#this is how I imagine parties in the rr universe

[dallonm-archive]

[image description: a cropped image of a pink sky. on the right hand side is a bunch of darker pink clouds. Just left of the centre is a full moon. In the centre, in a white serif font reads "writing update" /end id]

july writing update

Hi friends! This writing update is me pretending I did Camp Nano and didn't kinda give up a week in! I had a proper goal and everything, but a lot of things got in the way that I'm not gonna talk about here because I already ranted about it in another update I'm drafting rn. Lets just say it's Disability Pride Month and being not neurotypical or able bodied in writing communities and their inherent focus on productivity is Hard.

But I did get some writing done and wanted to do a little Camp wrap up post regardless. And I'm doing it now because I'm cancelling the last week of July for some rest/self care and I do not want to think about writing for that time and if I write a tumblr post about July Nano being over my brain will think it's actually over <3 I will probably do updates like these for most months tho! Depends on how much I write lol! This one is not too long (by my standards) and has some Revelations, Revelations, Life Cycle of Massive Stars, Nocturne for the Holy and a new wip idea 👁️

excerpts under the cut!

general taglist ; ask to be + or - ; i only have one! ; @childhoodlovers @svpphicwrites @abiandwriting @kowlazovdi @avi-why @ryns-ramblings @kitblogsthings @bijouxs @bookphobe @moonhungers @alicewestwater @bookpacking @shaelinwrites @onlyganymede @theelectricfactory @write-like-babs @oceancold @sidhewrites @wolf-oak @oasis-of-you @coffeeandcalligraphy @cecilsstorycorner @howdywrites @keira-is-writing @flip-phones @piyawrites @avakrahn @goose-books @finch-goes-write @ziyin @aphaimaniis @isherwoodj @laughtracksonata

I'm also editing this in to say I only just realised that July is my writeblr birthday month and that is very weird to me! A year and a couple days ago I impulsively turned an old blog into a place to document writing for me and ended up meeting people who now mean the world to me and my writing blossoming in a way I never thought it would. And the funny part is it doesn't feel like it's been a year, ever since I joined it's just felt like life has Always been this way and I cannot fathom that it hasn't. I'm sappy bc it's 4am lol but ultimately the friends I made (you know who you are) and the community I found is what retaught me the value of writing and helped me unlearn toxic ideas and whilst the last year was tough I wish I could tell July 2020 Dallon (who did not realise he was Dallon yet </3) what July 2021 would look like.

revelations, revelations ;

Oh the absolute state of affairs with this book rn. Nothing bad but I don't know when I'm gonna update y'all because sometimes I do not know where to start when talking about this wip lol! Currently on a break with it (but also my thesis work is on late 20th century queer lit/history rn so am ever really free of RR? <3) but had a lot of fun with it at the end of June/start of July. Anyway here's Dorothy finally revealing more of herself to me after a year. Dorothy as a character is like, I truly believe she is capable of killing a man but the story she is in just does not allow that so I am trying to grow her unhinged side a little bit in other ways bc I know she has it in her but I also really cannot deal with the plot repercussions of her actually killing a man! I'm sorry Dotty but this'll have to do!

(cw for groping/a man being creepy as hell, death/funeral mention, drug mention, drowning imagery kinda)

There’s too much to tell Felix. That his sister lives on the fringe of Castro and has attended three funerals since September; that it’s January 11th and she’s already attended one this year. That his sister drives through sunsets and imagines parties: the amber dusk, warm mosaic tiles, platters of Greek salad skewers and shrimp tostadas, and sometimes Jolie joins her and they share a blunt on the hill. That his sister bought an aquamarine body-length dress for six bucks in a thrift store sale bin, so when her and Jolie broke up for the second time, she waltzed into a sunset party, locked arms with a CEO’s son and gave him a fake number and plucked strawberries out of champagne and blended so well nobody noticed when she left. That during the summer of ’83, his sister walked a neighbour’s Golden Retriever on Wednesdays, and on the sixth Wednesday he gave her a wad of tens with one hand and palmed the back of her neck with the other, so she walked his dog to the beach and stole another hundred from his wallet. That his sister bombed an interview for a Nursing school and didn’t get home until night and missed their monthly call, and Jolie heard the phone ring and didn’t take a message, so his sister snuck into the CEO’s son’s villa and floated in the centre of their heated pool like a cloud. A pause, a breath, an Opheliean threat.

life cycle of massive stars ;

Switched to LCOMS this month because I was burnt out with RR and it made such the difference! I really love working on two novels at once because it keeps me consistently creative but also both of these books are so different so its always refreshing to bounce back into one from another. I have a whole update in the drafts rn for this so keeping this part brief but still love this book, still the best thing that has ever happened to me, me and this book will have a glorious summer wedding etc etc. These excerpts are from chapters that summarise the first semester of each character's first year and have to say it. has been Very Fun to get into the mindset of Freshers Melodrama. Here's Junie having a crisis and an unhealthy relationship with her hetero flatmate :( (alcohol cw for both excerpts)

In October you are drinking double espresso and trying to breathe normally in lectures and you are trying to figure out your favourite colour because Fleur asked and you stumbled out an answer (Purple, I think. Violet? Lavender? Indigo?) and it didn’t match hers (I like yellow. I like sunlight). You buy mugs from IKEA to paint you paint cats and fireworks and constellations and moon phases and daisies. You try to scratch paint stains off your desk. You do laundry at 2am. In October you colour code your notes with pastel highlighters. You go to the library at 3am. You paint your nails sunlight and hate it. You finish an essay that’s due in December. You knock on Fleur’s door at 8am so she makes her 9am. You wear off the shoulder tops and you let a girl dab glitter on your collarbones and you are watching Fleur kiss a boy from the neighbouring hall. You bite your sunlight nails. You break the handle off your IKEA constellation mug. You leave your keys in a lecture hall and stand at the reception for forty minutes waiting for them to realise that the keys on the desk have the moon chain you mentioned - or, you are waiting to say it yourself. You are watching the rain trail down your window. In October you get a halo headband tangled in your hair you are sipping a vampire themed cocktail that tastes like acetone you rip your heels off and you go home early and do laundry at 2am and you are waiting for the courage to tell Fleur you don’t like clubbing - or, you are waiting for her to ask where you are. In October you are many things / a good student a dancer a painter an angel a big sister an alarm clock you are nocturnal and a lucid dreamer and confused about your sexuality / and it’s still October but it’s not because it’s November now and you are still Junie but not because you don’t know who Junie is. It’s November, it’s September October November December. It’s 2016 2017 2018 2019. You are fragments and you don’t know if you are a kaleidoscope or shattered glass.

And here's first year Tomas being like I Moved Countries For University And All I Got Was Homesickness And A Crush On My Flatmate And Resurging Autistic Symptoms And This Lousy T Shirt (cw: vomit mention, injection mention, parental death mention)

Kristen is seven months younger and five inches taller than you. He’s the last flatmate you met and the only one you talk to beyond kitchen greetings and passive aggressive texts about dirty dishes. He is too quiet and too loud and not the type of person you befriend. The first night, he lost Ring of Fire and downed the concoction of Echo Falls, Dark Fruits, Jack Daniels and coke, vodka and lemonade alongside a cigarette and said he’d let God figure out the rest. He held your hair back when you threw up amaretto and held onto your knee when you first self-injected testosterone. He taught you Yorkshire dialect and you pretended to understand the Yorkshire dialect. He told you he got diagnosed at four and you told him you didn’t get past the first assessment but sometimes you flick the bathroom light on and it’s fire: the orange on the orange towel is louder, the white on the white tiles are louder, the colours and light and sink and showerhead are prickly and all you can do is blink and breathe until it fizzles out. You reminded him to take his meds and asked if you were weak for wanting to drop out and hop on the first Eurostar to Rotterdam. He reminded you to take off your binder and asked if he was robotic for not grieving his mother. You spent inky nights on the kitchen floor, counting the dead flies in the lights and scooping crumbly coconut ice cream out of a maker you got for half price in TK Maxx. You spent dusk-dusted afternoons at the global street food markets, at the vegan markets. Spent student loans on raspberry lemonade in recycled cups, veggie burgers in beetroot buns, got him hooked on poffertjes and advocaat and could’ve cried when the vendor spoke to you in Dutch. Sometimes you didn’t buy anything. Just liked hovering at stalls ambered with fairy lights, writing down Etsy stores on your notes app; just liked Kristen’s impulse to trek forty minutes into the city for a market he didn’t know existed until five minutes before; just liked how he always invited only you, cancelling your other plans last minute, the feeling of being ambushed; just liked how he stopped to take photos of dogs and the sunset; just liked how he looked haloed under lampposts waiting for Ubers, golden on golden.

This is also nearing creative nonfiction because Sheffield truly is a haven for just. vegan markets and cafes lol! I experimented with veganism there and never struggled to find something and at this point I call myself a fake vegan because it's too easy to be vegan in Sheffield and too difficult to be vegan in my actual hometown. And the global street food markets!!! SO GOOD! I miss pre pandemic days

nocturne for the holy ;

Giving her a little shout out because she does exist actually! I've figured out a really good system for working on two novels at a time, so my plan is maybe to start properly on this after I finish either RR or LCOMS. Idk I got 3 novels to pick from haha oops! I did do some free drafting back in April though and found it recently and I Like It! And I edited it so it counts as Something I Did This Month :) Also have decided that I loathe this working title <3 Okay see you with an update for this novel in like a year, sorry for the absolute zero context for this excerpt hehe

The morning I was due back, I hadn’t yet decided that this would be my last visit. I wandered between rooms like an overstayed guest, like I didn’t know which crockery lived in which cabinet and which bedroom had the best view of the overlapped hills. Dad would wake for his run in an hour, plastered to his twenty-year-old routine. Mum would pretend to be asleep until breakfast. Until then, it was myself and the house, hazed by sleepy sunrise. Downstairs. The peeling paisley wallpaper in the lounge, the lilies in the middle of the kitchen table, the vases of candy floss pink peonies wilting on every windowsill, the desolate double swing-set in the garden. The mist-clogged mornings. I stood outside in my dressing-gown until my fingertips felt numb. Upstairs. The sage coloured bathroom. The bathtub I’d laze in with my clothes on and no water because it was the quietest room in the house. The dusty dance trophies on the top of my wardrobe. Wine-flushed Jeanette in my teenage bedroom. The stale grey mum painted my teenage bedroom after I moved out. Minus their room, I stalked the layout of the house three times before settling back into bed - teenage Nora’s bed. Nora who cared for peonies and pushed her brother on the swing set and flung her ceramic ballerina at the wall and jogged with her father and collected wine bottles and acorns and kisses from girls who were supposed to visit for dance practice. Before I left, I’d have cycled each room another three times. And in every room he was there, hovered in the corner like black mould.

love this update bc it's like i've got my third person, my second person, my first person! collecting all the POVs like chaos emeralds :)

eulogy for our burnings ;

-looks away-

girl help I did it AGAIN!!!! Apparently Camp Nano is just the perfect time for me to get novel ideas. I made this post specifically to talk a bit about this because I have no idea when I'll draft it but it's certainly not soon. This is not me trying to doubt my own skill but I feel like I am not in the place I'd like to be as a writer to tackle this project with the zest it needs, however I am v excited by the prospect of it! Don't know how I feel about the working title bc I'm like "that doesn't sound right but I don't know enough about this wip to dispute it" but the only purpose my working titles serve is to sound pretty lol! But here's the tea:

1991, UK.

2nd person present + past. Very flexible form. I can't decipher how yet but I'm feeling interviews, newspaper articles, receipts, grocery store lists weaved with actual narrative, that kinda vibe.

Best summary is we follow our nameless narrator, a stealth trans man, as he becomes unhealthily obsessed with a man who "hires" him to photograph the buildings he burns

Very,,, isolated? Minimal settings, minimal characters, minimal prose etc. Almost claustrophobic

There's basically only two characters and they are probably the most morally deplorable, indefensible characters I've created which just means most of you are gonna LOVE this /lh I do too I do too

Only comp title I can give is it has the vibes/tone of Boy Parts by Eliza Clark (just with none of the nsfw content lol if you've read the book you know what I'm talking about) (also that book is great for morally deplorable women protagonists but omg look up the content warnings because it caught me off guard! enjoyed it tho gave it 4 stars)

The pinterest board is the best visualisation of the Vibes also follow me on pinterest lol

And that's all I've got today! A bigger Life Cycle of Massive Stars update coming in the next few weeks. Might do a proper intro post for Eulogy For Our Burnings but idk!!! It's a surprise :) Thank you for reading this far!

[snowdice]

Labeled 100,000 Word Special Voting

Alright, all prompts have been accounted for. That was. Chaos. Here is your list. Just send in an ask, reply to this post, or reblog this post with the number you want. Thanks for your participation. Yes, you can vote for multiple, but please keep it at 5 and under so I’m not dying to keep up with you all. I am not anticipating more chaos. So, you can block the tag 100000 word special if you don’t want to see it for the next 30 minutes.

Voting closes in exactly 30 minutes. So about 2:05pm Central Time. 

1. The scene after Coffee and Cinnamon Rolls where Remy takes photos of Virgil’s wounds. (SLS)

2. Virgil accidently gets hit by Patton or Logan and thinks it’s a punishment (SLS)

3. It’s a Boy! card from Remy is delivered to Logan and Patton. Logan’s head explodes. (SLS)

4. Hospital shenanigans featuring Remy. (SLS)

5. Virgil learns to drive. Logan wants to use the disaster car (from Gaps). Patton is not enthused about this. (SLS)

6. Virgil has an opportunity to go on a field trip. Logan ends up being a chaperon. (SLS)

7. Gotcha Day celebration. (SLS)

8. Bring your child to work day with Logan. (SLS)

9. Comfort after a nightmare for Virgil. (SLS)

10. Shadow puppets day! Virgil shows off. (SLS)

11. Logan and Virgil have a poke war and Patton ends up in the middle. (SLS)

12. Virgil teaches Missy new tricks! (Or... tries to...) (SLS)

13. Janus kidnaps Patton. (RR)

14. Virgil cooks dinner for his parents when they’re running late. (SLS).

15. Another first week fic. (SLS)

16. Next chapter of Illusions of Grandeur. (IR)

17. First snow day for Virgil with Patton and Logan. (SLS)

18. Virgil's parents tease him about a crush (SLS)

19. Virgil and Patton planting trees for arbor day and they get a bit caried away. (SLS)

20. Virgil comes out (SLS)

21. Virgil helping Bluebird as Shadow Caster (other)

22.  Family vacation for Patton+Logan+Virgil (SLS)

23. Labeled Universe Remile doing something (other)

24. Everyone including the dog goes to a pride parade (SLS)

25. Virgil being able to believe his dads when they compliment him (SLS)

26. Virgils dads showing support for virgils progress in therapy (SLS)

27. Logan buying patton stuffed animals to add to his collection (RR probably)

28. Family (including the dog) kitchen shenanigans (SLS)

29. Virgil and Logan plan a surprise party for Pattons birthday (SLS)

30. Umm Virgil develops a crush? (SLS)

31. Virgil’s parents supporting and engaging with Virgil’s interests (SLS)

32. Obligatory beach episode for Labeled (SLS)

33. Snowball fight between Remy and Emile vs Virgil and Patton while Logan stands off to the side awkwardly (SLS)

34. Logan and Patton coffee date! (RR)

35. If it's still in time, Virgil finds something he wants to collect because he likes it, not, like the food and money, because he thinks he needs to have it. I imagine Patton would be wildly supportive, depending on what it is. (SLS)

36. Prank war (SLS)

37. Someone from Logan's youth meeting his husband and emo child. (SLS)

38. Family cuddle pile! (SLS)

39. Virgil wanting to go out as Shadow Caster separate from Bluebird and the ensuing argument. (SLS)

40. Logan and Virgil testing their powers against one another? Not in a bad way, just a "lets see how well we work together" kind of thing (SLS)

41. Virgil somehow being turned into a little kid temporary. (SLS)

[ourplaceinthecosmosphff]

Chapter 2. The British Inquisition

‘They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.’ F. Scortt Fitzgerald

It’s not that I didn’t like Harry. It was just his.... overconfidence, his relentlessness, his constant smug grin, his general aspect of brazenness - well, maybe I just didn’t like him. I didn’t like saying I didn’t like anyone, I had an honest belief that most people tried to do what they assumed was the best. Most often than not, their personality merely didn’t match ours. Like two puzzle pieces not fitting together. Not every single person should get along perfectly, and that is absolutely fine. I sure wasn’t intending on allowing it to put a damper on the work we had to.

Did I expect him to be there? No, I was surprised. I hadn’t seen him in years. It’s a small circle, being royal. You see people, can’t be helped, but Harry and I didn’t usually frequent the same places in our down time. He was a party-boy with a track record for hell raising, I was… well, a lawyer; an adult; let’s just say, someone who didn’t spend a lot of time in Vegas.

The way he tried to relate to me didn’t help. Not the casual flirting on the wake of his grandmother’s comment about his heartbreaker ways, which was simply confusing. Was he trying to prove her right or wrong? And which option was more freaky? No, it’s the thing he said after, about my cousin, when we were sitting in a procession carriage with his father on our way to Buckingham Palace

“I think I know your cousin!”

I smiled in response, politely. “Klaus of Luxembourg?” 

“No. I mean, I think I know him, too… But I mean the other one.”

“Brown hair? Thin nose?” he seemed more confused, “Always smells of cigarettes?”

“Yes, that’s him.” He nodded. “We met at the Grand Prix in Monaco, I think.”

“That’s Adrien.”

“Great guy.” He said. “Always knew how to party.”

It made sense he would know Adrien, they were both party boys with no thought to future consequences. With one caveat.

“He has quieted down recently.”

Harry chuckled. “Yes, getting engaged will do that do a man.”

The thing about my cousin Adrien was that he had a great heart. Unfortunately, it used to beat a little too much to the sound of parties all over Nordic Europe. And Northern Europe. And Southeast Asia. Everywhere, really. It became problematic for my family to have to track him around the globe to make sure he wasn’t about to do something scandalous in nature. There is no room for individuality or self-exploration in royalty; one mistake, even by a cousin who is not really going to be king, is connected to us all. All that is to say, we were all very happy Adrien had finally, officially gotten engaged to his long term girlfriend, which made him more predictable and reliable. So hearing from one of his old party buddies that said life change was somehow negative didn’t really warm His Royal Highness in my regard. Still, I was prepared to be professional.

“And, of course, I know your brother as well.”

“Edinburgh University is a fine institution.” His father added. “He’s acquiring a master’s degree, I understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what is his intention with it?”

At this moment a chuckle came from his son.

“To stay away from Savoy, I’m sure.”

“Are you, sir? What gives you that impression?” I asked, a lot harsher than I had meant, feeling my heartbeat in my throat at the sound of an implication. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Harry.” His father warned, still politely. “Will you please be quiet for once?”

“I was only kidding.” He shrugged, quickly.

Still, though the moment scared me, I was still prepared for a successful trip. 

And then the questions started.

It started with:

“I’m sure it’s not your first time in the U.K., is it?”, and when I told him that of course not, I visited my brother often enough and came with friends in the past, he wanted to know “Where did you grow up?”, to which I replied, not without some sass, “I thought it was obvious, sir, I’m from Savoy.” Not one to be deterred, he explained he meant if I was raised in the countryside or capital, or if I had gone to boarding school (mostly countryside until my father became king, then boarding school in Belgium). 

I wanted to merely avoid him, of course. But being the spare of the King I sat next to him - the spare of the heir - at luncheon, and so it was unavoidable.

It feels redundant to explain, but growing up in this world means a saturation of things that aren’t common knowledge to the regular civilian, so explain I must: A ‘spare’ is the term designated for secondary children, the ones who aren’t direct heirs. So when it comes to heirs to the throne, or monarchs, for centuries it was advised that they had one heir to inherit the throne, and at least one ‘spare’, one extra child, who would be available in case something happened to the first one. Which, in those days, was often. After the gift of penicillin and vaccines, spares became more of a commodity than a necessity. A trading card to negotiate with other kingdoms for political power. An arranged marriage here and there, a good dowry to a second child, turning an otherwise useless daughter into a queen consort for another country’s throne. 

In the twenty-first century, us spares were… well, even more useless. Monarchies as a whole lost much of their power, and so the spare’s job is no longer to secure the throne stays in the family in the case of a fatality, but only to support the monarch and future monarchs as much as they - as much as we - can. 

So it was natural we were sat together. Though his father was still the heir, he would be king soon enough. So his spare - Harry - was expected to chat-up my father’s spare - me. I don’t think, however, that it had been anyone’s intentions for him to chat me up that much.

I had spent some time admiring the room, it wasn’t a full on banquet room, but a smaller, dining room, with pink arabescos prints on the wall and kings and queens painted inside gold frames hanging from the ceilings, when I realized I hadn’t actually talked to Harry in a  while. Thinking he may have been timid after his father’s warning in the carriage, I decided to take the first step. I was nothing if not professional.

I should have known it would be enough.

“And where did you go to school, sir?”

He looked at me, seemingly surprised and a bit caught off guard. 

“Oh, ah, Eton. Eton College. Berkshire, not far from Windsor.”

I nodded, as though I knew where Berkshire or Windsor were exactly. 

“And, uhm,” he went on, the red cheeks transforming into a small smile, “you don’t have to call me sir. You can call me Harry if I can call you Mary.”

I grinned, resisting an urge to roll my eyes.

“It’s Marie.”

“Marie”, he repeated, forcibly, with a French accent this time. “Please, call me Harry, Marie.”

I shrugged, trying to hold in a sigh at the forced ‘rr’ sound when he said my name, “force of habit.”

“What did you do after school, Marie?”

I looked at him. “After?”

“Yes, did you play any sports?”

“Oh. I played some polo. Volleyball.”

A couple of seconds went by as his smile grew more knowing than polite.

“And what did you actually like?”

And, see, it was that kind of presumption that made him just a little… infuriating. The smile that accompanied the presumption - almost unbearably charming - didn’t help his case, either. 

”What makes you think I didn’t like those sports?”

He took a sip of his water, still smiling in a way I could, inexplicably, almost feel.

“Did you?”

“I hear the Crown Prince will be finishing his studies soon.” His grandmother put, to my father, before I could figure a way to answer him.

“Yes, he, uhm,” Father pondered, “He is very diligent with his academic career. We’re so proud.”

I suppressed a roll of my eyes by staring at my plate. 

The Duke of Edinburgh nodded. “I’m sure it’ll be a relief to have him back in the country.”

“Margueritte has been a great help. But it’ll be nice to have him home again.”

I smiled graciously at them before downing my water, hoping the conversation would have moved on before I had to join it.

After the meal we were guided to the gallery, where Her Majesty proudly showed us some Savoyen relics that the British Royal family had accumulated over the years, as well as their entire collection. 

There, the British Spare wanted to know if I liked art (of course), if I had taken any course about it on Uni (a couple more and I could have minored in it), and told me all about his own feelings on the matter.

“Like what you see, Marie?” He asked, on a whispered low baritone, when I stood in front of a painting of himself and his brother, leaning against a doorframe. He was pronouncing my name wrong again, as ‘Mary’, just placing the stress in the last syllable.

Instead of staring at him in disbelief, however, I took a deep breath and kept my eyes on his painted face. 

"Masterful work. Wonderful physiognomy, even if your right hand looks a little crooked... and small."

"My-?" He asked, confused, removing his arms from where they had been, connected behind his back, and staring at his own hand. "My hands are not small."

Pleased with the unsettled displeasure in his tone, much more amusing the previous flirty intonation, I followed his eyes, seeing again whatever it was he scribbled into them in black ink. His hands were indeed large and, resisting an urge to touch them, or take some time to imagine what they would feel like on my skin, I focused on the painting again. 

"The color in your hair was well captured, though it is depicted understandably bushier than reality."

"Okay." He rolled his eyes, now, as I watched satisfied the corners of his lips slowly curl up in a grin. “That’s an old- it was a long time ago.”

“Don’t worry yourself, sir, it happens to a lot of men. I’m told it’s very natural.”

“Okay!” He let out a silent laugh; interestingly, this time the grin it left behind did not unsettle me, though it did make me feel victorious somehow.

“Do you remember when we had to actually sit through these?” The Prince of Wales asked my father. “Are you old enough to remember that?”

My father laughed, delighted, “I am, yes. I once had to sit in a hot summer day in full military costume, a replica, of course, I was a child. And the mosquitoes just had a feast that day, because I was not allowed to move!”

They laughed, “Nowadays the children sit for a photograph and that is it!”

I looked over at Harry, hoping to see my own exasperation at the exchange looking back at me, and I did. It was accompanied however, by a softness in his eyes and smile that made me feel weirdly seen. As if he knew a secret I was hiding. It felt unsettling. So, leaning over, I said,

“I hope the painter signed a good NDA.” To which he laughed, now more loudly than before, looking back at the painting. 

There, I thought; this feels better.

We were ushered into another room, brightly lit and artfully decorated where we were served tea. I had been telling the Duke of Edinburgh about my focus on senior citizens’ aide when he approached again. And that’s when it got kinda weird.

“Did you have a good relationship with your grandparents?”

“Something you want to get off your chest, Harry?”, his grandfather asked. “I can step away if it’ll make you more comfortable.”

The Duke laughed at his own joke, and I tried to suppress a smile. 

“No, grandad, I’m just- just making conversation, it’s all.”

He then looked at me, expectantly, and seeing as his grandfather did the same I saw no way out other than to answer, “My great-grandmother is still alive, I have some wonderful memories of her from my childhood. And my grandparents, on both sides, are of some age, but still very present in our lives.”

“King Philippe” His grandfather nodded. “Well, Prince Philippe now, I presume, after he abdicated in favor of your father? Wonderful fellow. Still owes me some money from a poker game from a Tour of Savoy I did with the Queen in 1991.”

“Really?”

“How much money, grandad?”

“Oh, that’s between the both of us.” He looked at me, then. “Do tell him I’m expecting it.”

“Will do, sir.”

“Don’t involve Mary in your weird, borderline undiplomatic shenanigans.”

“Marie!” The Duke corrected for me, rolling his eyes. “And look who’s speaking... You didn’t see me preaching when your shenanigans ended up in the cover of The Mirror.”

“Grandad.” The prince exasperated. But, hearing me laugh, he smiled a little more comfortable. “First of all, yes, he did so.”

“I did?!” The Duke exclaimed, aghast, but Harry was now whispery, looking around suspiciously that we weren’t overheard.

“You lecture everyone!”

“Oh, nonsense.” He then turned around, aiming for his son across the room, sharing a couch with the Queen. “Your father will clarify this.”

Harry was shaking his head, eyes shut, but an amused grin rested on his lips. It was… not a bad sight; a thought which may be why I felt myself blush so furiously when he opened his eyes to look directly at me, and I felt like I was doing something wrong again.

“Oh.” The Duke of Edinburgh had returned, apparently with one last thought, and now leaned in to ask me on a stage whisper, “What are your favorite flowers, Ma’am?”

“My-?” I took a second to think on it. “I suppose daisies, sir, after my name. But I don’t really have a favorite. I like… all flowers. The more colorful the better.”

He seemed momentarily intrigued by the answer, then nodded, thoughtfully, before looking at his grandson as if for confirmation.

“May I ask why?”

He smiled at me, dismissively, already walking away again. “Oh, just trying to simplify my grandson’s life. He ought to know what flowers he should get when he inevitably sends your some.”

“Grandfather!”

But the Duke merely waved at Harry, back turned, and continued to walk away from the awkwardness he left behind.

“Good God… I’m sorry.” Harry looked around, searching. For what, I couldn’t be sure.

I just nodded, affording him a chuckle so he knew there was no harm done. Then, simply because I couldn’t exist in the silence anymore, I walked over to the tea table and found a coconut biscuit.

“He is… retired.”

I bit a piece of the cookie as fast as i could, making it impossible to have to join Harry back into the awkward moment he was so clearly still inside. 

“I haven’t… things haven’t-” He sighed. “I suppose he thinks I need… help.”

“Tennis.” 

“Pardon me?”

I turned to him. “At lunch, you asked which sport I actually liked. I really like tennis.”

He stared for a prolonged time, but the redness that had taken over his cheeks and neck began to diminish. Still, I felt mine bright and angry. I suppose I just didn’t want him to tell me what kind of help his grandfather seemed to think he needed. 

“Individual sport.” He nodded. “Shy, Mary?”

“I see we’ve gone back to Mary.”

“You’re free to call me Harry. I like having a nickname for you.”

“It’s… not quite a nickname. Just my name, but wrong.”

He smiled. “You didn’t answer my question.”

I shrugged, non-committal. “I guess I just dislike the pressure in team sports.”

“Hm.” He seemed intrigued. 

“What, you don’t believe me?”

“I didn’t say that. I think I do. I just wonder if that’s all there is to it.”

I had another question ready, but refrained from it, looking away; his smile grew bigger.

“Go on, ma’am. What have you got to say?”

I let out an incredulous chucke. “Why do I have the impression you are playing a game with yourself to see how fast you can make me lose my composure?”

He shrugged. “I am, a little bit. Seems easy enough, since you don’t seem to like me, for some reason. But I’ve begun to see that is a losing battle.”

“Good.”

“Is it?”

“To me? Yes.”

“I’m not so sure it is.”

I downed the rest of the coconut biscuit to stop myself from arguing further, but he kept staring at me the entire time, which was unnerving. 

“Am I right?”

I took my eyes from the others to look at him, again. “About what?”

“You don’t seem to like me very much.”

I gave him a polite smile. “I don’t see why you would think so.”

He grinned. “That’s not a no.”

“You seem nice.”

“Oh.” He put a hand to his heart and closed his eyes. “Please, Mary, calm down, or I might burst with such loud endorsement!”

I laughed, contradicted. Harry remained silently watching me, so finally I sighed and looked out the windows overlooking the mall.

“You don’t seem to remember, but we have actually met before.” I confessed, to his confusion.

“We… have. I thought you wouldn’t remember it.”

Now, however, I was the one confused.

I had met him exactly three times in the past. I was confident he couldn’t remember the first, the second was a birthday party of a friend in common where I’m sure we didn’t speak, and the third was-

“Royal Ascot.” He nodded. “A few years ago, actually.”

I nodded, slowly. “Right. That… one time we met.”

“Yes,” he smiled, seeming genuinely happy I remembered it, “I think it was the second day. I know my grandmother wasn’t there, because she would have known you were and would have asked someone to bring you over to us to say hello, but no one did. It was mostly me and some of my cousins. I think maybe my brother was there, too. He’s the one who pointed out your group to me.”

It was, if I’m not mistaken, a good three years before. He didn’t have a beard, then. I attended Royal Ascot because Louis, my brother, had recently moved to Scotland to attend University and had gone a couple times prior. Despite Harry’s impression from earlier, I do like polo and horses, and was interested. But when we got there, and Louis told us we should go say hello to the British, I had a horrible flashback of the previous time I had met Prince Harry. 

“I did meet your brother a year before, I think? Maybe two. He was new to Britain, when he’d just started Uni, and so in Ascot I went over to say hello to him, but just as I got there, you… sort of, took off.”

I nodded, now feeling slightly… childish.

“Yes, I… I remember.” I risked a look over at him, who was biting his bottom lip. 

“I thought maybe you’d looked at me before I arrived, and ran off because you didn’t want to meet me.”

He laughed, and I joined, somewhat awkwardly, knowing that was… precisely the case.

I shrugged. “I needed a drink, I think? I do remember coming back around and Louis telling me we had just missed you.”

“Yes, it’s okay, of course.” He added, quickly. “He said you had gone off with your boyfriend.”

He added the line so dismissively, and yet pronouncing the word ‘boyfriend’ so specifically at the exact volume so that I could hear it clearly, but still know he meant it to be a dismissive sentiment, that I knew, somewhere inside, that I was meant to address it. It was hard not to be amused. Instead, I just nodded, trying to bite my inner lip to contain a grin.

“Yes, Christopher.” 

There was a pause. An almost comically long pause. He kept looking over at me, but I decided to just poured myself some more tea. 

“And, uh… Is Christopher from Savoy as well?”

I took a moment to think on it before replying. “He’s French, actually. His family is, mostly. But he was raised in Savoy.”

He nodded, slowly. I continued to pour my tea, also very slowly.

“And uhm, what… what does he do?”

I suppressed a smile. “He’s a hedge fund manager.”

He let out a loud sigh, which could have been a sarcastic laugh, and as I finished pouring my tea, I looked over at him as I brought it to my lips, enjoying his reaction maybe a little too greatly.

I wondered, as I walked over to Cadie, if he would leave me alone now. Clearly, the flirtationship would lose its appeal now he thought I was taken. Guys usually only respected other guys, so perhaps he would keep his distance now that I wasn’t as interesting as before.

Cadie was standing by the door, in a corner with the rest of our traveling staff as well as some Buckingham staff. She smiled as I approached and spoke before I even asked,

“His security just sent an update. There was a… logistic delay, but they’re about half an hour from London now. He should be here in time for the Mayor’s ball this evening.”

I smiled at her, knowingly. “Logistic delay? They mean he forgot to pack until the last minute, don’t they?”

She smiled, but no reply came; she knew I didn’t need one, and I wouldn’t force her to incriminate her future king. Instead, she said on a low whisper, looking behind me,

“He seems to like you.”

I rolled my eyes at the wall, so no one but her would see it. 

“He is one of the most annoying people I have ever met.”

“Is that why you blush every time he asks you something?”

I felt my own head snap at her direction against my will, “I do not!”, but I could already feel my cheeks redden.

Cadie smiled. “You’re allowed to move on, you know?”

I rolled my eyes at her, and was abou to reply when Auguste approached us.

“Ma’am,” he said, lowly and very menacingly, “I think your time might be more productive today if spent, perhaps, socializing?”

I sighed, and walked back to the tea table before I could give him the answer I actually wanted.

“Anything wrong?”, Harry asked, approaching again. “You look… annoyed.”

I wanted to say that was a common effect of his presence, but still, I merely smiled.

“Just checking if my brother is on his way; he is.” 

He nodded, and looked over at our staff, who averted their eyes from our direction, though unfortunately, not quickly enough.

“Is that your handler?”, he asked, looking discreetly at Auguste.

I responded by giving him a quizzical look.

“Secretary? Assistant? Aide?”

“Oh, no. My father’s junior aide. He’s… he’s being trained to work with my brother after his… heirdom starts.”

“Heirdom?” He asked, amused.

“You know, when he graduates and starts being a proper heir.”

He nodded. “And why don’t we like him?”

“I like him.” I shrugged, looking resolutely ahead, still feeling him look at me, disbelieving. “He-”

I sighed, turning back around, to the window, hoping no one could see me.

“He seems to think I’m still a fourteen year-old child who doesn’t understand that daddy has a big responsibility I’m getting in the way of.”

Harry was quiet for a long time. A long enough time for me to regret telling him this, and to wonder if there was a casual enough way I could pretend I was joking.

“Does he not know you’re a lawyer?!”

I looked over at him, who looked the most confused I’d seen him all day.

“He does… how do you know?”

He shrugged. “Your brother, and Adrien… I don’t know, I heard it somewhere. Adrien once said you’re the smartest person in your family.”

I turned to him, now, fully confused myself. “He… did?”

“What, does he not seem like the type?”

“The type to puke all over the Christmas tree when he’s drunk on eggnog? Yes. To  compliment people when they’re not around to give him credit for it? Not really.”

He laughed. “Oh, wow. Yeah… I’ll definitely be asking him about that… “

We let a moment pass in silence, and I noticed, somewhat joyfully, he hadn’t allowed the knowledge of Christopher stop him from talking to me. 

“Hey, how did you know?” I asked, and one of his brows corked up. “That I didn’t like polo or volleyball as much as other sports.”

“Oh. Well… I suppose, because it’s a tour.” He shrugged. “And you being...” His eyes traveled down my whole body and back up to meet mine. “Perfect… ly-perfectly poised, and… and polite and professional, you just… you seem like the kind of person who would make sure to give exactly all the answers you’re suppose to at such an -- important job.”

I let my face contort at the sarcasm in the words ‘important’ and ‘job’.

“You don’t think our job is important?”

His smile didn’t reach his eyes, which looked over at his shoes as he thought of how to answer me.

“So what was your favorite subject in school?” He asked, very deliberately chipper now.

I stared him down, unrelenting, matching his smile, until he sighed.

“I don’t think we’re ready for this conversation.” He said.

“When will we be?”

“When we’re friends.” He returned, quickly. 

It was an answer he had ready and, although I felt I was expected to say that we were already friends, I respected his self-awareness that we weren’t. So I just nodded.

“I liked classics.” I told him. “In school.”

He nodded, looking me up and down. “I see that.”

I rolled my eyes. “Do I have a face for Shakespeare?”

“Well, your name already sounds like you should be in Hamlet.”

“You mean Mary?”

He laughed. “Yes. Yes, that’s what I mean.”

“And what did you prefer in school?”

He shrugged. “Sports.”

“Hm.” I let out, looking away so he wouldn’t see my second eye-roll. But he still laughed.

“What?”

“Nothing. I also see that for you.”

“Do I have a face for sports?”

I shrugged. “You have the body.”

He raised his brows at that, and I looked away, suddenly realizing my own words.

“I mean-”

“No, no, Mary, no need to explain. I understand.” 

His tone was so insufferable and his smile so knowing, and yet, somehow… I couldn’t help but smile.

“I think it’s your turn, now.”

I looked back at him. “My turn?”

“To ask me a question.”

There something benevolent about his tone, as if he was doing my favor by giving me a chance to change the subject. 

I took it.

“Truth or dare?”, I asked, to his surprise.

“Really?”

“You told me to ask a question. That’s a question.”

He took a step closer. “What happens if I pick dare?”

I faced him, keeping my face as still and intense as I could. “Pick and find out.”

I suppose the half an hour Cadie mentioned Louis would take to arrive might have fit inside the long look he gave me; but in truth, I wouldn’t know how long I stood there as he looked at me. 

Eventually, however, the loud laughter from both our families startled us out of the little trance we seemed to be in, and he cleared his throat, awkwardly.

This was when my father approached.

“Margueritte, your brother is arriving in Clarence House as we speak. It’s time to go.” He shook hands with Harry. “Thank you for having us today. We have to go receive my son who’s meeting us here for the rest of the tour.”

Harry smiled at him. “Of course. And will Christopher be joining you as well?”

I bit my lip to hide a grin, but my father seemed puzzled. “Christopher? You mean, our Christopher?”

“Our Christopher?” I asked my father, who sighed.

“You know what I mean… Christopher Ratté. How do you know Christopher, Harry?”

“We have common interests, apparently.”

“Oh, well, that’s... nice. I don’t think he’s in the country, however.” He looked at me. “Margueritte?”

“I wouldn’t know what Christopher is up to these days.”

“Yes, well, we’ll tell him you said hello if we do see him.” 

As my father left to say his goodbyes, Harry looked at me.

“You don’t know what he’s up to these days?”

“I wouldn’t know.” I shrugged. “Seeing as he’s not my boyfriend anymore.”

I might as well have told him Santa Claus was real and he was getting coal for Christmas.

He nodded, slowly, a few times as his mouth opened and shut, before he finally seemed to settle on, “Oh.”

Before I could turn away to say goodbye to his grandparents, however, he held on to my elbow, delicately. 

“Damn, Mary, you could have said something.” He whispered, breathlessly.

I tried not to laugh, which was not an easy feat.

“You could have asked… you didn’t seem to have a problem asking anything today.”

“I didn’t want to… appear… invasive.”

This was too much, so I did laugh.

“Wow.”

“I’m glad you can laugh about it… does this mean I have permission to keep asking things?”

I sighed. “You didn’t seem to need permission before.”

He laughed, biting his lip.

“Sorry. I… It’s just- I don’t usually meet people who may… understand... What it’s like.”

I gulped. “What it’s like?”

He looked around the room. “What it’s like having to shape your entire life after… all of this, and yet… not to really have a role to play in it.”

I nodded, wondering if that’s all he wanted; someone to understand. Wondering if he did need help; or if Cadie was right.

“...Especially ones with a face like yours.”

“Aw.” I said, emotionless, deadpan, “you ruined it.”

I was going to turn away to go say my goodbyes to his family, but before I did, for reasons still unknown to myself, I turned to him again.

“By the way, Christopher wasn’t the only thing you were wrong about today…”

He was still grinning. “And what was I wrong about, ma’am?”

“Royal Ascot. That wasn’t the first time we met.”

--- --- --- --- --- ---

[A/N: Thank you so much for reading, please let me know if you like it by liking this page or leaving a comment? It’d mean so much to me!]

[sleepychihuahua]

MCs as Ayakashi Suitor Descendants

WARNING: Some spoilers ahead.

Ayakashi RR is it’s own universe separate from the Love 365 games, but what if it wasn’t? Ignoring EITM (since the history and rules of their yōkai are so different), maybe some of the MCs are descended from the Ayakashi suitors?

So far, I’ve only finished Koga and currently somewhere halfway with Ginnojo, but from what I do know about the suitors, I imagine that for the Dawn Faction:

Ginnojo and MPDCTY MC

Koga and MFW MC

Kuya and SITS MC

Yura and FILA MC

Aoi and IYAT MC

Ginnojo and MPDCTY MC

Ginnojo reminds me of the MPDCTY MC. I only played Kimura’s stories, but from what I gathered, MPDCTY MC’s main traits are: she’s a big eater, a Judo black belt, and has a strong sense of justice.

Mizuchi dragons seem to be one of the longer-living ayakashi since Ginnojo is apparently 54 and still looks young, so he could potentially be alive when MPDCTY MC was born and growing up.

He’s most likely a grandpa. The game takes place during the Taisho Period (1912-26) so he could be a great-grandpa, but he’s so shy around women. If he doesn’t end up with Futaba/ARR MC, then it would take a while for him to interact with another woman and start a family with her.

He trained MC how to fight and use her water powers. Sparring is normal and their training room/backyard normally floods from the water that they fought with.

She could never beat him.

They probably caused the family grief with how much they eat. Imagine the food budget. They probably eat extra large pork cutlet curry and beef bowls at least two/three times a day.

Ginnojo would read little MC his favorite books after meal times and tell her about the Shinsengumi and their convictions. These stories and Ginnojo’s love for his country were what influenced her to become a detective.

She becomes a Shinsengumj geek, and she and little Kiyonori became Shinsengumi BFFs. Grandpa Ginnojo is highly uncomfortable when they would team up against him to hear stories that he already told 567 times.

Ginnojo is always flustered when MC gets crushes and tells him about it. But he’s also there to kick ass if anyone makes her cry.

Koga and MFW MC

They like to drink.

Honestly, that’s my biggest argument. I only played Yamato’s stories (can’t bring myself to cheat on him with the other guys even though I love Ren and Saeki’s characters...) so I don’t know how different MFW MC is in other routes.

But MFW MC’s funniest character trait is her love of shochu.

Koga mentioned that only few Ayakashi have long lifespans and in his route, he has an illness known as the “carnage” that some Oni Ogre have. Koga’s probably dead by the time MFW MC was born.

If there was a cure for the “carnage” and he’s still alive, he would drink with MC once she was of legal age. The two would have a Sake vs Shochu argument every time.

Koga’s probably a stubborn, old man. He can’t handle not moving around and doing work even when he should be resting. And he feels embarrassed when his granddaughter takes care of him. But MFW MC is just as stubborn and cooks for him, does chores that he can’t do, and makes sure he doesn’t overwork himself.

That was how she developed wife-skills

MC got his kind and strong nature from him. She’s willing to help others, although she didn’t inherit his natural entrepreneurship skills. Not to say she’s an idiot. She probably took business as her major because she was exposed to it. Taking a page from the PARTY version, MFW MC opens up a flower arranging business

Kuya and SITS MC

There are two types of writers: ones that actually write and publish things and ones that don’t and just keep the ideas in their heads.

Like Koga, Kuya is most likely dead or just very, very old when SITS MC was born.

I haven’t even unlocked Kuya’s route yet, but I found the contrast and similarities between him and SITS MC kinda funny.

SITS MC daydreams. A lot. It’s how she writes.

And then Kuya is here:

If Kuya’s alive when SITS MC was little, they probably took naps together under the shade of the mikan tree in their backyard with Kuya using one of his wings as a protective blanket over her.

They’d also go to the mountains where no one would see them and fly around to stretch their wings.

I don’t know if Kuya actually starts writing stories during his route, but if he does, he would tell little MC bedtime stories...

...then proceeds to fall asleep halfway through before MC does.

He’s an old man now, so he sleeps much more often. MC doesn’t mind and finishes the stories for him so she could tell it to him before his nap times.

Watching movies became normal since they don’t have to waste energy talking and can instead sit on the couch and focus on the screen until one falls asleep and the other daydreams scenarios.

SITS MC inherited her workaholic tendencies from Kuya’s kid/her father, who was taught by Kuya’s wife to work hard. That’s why she can handle working as an assistant manager and lyricist for Revance.

The band would find her napping with Little Yamada under the tree in the yard in a regular basis when she hits writer’s block. Poor girl would wake up to Takashi’s monster mode every time.

Yura and FILA MC

Sweets

Haven’t played a full FILA route yet but I’ve read reviews and read the prologue so I kinda have a general idea of the FILA MC.

If Yura didn’t end up with Futaba, he ended up with a confectioner. In this case, Yura is probably FILA MC’s father. He is already 1000+ years old, so another handful of decades probably wouldn’t mean much to him. It took a while for him to find his true love without being blinded by his love of sugar.

Father, grandfather, or great-grandfather, Yura’s alive when FILA MC was growing up. He doted on her and would always take her out to eat cakes, so he when she decided to become a pastry chef, he was happy.

She would always have Yura taste test her desserts. The two were inseparable and practically lived in the kitchen.

Ever since Aoi made that cake, Yura was fascinated with hybrid desserts a d new food combinations.

FILA MC tries to add sweet-bean jelly to almost everything and makes huge batches for Yura’s birthday. She loves seeing the happy look in her father’s face.

She even makes desserts with a bit of spice for her Uncle Gaku since she loves him just as equally and as thanks for always helping pay for the ingredients she needs.

Outside of sweets, Yura would encourage small animals to their backyard. Little FILA MC would play with them almost every day.

If Yura was freed from his curse, he would play his flute for her (sometimes with Gaku on drums) and teach her how to play the instrument so they could have a duet.

Aoi and IYAT MC

Art runs in the veins.

IYAT MC grew up with Aoi’s paintings and with her powers as a Satori, she can feel his emotions and thoughts for each one.

Aoi’s probably still alive since he’s 16 during the story, so he’s most likely to be a grandpa.

IYAT loves watching him paint. Her favorites are the portraits of his loved ones and she always feels warm and loved when he paints her.

The old paintings of his wife and kids in their old homes were what inspired IYAT MC to be an interior designer. She wanted to create that warmth she saw in his paintings.

She learned to paint by imitating him and they would often spend a whole day together just going out in nature to paint.

IYAT MC often painted her three childhood friends and would do commissions for them.

Aoi made sure that his kids had good work ethic he doesn’t want any deadbeats like that tengu so he taught IYAT MC as well to not be lazy. Recipes he learned from Raccord was passed down to her.

Aoi taught IYAT MC to make sure to not use her powers to invade privacy unless necessary, but also to not become bitter towards his powers like he was.

She didn’t use her powers on Koichi until she saw him with his mistress, which made her depressed. She couldn’t help but think that if she had read his heart earlier, she wouldn’t be feeling the pain of being cheated on.

But if following Koichi’s route, it was her powers that let her forgive Koichi when she saw how he was changing and truly learning to love her. She stayed with him because she saw that there was a part of his heart that thought he would grow to love her because he wouldn’t let go of her as a baby.

IYAT MC designed Aoi’s and her grandmother’s new living room. She went all out to make sure her beloved grandparents will be comfortable and happy. Aoi can always sense her love for them because of it and was embarrassed but happy the first time he stepped inside.

And that’s it for the Dawn Faction! I don’t really have any ideas for the other suitors since they’re not out yet and I haven’t read all of the other Voltage stories. I have a vague idea for Kagemaru and Toichiro but not enough to write about. Maybe once I read more.

Anyways, thanks for reading and I hope you guys liked it!

[thebatgurrl]

I have been drawn down a rabbit hole to find out more about the three brothers that found the Jones Slope Coal Mine.

What started all this research into someone else’s family and legacy you ask?  It started when my latest lost coal mine search became the New Black Diamond Coal Mine (NBD) (aka Indian Coal Mine).

Indian Mine (New Black Diamond Coal Mine) Maintenance Building under construction with bunker in background

This was no small mining operation and it required a lot of hiking, photography and research.  And a bunch of it was around the three brothers and the Jones Slope Complex.  I have mentioned in my posts a certain amount of magic and serendipity that kept occurring.  Plus my finding against the odds their 100 year old hoist foundation buried in the brush.

About a month into my research I found this photo on the University of Washington Digital Archives.  I found it because Renton History Museum directed us there for their on-line content.

Jones Brothers posing at their mine entrance at the 1925 Opening

This was pretty exciting because from all of my research and visits to the site I knew this was from the Jones Slope and not the main entrance down at river level.  However, I stumbled onto a mystery. Which brother is on the left?  Here is a quote from my email to the Black Diamond Museum for help finding a photo of Ben or Ed after Renton History Museum gave me what they had.

I inquired to Liz at the Renton History Museum if they had any more info on the photo. She told me it was Ed Jones on the Right and Tom on the left. We were pretty sure the Jim Jones reference on the UW site was an error. Plus, she gave me enough information to sort out that this photo was taken on the Oct 1925 opening of the New Black Diamond Mine. It is not of the main tunnel down by the Maple Valley Highway but is from the Jones Slope area up near Lake Desire.

Then I found the Seattle Times article (March 1927) with this same photo in it. It says it is Ben & Tom Jones.

Can you help me find a photo of Ben or Ed to sort out who is on the left? We know for sure it is Tom on the right from an obituary photo in the Seattle Times.

Now I was in deep.  I could look into the faces of the Jones Brothers. I have been hesitant to mention that several times I would see people around the site and when I looked closer they would be gone. Could be my imagination but perhaps I had a helper

As of this article I still only have the photos of Tom & Ed.  Several folks owe me responses for a Ben photo.  My gut tells me it is Ed but I won’t bore you at this point why I think that.

Tom Jones photo Seattle Times 1936

  Ed Jones Photo 1903

Needless to say these brothers got into my head and with my trusty computer in hand I pieced together their family story.

It all starts with their parents immigration to the Washington Territories via Victoria BC in 1869. Benjamin P Jones and Ann Jones were both from Wales.  He was born in January 26, 1841. Ann was also born in 1841. They had married in Wales the same year they immigrated.  In the 1870 census they were 29 years old and resided in Freeport, King County, Washington. Ben was a Machinist and Ann a housewife.

Where is Freeport in King County, Washington I asked myself?  I found that it was an early name for a place in West Seattle. Many of you may know Youngstown on Delridge or where the Steel Mill is.  That was called Freeport and a thriving Sawmill was established there in the mid 1860’s. I live in West Seattle which is another coincidence.

Ben established one of the the first Machinist shop in Seattle.  However due to his declining health he closed it and they homesteaded on the Cedar River in 1878.

By the 1880 census they bore three sons and Ben had died in June of 1879. This left Ann a widow with 3 young children to make her way in the wild Pacific Northwest.  That census lists her sons, John “Ed” (born 1870), Thomas Livingston (born 1871) & Benjamin Ivan (born 1875). She also had John Jones (brother) and Atta Mills a teacher that boarded with them.  I think John must have been Ben’s brother because I have found Ann’s maiden name was Edwards.

I received from my Black Diamond contact Ken Jensen an article on Ann.  This had some great info.  It states that when they moved to Cedar River it was only accessed by horse on Indian Trails. Their neighbors were the Indians and only 5 other settler families. Mrs Jones was fluent in Chinook and Siwash plus the Indians liked her. It also states that she moved to Black Diamond and established the first hotel there.  More on that below.

Ann Jones Article from Black Diamond History Museum archives

A few years after the Jones moved to Cedar River a community called Cedar Mountain opened up river from them. Nothing is really left of it these days. It was established around coal and the mine that was there and across the Cedar River.  The coal seam would be found and lost and then found again. Eventually becoming the future New Black Diamond Coal Mine which was just around the bend of the river and about 1 mile west on the Maple Valley – Renton Highway.

Here is a bit of an article and a link from the Black Diamond History Blog called Lost towns of King County: Busy Cedar Mountain of former years now is only a memory

In 1862 Martin L. Cavanaugh, a homesteader in the Duwamish Valley, near present Boeing Field, discovered coal on the hillside at this point while on a survey party. He made the mistake of talking about his find. By the time he went to Olympia to file on a mineral claim, it already was down in the books in James M. Colman’s name.

The Cedar Mountain Coal Co., with Samuel Blair as president, Lawrence Colman as secretary, and J.M. Colman, manager, bided time until a railroad existed to move the product. When the Cedar River extension of the Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad was completed to Black Diamond in 1884, this mine produced 1,732 tons before the end of the year.

Plus a bit from an article in the Voice of the Valley –

Coal Mining began at the base of Cedar Mountain in 1884 and ended in 1944.  It never produced a large amount of coal, but it produced enough to form the little town.

It had all the fixing of a coal company town: stores, a hotel, bunkhouses, a school, a church, mines, a post office and a railroad station. Miners cabins consisted of three rooms. The officials and their families lived in larger homes.

All of this existed where Maple Valley – Renton Highway (Hwy 169) is intersected with 196th Ave SE and SE Jones Road.  Hmmmm…  Jones Road?

In 1885 to help support her family Ann went into the hotel/boarding house business that housed miners.  The family moved to BD and establish the first hotel there.  According to an Obituary on Ben’s son it was the Black Diamond Hotel. Here is a picture of it from BD History.

The Hotel & other buildings were located where the Green River Eagles #1490 is today

BD got the RR in 1884 after several years of mining without heavy machinery.  The coal boom began with the town growing and with machinery could get to serious mining.

In a letter from Morgan Morgan to his grandfather Walter in 1882 he describes his trek to BD from Seattle.  It includes two horses from their friend Mr Jones.  They declined to stay overnight at Jones Ranch & went straight on to BD.  Could this be John Jones (Brother) – eldest son Ed was only 12 at the time.  In June of 1913 BD Hotel & Gibbons Hotel plus the meat market (in picture above) burned down.  At the time the hotel was owned by Frank W Bishop.

When did Ann end her Black Diamond Hotel ownership?  I have a few clues. Ann along with Ed were running another hotel in downtown Seattle by 1910 census.  In 1904 Pacific Coast Coal Company bought the Black Diamond mines and most of the town.

Another clue is from a Washington Census in 1889.  It has her and all three of the boys listed as farmers on their Cedar River Farm.  Found another reference in my BD history book about a butcher in 1890 buying cattle from farmer near Cedar Grove.  Could this be our Jones family?

My educated guess is she ran both properties till  Pacific Coast Coal Company came along.  They owned the land under the buildings and that made Ann determine she didn’t need the hotel any more.

The next census of 1900 found Ann still in Cedar Mountain but the boys are like straws in the wind.  Want to point out it would have been nice to have the 1890 census but it was burned up in a 1920’s fire.

What that census contains confirms my assumption on the hotel as she is listed as owner of her property and Land Lady.  She had retained the property on Jones Road plus was still running the hotel in Black Diamond.  A woman to be admired in how she stepped up to support her family in a man’s world.

I found Tom in the 1900 census as a clerk and a boarder in downtown Seattle. In a Bio sent to me by the Renton History Museum Tom was a “Railroad Man” from 1892.  He worked for the Northern Pacific eventually making it to conductor. His Obituary in the Seattle Times gives us more clues on his whereabouts around 1900.  It states:

In the early 1880’s he was employed by Columbia Puget Sound Railroad (one of the lines was from Renton to Black Diamond), went to Alaska in the 1898 Gold Rush and mined for 4 years there.  He was a conductor on the White Pass & Yukon Railroad and then returned to Renton in 1917 from Alaska.

Ed was also on the 1900 census. He was found on a passenger list for the SS Victoria out of Seattle listed with occupation as miner. Bet he was going to Alaska even though the heat of the Gold Rush had been over in 1898.  Perhaps he was mining with his brother Tom?

Then we come to Ben.  I cannot find him in the 1900 census.  However, we do know that his son Ivan was born in 1903 in Charleston which is a community of Bremerton.  He was a machinist  so he might have been working at the Navy Ship Yard that was opened around the turn of the century.  Perhaps in 1900 he was in Alaska with his big brothers? All an educated guess.

Another bit of the story is Ed Jones made a name for himself by running for mayor of Renton and he was elected the second mayor of the city for the 1904 – 1908 term.  Prior to that the Bio I received from Renton History Museum has him as a Stationary engineer in charge of Seattle Electric Co. mine in Renton around 1903.  He lived on his farm on Jones road with his mom and they also had a house in Renton on William & Walla Walla across from Tonkin Park. This fits in with Ann leaving the Black Diamond Hotel around 1904 & PCCC owning Black Diamond.

In the 1910 census we can find Ed & Ann as Hotel Keepers on 414 – 4th Avenue, Seattle, WA. Currently this property is a parking lot between two buildings – north side built in 1924 & south 1909.  The 1909 building is called the Crouley Building and was the Reynolds Hotel. Maybe that is it but the address is not perfect. All of this is across the street from the City Hall Park and King County Courthouse & Administration buildings.

In that 1910 census Ben is now in Raymond, Washington down by Willapa Bay along the Pacific Ocean Coast.  He was a Machinist at an Iron Foundry and was with his wife Edith and two children Ivan and Bernice.

Tom was in Alaska per his Obituary and I cannot find him in the census.  Guess he was mining and railroading in the wilds of Alaska.

We have now arrived at the brothers finding the Jones Seam and the Indian Coal Mine. In mid 1918 Ed obtained a lease from Fred & Edith Cavanaugh who owned the property around Cedar Mountain.  This lease was for 25 years starting January 1, 1918. Here they found the Jones Seam and opened it up in a small way.  This is substantiated by the Washington DNR Coal Mine Map of the Jones Slope/Indian Mine and future maps when it was developed into the New Black Diamond Coal Mine.

I believe that somewhere along the line the Jones bought out the Cavanaughs because in a 1920 Seattle Times article it mentions PCCC buying the property from the Jones and the adjacent properties from the Campion Family who owned the Coleman Estate.  Coleman was the original owner of the property to the east where coal was orginally found.  Remember how he beat Martin Cavanaugh (Fred’s father) out of the rights.  In turn Cavanaugh bought other properties on the hill plus where Valley View Mobile Home Park is today on the Maple Valley – Renton Highway.

The Jones family hit the jackpot at this point and sold their rights to Pacific Coast Coal Company. In one of many articles I have they sold their working rights in 1925 which they must have kept in the original sale.

The Jones wasted no time in finding a nice place to retire and bought a house in the Mount Baker neighborhood of Seattle.

The house in Mt Baker that Jones Slope Coal bought

Back of the house that the Jones Family purchased after selling the Indian Coal Mine

In the 1920 census the whole family was living in this house.  That included Ann, Ed, Tom, Ben with his wife Edith and two kids Ivan and Bernice.

A decade later they were still all in the same house along with Ed & Tom’s wives Edna & Vivian.  Guess when they retired they had time and money to get hitched.

Ben dies in 1933 and Tom in 1936. Fairly young guys with both of them in their mid 60’s.

The Jones Farm was on the Jones Road and best I can tell from the description in Ann’s Obituary above it is located across the river from where the 76 station is on the Maple Valley – Renton Highway. It is a large horse farm that is famous for raising and training horses.  I am awaiting info from them and will update if and when they respond.

To wrap up things I went for a visit to Lakeview Cemetery in Seattle near Volunteer Park.  This is one of the cities original pioneer graveyards with many of our founders buried there.

The cemetery was most helpful with the location and who was buried where in the plot. It is in very close proximity to Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee’s graves. As I was documenting and leaving coal and roses at the Jones graves it was a revolving door of people visiting the Lees.  I also went up there when the crowd split and found this little grave next to theirs.  I felt bad for this guy buried decades before the famous father & son. (actually the same year as the Jones Brothers Father was buried)

Mr Malon Grave next to Bruce Lee at Lakeview CemetaryBenjamin P, Ann, Ed, Tom, Ben I, Edna (Ed’s wife), Edith (Ben’s wife), Ivan (Ben’s son), and Bernice Crisp (Ben’s daughter) are interned there.  There is a Jones Family Monument with several of their names inscribed upon it.  Ben P has his own ground marker from 1879. However Ann, Ed & Tom have no true markings that they lay there with the family.

Jones Family Monument at Lakeview Cemetery Seattle, WA

Close up of Jones Monument with Coal from the Indian Coal Mine

Benjamin P Jones grave marker

In my research I realized that Find-A-Grave did not have photos nor complete information around this pioneer family of Renton and Coal Mining.  I posted my photos on all 9 of them, linked the family together and wrote bios.  The site took all my changes and updates.  Mission accomplished.

So here we are in the middle of a terrible time for our world. We are plagued by a terrible virus, the USA is divided politically, regionally and culturally.  Many of us including myself feel a helpless sadness overwhelming our lives. Perhaps this is why I have gone down this rabbit hole of history to bring some order to the world.

But we must remember Times are a changing.  Blink and all will be changed.

Yes Time does change everything. It may take longer than we want it to but look what can happen in 100 years.  Coal was king then and now it is looked down on as a contributor to global warming.  The Jones Family would be astonished at the changes. In the flash not only has our way of life changed drastically but we overcame depression, a World War, civil rights, Vietnam, an industrial revolution, and a technical revolution. May the story of the Jones Family show us that we too can overcome the odds and win.

For those that want to read my adventures on the NBD & Jones Slope I created a directory of my Coal Mine Hunter series.  The NBD and the Jones Slope articles are towards the bottom of the list.  Lost Coal Mines of King County

Perhaps you will be inspired to go on your own adventure and let serendipity lead the way.

Postscript –  I wondered why Vivian Jones (Tom’s wife) was not buried at Lakeview like all the rest of the family.  She was a clerk at Dupont Powder Company in the January 1920 census & married Tom in December of that same year.  She was about 20 years younger than Tom.  Dupont must have supplied the dynamite and blasting powder used by the Jones Brothers.

What I found is she lived until 1970 and is buried in Glendale, California.  She remarried in 1939 Earl J Klingaman and they lived in a rather nice apartment building that still exists today – The Marlborough.  It was built in 1928 as the first high rise residential building.

The Marlborough in Seattle built in 1928 – photo today in 2020

I also found that Earl was a car salesman in California before he enlisted in WWI. He became a flyer but never went to Europe.  He married twice before marrying Vivian.  In 1921 and in 1931. Gave up on finding if he divorced any of his three wives since the sites I found want money.  I have my suspicions but will leave you to ponder this yourself. Just hope Tom was happy the years they were married.

Jones Brothers – Their Story behind the Coal Mine I have been drawn down a rabbit hole to find out more about the three brothers that found the Jones Slope Coal Mine.

[captainharunanase]

When you justified with the term fanart, that you can basically do whatever you want, I agree with you. BUT the recent new stalker *cough* cozy-hovel *cough* commented more than one IR fanarts with very piss-weak comments like "you're delusional" or "not gonna happen". Not worth this person's time but keep a look out, I got the receipts and I've counted.

Very true. I have seen that particular idiot call anything IR-oriented as “delusional” but here’s the kicker–all those IR moments are legit scenes from the manga. How can any IR scene, that Kubo himself drew, be delusional? Despite how people interpret them, an IR moment is STILL an IR moment.

Long-ass post under the cut because I want my IR lovelies to enjoy the tag and not have to be bombarded with my super long semi-meta post.

Anyhoo, a few examples here just to make my point.

Ichigo went to SS to save Rukia himself–no one forced his hand. And regardless if it’s “seen” as romantic or not he still saved her AND thanked her for stopping his rain (i.e. depression). Orihime even admits Rukia changed his world and is his most important person. That’s legit there no matter how you translate it.

How is that delusional? We all read it. Saw it. Heard it from Ichigo himself. Major IR moment.

Ichigo feels down about his inner hollow and all that jazz until Rukia shows up and literally cheers him up. Doesn’t matter if it’s romantic or not. It happened. It’s there. Even Orihime is grateful to her for doing something even she could never do. That’s an IR moment.

How is that delusional? Kubo showcased it in full view. No tricks, no double-meaning. It’s right there.

Ichigo saying goodbye to Rukia at the very place he gained his powers from her when they first met. His and hers facial expressions displaying such sadness and melancholy over their farewell. How their humans friends were also sad for the both of them in seeing this happen to them.

How is that delusional? It’s right there. It’s an IR moment that Kubo took the time to draw with such great emphasis and detail there’s no way people can mistake it as anything but a semi-private sad goodbye moment between them.

And when Rukia returned at Ichigo’s lowest moment in FB Arc? Where Ichigo was in the very pinnacle of despair and desperation and fear and hopelessness? Where every single human bond (minus his dad and Uryu) he had in his life had been utterly ripped apart and distorted and used AGAINST him to show how weak and easy it was to turn on him and betrayal him? How even though Uryu and his father hadn’t betrayed him–he still DOUBTED them at first until he was reassured by them that they were on his side?

Yet the moment he saw Rukia–even with a blade stabbed through his chest FROM BEHIND–he automatically trusted her? Was fucking relieved to see her? Didn’t doubt his Shinigami friends when they appeared to aid him? Or that moment where even Byakuya, having gotten cut by Tsukishima’s blade, still was on Ichigo’s side because of his faith in him–through all of the actions Ichigo’s done for his sister and Soul Society? How Ichigo finally regained his resolve back from her, again, and literally showed Ginjou that his despair had changed into his strength through her? And the very fact Rukia would have died for Ichigo–again–when Tsukishima tried to kill him from behind? The look on his face when he saw it about to happen?

How is any of that delusional? We saw his depression after losing his powers. We saw him try to find a way to get them back. We saw him struggle with his Fullbringer so he could try getting his Shinigami powers back. We saw his human bonds break and his doubts against everyone until Rukia showed up. He didn’t question her. Kubo literally wrote “these bonds will never break” about IR. This is literally a fact from Bleach. There is no bias or twisting the truth.

Romantic, platonic, and so on does not matter here. Kubo made that moment important to the both of them and ONLY them. That is the truth. There is no asspulling or imagining it. This is literally not up for debate. It’s literally a highlight to illustrate that his bond with Rukia will never break despite the ending.

Yet Kubo not only tried to dismantle and discredit 15 years of buildup between IR through the last arc, but in trying to do so made the ending seem extremely OOC and off-putting to the majority who expected actual substance not shallow and hollow imitations of what they once loved and cared for for 15 years. I’m not talking about ships. I’m talking about the 180° character assassination and the horrendous gaping holes in his story. He had 10 more years left for Bleach. What he does instead is a 10 year jumpskip with literally no explanation of any major plotlines except Rukia being captain and some characters are around and about but who the hell knows what they’re even up to because it was wasted on ships of a future generation Bleach never once hinted on or was expected to be about all…along?

If Kubo wanted to pull a Naruto he should have actually read it because Kishimoto definitely talked nonstop about past, present, and future generations so much I’m surprised few people find THAT ending odd yet say Bleach was always supposed to end this way? Really now? I definitely know people that think that way only cared about ships and not the integrity of Bleach.

I don’t care about canon ships or if Ichigo somehow fell in “love” with Orihime 3 years later after the final arc. Same thing with Rukia to Renji. What I care about is facts and evidence supporting it.

Which there literally is none in the manga.

The only evidence that Ichigo felt for Orihime had only ever been friendship. What she felt for him was more than that–that is a no-brainer. Her feelings for him is a fact. His feelings for her? Never saw romantic proof. And I didn’t ship IR or any ship seriously until the FB arc. But even I knew, if Ichigo had to be with someone based off who he was closest to in terms of who actually understood him best–I assumed it would be Rukia. It made logical sense based off all the mutual compatibility and the semblance of how Kubo was always furthering their bonds and demonstrating their importance to each other through not only other characters but through Ichigo’s and Rukia’s actions for one another.

Even when he was trying to separate them in the end you could tell how he had to actively alienate them to even give a small glimmer of hope to make the canon ships somewhat passable. But all he did–since he never properly handled IH/RR correctly with equal mutual reciprocation from Ichigo to Orihime and Rukia to Renji–is make the majority of his audience feel dissatisfied with how strange they were acting. He had plenty of time to make those ships important but he chose not to. It wasn’t until he was getting the plug pulled that he suddenly cared about them. Yet in doing so was too little too late. He was reaching the end of his serialization and instead of closing all the loose ends and trying to end the final battle as best as he could. He chose to focus on a faulty shipping path instead of the story’s own dire need of a proper closure.

Rukia ignoring Ichigo? Renji giving him a speech to lift his spirits that he’s never done before? Tsukishima giving him powers? Rukia and Ichigo barely interacting or even acknowledging each other? So on and so forth?

That is actually also not delusional. We don’t deny it happened. It’s there. We see it. Those are moments meant to dissolve IR importance at the last second. This is Kubo stating if Bleach ends so does IR.

But it really didn’t. He never actually goes through with it.

Ichigo and Rukia still are the same when they are together. Albeit still not IC fully yet it’s undeniable that while 686 spewed some ooc talk about courage–IR still had a moment. They are still the definition of Bleach regardless how you see them as.

That is fact. That is truth. It’s there. Kubo made sure to remind us. Even with all he’s done, Kubo still had to make IR important because it started with them and now ended with them.

Lil Kaz and Lil Ichka didn’t change that even if they “inherited the love and destiny” their respective parent had for each other to them. If anything I don’t hate or blame the children for that. They are merely the byproduct of a man who has been proven to have lost Bleach’s true purpose and integrity years ago and now has nothing left to show for it.

This is not a delusion or made up. This is fact. It happened. It’s there. We all universally read the death of Bleach together. We saw how it failed to capture the essence of what made Bleach–BLEACH. The ending IS a failure. The sales project it, the Japanese fans express their displeasure, the negative reviews and reactions received are not made up or imagined, the daily fact Kubo has yet made a formal interview or even attempted to write a post-script to answer our questions is proof he no longer wants anything to do with his own work.

He was coerced to draw for his own post novels and he even stated he wanted no part in them. All talks of post Bleach is done by third parties and any small snippets of him are done by others literally quoting what he’s told them–not to us his fans. The "bonds" we see in the newest novel? He literally stated they were "never seen in the original manga." Antis say he didn't have "time" because of the cancellation but he had 15 years for IR yet no time for the "intended" ships he apparently wanted? What an asspull and last ditch effort to screw himself over.

That is definitely not delusional. Never in my years of being a part of this world of manga and video games have I ever heard of a creator taking such great lengths not to address or even talk about his work post-conclusion. Kubo is not talking and will most likely not talk about his thoughts on his direction towards the end of his series for a good while.

And to all those that actually enjoyed the ending, despite evidence to prove how much of a complete debauchery it made the characters out to be and the storyline put into utter jeopardy and disrepair, congratulations you’ve played yourselves.

You’ve literally proven not only do you not care about the foundation of what made Bleach what it used to be (the characters, the story, and even the bond between IR–honestly don’t care if you ship them or not) but also the very fact you rejoice in the thought that IR has "sunk" (uh-huh yeah sure) simply because it THREATENED your ships. You only care about how much of a hassle their bond was that you knew the only way Bleach would be great TO YOU is if IR was destroyed in every way, shape, and form. Regardless whether it was Kubo trying to ruin any potential romantic bond or even their platonic one–you are HAPPY at the thought Kubo tried to disprove them in any way you think he could.

Now that’s delusional. It actual never came to fruition or able to stop IR from being IR. Kubo literally could not be bothered to care to try and go through with even that. He tried, yes, but he took it all back at the end with his. “Thank you Ichigo and Rukia…” and his “won’t this make you cry if you’re a fan of Ichigo and Rukia?” These tidbits he insists on saying over and over are facts.

Your positive reactions of Kubo trying to disassemble IR and how you all have in turn tried to dissuade us to stop criticizing Bleach is as transparent as your blatant hate for Rukia and her importance to both Ichigo and Bleach.

The truth is you all would gladly sacrifice the whole essence of Bleach if it meant IR was never meant to be. That is literally how far you antis have gone. You all would gladly see Bleach fall than admit without IR your ships would sail worry-free.

In truth, it’s not even the real IH/RR fans that are delusional it’s the anti-IR fans that are severely misinformed and delusional.

They see any IR moment and have to assume it’s unimportant because it threatens them. They need to assume it’s only platonic and can only be seen that way because it makes it easier to then steal IR material for themselves and call it romantic for their ships. They believe in their minds that IR fans are delusional because we hated the final arc of Bleach over ships and nothing else. They wholeheartedly think we are all inherently wrong because we didn’t read Bleach “right” and we’re the delusional ones.

All of these assumptions and accusations of IR fans are ironic as fuck because there had been nothing but proof and receipts from our side proving how insecure and pathetic their attempts at garnering our attention and their need for us to validate them since August of last year.

They want us to feel threatened by this ending, by Kubo’s attempts to assassinate his own series, and by admitting somehow and in some twilight zone that their way was the true way.

Their delusions are grand I’ll give them that but their transparency and smell of desperation reeks of instability and fragility.

I have never felt threatened by IH/RR or by any ship for that matter. We all know IR is the pinnacle and definition of Bleach.

Love them, hate them, and ship them or not there is no delusion about them. When you think of Bleach they are the sum of it. They are what made Bleach great. And through them, we had many other great things and characters born from those two’s interaction that fateful night 15 years ago. That is fact. It happened. We all read it. No denying the two main characters of the story creating the very basis and foundation Bleach once stood upon proudly. Now? All we remember is the horrible ending of endless loopholes, incomplete retcon plotlines, MIA characters, OOC overturn of remaining characters, and still underdeveloped half-sided ships meant to take seriously with a finale of two small children that somehow was the conclusion needed to finish Bleach in all it’s now faded glory?

The delusions pro-ending fans take to ensure they are proven right with as little to no evidence as possible to dictate this is how we all as a collective whole must see it as is anything but delusional.

Now, if Kubo cared and catered to the ending correctly by talking about it and making interviews and just admitting the truth “yes I wanted everything to happen EXACTLY like this for x and y reasons because this and that.” Then yes we’d all would have seen it. It would have happened if he did it. We couldn’t have denied it even if we tried.

But no, we get nothing but vague “I intended it from chapter 1…” and “I only wanted the kids to meet…” the “it” in question is vague and had been never clarified so anything we assume ranging from ships to just Ichigo losing his powers and staying in the human world can be what he meant. The kids bit is also strange because while he states he wanted the kids to be a part of Bleach (how? Well not sure except from what we got in 686 obviously) but he doesn’t specify WHY he wanted the kids to meet.

As a roundabout way for IR? To illustrate the IR bond through mini IR 2.0? To show the love IR had for each other through their kids? Wanting them to go through the same trials and tribulations IR did for some sadistic twist of fate? To try and do a failed Boruto rehash? To try and save his series? To make the kids the ones to break the tragic love stories by ending up together whereas all the other romances didn’t? He didn’t specify and I honestly doubt he ever will.

Nor do I honestly care about him or his lackluster post ending bullshit.

I care about Bleach in its entirety. I care about each and every character–even the ones in the last arc. I care about the narrative and what used to be the true purpose of Bleach in Ichigo’s incompleted Hero Journey. I care immensely about the dishonor he has done to Rukia and her shinigami world. I care deeply at what he’s done to both IR and even Orihime and Renji. I care ferociously about Uryu’s mistreatment and isolation. I care strongly about Chad’s lack of importance in the end and how much disrespect Kubo has done to the rest of his characters and story.

I will always put Bleach first and IR second. Good thing they are at times one and the same when it comes to their tragic fall from grace.

Give me true mutual 100% irrefutable fact that I’m wrong about both Bleach and IR and maybe MAYBE I’ll reconsider my analysis and interpretation of this major work I’ve literally been a part of since the very beginning 15 years ago when I was a preteen. Tell me, my understanding was always wrong when I didn’t even fully ship IR because I believed with my whole being that IR is just IR any way they wanted to be for Bleach didn’t need ships to make it great so long as IR’s bond pulled through.

Tell IR fans how delusional we are when the jokes on you antis on how shallow you have been proven to care about Bleach where even tons of non-shippers like I used to be can see through your bullshit and has since joined sides with the anti-ending fans as well as IR fans on criticizing the fuck out of this shamble of what used to be a great top 3-tier manga.

So yes, Anon-san that anti fool can crosstag and complain and whine about how the majority of the Bleach fandom is “delusional” and “salty” and etc.

Doesn’t change the fact that the majority of the fandom is pissed and will always be outraged and feel betrayed over the disaster that Bleach has become and no amount of bitching insignificant, incompetent, disrespectful crosstagging little shits will ever find the validation they so desperately crave from the majority that will forever loathe both them and the ending Bleach never deserved.

But thanks for keeping track of their actions, it’s great to know how much they prove their own stupidity while we continue to simply bask in all of Bleach–both good and bad parts.

Sorry for the long length. But it’s just irksome to see assholes like that one pretend to care about Bleach and call us fake fans.

How delusional can they be, amirite? Guess we’ll just have to keep our epic-ness at full blast per usual to spite them since they just can’t help getting their arses roasted every time they try to use their emotional opinions as facts while we just drown them with contextual evidence as truth and just sip our deliciously hot scathing tea in the aftermath.

Because I do love me some tea after a good roast. Don’t you? Good bitter pity and disgruntle pettiness from their end is always great in my cup after washing my hands of their tears.

Oh, no I just realized I might have offended crosstaggers with my “delusions” of grandeur!!! *fake gasp*

Oh wait!!

I also just realized I don’t fucking care. Whoops~

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ucanbeasurvivor]

Truth hurts but also needs to be told Grassley 'Caved' again this morningAt 10 A.M. They're-after-you. So there you have it. You can’t get clearer evidence of this than current Dem demagoguery with Brett Kavanaugh. Dem dirtbags have no morality whatever as any normal person has. All they care about is gaining power over you and me, and will commit any lying, cheating, stealing, and smearing it takes to get it. But really – we all know this, which must include Republican Senators. While the Dems are called the Evil Party for good reasons, it’s not true that the GOP is the Stupid Party.. For no one can be that blind and dumb. No, the GOP is the Coward Party, and right now that fatal flaw may result in their extinction.That is, if they buckle and cave regarding Kavanaugh’s confirmation, they’re done with millions of GOP voters sitting on their hands on Nov 6th in disgust. Grassley caved this morning – his 10AM red line of Ford committing to testify next Monday the 24th or forget her, was gone with the wind. The Dem response to the GOP offer for her to testify. You can’t make it up. NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand having the effrontery to say, “Asking Kavanaugh’s Accuser to Testify Is ‘Silencing Her’.” Bottom line: McConnell and Grassley shut down this charade, hold a confirmation vote next week and we have Justice Kavanaugh, or the Dems kneecap the Trump Presidency with victory in November. Cross your fingers that McConnell is right when he said this afternoon (9/21): “We’re going to plow right through this and do our job.” ************One of the philosophy courses I taught at the University of Southern California many moons ago was on logical reasoning. That meant being able to spot and refute logical fallacies in someone’s (including yours!) reasoning. A lot of them have Latin names, like argumentum ad hominem (to the person) or ad verecundiam (to authority). One of the most important that I always wanted students to understand was onus probandi – the burden of proof. That is, the burden of proof is on the person making a claim. What if I say to you, “You are so weird you must be an alien from outer space. Prove you’re not!” All you need reply is: “The burden of proof is on you. You must provide evidence, actual real evidence not skyhooked out of your imagination. Until you do, your claim is worthless as there’s nothing to disprove.” This burden of proof applies to all #MeToo claims. There’s an overabundance of evidence, for example, that Harvey Weinstein is a sexual predator, solid evidence that Keith Ellison physically beat up his girlfriend Karen Monahan, and that Bill Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick. Blasey Ford’s MeToo accusation has no evidence at all, save for naming the two boys she says were abusing her along with Kavanaugh – both of whom categorically deny any such thing happened, as he does, with all three under penalty of felony perjury. This is why POTUS nails it with his demand today (9/21) that the onus probandi be on Blasey-Ford: trump-tweets-092118************ A must-read this week is Jack Kelly’s Trust The Plan? Kelly makes a persuasive case for doing so – that is, Q’s claim that Trump’s criticism of Sessions is an act, that Sessions is going to come down with a hammer and perp walk Comey, McCabe, Brennan and the whole FBI-CIA cabal for their attempted coup of American democracy. I’d love for this to be true, but as the sayings go, the proof is in the pudding, I’ll believe it when I see it. When POTUS issued his order to declassify and unredact the FISA warrants and Strzok-Ohr emails etc., on Monday (9/17), a warning bell went off in my head. He has the docs himself. To really declassify them which he, as Commander-in-Chief, has full authority to do, he just issues them publicly – he has no need of DOJ/FBI approval whatever. And sure enough, what’s the lead headline in the New York Post this morning (9/21)? Trump Walks Back Plan to Declassify Russia Probe Documents. This is not good. I’d love to trust Jeff Sessions, but I just can’t do it. ************ On the other hand, I’ve never had the slightest urge to trust Rod Rosenstein, always regarding him as a Deep State slimeball. And here we have the New York Times bombshelling the news this morning: rosenstein-plotThe NYT story starts: “WASHINGTON — The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit.”But this is the Slimes, remember, which you can trust far less than even Rosenstein. It is accusing Rosenstein of flat treason, which any “cabinet members” – one of whom it claims was Gen. John Kelly – would have immediately reported to POTUS, resulting in RR’s being thrown out of DOJ on his derrière in a New York second. So you always need to suspect a foul ulterior motive with the Slimes – which in this case seems to be causing chaos and dissention amongst Trump’s cabinet, and adding fire to the Dems’ latest fantasy of getting rid of Trump via the 25th. Why would the Slimes out their guy? This “plot” will definitely thicken in the coming days. ************ Let’s go international. *How about this for the Picture of the Week? pic-of-the-week-092118That’s North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in with their wives at Mount Paekdu with its crater lake, Lake Chon, a site revered by all Koreans. It’s on North Korea’s border with China (the crater rim in the background is in the PRC). For Kim to have brought Moon there, and with their wives, is momentous. The peace that everyone on earth – with one exception – thought impossible is becoming possible before our eyes. Thanks to that single exception, the one person who made this photo possible, our POTUS. I well know what the picture signifies to all Koreans, for I have been to Mount Paekdu three times. Even CNN heralded the 9/18-20 Kim-Moon summit: North and South Korea Commit to “An Era of No War.” It really is an extraordinary moment, of which the President could take justifiable pride: trump-tweets-091918*Last week’s HFR Hero of the Week was Australian. This week, Herald Sun cartoonist Mark Knight continued to stick it to libtard political correctness: politcal-correctness-of-the-leftWhile yesterday (9/20), Senator Pauline Hanson from Queensland filed a motion in the Australian Senate condemning “anti-white racism” and affirming that “it’s okay to be white.” Here is her motion published in the Parliamentary Record: pauline-parliamentary-recordWish we had a US Senator with Pauline’s moxie. *Indeed, it would be good to have US Senators with the moxie of European politicians. Say what?? No, not the Euroweenies who run France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Britain, the EU et al. The HFR means heroic guys like Italy’s leader Matteo Salvini. On Saturday (9/15) at a conference on immigration in Vienna, he scandalized Euroweenie Jean Asselborn from Luxembourg, who maintained that Europe must “open its borders” to Arab-speaking Moslems from Africa because “Europe’s population is getting older.” Salvini torched him with this response: “Maybe in Luxembourg they need to do this, but in Italy we need to help people have more children, rather than bring in modern-day slaves from Africa to replace the children we’re not having.” Realize that Salvini – who is far and away the most popular politician in Italy now – is not alone. His values are those of Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Czech President Milos Zeman and Prime Minister Andrej Babis, Poland’ President Andrzej Duda, and above all Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban. These men are Europe’s last hope. On Tuesday (9/18), Poland’s President Duda met President Trump at the White House: poland-president-at-white-houseMy wife and I have been to Poland many times and know very well how immensely popular our POTUS is among the Polish people. So it should come as no surprise that during his Oval Office meeting Duda announced he wants a “Fort Trump” US military base in Poland, serving as a guarantee against Russia. Now the question is, when will the President invite Viktor Orban to the White House? And then convene a meeting with all of Europe’s good guys to forge an alliance between them and with them and the US? *Meanwhile, over at the Vatican in Rome, it seems that the Catholic Church under Pope Francis has become the “Church of Homoclericalism.” It’s little wonder that Francis’ popularity has plunged to an all-time low. What has to be the last straw for Catholics everywhere is this: On Tuesday (9/18), Francis had the blasphemous temerity to compare pederastic child-rapist priests to Jesus and their whistleblowers to Satan. The HFR of 12/29/17 reported on the coup of Obama and George Soros to replace Benedict XVI with a Marxist Pope. It is high time for regime change in the Vatican, for a real Catholic to replace Francis and drain the Papal Swamp. *Speaking of Popes, Fox today (9/21) has an interesting story that the legend of a medieval female Pope may be true. That Pope Johannes Anglicus, whose two-year papacy was from 856-858, was actually a woman, Pope Joan. Curiously, Fox fails to mention the 2009 movie, Pope Joan – especially the male lead of the Pope who is Joan’s mentor and whom she succeeds, is John Goodman of Roseanne fame. I saw the movie s a few years ago and thought it very well done. It’s worth watching, say on Amazon or Direct TV. *How’s this for a schadenfreude two-fer? Desperate Iran Begs China for Help as China’s Oil Purchases Plummet. “The collapse of the rial currency and the looming threat of U.S. oil sanctions, scheduled to take hold in November, are reportedly leading Iran to turn to China for help keeping their economy afloat. China, itself struggling amid U.S. tariffs, may not be looking to save Iran and is diminishing its imports of Iranian oil.”Trump’s sanctions start on Nov. 4, at which time any country (or its businesses) doing business with Iran will no longer do business with the US. It’s a no-brainer for most countries, and although some will cheat it will be fairly marginal, resulting in Iran’s economy going flat out bankrupt. Sure fire way to ensure the Mullah Regime’s overthrow – no military or US lives at risk needed. This combined with China having to come to heel with Trumpean tariffs is proving yet again we have the canniest president on foreign policy at least since Reagan and perhaps ever. Watch out then for the fireworks show at the UN next week. This month, September, the US holds the rotating presidency of the 15-member UN Security Council and thus chairs the meetings. And guess who will chair the Security Council on Wednesday Sept. 26: trump-tweet-092118Stock up on popcorn… ************ Back on the home front. A dear friend of mine – and a TTPer – who shall go unnamed should be a hero to all of us, for he chose to spend his money incredibly wisely by supporting James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas. Wow, talk about getting an ROI in patriotism. Four huge stories four days in succession this week: Monday (9/17): Investigation Uncovers Foggy Bottom Anti-Trump Leak Factory. Tuesday (9/18): Deep State Unmasked on Hidden Camera. Wednesday (9/19): DOJ Socialist Unmasked, Says Can’t Get Fired. Thursday (9/20): GAO Auditor Socialist Says “I Break Rules Every Day.” This is why James O’Keefe – and my friend – are the HFR Heroes of the Week. ************ The best news in the country this week comes from… Texas! *Texas Senate District 19 is enormous, with 400 miles of the US-Mexico border. The last time it had a Republican represent it was 1879 – no typo, 1879 – 139 years ago. Until Tuesday (9/18) that is, when Republican challenger Pete Flores beat Democrat incumbent Pete Gallego. Talk about a Red Wave Harbinger for November! *Also on Tuesday: Ted Cruz Takes a Nine-Point Lead Over Beto O’Rourke in New Poll. “Undecided voters finally developed an opinion of O’Rourke—and it is unfavorable.” Via Arthur GranvilleBy Dr. JACK Wheeler

[haley1575-blog]

Life

It’s just.. easy and difficult to figure yourself out. Through my life I have always strived for companionship, and the person changes every so often. Mom. Boyfriend. Best friend. Animal.

The public education system pressures children to consider what they want and expect out of their lives at a very young age. For the first ~I don’t even know how many years~ I didn’t care, didn’t wanna think about it. Whatever. Then when I did get interested, I wanted to pursue a career that requires at least a bachelors degree, which means a university. I talked to my mom about it, she was supportive but skeptical. Only one income in the home, not impossible.. but lower the standards.

I was dissapointed for a while.. a good long while. I want to have a job when I’m older where I can have a good salary among a working husband. I want kids that I can support, and spoil while still teaching them respect and hard work.

At the moment, the thing I want the most is a job (and a steer but that’s not the point). I want to have money to spend, to learn how to save, to gift to charity. But my parents are unallowing during the school year.

I have a tracker.. which drives me insane. My location. My speed. My privacy is all in the hands of my mom. She does this with my dad too. It keeps me from having some friends.. a good bit of friends. I can’t go to parties, nor drink socially. Do drugs (I don’t even want to). Or have sex (I do want that). This tracker is keeping me from having fun, I’m a genuinely good kid, I don’t see why she’s like this to me.

Back on the subject of the future career. I searched the ACC website through and through to find a high paying job (2 yr only). And I was surprisingly successful. Physical therapy assistant. It’s something I was considering anyways because it’s medical. But I found a happy medium. Now what would be next? Actually working. Maybe love. A house. Children.

My mom expects me to live with her until I am married. But imagine that. I live with my parents up until the age of 25 then immediately move with a spouse. No freedom there either. I mentioned the fact of having a roommate, not acceptable. Apparently my mom knows that my future roomie is a drug addict who booms music until 4AM. What about moving in with someone I know? Has that never been considered? I’ll just lose that friend. Plain and simple. And moving out by myself is too dangerous Mexicans and terrorists and rapists are on the loose, destined to land on my front door step. I’m not allowed to move in with my future bf before we get married. But could I really handle all of those rules? Being controlled up until I get married like that? I’ll be a grown woman. But it will all depend on wether or not I will still need financial support. The tracker is gone by 18 though. That I’m not willing to budge.

When I’m able to support myself, even if I have no one, I wanna live alone. I’ve been socially independent my whole life. Only child. Can’t see the cousins. Can’t even see a majority of my family. One thing that also struck my mind is what if I can’t find a man? I want companionship more than anything. A husband. Some children. But one requires the other, right? Wrong. A husband usually wants children and vice versa, but they don’t have to have each other. If I have a husband I will have kids, plain and simple. But if I can’t find a husband by age 30, I am taking it into my own hands. AI, adoption, fostering. I don’t know the details just yet.. but I want my own.

Independency isn’t something that scares me.. like at all. It would be nice to have a cozy apartment full of random friends I make by the day. I never stay the same. And I realize that. My mom looks down upon it but it’s the one thing I value the most about myself. I can’t stick with one solid extracurricular (which is a BIG portion of blame on my mom), but I see it as learning a collection of skills rather than focusing on one thing obsessively.

Girly➡️hippie➡️emo➡️transitioning➡️girly➡️hippie➡️girly➡️cowgirl hippie

round rock➡️mcneil

so let’s talk about that too relating to the independency. I wasn’t happy with RR theatre, the people, the ~vibes~ I guess. I had been unhappy for a while until I met Gabriel. We dated for seven months and he was my world. We spent the whole summer together, were close to each other’s families. He was the one thing I was not wishy washy about (just family in general). But he cheated, I ruined his reputation, we tried to stay friends, he went off the rails, I stopped torturing myself. but, at the time I was at RR, around April I randomly thought about MHS.. and I applied. got denied once because I didn’t fill out a form correctly. Then everybody questioned me, trying to persuade me to stay. I had Gabe, I was supposed to stay, or I might regret it. Something told me to reapply, I did, got approved. Best decision I’ve made in a while. He visited the school once with me to make sure I made the right decision. we tried to stay together, but I couldn’t babysit him, so he went ape. It’s a good thing I went. I realize I don’t need someone who I have to babysit.

I knew no one really. Just Jaiden and Jake because they used to go to RR. But I had to make new friends. Ag. Physics. US history. All of it. And I’ve never felt more alive. I commute anywhere from 60-120 min a day and have hours worth of homework, and an okay social life. Some solid friends. Life is good, for now.