#writing out victorias newspaper clipping killed me

[orangegloom]

czolgosz family photos for those who care

[ckret2]

Do you have any headcanons about the Hazbin's (minus Charlie) lives back when they were alive?

I scrolled through all 42 pages of the hazbin tag on my blog and literally every one of my premortem headcanons are about Alastor and Sir Pentious lmfao

So sure! Want an entire novella about my headcanons for Sir Pentious's backstory?

For Alastor, I can offer:

a traumatic toddler experience

his mother observing him with ghosts as a child

Alastor working with demons (funny)

Alastor working with demons (creepy)

Alastor and his asexuality/aromanticism (mostly postmortem but it has some premortem flashbacks)

Alastor with friends in the 20s trying to explain he does not get horny

a fic that didn't ACTUALLY happen but that demonstrates my headcanons for how he works with demons

And moving away from fics and on to tumblr posts!

For Alastor:

Alastor fought in World War I

another WWI post

headcanon about how he died (I've since changed my headcanon—hunting accident rather than manhunt—but the position's the same)

excerpt from one of the fics above about Alastor's first kiss

early headcanoning on Alastor's relationship with the queer community in life

Alastor saw but didn't learn the lindy hop in life

Alastor's accent makes people (in this case Sir Pentious) think that he's upper class when actually he's just had theater training

Alastor's family tree comes from a mix of socioeconomic backgrounds and before he died he achieved fame but not fortune

Alastor does not feel broken/insecure due to being ace/aro and never has

what people in Louisiana thought of Alastor as a radio host

what did Alastor look like (and Sir Pent)

Alastor only saw 10% of the Golden Age Of Radio and that's fucked up

fun fact when Alastor was on air radio stations weren't "just news" or "just (one genre of) music," a single station would play music and news and soap operas and sports etc

random links of queer history, 1920s gay culture, slang, and NOLA history

Alastor's mother grew up while Sir Pentious was menacing the US and she has very vivid memories of living in fear of him, and also she doesn't know her son is a cannibalistic murderer

Alastor wore glasses in life and only switched to a monocle in death

Alastor was never identified as a serial killer and there's probably unsolved true crime documentaries made about his killings (and these documentaries unknowingly use a recording of the killer's real voice, a clip from a news broadcast where Alastor read about the killings on air)

check out how hyped this newspaper in the 20s was for radio like goddamn

Alastor listened to radio all day every day

more 1920s research links

very loose overview of New Orleans race relations 1890-1920

how NOT to write about Voodoo

reminder that "alastor did magic in life" is a headcanon until we SEE him using magic before he died—also "Voodoo" is a religion not a magic power

how Alastor avoided getting caught as a serial killer

I doubt Alastor was famous enough for queer historians to have discovered he existed, only niche radio broadcast historians know about him

Alastor was raised to be courteous to (respectable) women, but not to genuinely see them as equals in a modern sense

1920s hair facts and headcanons on Alastor's hair

scene from one of the above fics of baby Alastor being haunted as shit

Alastor is a hedonistic thrill killer not a mission-oriented killer

his killing method was shooting from a distance, like hunting game

Alastor was kinda psychic in life and his psychicness interacted with radio signals

this includes developing a hella accurate sense of time

Alastor's always been hella into Mardi Gras

here he is in a ridiculous Cajun Mardi Gras costume

how the Great Depression probably affected Alastor

Alastor feels 0% empathy for other people but 500% empathy for fictional characters in musicals

For Sir Pentious:

he was so infamous that today he's a common character used in historical fiction in the same way that Victorian-era historical fiction commonly uses Queen Victoria as a character

(and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle references him in a Sherlock story)

(and he really did call himself Sir Pentious in life)

(and every character who lived after him had to study him in school, including Vaggie writing a paper about him and Alastor was cast as him in a school play)

(and now let's talk about historians dying and meeting the people they studied in Hell)

he has a son who's probably now in heaven

Sir Pent is trans

no seriously he has a son

Sir Pent has a chain of deadnames he used before settling on "Sir Pentious" and all of them are snake puns

one of Sir Pent's chosen names

based on Victorian sexual mores Sir Pent probably got kinda homoerotic with some dudes

this is just big Trans Sir Pent energy

what did Sir Pent look like (and Alastor)

I don't think Sir Pent used a wheelchair in life (but do think he had to for a while after he died)

Sir Pent is Pussyeating World Champ no I do not accept arguments

Sir Pent and his wife were very loving until his wife went "nope, you're planning world conquest, that's too evil for me"

he rigged his clothes to self-combust so he could choose death if he was ever on the verge of capture

his wife was named Helena and here's why

this is his self-destruct binder/corset

the one headcanon everyone shares

Sir Pent ain't Jack the Ripper

And there's a ton more headcanons on @dontasktheradiodemon my Alastor ask/RP blog but listen, I just went through 42 pages of one tag and it's 3 a.m., I'm not going to comb my roleplay blog for every premortem headcanon I've ever mentioned about him over there. It includes stuff like "he did deliberately shitty horoscope readings on air" and "the first time he summoned a demon he was on the Western Front and also coming down with Spanish flu so he's not sure how much of the ensuing chaos was real vs fevered hallucinations or how much was the Germans' fault vs the imp's" and "he lived a few years in New York and did drag."

These are not the only headcanons I have. These are just the headcanons I've been asked about or made time to type down. (And not counting all my postmortem headcanons. Or the premortem headcanons sprinkled into postmortem fics.) Feel free to ask me for more. Ideally with a topic you'd like to hear about; otherwise asking me "do you have any headcanons?" is like walking into a library and asking "do you have any books?" Gimme a section to start with.

[poetrybooksya]

#EMPTYSHELFIE Spookie Shelfie TBR

  Empty Shelfie is a year-long reading challenge to empty your incredibly long TBR list. For the Halloween season this month, here are 7 challenges from 7 hosts: Heather at Zether Books, Taylor at Bookish Taylor, Roya at Unicorn Hunter Books, Britt at Britt, Ali at Hardback Hoarder, and Desi at Libri Labra Twitter. Challenges: Serial Killer POV Read a book involving a spell or curse Supernatural/paranormal elements Freakish characters Read a book with a Mask in title or cover Black and orange cover Concept of a person/place/thing that terrifies you

I'm not a huge fan of horror or supernatural genre, so my TBR will be pretty small, compared to last month. Challenges:

Serial Killer POV - Because You Love to Hate Me by  Ameriie, Renee Ahdieh, Soman Chainani, Susan Dennard, Sarah Enni, Marissa Meyer, Cindy Pon, Victoria Schwab, Samantha Shannon, Adam Silvera, Andrew Smith, April Genevieve Tucholke, Nicola Yoon, Sasha Alsberg, Whitney Atkinson, Tina Burke, Catriona Feeney, Jesse George, Zoë Herdt, Samantha Lane, Sophia Lee, Raeleen Lemay, Regan Perusse, Christine Riccio, Steph Sinclair, Kat Kennedy, Ben Alderson  Best-selling authors working with Booktubers on the perspectives of villians? Yes, please!! Summary: Leave it to the heroes to save the world--villains just want to rule the world. In this unique YA anthology, thirteen acclaimed, bestselling authors team up with thirteen influential BookTubers to reimagine fairy tales from the oft-misunderstood villains' points of view. These fractured, unconventional spins on classics like "Medusa," Sherlock Holmes, and "Jack and the Beanstalk" provide a behind-the-curtain look at villains' acts of vengeance, defiance, and rage--and the pain, heartbreak, and sorrow that spurned them on. No fairy tale will ever seem quite the same again! Featuring writing from . . . Authors: Renée Ahdieh, Ameriie, Soman Chainani, Susan Dennard, Sarah Enni, Marissa Meyer, Cindy Pon, Victoria Schwab, Samantha Shannon, Adam Silvera, Andrew Smith, April Genevieve Tucholke, and Nicola Yoon BookTubers: Benjamin Alderson (Benjaminoftomes), Sasha Alsberg (abookutopia), Whitney Atkinson (WhittyNovels), Tina Burke (ChristinaReadsYA blog and TheLushables), Catriona Feeney (LittleBookOwl), Jesse George (JessetheReader), Zoë Herdt (readbyzoe), Samantha Lane (Thoughts on Tomes), Sophia Lee (thebookbasement), Raeleen Lemay (padfootandprongs07), Regan Perusse (PeruseProject), Christine Riccio (polandbananasBOOKS), and Steph Sinclair & Kat Kennedy (Cuddlebuggery blog and channel). 

Read a book involving a spell or curse - One Wish Away by Ingrid Seymour I'm a member of Ingrid's ARC team, but I haven't read her latest works since her first book, Ignite the Shadows back in 2014. So I'm excited to try to get into this one for this challenge.  Summary: Faris is a Djinn with a secret and Marielle the first master to give him hope. Will she be the one to break his curse? There is no telling. All he really knows is she's ONE WISH AWAY from breaking his heart. When Marielle was little, she used to believe Grandpa about his wish-granting Djinn. But now that she’s older, her beliefs have changed, and things like lousy ex-boyfriends and alcoholic fathers have become her reality. Life isn’t done shattering her truths, though, and when Grandpa dies and the Djinn he warned her never to trust shows up at her doorstep, the world becomes a dangerous, magical place she never knew existed. Reeling for her once-normal life, Marielle soon realizes there’s no going back—not when she’s become part of a mortal conflict between two spell-bound Djinn. Faris—her handsome slave. And Zet—his vengeance-hungry brother. They both want something from her. One, her love. The other one, her life. Now she’s afraid she will die in love. One Wish Away is a young adult paranormal romance that will appeal to lovers of Hush Hush, Twilight, and the Fallen series. 

Supernatural/paranormal elements - Unreality by Ingrid Seymour (blog tour with Marked by Fate box set, where the book is from) Summary: Ever since she helped solve her mother’s gruesome murder twelve years ago, Meadow Bright has kept her psychic abilities locked away. As a five-year-old, the brutal visions of her mother’s death nearly destroyed her. Now, a senior in high school, she still fears her nature and what opening up could do to her. But when a classmate is found viciously tortured and murdered, her powers return with a vengeance, flooding her mind with new visions and opening old wounds. Worst of all, the new victim wears the signature of her mother’s killer, a man who’s still in jail under a life sentence without parole. It seems that, all those years ago, she made a mistake and helped put the wrong man in jail. Now, she must redeem herself before more people die.

Freakish characters - Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older Summary: Cassandra Clare meets Caribbean legend in SHADOWSHAPER, an action-packed urban fantasy from a bold new talent. Sierra Santiago was looking forward to a fun summer of making art, hanging out with her friends, and skating around Brooklyn. But then a weird zombie guy crashes the first party of the season. Sierra's near-comatose abuelo begins to say "Lo siento" over and over. And when the graffiti murals in Bed-Stuy start to weep.... Well, something stranger than the usual New York mayhem is going on. Sierra soon discovers a supernatural order called the Shadowshapers, who connect with spirits via paintings, music, and stories. Her grandfather once shared the order's secrets with an anthropologist, Dr. Jonathan Wick, who turned the Caribbean magic to his own foul ends. Now Wick wants to become the ultimate Shadowshaper by killing all the others, one by one. With the help of her friends and the hot graffiti artist Robbie, Sierra must dodge Wick's supernatural creations, harness her own Shadowshaping abilities, and save her family's past, present, and future.   Read a book with a Mask in title or cover - Sadly, I can't think of a book that can fill in this prompt, so I'll skip it. 

Black and orange cover - Mexican Whiteboy by Matt de la Pena Summary: Danny's tall and skinny. Even though he’s not built, his arms are long enough to give his pitch a power so fierce any college scout would sign him on the spot. Ninety-five mile an hour fastball, but the boy’s not even on a team. Every time he gets up on the mound he loses it. But at his private school, they don’t expect much else from him. Danny’ s brown. Half-Mexican brown. And growing up in San Diego that close to the border means everyone else knows exactly who he is before he even opens his mouth. Before they find out he can’t speak Spanish, and before they realize his mom has blond hair and blue eyes, they’ve got him pegged. But it works the other way too. And Danny’s convinced it’s his whiteness that sent his father back to Mexico. That’s why he’s spending the summer with his dad’s family. Only, to find himself, he may just have to face the demons he refuses to see--the demons that are right in front of his face. And open up to a friendship he never saw coming. Set in the alleys and on the ball fields of San Diego County, Mexican Whiteboy is a story of friendship, acceptance, and the struggle to find your identity in a world of definitions. 

Concept of a person/place/thing that terrifies you - The First Hour I Believed by Wally Lamb Not only does the cover haunt me, but the summary does too. Columbine High School shooting? Trauma? PTSD? Whoa...what an experience.  Summary: Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. In The Hour I First Believed, Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work and embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character. When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues. While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface. As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary -- and American. The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity. What's your TBR list for Empty Shelfie's Spookie Shelfie season? Leave comments below!

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via Blogger http://poemsbyayoungartist.blogspot.com/2017/10/emptyshelfie-spookie-shelfie-tbr.html

[vrosier-blog]

task one: interrogation

victoria’s got her legs crossed as she awaits her monthly doom, staring at her fingernails as the usual background noise of the building’s occupants keeps her distracted from the quiet sounds of potentially demonic chatter that comes through the door. she’s been raised to hide any signs of discomfort and anxiety beneath layers of confidence and charm - that was how she got through years of public speaking and useless chatter with important people during her youngest years. her father would be disappointed to see her here, of course - but at least he’d know that what he taught her about the art of misguiding people stuck to her.

she pulls at the hem of her skirt, and thinks of wildflowers. the ones that covered their gardens during off seasons, and the ones her father made bouquets out of when her mother was feeling particularly under the weather - the african daisies that should never have been able to grow in the climate of their grounds, and the pink cornflowers her father would stick into her hair when he was feeling particularly charmed. now the only flowers she ever sees are the occasional azaleas and cheap, dead roses on the street - she thinks of wildflowers, and how she used to be one. the door opens, footsteps echo into the corridor, and macdonald calls a soft but stern “miss rosier?” into the air.

victoria coughs, barely audible as she straightens her back and stands. she grabs her purse from the seat next to her, and listens to the sound of her own heels clacking against the ground as she enters the living room, sick of the already familiar smell, and the potential hour she’s going to be spending here, stuck with a person who’s got nothing but judgement for her. she thinks of setting the place on fire, and clears her throat as she sits across this month’s executioner. macdonald looks unimpressed, which is also a familiar sight - she always feels like these inspectors always think that she’s got more to atone for than the rest of them, with the sway of her hips and the way her name rolls of her tongue, unashamed. a hand falls at her pearls around her neck, and the other wraps itself around her waist. she smiles, deadly.

“so, miss rosier.” it almost sounds like an accusation. she knows it’s one, and wonders if her father was responsible for the death of any of her loved ones. “how are you feeling? how’s your job?”

victoria feels her head tilt just slightly, and tastes the distant aroma of her lipstick as she speaks. “i’m quite alright, thank you.” she wishes she could have a glass of champagne to accompany this hell, but goes along with this persona instead. they don’t want her to be her, anyway - if father didn’t want her to be her, why would the ministry? “my job can be somewhat taxing, sometimes, but i have come to... accept it, if i dare.” another tight smile follows her words - she talks sweet, but her body language tells a different story. she knows that if she were to really enjoy what she was doing, if she were to feel anything other than distaste, they would be suspicious. she raises her chin in retaliation, waiting for her to question her motives in her job. when the questions don’t come, she sits back, empowered, if only slightly.

macdonald pushes her glasses back on her nose, and looks up at her after her endless scribbling. probably notes about how much of a smartass she is. victoria wants to laugh - she doesn’t. “do you feel integrated into society? a job, a house. how do you think you’d fare outside of the r program?”

she taps her fingers against her waist, thinking the question over. “i’ve always been integrated to society. i never had any intentions of isolating myself, or disintegrating my identity.” she’s always given the same answer to this question and similar ones, because it’s true. “i’m good at my job. i talk to people at work, i socialise, i take care of myself and the people around me. i’ve always been capable of taking care of myself, and it’s no different now.” macdonald’s gaze burns into her skull as she begins writing, not looking down at her words. victoria knows she’s playing with fire here, but she doesn’t really care - they’re not going to send her to azkaban, not after the names she’s given them. she wouldn’t admit it to macdonald, or any other investigator, but she wants her freedom back. she thinks of wildflowers, and twirls her pearls around her neck.

macdonald stops writing. she purses her lips, raises her eyebrows - “have you, in any way, been in contact with known war criminals? or, to the best of your knowledge, have the other residents in the past or currently been in contact with known war criminals, shown any desire to attack muggles or muggle-sympathizers? have they joined any suspicious groups?”

she has to bite back the laughter that forms at her throat - does she think any of them would do something so stupid after all the things they lost in the war? does she really think any of them would tell the truth, even if they did, without a drop of veritaserum? she shakes her head, arms crossed. “as i am not allowed to visit the half of my family members who are in azkaban, and that the other half is dead, i haven’t had the opportunity - or, the thought, mind you - to contact any war criminals. i don’t want anything to do with the ones you already haven’t found, and they’d probably kill me if they knew what i did.” the cold, harsh truth. macdonald knows it. victoria knows it. she doesn’t understand why the ministry wants answers to questions they know the responses to. “i hardly think any of us would be stupid enough to do that,” she says, as macdonald writes. “even if something has happened - something that would be malicious towards muggles, i don’t know of it. i doubt it would happen, and i also doubt that anyone would be telling it to anyone else in the building.”

macdonald thinks it over, and for a moment looks dissatisfied with her answer. victoria challenges her again, with the tilt of her chin, the cross of her legs, the raise of her eyebrows. when she turns back to her notes with an aloof expression, victoria knows she’s won again. or, at least, macdonald’s allowed her to win. once she’s written half a novel about her words and body language, victoria suspects, she raises her head to look at her again. here comes the more difficult of questions: “your presence here is the sign of the benevolence your actions didn’t show. if i’d brought in a relative of one of the many permanently injured or murdered by death eaters, what would you say to them? would you hide your mark?”

there’s always a question like this in the investigations: if she wants absolution, if she would do it again if she ever had the chance, what she would say to her father if she was presented the choice once again - they are never easy, but rosiers have been trained to make uncomfortable look smooth. she takes her time with the response, the words rolling off her tongue with practiced nonchalance with a hint of apathy. “nothing i would say to them would make any difference. i wouldn’t hide my mark, because i don’t want to pretend that i didn’t make questionable choices in my past, and i don’t want to lie just to make somebody else feel good about themselves. nothing i would say would change the way they saw me - a murderer, a representation of the reason for their loss. i’m not the one to show the greyness of the world to strangers, neither am i one to save them.”

macdonald looks almost affronted: victoria’s sure something’s happened to her or her family in the war, now. she obviously didn’t expect this - this honesty that victoria has allowed herself to share with the people who don’t expect it from her, the people who want her to be victoria rosier. who need her to be a rosier, just so they can condemn the name once again, just so they can prove that there is no good that can come from families that have made mistakes. she’s already accepted that she’s made mistakes - but being ashamed of them will never solve the problem, will it?

the sight of a newspaper clipping is different - victoria raises her eyebrows as macdonald taps on the table, looking at her face as if to dissect any suspicious piece of expression. “i’m sure you’ve heard about this.” she pronounces, deliberately expressed syllables as victoria examines the article. “do you think anyone in here would be susceptible to this? what would it take for them to convince you to join them?”

she should have known something like this would come up in this month’s interrogation: the moment she saw the article, the moment her boss told her they would be covering it in an episode the week later, she knew this would be talked about. “the radio show i work for covered it last week,” she says, unimpressed. is she trying to shake things up, make her spill? surely, this is no way to startle a rosier who knows her way around research. “as i said, i don’t think anyone would be stupid enough to do anything about this. we’re not malicious people, we’re kids that were sidetracked during their parents’ war.” perhaps the truth, perhaps a lie - for a while, victoria knows she believed in her father’s cause. but she believed in it simply because it was what her father believed in, and now the memory almost brings her to tears. she shakes her head. “there’s nothing left for me in that world. there was nothing for me the moment i saw my father in the battlefield, and that’s why i left.” famous last words.

macdonald looks at her, examining once again, and nods. looks pleased. it’s not that victoria hates her father, now - it’s just that she wants to make the ministry think that she hates her father, because it makes things easier. she hates it, but she wouldn’t know what to do if she met him ever again, either.

she is kept inside for what seems like an eternity, going over every single response she’s ever given to a ministry official, ever - macdonald must really hate her, if they’re talking about her job applications in detail. she laughs once when she asks her if she ever thought of poisoning any of the residents with her cooking, and tells her that she’s just that nice. macdonald doesn’t buy it, but moves on, asks her about her boss, his affiliations with the death eaters in the previous war, and she tells her about how he fought alongside the ministry in the second one, how he risked his life so that the world wouldn’t be the place they both fought for when they were misguided. macdonald seems sure that she doesn’t deserve the job, or that they’re conspiring something together - victoria tells her to listen their episode on parent influence in traditional, pureblood families next wednesday. macdonald looks at her, and tells that she will. after that, it’s routine: she asks, victoria answers, lies, tells the truth, pretends she is the rosier they want her to be for a while.

when she leaves, exhausted and angry at the world for nothing and everything, she feels the gaze of mrs. macdonald at her back. she hopes she never comes back to this place, ever again.