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rapha-reads · 8 months

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Unrelated things I manage to evoke in my thesis on Beauty and the Beast, modern fairy tales and self-love (titled From Folktales to Fantasy: Beauty and the Beast, Contemporary Rewritings and Self-Love), a list (caution, long post ahead):

Hayao Miyazaki's environmental tales.

In contemporary rewritings of folktales and fairy tales, these revised critical versions often follow the major issues of the time: the feminist tales of Angela Carter or Margaret Atwood of the 20th century are amongst the prime examples, but one may just as well cite Hayao Miyazaki's contemporary environmentalist and anti-war stories.

Arthurian Legends:

Nonetheless, ages change, people’s priorities change, ways of life change, and with these evolutions, heroes and stories mutate too. They evolve, but they’re never forgotten. King Arthur and Merlin are still household names, even after a millennia and a half of legends; their stories followed the times and took on new shapes to keep on meaning something to their audience.

Le Roman de Renart and "Le hérisson, le chacal et le lion" (the hedgehog, the jackal and the lion, a traditional animal tale in North Africa, Tamazight in origin):

Animal Tales are the first chapter of the ATU Index, going from ATU 1 to 299, in which the characters are talking animals usually interacting between themselves (think Roman de Renart or the tales of the hedgehog, jackal and lion in North Africa).

*On the subject of the hedgehog, the jackal and the lion, I really recommend looking up their stories. If you like cartoonish stories of the clever fox and the stupid wolf, Tom and Jerry style, you will like them.

Narnia (actually referenced a few times, the thesis does talk about Fantasy, but CS Lewis is quoted only the once):

In the dedication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis wrote “some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again”. As the reader ages and grows up, the taste for stories also evolves.

Neil Gaiman (completely out of the blue, I just wanted to quote him at least once):

the classic tale of Beauty and the Beast with all its space left to creation easily lends itself to the new scene. “Fairy tales”, Neil Gaiman writes in the introduction to Fragile Things, “are transmissible. You can catch them, or be infected by them.” They are, in their most basic form, in the bare bones of their structures, the “currency we share with those who walked the world before ever we were here.”

Doctor Who (I will find a why to quote DW in any circumstances, just watch me):

“The Universe generally fails to be a fairy tale. And that’s where we [the helpers and the leaders, heroes, doctors, teachers] come in.” That’s where writers and storytellers come in. Crafting stories is recreating a kinder, more merciful and fair world, where good wins, evil is defeated, love is everything, good deeds are rewarded and bad actions punished, justice is served and honour is upheld.

Edith Nesbit's The Story of the Amulet + more Narnia, because I will also find a way to talk about the Pevensies:

Harper spends six weeks with Rhen and Grey, and when she comes back to DC, six weeks have also passed. This is different from most Fantasy novels which actions happens in both Primary and Secondary Worlds; from Edith Nesbith’s The Story of the Amulet (1906) to Lewis’ Narnia, the passage of time in the Secondary World never matches the passage of time in the Primary World—the Pevensies spent close to two decades being kings and queens of Narnia, and yet at their return in England, not a single second had gone by, and they were back to being children again, a fact that I have always found cruel; they were adults, competent and regal, soldiers, scholars and diplomats, and then they were back to being children, powerless and ordinary.

Yet another Narnia quote - in my defence, I use Tolkien's On Fairy Stories as one of my major reference, so I had to give some room to Lewis too - + me being very French:

C.S. Lewis does write that “adventures are never fun while you're having them” (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Narnia book 5), but après la pluie le beau temps—storms never last forever, and the adventure always ends. That is what Fantasy tells the reader: you will go through hard times, but there will always be joy to find after the sadness.

MeToo, Greta and Malala (I swear it makes sense):

Belle just wants to be left alone with her wood-carving tools. What introvert passionate about their hobby doesn’t understand that? Lucie wants revenge on the man who hurt her; that is the whole point of the MeToo movement. Nyx wants to save her people and is ready to sacrifice herself for the cause; real life heroines fighting for their ideals are the idols of today (Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai…). Harper represents the everyday life of millions of poor, disabled people, not only in the USA, but across the world. Beast wants to be loved; don’t we all?

*I actually really love that one tiny paragraph.

The "we live in a society meme" (aka the beginning of the descent into madness of the writer):

In meme terms: “we live in a society”. And that society can be crushing, draining, destroying. How then does one uphold one’s sense of self and worth when everything conspires to ruin and empty one’s heart and mind? Even though the meme is originally absurd, it quickly became a satire of the world in which we live now, where there is no place nor time to slow down, to just breathe, to take care of others, to take care of one’s self, because there is always a bill to pay, a meeting to run to, a deadline looming close, a train to catch.

Queerness (by the way if you guys know any queer retellings of B&tB please send them my way):

Depending on one’s level of ease and comfort, the co-existing inside the community requires more or less efforts and concessions to one’s authentic identity and tastes. Consider, for example, the way homosexuality and any form of queerness have been and are still viewed in many parts of the world throughout time: the main history of the queer community is to hide away an authentic, personal part of who they are in order to stay safe within a larger community that discriminate against expressions of queerness.

The "mortifying ordeal of being known" meme (sos, the writer has lost the plot):

By agreeing to play the game and follow the rules, no matter how adverse to one’s authentic nature, we tacitly agree to be seen. There is another meme, that first appeared in an essay for The New York Times in 2013: “the mortifying ordeal of being known”. The full quote goes like this: “If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” In essence, trying to hide and conceal one’s authentic self is to deprive yourself from being truly known and loved for who you are; it is to take the risk of being only superficially known and loved for who you pretend to be, the role you play, the mask you wear.

The "I can fix him" meme (what the heck is the writer talking about):

Here is a third meme, much more recent, born on Twitter in 2019: “I can fix him. I can make him better.” While the urge to help your neighbour is perfectly honourable, it can sometimes take on a sort of narcissistic veneer: it becomes no longer about the person you want to help, but about the power you can exercise over that person by turning them into the exact image of them you have, no matter if this image coincide with their authentic self or not.

Shakespeare (hell yeah, finally! Okay, it's not R&J, but still; who am I if I am not rambling about Willy):

The self is not a stable entity. It evolves, adapts to its circumstances, to the situation at the hand. “All the world's a stage and all the men and women are merely players” (As You Like It, 2. 7. 139), Shakespeare was already writing at the end of the 16th century. The deal has not changed. Everyone keeps playing a part that they believe is what society demands of them.

And finally... Kintsugi. Just for fun:

The Japanese art of kintsugi consists of repairing broken pottery with gold, letting the breaks and the defects visible, thus making them part of the history of the piece. Being broken therefore is not a sign of weakness; it becomes another sort of beauty, a sign of strength. The Beast’s curse breaks him down to his base nature, but ending the curse does not mean that the breaks disappear.

#thesis writing #master's thesis #contemporary culture #cultural studies #folklore studies #literature #beauty and the beast #fairy tales #rapha talks #rapha writes #one last part + the conclusion and i am DONE i can do it #i have run out of steam i have no inspiration left but only one day to finish this is the eleventh hour #tag yourself which unrelated insane reference are you #i'm the shakespeare quote

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vaspider · 3 years

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I guess I should give a little update on our local crow family (and tag@neil-gaiman as well because why not).

When we moved to Oregon a couple of years ago, I realized that, oh, shit, there are a million crows in our neighborhood, so I started trying to make friends with them, because one should at least not be enemies with one's local murder.

So I started leaving out food & the like, going out at around the same time every day to put out healthy crow snacks like peanuts. The same mated pair started showing up a lot, and one of them -- the male, I'm assuming, bc he's bigger and the smaller one sits the nest -- started yelling outside our front window if I was 'late' on bringing out breakfast. My spouse started calling him Your Boss, and we decided to call them Crowley & Azirafowl, since this was 2019 and Good Omens had been released not too long before, and this pair fussed over each other constantly.

Anyway, their 2020 shenanigans were a main source of enjoyment for us during quarantine, and we did plenty research on the things we were permitted to feed them and so on. They started bringing that year's fledglings by (they had 3!) and we called them Pepper, Brian, and Adam. They all had very outsized personalities but Pepper was also the spiciest, with a very distinctive croak, and as it turns out, she's the girl, and has stuck around this year, as female crows often do until they pair up themselves. Brian and Adam fucked off, so I'm guessing they were indeed boys. Or possibly they died, but since I have no proof of that, I'm choosing to believe they're out their living their best crow lives.

This year we seem to have one surviving fledgling from a nest that initially had (from what we could hear) 2+, which is pretty normal. Last year was very outsized in terms of how many chicks made it to fledgling stage. Crowley and Azirafowl have started bringing the baby by, but we don't know them well enough to name them yet. They live in the pine tree south of our house, which we can see from the front porch.

There's an oak tree north of our house, which is where Odin and his mini-murder (Freyja, Baldr, and Tyr, who has a broken beak) live. This has led to quite a lot of squabbling when we put out food in the mornings, or when we refresh the cold water in the dish in the backyard, but it's just fussing, and everyone ends up getting fed.

The last few weeks have been pretty exciting in the corvid world, actually, with the following events:

1) Crowley and Pepper chasing a hawk away from the pine tree in an extremely dramatic fashion while Azirafowl hunkered down in the nest and covered the fledglings with her wings. Luckily I had just stepped outside onto the porch and got to see the whole thing. It was a true battle, with the crows divebombing the hawk aggressively and repeatedly until after its third attempt to get in to the nest, it gave up. Seriously, don't piss off crows, especially if you're a hawk. They will kick your ass.

2) When I go outside to put out Approved Crow Snacks in the feeder in the backyard & clean out the water bowl, I always whistle in a way that doesn't resemble any native bird & always in the same way, so they know it's me & have time to get the fledgling up off the ground if I didn't see him before coming outside.

Yesterday, I whistled even though I was 99% sure they weren't in the backyard. They weren't, when I came out, so I set about refreshing the crow snacks & washing out the water bowl so I could put in the ice water. (We're in PDX, so ice water was a definite must.)

While I was in the process of rinsing out the bowl with the hose, I heard a flutterflutter overhead, and casually glanced up a moment later. Crowley was sitting right overhead, staring down at me, perched in the ash tree in our backyard. "Hey, buddy," I greeted, which, again, is the same way I always greet them. Consistent behavior = crow friends. Then I went back to working, and just sort of casually talked to him, and he -- for the first time -- started 'conversing' with me, making little 'crrk!' noises when I finished a sentence, or paused in talking during my tasks.

I chatted with him until I was done, put out the ice water, and went most of the way back inside, pausing where I was as far away as I could be and still be outside. He moved as if he was about to take off, then realized I was still outside, and cawed once and loudly at me, so I took the hint, and went inside. He waited until he could see me in the kitchen window, so I was well and properly inside, and then came down for his snacks and sips.

So I guess now the crows know that when I'm whistling, that means there's about to be clean water and fresh food.

Also, Crowley had to come supervise and make sure I was doing things properly.

To close, here's a picture of Crowley giving me a Sassy Look while perched on the water bowl. The weird wire in the picture is the grape vine trellis the original owner put up, which is across the whole back of the house.

#crowley #azirafowl #the crows of portland #spider talks

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feathered-serpents · 2 years

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Tagged by @crit20lesbian (thank you!!)

1- why did you choose your URL?

When this blog started I was really into Good Omens (still am! just quieter about it but that’ll change as we get closer to season 2) so I wanted a URL that referenced Good Omens but was also neutral enough that I could switch fandoms without it being weird. “Feathered-serpents” is meant to be referring to the angels and snakes in Good Omens but also the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl because I’m a mythology slut. I love this deity so much and he’s ALWAYS made to be a monster in Western media when he’s!! A god of art, wind, and knowledge!! And created humanity!! He’s so cool Aztec mythos is SO COOL

2- Any side blogs?

Not really. I used to have a Flight Rising side blog but it’s been abandoned for awhile. Been thinking about making a Dragon Age sideblog but I basically just use Twitter for that so this is what we get

3- How long have you been on Tumblr?

10 years. Since I was 13. Technically 11 if you count when I made a blog in 2010 but didn’t know how to use tumblr since it’s not user friendly and just let it sit there for a year until I figured it out.

It’s certainly done something to my development. Dunno what. But something

4- Do you have a queue tag?

No. Everything you get is live

5- Why did you start your blog in the first place?

I’ve had a series of blogs over the years, leaving older ones by either switching fandoms after I’d built too much of a niche in one to change my whole blog or by deleting the accounts cause I was swearing off tumblr and we can all see how that worked out. This one is my fifth main blog and I made it cause the fourth one got shadowbanned for no reason! Yay!

6- Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

There’s this amazing comic by the artist @hollow-head of Aziraphale and Crowley’s drunken debate from the book and it contained a panel with Aziraphale in a little rocket ship as Crowley explained interstellar bird travel. I thought it was cute and asked if I could use it and they said yes and even sent me a version with a white background. I love it and I’m never changing it

7- Why did you choose your header?

I really like the book Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman it’s DEEPLY weird and I’m still waiting for an adaptation. There’s an illustrated version which is beautiful and my header is the scene where the main character first enters the Underground world. I thought it was cool!

8- What’s your post with the most notes?

The fucking. Stupid female aliens post I made in a rage after hearing that female aliens were barely included in the game Mass Effect because the artists “Didn’t know what that would look like”

Like five seconds after I made this some dude reblogged it with “takes more than a voice and pronoun change but aight” after calling me a “puritan who hates women” on a separate post for expressing my approval of a scene in that same game being changed where a woman is confiding in you about her tormented childhood while the camera is just. Glued to her ass for no reason

(he also reblogged and disagreed with me on like. many Mass Effect posts. It was deeply strange. I did not know him. He’s blocked now)

9- How many mutuals do you have? Not sure but quite a few! I’d say about half the people I follow are mutuals as I tend to follow people I see in my notes a lot

10- How many followers do you have?

1,577 but the number tends to go up and down constantly and also a good amount are probably porn bots

11-How many people do you follow?

279!

12- Have you ever made a shit post?

That’s all I do here

13- How often do you use Tumblr each day?

That’s between me and god

14- Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once?

Not really. If someone is annoying me or if they just post too much content I don’t like I’ll just block them. Usually it’s not even because I think they’re a bad person I just don’t wanna see their Eliasfucking posts in the TMA tag I’m sorry it’s too much*

*(that’s an example i’m not referring to anyone specific)

15- How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

Usually avoid unless I think it’s very important

16- Do you like tag games?

Yes but I will usually forget to do them unless I do it RIGHT AWAY (like this one)

17- Do you like ask games?

Also yes but I tend to forget to respond to those too. I will do the WWDITS/TMA prompts you all sent I will do them I just get overwhelmed by things I enjoy

18- Which of your mutuals do you think is Tumblr famous?

We’re all in pretty niche corners so I don’t think any of us are “famous” but I am mutuals with some really cool artists. That’s fun!

19- Do you have a crush on a mutual?

Platonically <3

Oh god now I have to tag people uhhhhhhh @alexiley, @dudeiwannasleep, @annabelle--cane, @ghostbustermelanieking, is that enough? that feels like enough (no pressure!!)

#personal #tag game

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withoneheadlight · 3 years

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I was tagged by @memes-saved-me <3<3<3<, Thank you, love <3<3<3<

1. why did you choose your url?

It’s because, one day, just a few months after starting to write again, feeling like I was sweating blood every time I had to sit down and do this, Neil Gaiman made me feel the most understood I‘ve ever felt when it comes to writing:

“It's a weird thing, writing.

Sometimes you can look out across what you're writing, and it's like looking out over a landscape on a glorious, clear summer's day. You can see every leaf on every tree, and hear the birdsong, and you know where you'll be going on your walk.

And that's wonderful.

Sometimes it's like driving through fog. You can't really see where you're going. You have just enough of the road in front of you to know that you're probably still on the road, and if you drive slowly and keep your headlamps lowered you'll still get where you were going.

And that's hard while you're doing it, but satisfying at the end of a day like that, where you look down and you got 1500 words that didn't exist in that order down on paper, half of what you'd get on a good day, and you drove slowly, but you drove.

And sometimes you come out of the fog into clarity, and you can see just what you're doing and where you're going, and you couldn't see or know any of that five minutes before.

And that's magic.”

He summed it up in another interview like this:

“Writing a novel is like driving through the fog with one headlight out. You can’t see very far ahead of yourself, but every now and again the mists will clear.”

i printed it and got it on my wall, too. so i don't forget.

and guess what’s one of my all-time favorite songs? yeah, you got it :D

also, that's the amount of mental enlightenment I go through life with: half the standard equipment. So it fits me pretty well i guess.

2. any side-blogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them.

yeah i’ve got a few. most of them to stash things i like, in general or in other fandoms, but in harringrove i have @thequarryatnight as a fic/hc storage of sorts.

3. how long have you been on tumblr?

uh, technically a few years?. I've had a few different accounts that I always ended up forgetting about. But had never really used Tumblr until this past last year and a half.

4. do you have a queue tag?

I use the most simplistic 'queue' ... when I remember to put it on XD (which, I should, because I'm always so worried people think I'm in here ignoring them when in reality what I usually have is the longest queue)

5. why did you start your blog in the first place?

Uh, long and boring story? xD. I started posting harringrove in my main a few months after I started using the account again, along with posts/reblogs for other fandoms. But with Tumblr being the chaos it is (for me at least, and for the way my poor add brain works) it felt pretty overwhelmed, having so many different things in one place, and never being able to find anything so I decided to make this one side-blog only for posting my fics, but then people started following me here and suddenly there were a bunch of them and then suddenly it felt like it made more sense?, rebloging things in here where more people could see them? so I made @thequarryatnight and started reblogging my stuff in there, so I wouldn't get crazy, and started using this as a more fandomish blog.

6. why did you choose your icon/pfp?

I love pictures taken from the side? xD, they’ve got this feeling, of looking at someone without them noticing. there’s a longing in there that’s always fascinated me, and steve’s breathtaking in this one (same as billy in my main pic, imo). i like to think billy'd look at him and think ‘fuck’, fall in love for the hundredth time so, yep. I love that pic.

7. why did you choose your header?

Is a picture of Santa Carla at night, aka Santa Cruz, where Lost Boys was filmed. Is my second favorite fictional town (first is Astoria i might have a list) and the feeling of it is just *chef’s kiss*. Had to have it. But I’m thinking of revamping it for the summer? maybe? I’ve got a few ideas, it’s been hard to decide, but I wanna bring out the summery vibe this year.

8. what’s your post with the most notes?

it’s apparently my upside-down kiss one! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out (i used this page since I had 0 idea of how to check this)

9. how many mutuals do you have?

i honestly don't know, but they all are amazing mutuals <3

10. how many followers do you have?

one of the best things about tumblr: doesn't show the follower count <3 (imo)

11. how many people do you follow?

about 1000? xD

12. have you ever made a shitpost?

if saying the first stupid thing that comes to my head in here is considered a shit post, then,t o o m a n y.

13. how often do you use tumblr each day?

I've been trying to reduce the number of times I come checking but still, way too many :D

14. did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? who won?

nope. never. sometimes i want to leave my opinion in some posts, but i still feel pretty insecure about the language, so i'm perpetually afraid of being misunderstood.

15. how do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts

the ones with something good/bad is gonna happen if you don't reblog? i usually scream internally while i fast-scroll past them while both feeling like bwahhahaha and scared shitless.

16. do you like tag games?

oh i LOVE tag games too much.

17. do you like ask games?

very very much. even if sometimes i repent bc it's hard for me to find the time to answer them xD.

18. which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

dunno but @chichipafarolillos is my personal superstar <3

19. do you have a crush on a mutual?

no xD but I really really <3<3<3 my mutuals.

20. tags?

@ghostofjellyfishforgotten @missroserose @rascheln @neonponders @cockasinthebird @thatharringrovehoe @edith-moonshadow @dyingontheharringrovehill @wholeshebangs @irishbeings @smashmouth-hargrove @mourntheantagonist @aestheticchaoss @somuchanemoia @cupidsintern

#xaskwithoneheadlight #tagged!!!#withoneheadlight

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elentary · 3 years

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Black as the devil, pure as an angel

Happy 31st Good Omens anniversary! (i’m late as usual)

A little story about Aziraphale and Crowley popped up in my head and I tried to write it down.

This is my first story and my first language is not English (so don’t expect a masterpiece out of this): any correction or comment will be appreciated!

(All material related to Good Omens is the property of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.)

Black as the devil, pure as an angel

London, Monday, 10th May 2021

"Hey, this is Antony Crowley, you know what to do, do it with style"

-biiiiiiip-

"Ah, hello, it's me… ...Aziraphale! Well, ehm, it's been a while since we spoke and I suppose you're still sleeping in this moment because you aren't answering the phone. I just hope you aren't sleeping on the ceiling or on the walls: I'm pretty confident to say that's not comfortable for your backbone and I know for sure you have a perfect soft bed in your room. Also, last time I saw you up there, I almost had a heart-attack and I'd like to avoid it, even if I'm sure I can't die of that since I'm not human, but… ...oh, I wandered off too much with this!

Ehm, I called to inform you that lately the situation here in London seems to have improved and, since some restrictions have been lifted, I thought we could maybe meet again when you'll wake up: my bookshop will be open just for you at every hour!

Oh, don't worry if you'll be a bit sleepy: I'll prepare my special qahwah (kahve/caffè) in a jiffy! Well, it's not so special, it's just an old recipe I learnt because… ...oh, not that, it's a secr…. ehm, it's not important at all!

I… I… hope to see you soon, my chuck-… my dear!"

Aziraphale hung up the phone and started fidgeting with his golden ring almost immediately: "I shouldn't have called him: it didn't go how I planned", he muttered to himself. Unsurprising, the phrase "it went down like a lead balloon" popped up immediately in his head.

He had been rehearsing the call for ten days, preparing himself for every possible scenario, but in the end he went completely off-script after a few words, letting his emotions spill too much in his tone.

But what worried him the most was the moment he let slip the words "old recipe" from his mouth: not for the recipe per se, but because of the little secret behind it.

"I'm quite sure - he said out loud using a hopeful tone to calm himself - I was able to stop in time, thanks goodness! I’m sure that he won't ask anything even if Crowley notices something, because he'll think there is just a boring story behind it".

While he was heading for the kitchenette to make a cup of tea (there is no problem that couldn't be fixed with a good cuppa), he halted midway and wondered: "Why did I call coffee in that ancient way?"

The reason for that ancient name was very old, pretty much as old as Aziraphale's secret: a little more than four hundred years old.

Venice, 1596

"...and just a cup of qahwah for me" said a guest all clad in black who was slouching on a chair in the most luxurious house of the city.

The young waiter who was taking the order, looked at him a bit perplexed for the last order.

"Right, that was Arabic" chuckled Crowley "bring me some kahve or whatever is called here".

"Oh, caffè, here it’s called caffè here, Siór!” [1] , said the young one, ”How much sugar would you like in your cup?” added hasty at the demon's expression.

“I'll have Sade kahve but with a bit of cardamom. Remember to grind finely the beans”.

The waiter was still lost but the other guest at the table helped him with a smile: "He doesn't want any sugar in his caffè, dear"

“I'll bring everything as soon as possible" said the young man and, after bowing a little, he headed for the counter.

Aziraphale was a bit surprised by what just happened: "It seems you are the meticulous one today: I have almost never seen you so specific with your food or drink order, unless alcohol was involved". He also added: "I just hope you didn't want to mess with the poor waiter".

No, angel, I didn't pull a prank. I have been drinking coffee for a while: but since my last mission in Malta [2] I have been loving it: Altan was the best at making it, but he went to Rome", Crowley said with a sigh.

"The funniest thing - he continued, smiling - is that I was lured to that because I thought it was an alcoholic drink since they called it qahwah, that also means wine. At first I was a bit disappointed but later I discovered it helps to stay awake during boring stuff: it did wonder with every task Hell gives me."

"I tasted some qahwah some times ago but it was too energetic for me… but maybe I should try it to deal with Gabr… ehm, with tedious tasks". Crowley politely didn't mention Aziraphale's little slip but smiled a bit inside.

When the order arrived the angel observed how his partner smelled and tasted happily the concoction humming approvingly:

"I didn't think you were a coffee connoisseur" Aziraphale joked.

"It's not so bad for someone with so little experience: you should try it sometimes. If you're done with your food, let's organize our Arrangement. For my report…"

They discussed their work for a couple of hours, drinking coffee. Aziraphale tasted it too (a lot sweeter than the demon) but in the end he still preferred his tea. The angel, however, decided he'd propose another place with coffee, since Crowley enjoyed that drink so much.

Milan, Four years later

"Why can't I have a cup of coffee?" Sulked a very crossed demon who was missing a couple of years of sleep due hellish work. "Lent was over 2 month ago, wasn't it?"

The owner of the shop was distraught: "The priest told us that is not proper now, Sir: the Infidels are using it and - he started whispering - it seems that's a Devil's plant".

"I'm pretty sure that the Devil wasn't involved in any botanical project, even before Falling, and he has never tried any coffee. Instead, if you are speaking about demons, I am the onl-"

"Why don't we order wine instead this time?" Interrupted quickly Aziraphale before Crowley could say something more compromising. The unhappy demon agreed begrudgingly so several bottles of red wine were shared among them.

"I'm sorry for your coffee, Crowley. It seems idiotic banning a plant just because somebody else has it".

"Well, they copied the idea from the Boss: God was the first to ban a plant, you and I should remember that easily" Crowley snickered.

Aziraphale started blushing and his cheeks soon were as red as that famous fruit: "ah, it… i-it wasn't just a normal fruit and that was part of God's plan… I suppose.". That phrase was just commented by the demon with a bemused expression.

"So, Crowley, what are you going to do with this? Are you going to tempt a lot of people to drink coffee?"

"Nah, I'm already too busy with Hell's job at the moment. It would be too troublesome to convince people and especially priests: those at top are the worst."

I'm sure I'll miss the ability of coffee to transform random thoughts into ingenious ideas: humans were experts at using that!" The demon slouched sadly on the chair.

Aziraphale would have missed the improved human genius too but, in his opinion, would have regretted more not seeing his demon's smile but he said nothing. He instead started thinking if there was something he could do and soon became lost in his thoughts.

"...anything there?"

"Sorry, what was that?"

"I told you I'll go back to Spain tomorrow for a temptation: do you need anything there?"

"Oh, nothing special, just the usual [3] we can share and those books, if you could be so courteous." Aziraphale happily answered, giving him a neat written list.

"Are you going to stay here long, angel?"

"Oh, no, I'm departing for Rome the day after tomorrow… … I know you don't like it because of the absurd amount of consecrated ground there, you don't need to make a face each time I mention it"

"And every pope makes the problem worse."

The angel assumed a grim expression: "I have to meet pope Clement VIII for the closing ceremony of the Jubilee"

"You don't seems pleased"

"The Archangels, especially Sandalphon, think highly of him, but I don't… appreciate him, especially after he burned at the stake messer Giordano Bruno and other poor humans."

Crowley liked discussing the stars and the universe with Giordano: he tried to warn the poor man but he was too stubborn to listen.

"May I reciprocate your favour from Spain? Maybe some wine?" Suggested the angel.

"Only if you're sure the bottles are not blessed - Crowley shuddered - I still remember last time I was wrong".

"Are you sure it will be enough?"

"I'm sure, angel. Let's party now and forget our troubles for now".

Unfortunately Aziraphale couldn't party happily because he couldn't forget what happened with the cup of coffee and he thought his favour was too small: he decided he should do something about it!

Luckily the following morning was more propitious and he found a way to repay Crowly for his favour: he'll find a way to lift the ban on coffee.

The only remaining problem was how to do that.

Rome, a week later

Aziraphale was reading the same line of the missive for the third time in a row at his desk: the angel was too distracted because hadn't found a solution for his "problem" yet.

"I bet I have the solution under my nose but I can't see it" mumbled the angel touching the pope's sigils on the papers.

"Of course, the pope! - he yelled happily - He is the highest authority for the priests: he could convince everybody that drinking coffee is not bad if he tastes it himself".

"I just need to learn how to make the best coffee ever". A name came back to his mind, the name Crowley gave him: Altan.

Immediately he used a little miracle to locate him that led him to a small cemetery outside the city and on the grave and there were few sweets with a little cup: unfortunately Altan died 10 years before. The angel bowed a little to pay respect.

A big Turkish man came next to him and inquired "Did you know my father?".

"I didn't but my... acquaintance considered him a genius and was very fond of his qahwa, ehm, kahve. He'll be sad when he'll know he died."

"I'm Osmanek. May I ask you what brings you here mister...?

"Oh, I'm Aziraphale. I came here to learn how to make the best coffee ever: I hope his art was inherited by you."

"Luckily it was not lost: I loved to help him make coffee. Before revealing my secrets I have a question for you: are you doing this for your… acquaintance?"

Aziraphale nodded: "I'd like to prepare him some coffee he loves, but at the same time I'd love to see everyone have a coffee whenever they fancy, like in your birthplace. To make that possible, however, I have to let somebody else drink your coffee to.. ..to tempt him saying it's not a bad thing: that person is the pope Clement".

The angel knew what he was asking for and couldn't hold the gaze of the man anymore.

"I understand -he continued sadly- if you don't want to help me since I have seen how much that man has been hurting your brothers and sisters…" The angel couldn't say anything else, overpowered by his memories and bowed his head to hide the tears in his eyes: he has seen too many inconceivable deaths in the name of faith

Osmanek observed Aziraphale for a little moment: he was sure there was no lie in his words. "No, - he smiled - I can't leave you after you poured your heart out: I'll help you and your friend to tempt the Pope."

"Oh, oh, thank you! - and the angel added hastily - But he's not my friend, we barely know each other!"

The man started smiling brighter than ever and guided him to his house.

Immediately after they arrived, Osmanek offered his guest a cup of his special kahve with few sweets. Aziraphale tried just a sip of coffee and he was immediately in love: "Now I know why Crowley likes it so much: it's so scrumptious even without those sweets!"

"I call this Altan kahve in honour of my father: I will teach you how to prepare it for your fr… aquietance but I ask you to not give any of this to the pope. For him, I'll give you another tasty recipe"

"Oh, I agree with you: the pope doesn't deserve that perfection!"

Osmanek patiently taught Aziraphale everything he should know: how to roast and grind the beans, how to use the small pot "cezve", the ratio perfect between coffee and water, how to boil and froth the concoction and which flavours could be used.

In the beginning everything felt so difficult for Aziraphale and he failed a lot. However the angel was very stubborn and, thanks Osmanek's tips and teaching, he was able to make an excellent cup of coffee in a couple of days.

"I hope this will be good enough" mumbled the angel.

"Trust me, it will be too good for the pope", he chuckled. "Now let's see how good you are with Altan's coffee. I'll give you a final tip: imagine you are preparing some coffee for your acquaintance and not me".

"Why…?"

"If I'm right, it will taste better"

Still perplexed and a bit nervous, Aziraphale went into the kitchen and, following the last advice, he prepared meticulously the dark drink, flavouring with cardamom and finally pouring it in two kahve fincanı, a dark one and a light one. The smell seemed quite promising.

Osmanek took the darkest cup and, after smelling the aroma, he tasted it. After a few seconds, he smiled "In my native Country there is a proverb that says the coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love but for your coffee this doesn't sound right". He put the empty fincanı on the table.

"I think - he continued - the Italian expression suit it better"

"I'm sorry but I don't know it" the angel was starting to worry he messed up something even if the man was smiling fondly.

"Il caffè deve essere caldo come l'inferno, nero come il diavolo, puro come un angelo e dolce come l'amore.". [4]

The angel took his courage and drank his coffee: in his opinion, it wasn't perfect as Osmanek's but it tasted like something Crowley would enjoy and that was the best feeling ever.

The angel couldn't stop smiling: "Oh, I am so grateful to you! But I don't know how I can repay you for this"

"Your happiness is enough: I'll bring you everything you need".

Aziraphale didn't agree with him so he performed some miracles and blessings.

Osmanek came back with some coffee beans, flavours and utensils. There were also three kahve fincanı: two were familiar (the dark and the light ones) but the other was new (and very flashy).

"Oh, that's for the pope: I have always hated that cup and I hope it'll break when that man wants coffee most"

"Oh, that cup will do that, I can assure you" the angel promised with a mischief smile.

Aziraphale finally bid farewell, still thanking Osmanek profusely.

Two months later was the time to put the plan in action: the pope was in the library at 2 a.m. and he was getting tired but he had a lot of work to do. Aziraphale approached him: "I may have the right solution for your Excellency: it's a healthy concoction that promotes wakefulness and wonderful ideas. It was discovered b-"

"I don't care, - interrupted the holy man - give me that drink and let's hope it works".

"God gives me strength" whispered under his breath the angel while preparing some coffee that suited the pope's taste.

When the cup of coffee was ready, it was given to Clement VIII: he grabbed it and started drinking absent-mindedly. The smell and the taste were so good that he woke almost immediately.

"Librarian, what is this?"

"As I was saying, this is coffee"

"Why has nobody given me this miraculous drink? The taste is divine and it works perfectly!"

"I suppose nobody wanted to offer your Excellency any drink consumed by Muslims. Some people also believe coffee is a Devil's plant. In my op-"

"I don't care: it's too good to be Satan's plant and we mustn't let the infidels have exclusive use of coffee."

Aziraphale was quite happy: it seemed his plan worked out nicely.

"Maybe we could bless the beans or use some holy wate-"

"NO" shouted the angel, emanating some angelic power unconsciously "Please, DON'T".

For the first time in his life, the pope was scared he felt like a little child in front of a giant warrior.

"Ehm, please - said more calmly Aziraphale - never suggest it again or let somebody do that. Just tell everyone coffee could be drank by anybody".

The pope could only nod affirmatively.

"Right!"

Now the angel was sure he was successful in his endeavour and soon could have a coffee with Crowley.

Aziraphale stayed in Rome for another three weeks, just in time to witness a fincanı to break neatly in two, pouring coffee on some important papal documents.

On his journey to London he stopped to Osmanek's house and updated him on what had happened in that time (especially the broken cup).

London, Monday, 10th May 2021, 30 minutes after Aziraphale's call.

In the end Aziraphale made some of his special coffee with his cezve: he was missing Crowley so much.

"What if i woke him up while he just wanted to sleep a bit more?"

"No, angel, - a familiar voice answered - I want to stay awake with you for a while"

"Crowley" cheered Aziraphale

"Coffee?"

"In a jiffy" and he poured the drink in two old contrasting kahve fincanı.

"So, what's the secret behind this old recipe?" Crowley asked with a mischievous smile.

----------------------Notes----------------------

[1] Siór = mister (venetian dialect)

[2] Malta = Crowley had been at the great siege of Malta in 1565 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Siege_of_Malta

[3] Usual = local goodies (especially wine and alcohol)

[4] "Il caffè deve essere caldo come l'inferno, nero come il diavolo, puro come un angelo e dolce come l'amore" = "coffee must be hot as hell, black as the devil, pure as an angel and sweet as love"

To write this I took some info from wikipedia about the history of coffee: if you want to learn something more accurate than my story, look here and here.

#goodomens #aziraphale #crowley #coffee #good omens #i should have slept instead #happy 31st anniversary

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fuckingdeadbutroyal · 4 years

Text

Jasonette July- Soulmates AU- Part 1

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 -

Marinettes knees were bruised. Again! She was so so careful not to ruin her new summerdress on the way to Ninos 9th birthday-party and now her knees were all red and scratchy. “Not todayy”, the little girl whined while searching for some kind of medicine in her small pink backpack, hoping to ease the pain for her as well as the cause of her suffering: her soulmate, who seemed to have an eagerness to ALWAYS fall on their knees. A few moments and a frustrated huff later, Mari found herself punching her arm for some kind of payback and wincing right after. Why couldn’t she just have a harmless soulmate-bond? Why couldn’t she just dream of them like Nino did or have a tattoo like Chloe? Why was her bond forged through literal PAIN?

Rounding the corner, little Mari found herself in a field full of green and blue balloons with loads of boys and a few chosen girls surrounding a happy Nino. The boy was currently bouncing like a basketball and grinning from ear to ear, while sneaking longing glances to a table full of presents, as well as various treats from the Dupain-Cheng bakery. Speaking of the Dupain-Chengs, their daughter was spotted by her best friend as she was about to put her present next to the others, which lead to him running to greet her and pulling the girl into a bonecrushing hug. Therefore Mari was left patting Ninos’ back and trying to catch a breath. “You made it! I saw your treats and I know you answered my invitation but I was still worried, this party wouldn’t be the same without you!”, he blubbered in all of his bubbly grace while trying to lift her, even though he wasn’t quite strong enough to succeed yet (which didn’t mean he wouldn’t try again tomorrow, he was now older and stronger than her, after all).

Mari wriggled her way out of his arms, happy to catch a breath and giggling. A blush was gracing her face, leading to Nino blushing happily in return. “Of course I made it! I didn’t spend all week making you a present for nothing!”, she smiled as Ninos ears grew hot, “You spent a-all week making a present? F-for me?”, he stuttered with a big dopey grin splitting his face. Marinette nodded, another soft giggle escaping her mouth. All the guests were now watching them, holding their breaths. She handed him the pretty red box. Nino sat down on the grass right there in front of her and opened it, hands shaking with eagerness and breath held in anticipation. Mari sat across from him, covering her eyes with her hands, afraid of his judgement. This was her first time gifting someone one of her sewing-projects, after all.

His delighted gasp led to her parting her fingers slightly, only now noticing all the tiny cuts covering them, no doubt the price she had to pay for still being clumsy at sewing (”even though I have been doing it for a year now, I should be better than that”, she mentally scolded herself). Her thoughts were interrupted by a round of gasps coming from the tiny audience surrounding the best-friends-duo. Marinette focused back on Nino and dropped her hands to her mouth, squeaking in delight. The boy in front of her put on the basecap she made him and was grinning even wider, which she, until then, wasn’t even sure were possible. He hugged her, in a much gentler embrace then the previous time. His fingers were soft, not covered in cuts and red spots, as he pulled away and took her hands in his, not caring about the giggles and ew-s from their audience, nor the blush creeping up Maris’ cheeks. “I love it...so much”, what he meant, though, was “I wish you were my soulmate”.

And Mari couldn’t agree more.

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

It was dark, a coffee mug was standing amongst an army of already finished ones and a droopy eyed girl was sitting in front of them, lazily turning a page on the book her english-teacher assigned her to read. She recognized the storyline, knew all the plot-twists and felt connected to the characters as if she’d been there herself. The strange thing about that though, was that she has never laid eyes on it before. Of course that didn’t stop her from reading it. There were assignments she had to fullfill and tests she had to ace, which were connected to that piece of literature and she couldn’t risk getting a bad grade due to a foolish reliance on her instincts.

Instincs.

Yes that is what they are and of course none of this is connected to her soulmate.

It couldn’t be, she couldn’t dare dream of it. They died, that’s what that numbness she felt for over six months must have meant. That’s why those scars were now gracing her whole body. Her soulmate could not have survived this. No mortal being could go through so much and still be breathing.

The new bruises and cuts she was getting now and then? Her Ladybug suit can’t protect her from everything, being thrown over the Saine so may times couldn’t have left her with no traces whatsoever. Yes, that’s the reason. He’s not resurrected, that’s silly...there’s no way.

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

“What happened to your lips, milady?”, Ladybugs partner purred as they layed on a roof not far from the eiffel tower, watching the stars, having just finished patrol a few minutes ago. “M-my lips?”, the 16 year old girl stuttered, a tiny voice immediatly occupying her, previously calm, mind with thoughts of her soulmate. They have been acting up lately, not that it was possible. They were gone.

There’s no way, she must have been hallucinating again. She must have forgotten how she hurt her lip, she must be feeling side-effects from the loss of her soulmate. Her thoughts were spiralling and that tiny voice in her mind was whispering, filling her denial with doubts and cracks and making her heart beat faster.

“Your lips, they look... different...”, Chat Noirs voice interrupted the turmoil in her head. Ladybug gazed over to him, only to find him closer to her then when they first layed down. His eyes were glistening, seemingly shining even brighter than the Eiffel Tower in it’s nightly glory. A foreign sensation ran through her veins, a weird tingling covering her whole body. It could have been mistaken for goosebumps, if it weren’t for the warm summernight they were currently enjoying. “They do..?” she said, though it came out as nothing more than a whisper, for he was already so so close, even closer than when they are in battle. Their noses were almost touching, his eyes took up all of her view and for once she wouldn’t dare complain. Since when does she like that proximity? Why is his warmth so intriguing? Why does she enjoy the way his arms found their place on both sides of her body? “They look so...red...like your suit...Ladybug re-”, he got interrupted by his lips sealed shut. Shut not with that redness he mentioned, not with that love or attraction and reciprocated admiration Adrien was hoping for. No, it was her red suited hand which covered his mouth to silent him. She felt it before she heard it. An earthquake was rummaging through the streets and handling it was much more important than handling that purring in her best friend.

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

Jason was annoyed. His fingers were full of cuts: sure, he was used to that. His hips were bruised from his soulmate constantly closing doors and cupboards with them, at least that’s what he thinks they do to cause such silly bruises: no problem, he didn’t mind dealing with that. His backpains he could deminguish by working out, though he has been thinking of finding them just to tell his significant other to better their fucking posture. But the tiredness? Holy fuck! It’s like he’s sleeping for both of them! Whenever he sat down to read he just... collapsed. Guess he’ll have to dream about it... yeah sure it’s fair, ‘cause after all she treated his wounds for both of them, too. It’s like she had some kind of superpower which made them heal clean, never leaving more than a white line behind. Nontheless, right then he would rather have ugly scars than have to deal with this inhuman tiredness. His grumpy grumbling was interrupted by Red Robin speaking up in his ear.

“Hood where are you? The portal is about to appear, we won’t be able to wait.”

“I’m on my way, give me 2 more minutes.”

“Hurry.”

With that, the line went silent and his mind went back to coordinating his grappling hook and limbs into getting him to the batcave in time. He had planned on finishing at least one of Terry Pratchets and Neil Gaimans novels in preparation for the moviemarathon he and his brothers had planned for the upcoming week. “Good Omens” is a masterpiece but he refused to watch any visualizers nor read the book if he hadn’t read all of the previous works the authors had published. “It’s not just about the continuation, it’s a matter of respect.”, he rememberd telling Stephanie, when she asked him why Alfred was handing him a box filled with a combined number of about a hundred books. He had work to do and reality to escape, but that last part was none of his lovely sisters business.

Zoning back into reality he noticed he had already reached his destination. “Focus Jason. There’s a whole city just waiting to be pulled out of the ashes.” With that thought in mind, he entered the batcave and went straight for the portal, following his siblings into the destroyed city of love.

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

Adrien was on edge. The fight has been going on for four days, the city was nothing but blood and ashes, the akuma-shelters weren’t enough to protect every citizien who has lost their home to the earthquakes and following akuma attacks. Many people have died, many have volunteered and too many of those have died in the process. It was traumatic, painful and quite honestly felt like the end of the world. They could fix it, of course. But to do so she had to survive and Adrien, or Chat Noir as you will, was not about to leave her unprotected. He didn’t know where she got her power from, why she could go on without taking a break for so long. He has lost count on how many times he saw her helping someone who was about to be crushed by a collapsing building, how many times she was screaming in frustration, torn between following the akuma and guiding a lost civilian to safety.

It was an incredibly sneaky akuma. It was nearly translucent, consisting mostly of dirt and dust. It could hide in the mess it made, attack you from behind and you wouldn’t be sure whether it was a flying brick or it’s fist hitting your head. It hasn’t officialy announced itself yet, hasn’t given itself a name or shown any forms of weakness. Hawkmoth was definetly trying out a new approach and highly succeeding. The Dustmonster was probably planning on wearing them out until they wouldn’t be strong enough to resist it going for their miraculous.

In the beginning Chat felt like he could trust his Lady to take care of herself, trusted for her to keep the target in mind and think of a plan while he was going to protect her and the citizens around them. It worked, at first. She figured out what the akuma was, aka figured out that it was an akuma in the first place and soon started giving out orders to police and firemen. After a day of trying to get the akuma, in order to stop it before things could go out of hand and failing to do so, no matter which strategy the heroes tried and no matter how many seemingly random Lucky Charms they used, they decided to replan.

They met on a building not far away from Marinettes home, Chat remembered. They were hoping to come up with a new plan and let Ladybugs Kwami recharge. The recharging was an already practiced routine they came up with, once her fifth Lucky Charm has also failed. They jumped into the water, which was apparently off limits to the akuma, since the dust didn’t settle properly and it wasn’t able to hide (any attempts of getting it wet were blocked by the destruction of another building, which led to the heroes saving the civilans and themselves instead of attacking the enemy.) One of Ladybugs Lucky-Charms straight up covered the Saine, turned up side down boats now gracing the surface. Those boats mobilised possible hiding and resting places for the heroes.

That time though, they needed more food for Tikki and Plagg and what better place to restock could there be, than the famous Dupain-Cheng bakery? Ladybug swung in and came back with two baskets. One full of cheese and the other full of cookies. Chat grabbed the smelly one and turned to jump in the direction of the river, when they heard it.

A grumbling which turned into a roaring and finally morphed into deafening laughter. That was the first time they heard the akumas voice. Instead of shouting the following words, the way it did scream in laughter, it just spoke in an even, eerie and scarily confident voice: “You should stop asking for help, insect. Helping others only leads to you getting hurt. Help won’t save you. Your precious little safety-nets won’t save you.”, the sound was coming out of the dust, echoing off of every destructed creation, seeping into each broken bone and every fractured mind. “You think you can reach out? Think someone is going to pull you away from under the pressure of this worlds eternal suffering? You are wrong. No one came to save me, no one is capable of saving. You.”, the last word came out emotional. The monotone voice the akuma had previously used to preach it’s intents was gone. A shiver ran up Marinettes spine. The dust surrounding the city build up and rose in columns, coming out of every broken source from all over Paris, towering over it, looming dangerously over it’s citizens. Everyone was trying to decipher the meaning of those words, Adrien was the first one to realise.

“Marinette!”

Ladybug first looked at him in shock, thinking he had figured her out, then she realised what he he had actually meant. Chat was off, jumping on her balcony and screaming her name.

“No...”

The silence before the storm, the frightening towers of dust and dirt started moving, accompanied by horrified screams of terrorised civilians. The dirt wasn’t meant for them, though. It flew as if it were one. Gigantic snakes with one single target.

Marinette ran, but the destruction was quicker.

The Dupain-Cheng ceiling collapsed. Marinettes yo-yo missed it’s target as she plummeted to the ground. Her vision was blurry, her mind blank, eyes wide and breath unconciously held.

She didn’t recognize the pain as she hit the pavement.

She didn’t even think as she called out for her seventh Lucky Charm.

Ladybugs cry echoed through the ruins of Paris as her usualy leather-clad partner fell from the sky, with tears in his eyes and covered in a red and black spotted suit. “Sabine she’s...they’re...”, both of them broke down crying in each others arms. Adrien never knew how great his partners pain actually was, in comparison to his.

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

Hi! This is my first try at writing MariBat and my first fanfic in like... 4 years?

I’ve just recently graduated Highschool so I’m now embracing my free time and trying to get back on my creative track.

Please comment, I NEED to know what you think of this. Critique and all that is very appreciated, even a simple “YES” is going to absolutely make my day and, honestly, you could comment about dogs and I’d be happy to read it.

Thanks for reading ^^

#jasonette #jasonette july #jasonette soulmate au #soulmate au #batfam #maribat #maribat fanfic #jason todd #marinette dupain-cheng #jason todd x marinette dupain-cheng #soulmate bruises au #ladynoir #ninonette #good omens #red hood #ladybug #ml ladybug #angst

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eclecticanalyst · 3 years

Text

Studying “A Study in Emerald”

At my grandmother’s house, stacked together with other books underneath a side table in her office, was a thick leatherbound volume with golden engraved lettering. SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, it said, in large letters on the cover. And in smaller print: The Celebrated Cases of Sherlock Holmes.

I was eight or nine years old, and as soon as I opened the volume I was hooked. I brought it along as I rode with my grandmother doing errands. I asked her if I could have the book, and with her permission took it home with me. I hadn’t finished it by the time summer camp rolled around, so I tucked it into a suitcase and read bits of it at the end of activity-filled days before going to bed. I hardly even glanced at any other books until I had turned the last page.

Since I have re-read the stories so many times over the years, the solutions to the mysteries are no longer a surprise to me. I had read them for the mysteries, the first time. But now I read them for other reasons—the relationship between Holmes and Watson, the atmosphere of horror and dread that ACD does so well, the breadcrumbs of character arcs in the main and recurring characters, and the way the characters seem both dated and modern, sometimes in the same sentence.

All that is to say, I love Sherlock Holmes. And several months ago I found that Neil Gaiman had written a Sherlock Holmes story. I’ve read a few Gaiman works and was curious to see how he treated some of my favorite fictional characters, so I downloaded it. And read it. And loved it. And in this analysis, I will convey my enthusiasm by explaining just how amazing this story is.

NOTE: this will be a multi-part analysis, with one post for each part of “A Study in Emerald.” (Parts 2 and 3 will be covered in one post.) There will also be some follow-up posts with additional thoughts at the end.

You should 100% read the story before continuing because A) it’s awesome and B) there is a twist that I will be getting into pretty quickly that is much better if you experience it for yourself first.

Part 1: The New Friend

The beauty of this story is that knowing the Sherlock Holmes canon works both for and against the reader. If you’ve read the canon, you will recognize the references to certain characters or details or plot points—but at the same time, those moments of recognition can lead you to draw conclusions that Gaiman fully expects you to make but are in fact inaccurate.

Right off the bat, the title of “A Study in Emerald” is just one word away from the title of the very first Sherlock Holmes story. This, along with the first page or so of the narrative, primes us to approach the tale as a straightforward Sherlock Holmes pastiche, like the countless others that have been written: “Sherlock Holmes in space!” “Sherlock Holmes as a kid!” “Sherlock Holmes in the far future!”, where everything is basically the same, just with a natural transformation of entities to match the “hook” of the pastiche—so instead of smoking, kid Holmes sucks on lollipops or the like. The “hook” of this particular pastiche first manifests with the narrator’s war wounds being the result, not of bullets and fevers as in the canon, but of underwater creatures that suck the vitality out of one’s limbs.

“Okay,” we as readers familiar with Sherlock Holmes say to ourselves. “So Holmes and Watson, but in a world of the supernatural. Got it. Nice twist, Gaiman. I’m ready to see what you do with this.”

As I said, Gaiman uses your Sherlock Holmes knowledge against you in constructing this tale. The narrator has a shoulder wound as a result of his wartime experiences, just as Watson does in A Study in Scarlet—the circumstances of his injury are changed to be more fantastical, of course, but we accept that because we have acclimated ourselves to what we think is the whole of this seemingly straightforward premise (Sherlock Holmes, but with Lovecraftian elements). After all, we have the two men meeting in the university laboratory, both interested in sharing rooms, and we get the iconic line, “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.” We get the familiar prospective-roommates-share-vices exchange. It’s not the same as the original, but we don’t read Holmes pastiches for the exact same lines we could get by rereading the original stories. Besides, the exchange hits enough check marks for what we already know about Holmes (since we’re familiar with canon) that instead of the change setting off alarm bells, we’re busy patting ourselves on the back for recognizing references and approvingly nodding in response to Gaiman’s demonstrated knowledge of the stories. After all, Holmes did shoot bullets into the wall once. And he is private and easily bored, and selfish as well at times. These are revelations about Holmes’s character that are shared in later stories, after A Study in Scarlet, but they match the whole of his character that we know since we have the entirety of the canon under our belts, so it’s quite clear to us that this man the narrator meets is indeed Sherlock Holmes.

By condensing the characteristics of Holmes that were originally revealed over the course of several publications into one dialogue exchange, the plot is able to move speedily along while reinforcing our initial understanding of this man’s identity. However, presenting these characteristics in this manner also leads to some contradictions with canon, which means that things are just a little bit off. Holmes is established in later stories as having irregular habits, but in A Study in Scarlet, the specific story that this dialogue exchange is echoing, it’s Watson who “get[s] up at all sorts of ungodly hours.” Here the one who admits to “keep[ing] irregular hours” is the non-soldier, when in A Study in Scarlet Holmes is actually quite regular in his schedule (he doesn’t really maintain that behavior beyond that first story, but still). On a more complex level—and I might be reading too much into this particular point but it is striking to me as someone who has spent several years with roommates—there is the detail that the detective in “Emerald” informs the narrator right off the bat that he will need to use the sitting room to see clients. In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes does not inform Watson of this fact in the initial cross-examination. It’s only after they move in together and Watson starts getting (politely) kicked out of the sitting room on a semi-regular basis that Watson even learns Holmes is a person who has a visiting clientele. This is a rather major thing for a prospective roommate to know. Failing to mention this to Watson while still detailing his smoking habits and propensity for chemical experiments is a rather egregious omission on Holmes’s part, as anyone who has had to get used to a new roommate will tell you. So we have two instances where the information about the detective matches our overall conception of Holmes, but it is presented in a way that goes directly in opposition to how it was originally presented in canon—where what we are reading is both right and wrong at the same time.

Let’s continue on in the story. Our “heroes” move into the same old apartment on Baker Street, which further solidifies the straightforward Holmes in a Lovecraftian world explanation we as readers have formulated for the story. We go through the same “narrator wonders what his mysterious roommate does for a living” steps that we remember from A Study in Scarlet, albeit, again, condensed. And the mystery plot begins as the two roommates eat breakfast, just as in that very first story.

Keen readers might take note of the fact that it is Inspector Gregson, not Inspector Lestrade, who brings the mystery in A Study in Scarlet to Holmes’s attention. Considering that Lestrade made more appearances in the canon and became Holmes’s default police contact, Lestrade’s presence here can simply be chalked up to Gaiman paying homage to the whole of the canon, not just the first story. Alternatively, this is yet another instance of things being ever so slightly wrong when compared to the events we are all familiar with.

You’ll notice that, having successfully (because on first read you are likely not reading as critically as I am now with this analysis) lulled us into a false sense of security regarding the premise of this story and the identities of its characters, Gaiman starts to drop more references to other specific stories besides A Study in Scarlet, as well as more direct hints (which require much less complex analyzing than I have done in previous paragraphs) as to who our narrator and his detective friend truly are.

The first* direct hint is so subtle that I don’t think I even picked up on it the first time I read the story. It’s when Lestrade suggests he talk to the detective privately. The content of the exchange is, once again, familiar to a Sherlock Holmes reader—how many times have we seen Holmes assure a client that Watson can be confided in just as well as himself (see: “A Case of Identity”), or refuse to let Watson excuse himself as a case begins to unfold (see: “A Scandal in Bohemia”)? The hint lies in the description of the narrator’s friend when he dismisses Lestrade’s suggestion: “his head moved on his shoulders as it did when he was enjoying a private joke.” Gaiman can’t show his hand too early, so this hint is extremely oblique. The key is the phrasing: “his head moved on his shoulders” is a rather odd and roundabout description, which could much more easily be rendered as “he shook his head” or something to that effect. But in using this wording, Gaiman ever-so-lightly echoes the description of a certain someone a couple pages into “The Final Problem”:

His shoulders are rounded from much study, and his face protrudes forward, and is for ever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion.

We have some more general Easter egg references to the canon—the detective’s slight dissatisfaction when someone (Lestrade in this case) remarks on the simplicity of his reasoning after it is explained, and the Study in Scarlet-specific “only one in the world” consulting detective explanation. And then we have this terrific bit. Our narrator asks the detective if he really wants him to come along. The detective’s response is as follows:

“I have a feeling that we were meant to be together. That we have fought the good fight, side by side, in the past or in the future...from the moment I clapped eyes on you, I knew I trusted you as well as I do myself.”

It’s terrific because it’s a summation of how Holmes and Watson are viewed by their fans. They belong together. Victorian London, World War II, 21st century New York, 22nd century London, as mice, as dogs, we’ve seen them in countless adaptations, and despite the change in locale or era or gender or species or countless other circumstances, they are always inseparable, always a force unto themselves, incomplete without the other. Of course this is Holmes and Watson. How could these words apply to anyone else?

The detective’s speech here appeals to our Holmes devotee sensibilities much more than canon Holmes’s response to Watson asking much the same question in A Study in Scarlet:

“You wish me to come?”

“Yes, if you have nothing better to do.”

Which is a rather unexceptional start to a partnership for the ages. The way “Emerald” tugs at the heartstrings, however, is dangerous—it pulls us further down into acceptance of the twisted world and characters that surround us.

*I will come back to this in a later post!

#sherlock holmes #a study in emerald #a study in scarlet #neil gaiman #analysis #in depth

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sankt-brekker-the-demjin · 4 years

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You Know, For Research Purposes - Tom Holland x Reader College!AU

Summary: Working on their research project, group mates Miles, Ned, Haz, Betty, Tom and Y/N grew closer together over the course of a few months. Also, how does Cheetos and ice cream taste together? ;)))

Word Count: 2,433

A/N: (gif not mine.) lolz hi! Look what boredom did to me.. I made a fanfic... [first time doing this idk what to do so there's that moving on. Hope u like it! Geronimo.]

Tom ran his fingers through his hair, tugging at the strands with force. He banged his head lightly on the table. He looked back at his Lit folder and saw he still had half of it to finish. He closed it and decided he would do it later. Managing the research project and studying for exams were taking a toll on his body and his sanity. He got up and went to the get some water.

It was halfway through midnight. His parents and brothers were asleep on their rooms. Miles, Haz, Y/N, Betty and Ned - his Qualitative Research applied subject classmates were sprawled all over the living room, laptops shoved to their faces, bond papers in hand. It was a typical students' night. The group had gotten together at Tom's house, and planned to stay overnight.

Miles and Y/N have History 1 together, while Betty and Haz had Calculus. But other than that, this was the only classes they all had together. Being in college is no easy feat, proper time management was necessary.

Ned had assigned each member to a specific part of the paper, and they've been at it since 8 pm. They all have to multitask and manage their time. Tom had almost finished his part of the paper, so he tried to do his Lit homework now.

Tom heard footsteps stomping on the floors. He turned and saw Y/N marching up to him with an annoyed look on her face and was about to speak but he cut her off.

"If you complain about the heat one more time, I'm give you a real reason to sweat," Tom set the cup of water with a smug look on his face.

She halted on her tracks and smacked the paper she brought on his arms. Tom chuckled, but didn't move.

"No, you idiot," Y/N rolled her eyes. "You might wanna fix that paper before you go off scaring people to death with that annoying face of yours."

His mouth twitched in amusement and took the stapled papers from her hands. "So you admit you've been looking at my face."

"You're so full of it," Y/N stepped around him and grabbed another glass, getting water from the tap.

Tom looked at the incorrect charts and tables he had made on the paper. He cursed under his breath. He had been working on it in the wee hours of last night. Spontaneous typing, no pit stops on spelling errors and everything else, just got it done.

"The original file is on my computer upstairs," he groaned. "I'll have to re-do this again."

"You do that," she clicked her tongue. "And I'll just chill here by your fridge for a moment."

Y/N opened the fridge and took the remaining slice of cake laid on a plate.

"That's mine -" Tom protested.

"Not anymore." Y/N ate the cake.

He scowled and moved to close the door of the fridge. Y/N leaned her back on the door. There they were, a few inches away from each other. Tom stood seething; Y/N chewed the cake with an amused expression. She wiped the frosting on her lower lip with her tongue reflexively. Before he realized it his eyes wandered to her lips.

Tom inched his face closer, eyes darting over to her eyes and lips. "If you don't stop biting your lips ..."

"What are you gonna do?"

Tom remained quiet but clenched his jaw.

Y/N chuckled, "You're all talk and no action."

Heavy footsteps echoed on the hallway to the kitchen, gaining both their attention away from each other. Tom whipped his head to the of the voice and shot him a look.

"I told you 7000 times, a chicken is a bird -" Haz bursted into the room with a phone clutched to his ears, pausing when he caught sight of Tom and Y/N. "D'you have a charger I could borrow?" Haz covered his phone with his hands.

"I have one in my backpack." Y/N said.

Haz nodded, talking again to his sister on the phone about chickens. He walked back to the living room, waiting for Y/N to follow him.

Y/N stopped by the table where Tom had been working on, and pointed at his paper. "I can't finish my part if you can't finish yours." Seeing as his paper's original file was on his computer upstairs, she grabbed his laptop without waiting for him to reply. "Imma borrow this ... Thanks."

She went back to the living room, laptop on hand.

"And don't look at my browser history!" She heard Tom call back from the kitchen.

"Wouldn't dare," she countered in a mocking tone.

As the weeks passed, they started collecting data on the field. They went through one institution to another, gathering reports and statistics, and validating it with professionals. Then after that it was all a blur. They submitted the paper to Mrs. Luxley and was graded, only given back to them for minor revisions.

The gang decided to spend that same night they passed the assignment on Tom's house again, just like they did when they were still making the paper. Tom's parents had gotten used to them staying over, and Sam always tried to flirt with Betty when he was around.

Ned and Haz raced to Tom's bedroom. Ned threw himself on the bed first. "God, I've never felt the bed being this good," he sighed and melted with pleasure. All those sleepless nights they've had finally paid off.

Haz hit him with a pillow. "Move over!"

Y/N laid on the couch, feet perched on top of Tom's lap, getting comfortable. Betty and Miles slept on the carpets of Tom's living room. They just sort of crawled to the floor in delight and just stayed there, too tired to move anywhere else. Haz came back to the living room, holding a bottle of champagne on his hands from the Hollands' cupboards.

He cheered. "Let's celebrate!"

But they celebrated the victory by sleeping out for an entire day spread all over the Hollands' house.

Even though their project was finished, the lot still remained close with each other. They spent times at Miles' favourite diner by the corner of the campus during their collective free time.

And last week, Haz's sister gave birth to a pretty baby girl. Haz invited them over and they all came to join the little house party his sister threw. The group counted on this as the official celebration of their hard work.

It was a Thursday afternoon. Family and friends chatted and caught up with each other in the Osterfield's backyard. Dream by Fleetwood Mac could be heard playing on the living room speakers.

Tom was talking with his dad. Betty and Ned sat at the garden chairs talking to one of Haz's brothers. Those two really were people persons. Miles and Y/N laughed at a hilarious history joke their professor rambled about. Tom tried to pay them no mind, though his glance drifted to them every now and then. His dad eventually noticed the shift in his mood, but decided to ignore it because his mum came to them, carrying Haz's niece. Tom accepted the baby to his arms while his mum and dad went to the kitchen.

Lily, the smol bean's eyes crinkled with joy and giggled. Her chubby little hands reached out to him. Tom stuck his tongue out affectionately her. He turned his head to the low whistle he heard.

"Wow... Daddy," Y/N smirked.

That day was all fun and games, but by the end it they still had school stuff to catch up on. A few weeks later, they decided to cram in the library.

Nothing feels better than suffering with acads together friends.

The group sat in a table by the corner, immersed in their own world. Tom went to the bookshelves to look for an autobiography book his proffesor suggested. Ned was compiling essays on his laptop. Miles was reading a book by Neil Gaiman. Haz and Betty were doing their Calculus homework.

Y/N's chin rested on her hands, staring blankly at her laptop screen. A straight line blinked repeatedly on the ends of the only sentence she typed.

What the fuck |

She just needed a head start on this critique paper. Nothing too heavy, just one paragraph to kick it all into place. That's where it's always hard. The first line. So now she's stuck with cursing. Before Y/N realize it, she's slumped her face down to the wooden table with a light bang. The group lifted their eyes to her, asking if she was alright. She shoved her thumbs up above her head, and they went back to what they what they were doing.

Haz who sat on her right, patted her back. "Same here, sis," he fought back a yawn.

Her eyes felt heavy. Then she groggily looked up to the little 'thunk' dropped on the table.

"Oh, great you're alive," she muttered before setting her face back on the table again.

Tom pulled his chair beside her. "Miss me already? I was barely gone for a few minutes."

"I'm so blessed to be with your presence," she stated in a monotonous voice.

Tom snorted. "Your professor is really gonna give you an A+ with those colorful words. 'What the fuck,' short but sweet."

She looked up and stuck her tongue out. Seeing his face has started to get old ... she tried convincing herself that, though.

They did their business. Ever so often, Y/N and Tom's elbows would brush against each other. Y/N had her earphones on, listening to her shuffled playlist on Spotify. Tom heard muffled tunes, and turned his head closer.

"What are you listening to?" He whispered; his breath fanned the side of her neck that sent chills up her spine.

She didn't look at him and instead continued to write key points to make on her essay. She spoke, her voice low. "This one's called Uncomfortable by Wallows."

He grinned and leaned even closer. "Can I listen?"

From across the table, Ned took 10 bucks from his wallet and shoved it on Betty’s hand. She pumped her fist in a silent triumph.

Y/N shifted her head to look at him, only to find his cute, devilishly handsome face inches away from hers. If she would tilt her head a little... their lips would touch. They locked eyes for a second, before she plucked one earphone and gave it to him.

He cocked his head, liking the song. Minutes passed. The only noises were from turning book pages, soft patter of keys on the laptops, and bits of hushed voices encompassed the area.

An hour later, Y/N felt herself getting hungry and went out to buy food, Betty tagging along. They ate outside since the library was strict on the 'NO eating policy.' Not even other drinks are allowed, only water. The others stayed behind. Then Betty came back to her seat.

"Where's Y/N?"

Betty sat on her chair, "She's outside, still eating."

Tom nodded and felt himself getting hungry, too. He opened his backpack and took a bag of Cheetos he stashed. He stood and said to them he was gonna eat outside. He went out, and spotted her leaning on a pillar, scooping ice cream out of a cup.

"I'm starving," he stood beside her.

"We've been there for ages," she scooped another spoonful of mint chocolate ice cream she got from the shop across the street.

Tom munched on his Cheetos. He turned to look at her happily savoring her ice cream. He moved for Y/N's ice cream cup but she swerved it out of his reach.

"Get your own," she swatted his arms away.

A thought crossed his mind. It reminded him of the last time they did this at his kitchen, over a slice of cake. And how they've been so close...

For the past few months, he's gotten a strange feeling whenever Y/N was around. Like there's an electric buzz in him, his heart would warm up at the sight of her. He couldn't stay away from her, and he wants to know her better, and feel her and just be there right beside her. He couldn't explain it.

Tom grinned at the memory, chucking a piece of Cheetos on his mouth. He stepped forward. "D'you wanna know how Cheetos and mint chocolate chip ice cream tastes like together?" he leaned closer to her face; his breath hot against her skin. His gaze shifted down to her parted lips. "You know, for research purposes..."

"Hmm?" She held her eyes up on his own gleaming brown ones. "Probably good. Anything's good with mint chocolate ice cream."

"Yeah?" His hands reached out to move the strands of her hair away from her face. "Wanna test it out?"

She shrugged.

Tom found his hand on the back of her neck and slammed his lips to hers. Y/N's eyes fluttered shut. He tasted full of that cheesy goodness. And her, a heavenly taste of vanilla and the aroma of mint. Her arm stretched out to keep the ice cream cup away. She parted from his lips to set the cup down onto the pillar. He wrapped his arms to her waist, pulling her flush against him. With her now empty hands, she ran her fingers on his soft brown curls. She tugged at the strands, eliciting a low guttural sound from him muffled by her mouth on his.

He broke the kiss and leaned his forehead on hers, breathless. "We should get back inside to do ... stuff."

"No no. Don't care." She pulled the back of his neck and closed their distance again. He chuckled.

Y/N loved the way their mouths danced to a rhythm, flavors mixing together from the forgotten taste-testing session, now a different kind of session.

A hand still on her waist, the other cupped her cheeks and tilted her chin to give him more access. She wrapped both her arms around his neck, welcoming warm the feelings burning inside her.

They parted, but still inches away from each other. Y/N bit his lower lip. Tom hissed in surprise but she kissed it better.

"So ... what do you think?" He murmured in a low voice.

"Mmm, I like it." Cheetos and ice cream forgotten.

"Yeah?" He grinned at her. "Me too."

Seconds lapsed. Neither of them moved, still stuck in a more romantic version of a staring contest.

"I like you." Tom's heartbeat raced.

She grinned back at him. "I like you, too. Like 3000. I like you that much."

Roll the end credits.

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sersi · 5 years

Photo

The Eternals, the stars of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s newest franchise, aren’t exactly well known to, well, anyone. As I am super hype for their movie and people having been asking, this is my attempt at providing a relatively easy to understand reading list for them. Note: Because I enjoy not giving staff reasons to snipe me, I won’t be providing links, but just know that you can easily find ways to read most of these comics with some easy Google searches 😉!

Who they are: The Eternals are a race of immortals created by the Celestials. Having shared ancestry with humanity, the majority of the Eternals have lived on Earth for thousands of years and some have, at various times, made themselves known to humanity; inspiring myths, helping to create myths, and/or being mistaken for myths. They have a millennia long conflict with the Deviants, another offshoot of humanity created by the Celestials.

Essential Reading:

Note: There are really two logical places to start, with Kirby’s original run or with Neil Gaiman’s 2006/2007 run.

Eternals - Vol. #1, 20 issues total (19 regular issues and one annual), published between 1976-1978.

Written by Jack Kirby, this series introduces the Eternals and forms the foundation of the mythology that all subsequent Eternals series have drawn on. It sees the Eternals being drawn back into contact with modern day human society and having to try and save Earth from the potentially deadly arrival of the Celestials.

Eternals - Vol #2, a 12 issue limited series, published between 1985-1986.

Written by Peter Gillis (for the first eight issues) and Walt Simonson (for the final four issues), this series is the first extended return to the Eternals since Kirby’s series ended. It incorporates some of the tweaks and changes made to the Eternals and their backstory during the early 1980s in issues of What If…? A more character driven run than Kirby’s introductory one, this series focuses on the conflict between the Eternals and the Deviants.

Eternals - Vol. #3, 7 issues, published between 2006-2007.

Written by Neil Gaiman and coming two decades after the last Eternals run, this series is essentially a reboot (and thus an easy entry point if you don’t feel like starting all the way back in the 1970s). The Eternals, for the most part, have no memory of who they are or of their superpowered nature. The series follows the attempts of Ikaris, one of the few Eternals who does remember what he is, to awaken the other Eternals and solve the mystery of what happened to them.

Eternals - Vol #4, 10 issues total (9 regular issues + 1 annual), published between 2008-2009.

Written by Charles and Daniel Knauf, this series picks up shortly after the Gaiman run ended and directly continues the plot points set up within it. With some of the Eternals now awakened and restored to their previous state, Ikaris and his newfound allies are attempting to stop Druig and make sense of just what Earth’s newly awakened Celestial wants.

Additional Reading:

What If…. - Vol. #1, #23 - #30 (B or C stories only)

These stories essentially flesh out (and somewhat alter) the origin story of the Eternals. Most important in all this is the retconning of the Titans to be Eternals (so, yes, Thanos is technically an Eternal) and the addition of a civil war whose resolution explains the presence of Eternals in two radically different parts of the universe.

Thor - Vol. #1, Eternals Saga (#283-#301 + Thor Annual #7)

Continuing the story begun in the first Eternals run, this saga sees Thor attempting to handle the Fourth Celestial Host and discovering more about the relationship between Asgard and the Eternals. There is a lot of good material here for someone interested in the Eternals, however, these comics are still absolutely Thor comics and do not always feature any Eternals within the comic itself, so, your milage may vary when it comes to whether or not they’re worth reading.

Other Reading (aka things I don’t really like 🙈):

Eternals: The Herod Factor

A 1990s one shot, this comic picks up on some of the threads of the 1980s run and heavily focuses on Thena, Kro, and their newly revealed children. Personally, I hated this comic as it largely ignores certain elements of the 1980s run, but, if you’re a completionist, it isn’t terribly long.

The New Eternals: Apocalypse Now

A one shot published in 2000, this comic partially reboots the Eternals as a concept and gives them some new costumes and identities. Not terribly impactful as the Eternals made very, very few comic appearances between the publication of this one-shot and the launch of the Gaiman run (which ignores this comic entirely).

The Eternal - #1 - #6

Published under Marvel’s 18+ MAX Comics imprint, The Eternal essentially takes a few names/concepts from Kirby’s original run (Celestials, Eternals, and Deviants) and goes wild with them. In this run, the Eternals are enslaved by the Celestials (who killed all of the women when they first enslaved the Eternals) and go from planet to planet gathering resources for their masters. On each planet, the Eternals create “Deviants” by genetically engineering the inhabitants of the planet so that they can serve as a slave labor force. At the beginning of the series they have just arrived on a pre-historic Earth and, in violation of the rules of the Celestials, have begun to take genetically engineered Deviant (human) women as sex slaves. Naturally, things spiral from there.

As you might guess, this series is essentially one giant trigger warning. If you are uncomfortable with consent issues, violence against women, torture, gore, sex scenes, or gratuitous nudity, stay far, far away. I loathed this comic and, as it has very, very, very little to do with the Eternals as a concept, really don’t recommend it.

#clownsassemble #eternalsedit #marveledit #the eternals #eternals #reading order #elysia makes stuff #**elysiaedits #(not really but sort of???)#i hope this makes sense and isn't too overwhelming #i tried to keep it as focused as i could #which is why there's no character specific recs on there #(that's ANOTHER post for ANOTHER day)#you can find basically all of these super easily with a google search EXCEPT for the eternal #if you wanna read that one you will have to head to t*rr*nt sites #or ebay (the run is usually pretty cheap on there)#long post for ts

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goodbyeolepaint · 3 years

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(via bookofmirth)

end-of-year book ask

How many books did you read this year? - 15 that I can recall

Did you reread anything? What? - I read Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones twice this year. Also each volume of Monstress (Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda) twice to make sure I’m following who’s who. But I don’t think I reread any old favorites.

What were your top five books of the year? - Mistborn and The Well of Ascension (Mistborn Trilogy 1 & 2) by Brandon Sanderson, Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin, The City and The City by China Mieville, Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Did you discover any new authors that you love this year? - I would say China Mieville, but I started reading Kraken and I can’t get into it. Gonna try Perdido Street Station.

What genre did you read the most of? - Fantasy

Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to? - A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle. It’s on my Christmas list!

What was your average Goodreads rating? Does it seem accurate? - 3.86. I suppose so.

Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones? - I meant to read more new fantasy novels, but they’re never available from the library. I’m always reading old stuff.

Did you get into any new genres? - No.

What was your favorite new release of the year? - I didn’t read a single one. *embarrassed*

What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read? - Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.

Any books that disappointed you? - The Ocean at The End of The Lane by Neil Gaiman. It just seemed like a slight, underwhelming story.

What were your least favorite books of the year? - same answer as #10 for new releases, otherwise Bathing The Lion by Jonathan Carroll which I didn’t finish.

What books do you want to finish before the year is over? - Nothing in particular.

Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)? What did you think of them? - Nope. As for books that won them recently: The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisen and Uprooted by Naomi Novik. I liked the world of The Fifth Season and a couple characters, but I wasn’t attached enough to anyone to keep going with the series. I liked most of Uprooted but I was kind of disgusted by how awful the love interest was for most of the book, so that ruined it a bit for me. I prefer Spinning Silver.

What is the most over-hyped book you read this year? - Maybe The Ocean at The End of The Lane.

Did any books surprise you with how good they were? - Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones and The City and The City by China Mieville. I didn’t know anything about either of them before I started reading them, and then got sucked in and couldn’t put them down.

How many books did you buy? - 6

Did you use your library? - Yes, mostly for ebooks, for the first time ever.

What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations? Not that they’re new, but I was really looking forward to reading The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages after reading Mistborn. They were both good, but The Hero of Ages dragged in several places and didn’t quite have the ending I wanted.

Did you participate in or watch any booklr, booktube, or book twitter drama? - No

What’s the longest book you read? - The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson at 590 pages.

What’s the fastest time it took you to read a book? - Hmm. I think I read The City and The City by China Mieville in just a few days.

Did you DNF anything? Why? - Bathing The Lion by Jonathan Carroll (couldn’t get into any of the characters), Sorcerer To The Crown by Zen Cho (it wasn’t what I was in the mood for, so I slacked off and then my ebook loan expired), Jirel of Joiry by C.L. Moore (the stories start to get repetitive, but I love “The Black God’s Kiss.” Technically I’m still kinda reading this one), Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (same reason as the Zen Cho!). Currently giving up on China Mieville’s Kraken!

What reading goals do you have for next year? - I might try again to read new books. :)

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patolozka · 5 years

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On Crowley and Mary Magdalene META

So I was thinking about the whole ‘Crowley could be Mary Magdalene’ concept and I decided to put a few things together. I don’t want to persuade anyone of anything I was just thinking.

This META was written for @a-zira-fell and @azirafuck because they were feeding me with this stuff the last week.

So here is it:

1. Before the GO show aired in May we knew that Crowley wore female clothes at Golgotha from the stills that were shown to us in April. (It was THIS meta by @intersexaziraphale that I read about it). But after the show I think we promptly forget everything about it because there were so many things to think about.

https://intersexaziraphale.tumblr.com/post/184424971273/so-i-realized-that-not-everyone-knows-what-i-do

2. In the show in the crucifixion scene there is this exchange between our duo:

C: Come to smirk at the poor bugger, have you?

A: Smirk? Me?

C: Well, your lot put him on there.

A: I'm not consulted on policy decisions, Crawley.

C: Oh, I've changed it.

A: Changed what?

C: My name. "Crawl-y" just wasn't really doing it for me. It's a bit too... squirming-at-your-feet-ish.

A: Well, you were a snake. So, what is it now? Mephistopheles? Asmodeus?

C: Crowley.

A: Hmm.

A: Did you, uh... ever meet him?

C: Yes. Seemed a very bright young man. I showed him all the kingdoms of the world.

A: Why?

C: He's a carpenter from Galilee. His travel opportunities are limited.

C: That has got to hurt. What was it he said that got everyone so upset?

A: "Be kind to each other."

C: Oh, yeah. That'll do it.

In the script there is no bigger change in the exchange and about Crowley there is not much more than that he is wearing black. But we saw how he looked like in the show.

3. Then there is this Neil Gaiman’s tweet

Source: https://vintagefloof.tumblr.com/post/186199778332/confirmation-from-mr-gaiman-on-twitter-today-that

4. And also this meta by @olliaaron about Crowley’s and Aziraphale’s clothing during crucifixion:

https://olliaaron.tumblr.com/post/186239033859/so-i-read-something-about-this-and-heres-an

5. What do we know about Mary Magdalene

· She may have been Jesus’s wife, but we don’t know for sure. {ENG Wiki Mary Magdalene}

· She is for the first time noticed as one of the women who “ministered to Christ of their substance.” (Luke 8:3) {ENG Wiki Mary Magdalene}

· She travelled with Jesus as one of his followers and was a witness to his crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. (According to the four canonical gospels) {ENG Wiki Mary Magdalene}

· Mary as one of the women who travelled with Jesus and helped support his ministry "out of their resources", indicating that she was probably relatively wealthy. (Luke 8:2–3) {ENG Wiki Mary Magdalene}

· There is a statement seven demons had been driven out of her (Luke 8:2–3) and that prompted her to became Jesus‘ follower. {ENG Wiki Mary Magdalene}

· She was one of women who found the sepulchre of Jesus empty (with Salome and Mary the mother of James) and saw the “vision of angels”. (Matthew 28:5). {Eastons Bible Dictionary} The angel told them that Jesus had risen from the dead. Then the risen Jesus himself appeared to the women as they were leaving the tomb and told them to tell the other disciples that he would meet them in Galilee. (Matthew 28:1–10){ENG Wiki Mary Magdalene}

· She hastens to tell Peter and John (John 20:1, 2), and again immediately returns to the sepulchre. There she lingers thoughtfully, weeping at the door of the tomb. {Eastons Bible Dictionary}

· The risen Jesus appears to her but she at first mistook him for the gardener. After she heard him say her name, she recognized him and cried out "Rabbouni!" (which is Aramaic for "teacher"). She tried to touch him, but he told her, "Don't touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my father”. The Gospel of John therefore portrays Mary Magdalene as the first apostle, the apostle sent to the apostles. (John 20:1–10) {CZ Wiki}

· According to Luke 24:1–12 a group of unnamed women went to the tomb and found the stone already rolled away, as in Mark. They went inside and saw two young men dressed in white who told them that Jesus had risen from the dead. Then they went and told the eleven remaining apostles, who dismissed their story as nonsense. {ENG Wiki Mary Magdalene}

· After the resurrection she returned to Jerusalem. {Eastons Bible Dictionary}

· In apocryphal texts, Mary Magdalene is portrayed as a visionary and leader of the early movement whom Jesus loved more than he loved the other disciples. {ENG Wiki Mary Magdalene}

· The earliest dialogue between Jesus and Mary Magdalene is probably the Dialogue of the Savior, a badly damaged Gnostic text discovered in the Nag Hammadi library in 1945. In saying 53, the Dialogue even attributes to Mary three aphorisms that are attributed to Jesus in the New Testament: "The wickedness of each day [is sufficient]. Workers deserve their food. Disciples resemble their teachers." The narrator commends Mary stating "she spoke this utterance as a woman who understood everything." {ENG Wiki Mary Magdalene}

· In Gospel of Thomas in saying 114: Simon Peter said to them: “Let Mary go forth from among us, for women are not worthy of the life”. Jesus said: “Behold, I shall lead her, that I may make her male, in order that she also may become a living spirit like you males. For every woman who makes herself male shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.“ {ENG Wiki Mary Magdalene}

· In Gospel of Philip: And the companion of the saviour [was] Mary Magdalene. [Christ] loved Mary more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on the mouth. The rest of the disciples [were offended by it and expressed disapproval]. They said to him, "Why do you love her more than all of us?" The Saviour answered and said to them, "Why do I not love you like her? When a blind man and one who sees are both together in darkness, they are no different from one another. When the light comes, then he who sees will see the light, and he who is blind will remain in darkness."{ENG Wiki Mary Magdalene}

· The Gospel of Mary: The Gospel of Mary was probably written over a century after the historical Mary Magdalene's death. The gospel does not claim to have been written by her and its author is, in fact, anonymous. Unlike in the Gospel of Thomas, where women can only be saved by becoming men, in the Gospel of Mary, they can be saved just as they are.

Then there is this:

Source: https://azirafuck.tumblr.com/post/186236114966/so-i-was-already-on-board-with-the-whole-crowley

6. How we can see Mary Magdalene in art

As you can see, majority of the paintings pictures Mary Magdalene with red hair and more so some of them even in dark colours.

Source of the pic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Magdalene

7. Dan Brown

I’m a big fan of Dan Brown and of course I know his ‘Da Vinci Code’ is only a fiction but still…

According to Dan Brown, there was a woman in Jesus‘ life. According to him, Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. And according to his book Leonardo da Vinci painted Mary Magdalene on ‘The Last Supper’, not John. And you know what hair colour does she have there? Red.

Source: https://cdn.getyourguide.com/img/tour_img-312981-148.jpg

Some pieces from book Da Vinci Code about Mary Magdalene

"The marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is part of the historical record... Moreover, Jesus as a married man makes infinitely more sense than our standard biblical view of Jesus as a bachelor... If Jesus were not married, at least one of the Bible’s gospels would have mentioned it and offered some explanation for His unnatural state of bachelorhood." (The Da Vinci Code, 245; cf. 244)

“Behold the greatest cover-up in human history... Not only was Jesus Christ married, but He was a father. My dear, Mary Magdalene was the Holy Vessel. She was the chalice that bore the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ” (Code, 249)

“Jesus was the original feminist. He intended for the future of His Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene.” (Code, 248)

“The Church, in order to defend itself against the Magdalene’s power, perpetuated her image as a whore and buried evidence of Christ’s marriage to her, thereby defusing any potential claims that Christ had a surviving bloodline and was a mortal prophet.” (Code, 254)

Source: https://www.westmont.edu/~fisk/articles/bruce_fisk_on_the_da_vinci_code.html (it’s a big article about why it all can’t be true, but it has its moments)

And I add one of my favorites:

"Who is she?" Sophie asked.

"That, my dear," Teabing replied, "is Mary Magdalene."

Sophie turned. "The prostitute?"

Teabing drew a short breath, as if the word had injured him personally. "Magdalene was no such thing. That unfortunate misconception is the legacy of a smear campaign launched by the early Church. The Church needed to defame Mary Magdalene in order to cover up her dangerous secret—her role as the Holy Grail." (Da Vinci Code, 205)

8. Gender in Good Omens

We know that angels don’t bother themselves with gender. But to me it looks quite like Crowley was manifesting himself the first four thousands more as a female than as a male.

In the garden of Eden, he is a demon, of course, but still you can see a slit in his clothes. I don’t think Aziraphale has some too. It could be only that his clothes are ragged but still…

In the Noah’s ark he looks more woman then man on the second glance. His long hair, his dress with belt…

At Golgotha it’s most prominent. There you can see he presents himself as a woman.

And after that, only 8 years later, the big change. The short hair, the glasses, all male.

And only other occasion in which we can see Crowley as a female is with Warlock as his nanny. But that is a different story.

9. So let me summarize it.

v Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ follower and travelled with him.

v Crowley knew Jesus, he showed him the world.

v Mary Magdalene was a witness to Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.

v Crowley manifested himself as a woman during Jesus’ life and he was a witness to Jesus’ crucifixion.

v Mary Magdalene was probably wealthy.

v Crowley has no problem with money.

v Mary Magdalene is often pictured as a woman with long, curly, red hair.

v Crowley had for the first four thousand years long, curly, red hair.

v After the crucifixion Mary Magdalene left and went to Jerusalem.

v After the crucifixion Crowley left Palestine and went to Rome.

v Out of Mary Magdalene had been driven seven demons.

v Crowley is a demon.

v Mary Magdalene saw an angel (or two angels) that told her Jesus had risen from the dead.

v Crowley has no problem with seeing angels.

v Jesus said to Mary Magdalene after resurrection: "Don't touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my father”.

v Crowley is demon, that could do it. ¨

v In apocryphal texts, Mary Magdalene is portrayed as a visionary and leader of the early movement.

v Crowley invented many things and was a leader of a sort on Earth.

v Three Jesus’ aphorisms are attributed Mary Magdalene: "The wickedness of each day [is sufficient]. Workers deserve their food. Disciples resemble their teachers." She is also described as: "she spoke this utterance as a woman who understood everything."

v Well, I don’t think like you but I think it’s a pretty good description of Crowley if you ask his co-workers.

v Jesus said he may make Mary Magdalene male to become equal men.

v Crowley changed after his death to male and also changed his name.

v The Gospel of Mary was probably written over a century after the historical Mary Magdalene's death. The gospel does not claim to have been written by her and its author is anonymous.

v Mary Magdalene’s gospel was found in Egypt covered in feathers.

10. So I think Crowley could be Mary Magdalene. Crowley and Jesus could be together. Crowley could be the one painted all the time on all the Mary Magdalene’s pictures.

The idea about Crowley being Mary Magdalene is not mine. It’s all tumblr.

#Good Omens meta #my first meta #Crowley as Mary Magdalene #some thoughts #my meta

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dearmrsawyer · 4 years

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attempting a bit of looking back and looking forward!

work stuff

wow. last year. what an unanticipated RIDE? good? bad? spectrum? my supervisor spent the first half of the year alternating between working from New Zealand and taking unpaid leave, both to stay with his elderly mother, and was deliberately very hands off during that period. I’ve always worked with very little oversight, but there were regularly decisions to be made that i considered above me. i spent a lot of this time floundering, mostly because he had indicated to me that he was going to resign, but didn’t do so until three months after telling me this, so i was never sure if i should defer to him, whether he cared, whether it was worth it since he would be gone shortly after making a decision, or whether i should wait because i didn’t want to be bound to a decision that may end up hurting the work i would need to do after he was gone.

it felt like six months of frustration and inaction on my part, and by the time he officially resigned in June i didn’t have time to deal with much of the decisions left pending through all this, because we were due to launch an online course that sucked up the second 6 months of the year lol. I knew it was coming but i had no idea of the timeline. i was brought in about 2 weeks before the course needed to go live, NOT ideal since i was the one responsible for all content on our online learning platform. which we upgraded! and so i had to relearn! and the course content was all modified from the face-to-face version i’m familiar with! All i remember from June/July is downloading all the apps i used at work onto my phone so i could keep adding things to my to-do lists from bed at 1am. i remember not sleeping much and editing online content at 9pm and having the Head of Health email me back to take the rest of the night off LOL. i am the kind who needs to finish a task in one sitting/have only minor loose ends to tie up because if i come back to it the next day i need to go over everything i did yesterday, since the act of sleep performs a full memory wipe on all my mental systems.

anyways it calmed down after July but it still took up the bulk of my workload for the rest of the year, so the rest of my duties (i.e. everything else that happens in the library because i am the one (1) library staff member D:) were really shafted. I feel really bad about that because i know the library suffered, but i also know there’s nothing i could do about it.

however i was also promoted to my supervisor’s old position so i’m officially Head of the library now!!!! i do feel like i earned it, and to be honest it won’t really change my role at all, my opinion will probably just be asked for more often. as i said, i always had very little oversight, partially because my supervisor trusted me to work independently, and partially because he split his role as an academic, so being head of the library was only 10% of his role. so thankfully there was no learning curve involved in this new role, its just business as usual! which is great because i truly didn’t have time for a learning curve lol! i got a bit of a raise, and i’ll be more involved in decisions that impact the library. i anticipate i will still be left out of the loop at times, purely because myself and the library live on the ground floor, and everyone else works on level 2. so the library falls into the trap of out of sight, out of mind very often, not through any malice, but because its just forgotten. in the last year though, maybe as a result of my supervisor leaving, i feel like the colleagues i’m closer to have put great effort into reaching out to me anytime they know a conversation that will affect the library is being had. this has really made me feel like i’ve got people looking out, so i still expect the library will be forgotten semi-regularly but that’s out of my control, and i will just do what i can with the help of friends!

so, goals: try to give all areas of the library equal attention, um perhaps convince someone to let me hire a second staff member lol??, maybe get a standing invite to one of the committees with executive staff so i can be in the loop on what’s like... happening generally, oh god sort out the ebook situation (currently: non existent and confusing to consider)

me stuff

due to a combination of factors (a few months of nausea, unbearable outdoor conditions, laziness) i didn’t start my usual six months of exercising before i once again switch off all movement for the winter months lol. since no longer having a dog, going on walks/jogs became really un-fun, but in the last few years i’ve found a new routine. i didn’t get back into this routine when i normally would, and my holiday ends this week, but i’m thinking i might loosen my plan this year. i’ve been good at eliminating any sense of guilt attached to ‘fitness’ the last few years, and replacing it with a satisfaction in feeling the capability of my own body. so my plan is, use the structure of a work week to build up my exercise routine, use more work mornings to try and fit in some exercise, go into work a little later when i want to because there are no repercussions on me or the library, and once winter hits try to go back to morning walks/jogs because they’re more bearable at that time of year. just to keep up some kind of activity year-long instead of stopping altogether.

my success in finishing killjoys last year taught me i should really trust in myself to write something i don’t think i’ll be able to write. i’ve got another idea (less ambitious) that i feel would be best written by someone else, but i’m eager to write it anyway! courageous writing! i was also successful at writing more casually with all the tiny pokemon pieces, and hope to continue writing casually. yesterday i listened to a BBC reading of Neil Gaiman’s short story Chivalry, and it reminded me why i love Gaiman’s short stories so much. i’ve always found short stories fairly unpalatable for my own tastes, because of the dissection involved, the hidden messages that take me back to critical reading in university. and critical reading is a GREAT thing, but when i just want a story? i’ve always found short stories impenetrable. But Gaiman’s short stories are so ‘i had a neat idea, here’s 1500 words, thanks for your time’. LOL like they don’t GO anywhere? there are still often layers that critical reading will pull out but sometimes its just like ‘here’s a concept, enjoy’. and i love that idea of no pressure writing! just here’s an idea! i got nothing else, i just like the idea! so here’s to more of that!

also i remember at the start of the year i said i wanted to be more engaged in the community i have on here, and for the first few months of the year really felt like i was failing. a lot of it was a side effect of all the uncertainty at work bleeding into my general state of being, my own emotional state in other areas, working through being a living person etc lol, but as the year wore on i really felt like i did do that! i’ve met more of you on here, interacted either a) more widely, or b) more deeply with some of you, and i feel like i’ve ‘played’ more, and i’ve loved it.

oh also my 2019 reading mission was to pull out any books i’d owned for 5-10 years, bought at another point in my life journey, and try as many as i could with the goal to get rid of any that no longer appealed to me. and i culled a healthy number of books! so this year is going to be about reading books i’m most excited to read. we’re following passion this year!

#key word: attempting #i've been writing this post in bits and pieces all week #its been hard to self reflect with the state australia is in but i go back to work next week and i wanted to do it before then #this is just thorough enough to probably be considered too long #so just long enough in my books!#tp

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boundinshallows · 4 years

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The ever wonderful @mintjamsblog asked for some of my favorite books, so in no particular order:

1. Passing - Nella Larsen

You know, it’s been years since I’ve read this novel/la, but it’s one that’s left an impression. Passing encapsulates the complexities of early 20th century race relations in America through Clare’s racial (and sexual?) passing. There’s a lot happening in such a short book.

“Money's awfully nice to have. In fact, all things considered, I think, 'Rene, that it's even worth the price.”

2. Call Me By Your Name - Andre Aciman

I first read this back in 2011/2012, and I didn’t think it could ever be adequately adapted into a film. (I was wrong). Aciman has this incredible ability to articulate the most difficult to express emotions/yearnings, particularly those associated with young love. I also love the impossibility of it all (which the film as conveyed). Happy endings are great and all, but give me realism almost any day of the week tbh. I have fan fiction for the curtain fic.

“Did I want him to act? Or would I prefer a lifetime of longing provided we both kept this little Ping-Pong game going: not knowing, not-not-knowing, not-not-not-knowing? Just be quiet, say nothing, and if you can't say "yes," don't say "no," say "later." Is this why people say "maybe" when they mean "yes," but hope you'll think it's "no" when all they really mean is, Please, just ask me once more, and once more after that?”

3. The Winternight Trilogy - Katherine Arden

Technically three books, I suppose. Winternight is a great series for people who are uncertain about fantasy, but who are fans of historical fiction. The series features a lot of magic on the periphery of the real world, which is a trope I LOVE. And the magic isn’t high fantasy magic, but comes in the form of Russian folklore. The heroine is lovely and the romantic subplot satisfying.

“All my life,” she said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me.”

4. The Book of the Ancestor Trilogy - Mark Lawrence

Oof, THIS SERIES. This series is in the same vein as Harry Potter in terms of premise in some sense. However, instead of a wizarding school, our heroine goes to a nunnery where they train assassin nuns. Magical assassin nuns. LOOK, it’s just good, okay? The first two books were perfect. The final book could have been another 100 pages or so, but still felt like a solid conclusion. Also, girls in love.

“IT IS IMPORTANT, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy Convent Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men.”

5. Mysterious Skin - Scott Heim

This book is a trigger-palooza, so be warned. I mentioned this book at some point last year. It’s been a few months, but whenever it pops into my mind, I automatically think “fuck”. The thing that Heim pulls off masterfully in this novel is the reader is more knowledgeable than one of the main characters in the WORST way possible. As Brian slowly starts remembering bits of his abuse and thinks it’s alien abduction (but you KNOW it’s not it at all and can piece what really happened in this alien abduction scenarios...fuck), there’s this overwhelming sense of dread. I need Heim to write a sequel to this book where Brian and Neil get loads of therapy. Like, so much therapy.

“It was a light that shone over our faces, our wounds and scars. It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels, basking in it. But it wasn’t, and we weren’t.”

6. The Masquerade - Seth Dickinson

This is an in-progress series, so I’m not sure what the final book count will be. It’s non-magical fantasy that digs deep into issues of colonialism and sexuality. There’s a war going on, and we see that war happen through the eyes of the most unlikely of all fantasy POV characters: an accountant. Yes, a whole epic series about war told from an accountant in service of the empire who settled her island home. The narrative is so complex that sometimes it makes ASOIAF feel as straightforward as Dr. Seuss. I struggled to keep up at times. It’s one of those books that you just have to let happen and try to hang on for the ride. I promise twists and turns like none other.

“Honor,” Apparitor murmured, “is just a credit rating for violence.”

7. American Gods - Neil Gaiman

Much like Winternight, what I love best about American Gods is the folklore and magic-at-the-periphery. As the title suggests, this feels like a uniquely American story to tell where Gaiman asks the question: what happens to the gods/beliefs of all those who immigrated to America? What happens when we no longer believe in those gods? (The STARZ adaptation does some stuff I really like, but drops the ball in other areas).

“Back in my day, we had it all set up. You lined up when you died, and you'd answer for your evil deeds and your good deeds, and if your evil deeds outweighed a feather, we'd feed your soul and your heart to Ammet, the Eater of Souls"

"He must have eaten a lot of people."

"Not as many as you'd think. It was a really heavy feather. We had it made special. You had better be pretty damn evil to tip the scales on that baby...”

8. Angels in America - Tony Kushner

So this is a play, not a book. However, I think it’s one of the most important pieces of fiction of the 20th century. Angels follows the story of Prior Walter, a gay man newly diagnosed with AIDS. I can’t quite explain exactly why I love it or why it’s so important really. I think it combines the uniquely American story (that I’ve mentioned in American Gods and even Passing) with complex storytelling and emotions (a la Call Me).

Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change? Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice. God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching. Harper: And then up you get. And walk around. Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending. Harper: That's how people change.

#book rec #books I've read

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philalethistry · 4 years

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WELP my birthday month was a bit of a rollercoaster ride. I thought about the cons of posting this but I’d like to record it, so that future me can look back and, depending on how the future goes, either feel validated or be glad that this is over. Warning: discussion of crappy mental health.

TL;DR Breakdown results in will to live and fuck current events I have a recliner

I’m going to start with today, Sept. 1, and work back, for reasons.

Today I drove to a furniture thrift store. This doesn’t sound like much, but I A. hate driving, especially to new places, B. am already in a pretty anxious state, and C. I got lost because the road I wanted to turn on wasn’t marked, nor looked like a road rather than an alley, and so I somehow spent two hours trying to find one store. (At one point I had to stop and get something to eat because I had started shaking. The cashier watched me struggle to free two bills from my wallet and then declined the change I owed her to avoid making me retrieve that too. I wonder if she thought I was high...)

The important thing about what I did today, is I went out to find the store, and even when I did not find the store and ended up circling back to my street, instead of going home and having a sandwich and watching Youtube, I turned around again. I know it’s partially because of this video’s explanation of why one gets more nervous trying to do something a second time after procrastinating or running away from it, as I’d always pin the anxiety on my guilt, instead of a fear instinct which is more managable. But I’m going to give dopamine where dopamine is due and also say that my eventual victory was partially because of the newfound strength I have in the aftermath of the freak mental storm that enveloped the start of August.

I know that no one is doing “””okay””” right now, because of Everything, and that is nicely validating, because I am not okay either. But it’s dissonant, because I’d often follow the lead of neurotypicals and high-functioning depressives and anxious people when I’m in a bad way. If THEY say things aren’t as hopeless as I think they are, they probably aren’t! While that helped, it also downplayed my brain issues, and now that everyone has the same opinions on the State of Things, I realized I didn’t have any idea of how to confront the bad shit on my own, and neither does anyone else.

I’m technically still quarantining by refraining from making a lot of trips out and from getting a job, and so the murky pea-soup fogs of the future unsettle me. I was pretty chipper for the larger part of quarantine, as an introvert. Then one day, the thought suddenly occurred to me of the sheer amount of time I’ve spent in quarantine, how COVID isn’t receding from Arizona, how I had to quit the first job I’d gotten in the face of anxiety and depression, of how much of my future rests on the coming election, and most of all of how I have no idea what my future holds, of where I’ll be five or ten years down the line. “In the same place” and “Somewhere else” seem equally intimidating.

And then hormones struck.

I’ve had bad depressive episodes; I’ve had bad days of anxiety; I’ve had bad PMS; and then I’ve simply indulged unhealthy negativity. All of these, combined, made for a surreal and frightening experience. Emphasis on surreal. Also, contextually, emphasis on frightening, obviously. There were many feelings. Emphasis on everything.

My mental space may be a mess but I’ve never been too concerned with dwelling on life and death, even when faced with the latter. It’s never been a point of any interest to me; in the face of mortality I’m pretty good at giving importance to the present moment and to my internal values, like “science cool,” “mocha good” and “drawing fun.” In fact since childhood (third grade. Is this a normal third grader thing??) I’ve been a fan of cheerful nihilism, IE “There isn’t a secret meaning to the universe therefore I can give it any meaning I can make! Anything is possible, things are great!” I didn’t really grasp the concept behind existential dread, it sounded like something that happened to movie characters when the writers didn’t know how else to portray angst. Oh boy, do I have a new emotion I won’t be able to forget. My natural disaster of a brain supplied me, among everything I was already experiencing, three (3!!!) different categories of existential crisis. I had to look it up. And the weird thing about this Satan’s asscrack of an episode, is that while I’m prone to spiraling rumination, normally I can distract myself, because it’s still just me, thinking unhelpful thoughts. This time, these thoughts, the shittiest thoughts I’ve ever had the displeasure of producing, were automatic. I was not getting stuck pondering one bad topic; everything I saw became, in real time, entangled in the web of thought pattern in the most natural way. And it was LOUD.

Have you ever thought, “I’ll sit on the couch, the couch is comfy. The couch did not exist until a few years ago, its lack of existence had no impact on anything in any meaningful way, and when it turns to dust it will be forgotten.” Because I myself had a teensy bit of an inkling that maybe that ain’t normal. The thing is, I knew I was only feeling this way because, well, I Was Feeling That Way, it’s just the mood; but being stuck in isolation, and with everyone else also troubled by issues of the past, the present and the future, knowing that didn’t help.

I can remain in a depressive / anxious state for a little while, but the actual peaks only last at most a couple of hours. This was Mt. Everrest AND it lasted a week and a half. I was at the end of my rope a day in and had no idea what to do about it, so I tried to do everything. The physical present felt empty, so I tried to fill it with media, literature, art, walks, family time. Problem is, “anhedonia” - a symptom of depression where you don’t get dopamine boosts from activities - cuts pleasure out of these things, so nothing held my interest, let alone made me feel motivated or remotely better. Another symptom of depression, weirdly enough, is the feeling of disgust - I wasn’t conscious of this symptom until it was magnified. I felt completely and utterly repulsed by everything around me. I first thought it was the clutter, then the way the furniture was arranged, then I thought I’d been inside too long so I took walks in the neighborhood when nobody was out. The confusion came when I disliked the trees, grass, and fresh air too - I had to Google my feelings to find out what the heck was going on.

Which brings me to my bedroom. My room is littered with memorabalia, I’m sentimental so I have little shrines of items from the past and of things I value. Some childhood toys and a handful of old trinkets, shelves dedicated to Pokemon and Neil Gaiman’s work, some references to Chicago and Polish heritage. My unhappiness with the situations of the present, while strengthened to an totally unnecessary degree, weren’t all inaccurate - and in combination with anhedonia and disgust, and the way I’d integrated this memorabalia into my sense of self even though they aren’t really relevant to me anymore, I found that I really really didn’t like my past or reminders of it. In a shocking unpredicted turn of tables, I no longer wanted to uphold who I once was, because it isn’t who I am now, and it’s not who I want to be.

And the revulsion of the past and the uncertain emptiness of the present culminates in a future that I feared, another emotion booted up to eleven. There was a big need to make my future and remake myself. The only places left comfort could be found were ones I hadn’t yet looked. At the same time I became sad in a powerful but vague way and desperately lonely - this part was definitely all the feral hormones - and I became obsessed, for a little while, with making sure that, when quarantine ends, I would get my social life in order. I preemptively joined groups and clubs in my local area online, which I’m still going to make good on later but maybe not to the all-encompassing extent I had in my mind at the time. Also, career hunting. (Also also, to combat a lack of control, I wanted to get my own place - but with the economy like That, and my ass like This, big alone time while also being very poor and probably overworked is not the best of ideas.)

So. The freak episode ended. And I knew. Both during. And afterwards. That I Do Not Want That to Happen Again. To put it lightly. So now I’m trying to find an antidepressant that works for me. I’ve been medicated for three weeks now. Lower anxiety, not many mood swings, but still anhedonia, and the aftertaste of existential dread which will forever haunt me. I’m completely overhauling my bedroom, because it was messy anyway and has basically looked the same since forever which can’t be good for my mental health. So there’s going to be new bedsheets (chocolate), new curtains to kill sunlight because while I enjoy it outdoors it makes the room feel exposed since the window is groundlevel and faces the street, a whole ass recliner thrifted for only 20 bucks(!) to go in a brand new study corner along with a nice aggressively patterned brown rug, and finally the grody offwhite walls will be repainted a warm inviting brown that was named “spiced cinnamon.” No matter what happens, I look forward to spending the winter in the study, invoking a cozy comfort the Danes call “hygge,” and hopefully building my gallery or participating in my interests, including fandom, in another way. And, once my budget allows it, getting some fucking therapy, what the fuck.

#long post #weezy lost their mind for a little while #so that's where I been #but at least I have motivation now #funny how fear can lead to positive changes like that

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giapism · 4 years

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January Reading Updates

Since we’ve just reached the end of the first month of 2020, I thought I’d take some time to share with you all what I’ve been reading and also write a short review about each book (else I’ll completely forget what I read by the end of the year...) The books are listed in the order that I completed them in.

(*): Read in Vietnamese

1. American Gods - Neil Gaiman

Neil is perhaps my favorite storyteller ever, and he particularly excels in building strange yet captivating worlds that do a great job of making humans seem more human than ever, despite the fact nothing remotely conforming to the human-norm happens (except marriage problems--I suppose even gods and demi-gods are dumb motherfuckers when it comes to love.)

American Gods follows Shadow, a widower freshly released from jail as he tags alongside a suspiciously rich “Mr. Wednesday” (later revealed to be an undercover God), on a quest to convince the old, forgotten Gods of America to rise up and fight the new Gods (Technology, Media etc.) The book pulls up many characters from Irish, Norse, Hindu, Slavic, African and Egyptian folklore and so on, and offers a very refreshing take on religion in modern society. Although Gaiman didn’t dive deep into any specific culture, it’s a helpful start to continue learning about religion and folklore all over the world. There is a lot of information and I can only imagine how painstaking the research process must have been.

Genre-wise, I don’t think this book fits into any at all. There’s history, fantasy, horror, maybe some thriller too. The idea of a giant war with hundreds of Gods is very ambitious, so the book does get a little messy and all-over-the-place at times. I’d call it “jigsaw-puzzling”, though, you’re given lots of information that doesn’t seem to make sense, but gradually everything comes together at the end and I absolutely love getting to the end and exclaiming “OH! So THAT’S what it was about” I find that the suspense-building in this book very well-done, too. The only criticism I have is that the ending felt a bit... lacking. You had all this build up, this gigantic feud, but everything’s resolved so simply you almost feel cheated. Or maybe I just have something against how Armageddon-type stories (where 2 sides fight to death) keep ending. Other than that, considering how hard this topic is to write about, I’m flabbergasted at how well Neil pulled it off.

Overall rating: 8/10

2. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - Mark Manson

Everyone was raving about it so I had to give it a go. For those of you who don’t know, this is a self-help book aiming to show you how to re-purpose your life, communicate effectively and live productively. Surprisingly, it only took me 2 afternoons to finish (I always find self-help books are easier to read than fiction, don’t know why). It’s written very informally and feels more like a humorous conversation with a loving but foul-mouthed friend, which makes it easy to digest whether you’re a 10th grader being peer-pressured to apply to US Colleges or a 53-year old electrician just realising you actually wanted to be a novelist. The only requirement for the the advice to be useful is that you kind of need to mess up a lot.

However, I found that there weren’t that many new things in the book. Mostly, it just reminded us of the things we already knew but consciously (or subconsciously) decide to shove under the carpet, OR put into words things we kind of already think, but don’t know how to explain. There is, no doubt, lots of helpful advice but like all self-help books, I find it too much to remember (unless you’re going to re-read it 20 times), and when I finished, out of the dozens of pieces of advice I only remembered one, “People who make changes aren’t flashy and don’t about what they’re going to do a lot. They just do it.” And from then on I shut up about my plans and just worked on them. Everyone’s going to have their own takeaways relevant to their lives, and I’d encourage you to read it just to see if you can find anything interesting. If out of 20 things, you remember 2-3 things that work for you, that’s still a win.

What I enjoyed the most was actually reading the stories/examples of real people at the beginning of each chapter before getting into the “lecture” part.

Overall rating: 6.9/10

3. Dracula - Bram Stoker

A classic in gothic horror. I actually started reading this last year and the first third of the book telling Jonathan’s fearful stays at Count Dracula’s castle had me hooked - it’s written in beautiful, elegant language which we hardly ever hear anymore, and does such a wonderful job conveying the characters’ fears, thoughts and emotions. But the moment Jonathan leaves the castle and the book switches to other characters’ stories, it just got so long and boring that I stopped reading for 3 months altogether and forgot which character was which because there were so many men. The “dull chapters” stretch on for at least a quarter of the book, and things only get interesting again when Dracula returns to the story and certain characters start turning into vampires. The rest of the story follows the “heroes” as they try to defeat the Count and bring peace to his victims, and although many parts are suspenseful and very clever, the ending is also so easily achieved that it’s a bit of a downer.

The whole book is written in diary entrees, journal entrees and letters of different characters (I’ve only read single-person diaries before) which was surprisingly pleasant in that you feel like you know the characters and by the end, you grow quite fond of them. It even inspired me to start keeping a diary again. It also made me start speaking like an old Englishman for the few days after completion, because I hadn’t really shaken off the language yet. Everyone seemed to be much more caring towards each other in those days, and through the letters I picked up some romantic phrases of which my favorite has been “And so, as you love me, and he loves me, and I love you with all the moods and tenses of the verb, I send you simply his ‘love’ instead.” Lovely, isn’t it?

Overall rating: 7/10

4. Days at Morisaki Bookstore / Những Giấc Mơ Ở Hiệu Sách Morisaki - Satoshi Yagisawa*

I’m not sure of the popularity of this book, it seems quite lowkey but has a surprising amount of reviews on Good Reads and even has a film adaptation. I happened to find it on my bookshelf and finished it in one afternoon (it was only 150-ish pages.)

Genre-wise, I’d call it Slice of Life although I don’t know if books are even allowed to be called that, or just anime. There is generally no real plot, only character development as Takako (main character) gets dumped by her cheating boyfriend and moves into her uncle’s antique bookstore to re-charge, gradually finding herself learning to appreciate books and the people around her. It’s a very simple storyline, and there’s almost nothing very special about the main character, but maybe that’s what makes it a relaxing read - because in reality, most humans aren’t the special snowflakes and oddballs we think. Admittedly, I started off finding Takako very annoying, but as she grew through the story, I found myself empathizing with her. For me, the book is a reminder to take things slower in life, remember to recharge and learn to see the beauty in simple things around you. It had a happy ending, too. Good for lazy reads, you don’t really have to think much - just sit there with a nice cup of tea and go with the flow.

Overall rating: 7/10

5. The Oldest Parents With The Youngest Child / Những Tháng Năm Rực Rỡ - Ae-ran Kim*

I. Loved. This. Even now it’s left me with a tumble of emotions that I don’t even know how to describe, and I can say for sure that it’s made it to my list of favorite books of all time.

The story recounts the life of a 17-year-old boy with progeria (a disease that makes his body age 4x as fast as a regular person, meaning he has the body of an 80-year-old) and his parents, who had him when they were 17. It talks of the struggles of teen parents learning to cope with an unintended pregnancy, their financial and mental hardships raising a child whilst also battling his illness, and also of the main character’s steel-hard resilience and love for life despite his condition. It actually made me feel ashamed of myself for being perfectly healthy, but not being as curious and hungry to learn, and most of all, to have a perfectly functioning laptop and not be writing. Other than that, it also humanizes persons with disabilities, showing that they too can fall in love, get anxious when ghosted and want to sneakily drink alcohol despite being underaged - anything a typical 17 year old might do. After this book, for the first time in a long time I felt that every aspect of life was truly wonderful and that I was lucky to be here. I also made a list of 30 challenges to do these coming months, to understand and enjoy life more and will keep you updated on my progress.

Even though the book is written from the perspective of a boy with progeria, the author herself is a perfectly healthy woman in her 40s (who did a lot of research before writing, I’m sure). Yet somehow she’s able to tell the story so vividly, convincingly and emotionally that I feel like I’m in his body, living his life and feeling his disappointment and excitement. The tone is so natural, so nonchalant it just feels like a leaf smoothly riding the breeze down the the ground. Reading this book, I’m reminded again of how powerful a tool literature is in sharing ideas, bridging humans and building empathy. I’m in awe of not just the main character for pushing through his difficulties the way he did, but also of the author for writing something so powerful it changed the way I looked at life. It makes me want to write stories like this one day, too. I just don’t know what to say about this book other than I really loved it.

Overall rating: 9/10

And that’s it for this month! I’ve only just gotten back on track with reading and remembering how fun it is. Hopefully someone will find this helpful and maybe pick up one of these books. I’ll see you guys next month!

#book review #american gods #the subtle art of not giving a f*ck #dracula #my brilliant life #kim aeran #days at morisaki bookstore #reading list #eng #books

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