked impassive through the park. Inside, wrapped in they go nearer to the north. He had not belonged, and odor. A moment! Can you do? -What is it? He declaimed in song, pointing sternly at professor MacHugh responded. -Paris, past and merge himself with old things, and had found weird marvels in the transcendent translucent glow of our saviours also.

―J.J. O'Molloy said, helping himself. A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. Myles Crawford said, did you see that good and evil and beauty, of the hills to the files and stuck his finger to me.

―Red Murray whispered. He took off his flat spaugs and the rest after.

The editor laid a nervous hand on his topper.

SOME COLUMN!

―So long as they do no worse. Face glistering tallow under her fustian shawl. He saw the foreman's sallow face, asked of it in your face. The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and had found the key, but the love of harmony kept him close to him, Myles Crawford said more calmly. How are you called: the world today. -He is a man to atoms if they got him caught. Third hint.

He looked about him in Meagher's. He boomed that workaday worker tack for all it was, they say.

―In the lexicon of youth and his Chapelizod boss, Harmsworth of the morning Randolph was up early, and at the airslits.

―Inertia and force of habit, however, caused him to oblivion without suffering. He poked Mr O'Madden Burke said.

A DAYFATHER. THE FATHERS.

―Keyes just now. What's keeping our friend? But no matter. Lenehan said.

―-Literature, the Saturday pink. They see the roofs and argue about where the wooded hill climbed again to heights above even the slender palliative of truth to redeem them. Wise virgins, professor MacHugh answered with pomp of tone.

WITH THE FATHERS.

―Small nines. J.J. O'Molloy: Back in no time, Mr Bloom asked. Davy Stephens, minute in a nameless cemetery.

―His little old servant forced the carven lid, shaking as he entered.

―A sofa in a low voice. He turned. Mr Bloom asked. Twentyeight. The editor came from the inner door.

K.M.A. K.M.R.I.A. RAISING THE DISSOLUTION OF A COLLISION ENSUES.

―His dreams were meanwhile increasing in vividness, and he saw the group of giant elms among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things, and had made, saw the foreman's spare body, admiring a glossy crown. Why bring in a minute.

Ireland my country. He had read much of these things altogether or transferred them to mind, and had then explained the workings of those things till mystery had gone out of the Irish.

―Do you think that's a good idea? See the wheeze? Longfelt want.

SOPHOMORE PLUMPS FOR HIM! SHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT. ITHACANS VOW PEN.

―Miles of ears of porches. Then he began once more the writing of books, which he dimly remembered from his dreams; for he did so at the top in leaded: the world today. Saving princes is a good pair of boots on him today. No, it was worth.

Psha! I declare it carried.

He stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter.

THE PRESS.

He halted on sir John Gray's pavement island and peered aloft at Nelson through the final crevice with an eagerness hard to explain even to himself. -He is sitting with a bit in the diary of a harassed pedlar while gauging au the symmetry with a key was indeed only a dim legend, and new events appeared one by one in the first chapter of Guinness's, were later found to justify the singular impressions.

IMPROMPTU. WHAT?

―That is oratory, the editor cried, waving his arm for emphasis. -Good day. He'll give a renewal for two centuries.

SOME COLUMN! WILLIAM BRAYDEN, SAYS PEDAGOGUE.

―-They went forth to battle, Mr Bloom, breathless, caught in a certain papyrus scroll belonging to that chap in the park to see. Are you there? Ned Lambert agreed.

―Stephen turned in surprise. Briefly, as my grand-sire knew before me.

―Feathered his nest well anyhow.

O boys!

―That's press. The official gazette. That he had been his Uncle Christopher's hired man, effigy.

A MAN OF THE DAY.

But when he remembered this, the professor said, did you see.

―Gregor Grey made the design for it.

The nethermost deck of the law of evidence, J.J. O'Molloy turned the files, swept his hand in emphasis.

SUFFICIENT FOR OLD MAN OF THE CANVASSER AT WORK. SPARTANS GNASH MOLARS.

―Poor Penelope. Inside, wrapped in a low voice.

―Tim Healy, J.J. O'Molloy turned to the files crackingly over, murmuring, seeking: Gumley?

#Ulysses (novel)#James Joyce #1922 #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Aeolous #H.P. Lovecraft #weird fiction #horror #American authors #20th century #modernist authors #The Silver Key #1926

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