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blackestnight · 2 months

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lucky numbers

a very happy birthday present for @nuclearanomaly! set in her adorable bookshop au which i love (and with a cameo from @aethernoise, thank you again for letting me borrow alyx). i know estinien and nini had traded numbers by the first time she went to one of his shows and i know in my heart of hearts it did not happen without significant embarrassment, so, behold: the annual tradition of bullying the shit out of estinien.

The best part of having friends was recruiting them for free labor—well, labor at the cost of cheap pizza and cheaper beer. The worst part of having friends was everything else.

“I find one makes faster friends with their neighbors by actually talking to them, rather than staring out the window,” Aymeric said, and Estinien scowled at his reflection in the glass. Beyond both of their ghostlike doubles, he could see the lights over the front door of Page 64 flicking on as evening fell.

“Don’t know why I’d bother when the friends I do have can’t mind their own bloody business,” Estinien snapped, and deliberately turned away from the window to lean back against the cool glass. It felt like bliss on the back of his head, easing the headache that was starting to form from the overwhelming smell of paint that filled the shop. “Am I paying you just to annoy me?”

“I come with a peace offering,” Aymeric assured him, and held up a slice of pizza balanced on a newsprint sheet. Both the edges of the paper and Aymeric’s fingers were smeared with red paint, though the pizza at least seemed clean. Estinien grunted and took the slice. “Have you been by the bookshop at all?”

“Too busy.” It was true enough, at least. Trying to organize equipment deliveries and inspections around painting and cleaning and the thousand other tasks he had to finish before opening day kept Estinien on his feet from sunup to sunset, it seemed, and whatever free time he had did not fall within normal business hours. He only caught glimpses of the owner when she stepped in and out of her own shop’s front door, hanging posters on the window or setting out little chalkboards with quotes from old novels. There seemed to be some sort of fantasy theme on this week, because there was a shaky outline of crossed swords in the corner of the slate that had nearly been smeared away by passersby, with little yellow lines around them like they were meant to glow.

(Idly he thought they could use a bit of shading for a more dynamic effect. Yellow and blue, maybe, in keeping with the pastels. A pink dragon and dusty orange flames crawling up the opposite corner. Deliberately two-dimensional, like illustrations in old folktales.)

Aymeric, the fucker, waited until Estinien had a mouthful of pizza to clap a hand on his shoulder. “If I may offer a bit of unsolicited advice, my friend,” he said, without a pause for Estinien to swallow and tell him you may not, you dick. “Sometimes it does one wonders to be a tad selfish. Taking a bit of time for your own happiness can bring about miracles.”

He wasn’t looking at Estinien anymore—Aymeric’s voice had gone soft and wistful, and he’d angled himself to lean against the window so he could look across the room to where Alyx was crouched on the floor, cutting in the corners by the floorboards with an angled brush and snickering over something with Hilda. She looked up as if responding to her name, improbable as it was with Ysayle’s little speaker filling the shop with screeching guitar riffs, and answered Aymeric’s soppy smile with a wink and a wave from her free hand.

Estinien swallowed his mouthful of pizza. “If you make me vomit,” he warned, “I’ll be sure to aim for your shoes.”

“Just consider it,” Aymeric said, and strode across the room to join the ladies in their corner, where Alyx busied herself painting a lopsided heart on his forearm with a brush far too wide for the task.

Estinien folded the remainder of his pizza slice in half to shove it in his mouth, dusted his hands free of crumbs, and resolved to ignore the sunset washing the shop across the street in enticing golds and blues.

—

His resolve lasted exactly as long as it took to finish peeling the tape from the base trim, and then the paint fumes became overwhelming enough that all of them had to step outside—his fault for scheduling a painting day before the aircon system had been set up, he figured. Hilda and Ysayle planted themselves on the front sidewalk, leaning back against the building’s facade, and propped the front door open with Hilda’s backpack.

Aymeric of course took the opportunity to sling an arm over Estinien’s shoulders and steer him across the street, like an obnoxiously polite sheepdog.

“If my shop gets robbed, you’re paying for it,” Estinien grumbled.

“Watching any would-be trespassers confronting Ysayle and Hilda would be worth the cost of admission,” Aymeric said. “Have a little faith, my friend. And be a little selfish.”

Aymeric was not so inelegant as to shove Estinien through Page 64’s front door, but it was a near thing.

The tinkling bell over the door disguised the sound of his stumbling footsteps, but didn’t entirely manage to cover the squeak of surprise from the front counter.

“Oh!” said the little shopkeeper as she pushed her glasses up her nose. “Hi, Mister Borel. I wasn’t expecting to see you or, um, or your friend.”

(Green eyes like fresh spring growth, and hair the color of lavender. The pastels really would suit her—suit her shop well.)

“My apologies for stopping in so late, Miss Ninira,” Aymeric said. “I happened to be in the area helping Estinien with his set-up, and he’s been so eager to come by”—Aymeric would have done his ballroom teacher proud, Estinien thought, with the way he pivoted to avoid having his foot stomped on— “so I thought I would join him. Have you finished the most recent Sirens?”

“Oh! No, not yet. I’ve been busy sorting new inventory…I like your, erm, tattoo?” Ninira said, with a fluttery little gesture to Aymeric.

“A new acquisition,” Aymeric said drily, and held out his arm for closer inspection. Alyx’s painted heart had blossomed rapidly into a field of truly shitty flowers, and eventually the entire inside of his forearm had been covered with a solid coat of red; Hilda had taken a Sharpie to the new canvas to give him a skull-and-crossbones ‘tattoo’ so awful Estinien had felt morally obligated to disguise it in a half-sleeve of boring but inoffensive thorns and roses. “Estinien’s work, actually. If you’ll believe it he’s actually far better in his preferred medium.”

“It’s really good,” Ninira said, and then looked up at Estinien. “Are you the owner of the place across the street?”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. S’posed to open in a couple of weeks.”

“I always say that if I am ever possessed with the desire to be stabbed thousands of times by a needle, Estinien will be the only one I trust to do it,” Aymeric said. “I’m going to browse for just a moment before you close.” And with that the cur ducked around Estinien and vanished into the stacks.

Having friends was the worst.

Ninira fussed with the counter for a moment, dropping Estinien’s gaze. “I guess my shop must not look that impressive compared to yours,” she said. “I’ve seen the renovations—just, just as I pass by sometimes—and I can tell it’s going to look really…cool once you’ve finished,” she said.

(Dusky rose on her cheeks. Was she blushing?)

“No,” Estinien said, and flinched when it came out gruff. He cleared his throat. “Your place looks good, I mean. I like the chalkboards you do.”

“Really?” Ninira said, and looked back up so quickly he might have called it a flinch. “I mean, thank you. I’m not great at lettering or art or…things.”

“Really,” Estinien said. “I think they look nice. Readable.” Readable. Fury’s tits. “I mean—sometimes when people do hand-lettering it’s so gods-awful you can’t tell what it’s meant to say. Yours is nice though.” He scuffed his boot against the floor. “What kind of chalk do you use?”

Ninira uncapped and re-capped a pen. “Just sidewalk chalk. Kids’ art supplies.”

From somewhere across the aisles, he swore he heard Aymeric cough.

“I’ve got some chalk paints you could borrow,” Estinien said. “They’re more durable. Or—if you wanted,” he said, “I could do a couple signs for you sometime.”

“Really?” Ninira said again. “I’d—yes, if it’s no trouble. That would be nice. Thank you,” she said.

“Yeah,” Estinien told her. “Here, I have—” He rummaged in his pocket. His ‘business cards’ were nothing fancy, no use wasting money on nice ones before the shop was even open, and he found himself regretting his frugality when the card he pulled out was plain white and grubby from the dye on his jeans. Thank Halone there was another pen on the counter so he didn’t have to ask for the one from her hand. He scrawled his tomephone number across the back of the card and laid it on the counter. “You can text me or something when you want me to do one for you. A sign.”

“I will!” Ninira said. “I’ll text you now, actually. So you have my number.” Estinien twirled the pen across his knuckles while she wrested her tomephone from her pocket—it looked massive in her hands—and carefully tapped against the screen. After a minute his own phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out to show a notification: This is Nini from the bookshop! with a little smiley face.

“Thanks,” he grunted, and obligingly entered a new contact: Nini, and then, after hovering over the keyboard for a moment, the smiling emoji with the glasses. “Just let me know.”

“I will,” she said. “Thank you, Estinien.”

Aymeric reappeared then, a slim paperback held in his hand. “My apologies again for coming in so close to closing time,” he said, as Ninira scrambled to shove her phone away. “I hope the rest of your evening is peaceful, at least.”

“You’re fine,” Nini said, as she punched Aymeric’s purchase into the register. “Thank you for coming. I hope I’ll see you again soon?” But when she asked, her eyes slid over to Estinien.

“Naturally,” Aymeric said. “Both of us, I’m sure. Have a good night, Miss Nira.”

“G’night,” Estinien grunted, and ducked out of the door.

“Night!” Ninira chirped.

—

In a fantastic display of restraint, Estinien had managed to wait until they were back across the street before pulling Aymeric into a headlock, and couldn’t even bring himself to regret it when his phone buzzed that night with a new text. Would you like to come by tomorrow to do a sign?

Sounds good, he sent back, and went to grab his sketchbook.

#writing - mine #aymeric de borel #estinien wyrmblood #ninira #alyx #HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAYNE #i was going to do something else but then this idea possessed me #so. ENJOY

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oshiawaseni · 10 months

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I recently am now looking through the mha fandom for the first time and discovered your blog. Looking through your posts and analysis you seem like you’re quite knowledgeable about Horikoshi’s writing or him in general and are confident about the potential of bkdk being canon. In fact, quickly looking through the bkdk tags, a lot people on here are quite confident about the relationship, whether viewing it platonic or romantic. Now I kinda expected that, as a bkdk shipper as well, but I became confused when I found alot of people implying that Horikoshi “ships” bkdk or encourages it. For the longest time I’ve only ever consumed the anime and never really knew what’s been going on in the fandom. So I don’t know much about Horikoshi, but I swear I heard way back about him not liking the ship bkdk and deliberately implying the relationship between Izuku and Uruaka. The questions I’m getting at here is, what makes you think that Horikoshi wants bkdk to be canon and is there any hints about it outside of the main anime/manga that supports that? I acknowledge how it’s hinted at that bkdk heavily “need each other” or something like that in the anime/manga, I just always thought it was always going to be platonic and that Izuku and Uruaka will be end game. Maybe it is that and everyone is just joking about Horikoshi, idk I’m confused and lost lol.

Okay what you're asking for is a little strange, because Hori's storytelling really does speak for itself, his heart shows up the most in his writing of bkdk, but here goes…!

In regards to Hori’s feelings about them, hmm I’m going to get there one day soon(tm), but I’ll give you two examples outside the manga that show bkdk are important to him and why Hori is a bkdk like us.

First is when an interviewer was asking about Kirishima saving Katsuki and Hori responded to him with a sentiment that sounded a lot like “actually the takeaway from this scene was bkdk. that it was a bittersweet moment because Izuku couldn’t be the one to take his hand… but the decision was made." He really deflected the topic away from Kirishima and pointed at bkdk "Look at them instead".

Showing importance of that decision to bkdk’s development because THEY are what’s most important to the series, not any of their relationships with the main side characters. (And then we got the parallel to this where Katsuki feels he didn’t have what it took to take Izuku’s hand during the Deku retrieval arc. Regrets, regrets, regrets... everywhere. Now Katsuki is dead and Izuku "still hasn't told him ____")

My second example is something I bring up on twitter a bit, but that's only because it's so validating.

So you know when Katsuki died, every bkdk was crying and/or freaking out, right? Back then the mood was… “How is Izuku going to react to this?” And in a lot of bkdk’s hearts, we imagined Izuku kneeling at Katsuki’s side, embracing him, possibly acting very protectively over his body. People drew fanart of this.

I also had this kind of vision of him... but back then, MANY of us did.

But for the most part, we knew it wouldn’t be practical in the middle of a fight setting and then come January, Horikoshi showed us he felt the exact same way as us about them with his Volume 37 cover “illustration.” It was like a brainworm image of Izuku and Katsuki he couldn't get out of his head unless he drew it for the cover, something he felt bkdk deserved, but he couldn't give it to them in the manga because of the unrealism and impracticality of it happening mid-fight.

What I’m saying is: when Katsuki died, all bkdks dreamed of Izuku holding him close and/or protecting him and Horikoshi turned that collective vision, that many of us felt in our hearts, into a freaking volume cover.

As bkdks, we have this idea in our heads of these characters; what motivates them, what or who are important to them, because this far along the story, these characters are basically writing themselves. And by him and us connecting on this feeling Izuku has with Katsuki, Hori is confirming the way we see Izuku and the importance of his intense love for Katsuki as "the correct version" of Izuku that also exists in HIS mind, and he showed his hand to us of him being the biggest bkdk out of all of us. He quite literally is our King of BkDk.

The reveal of this cover is the moment I knew, without a doubt, that Hori was one of us. And that's not even factoring in that Edgeshot quote. Even that is a whole thing in itself to unpack, which I've done multiple times already.

If Hori's chosen composition and overall mood for this cover weren't already damning enough evidence for his love of bkdk and intent on making them canon, the other thing of note is that the red fingers in their background are HEAVILY inspired by Berserk.

When I saw it, I got flashbacks of the eclipse, and the hand that lifted Griffith out of Guts' reach. It also turns out there was a very similar "lovers" pose between Guts and Casca for that eclipse content. And then there are all of those Spider-Man death embraces with Gwen Stacy.

The inspirations for this volume 37 for the hero comic-loving Horikoshi are quite clear: Izuku is embracing his future lover.

#bkdk #bkdk canon #bakudeku #dkbk #kana writes #asks #btw anon hori hasn't said anything about izuocha being romantic himself - izuochas like to make up a lot of unsubstantiated claims #it's probably something like that

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crossroadart-seabear · 8 months

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Sketch vs Final

I dont do these very often and I don’t know why, they’re fun to look back on.

I remember this particular scene from my book being in my head and written for nearly a year before I could illustrate it. But when it came to drawing the scene it became one of those examples of a composition that looked good in my head but did not translate into 2 dimensions. Took some trail and error on the sketch front to figure out how to get both Theo and Marcus expressively in the scene with all that scaffolding and space to contend with. Not to mention that the tone and the weather did not match 😂, which isn’t necessarily bad, like it was a deliberate choice when writing it, that the ominous weather was not being taken overly seriously by one very inebriated little shit. However, it wasn’t an illustration that wasn’t intended to be taken as seriously as that kind of weather usually impresses upon. Liberties were taken with the saturation as a result 😂.

Jeez that’s a lot of text, that almost looks like one of my patreon posts 🧐, wtf happened there, I must have disassociated or something.

My links, because Idk… actually I really don’t, why would you want to know more? You don’t need to know more, I assure you.

#the henchmens guide #theo cooper #bear pettigrew #crossroad art #urban fantasy #urban fantasy books #illustration #fantasy

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tawus · 10 months

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A birthday addition to No Cure [Gojo x Reader]

Rolling your tired neck and taking your shoes off on the engawa, you entered.

How odd it felt to enter not a tiny 1LDK that you were renting in Tokyo, but a palace-like traditional Japanese temple. You would’ve felt like an intruder if not for the exclusive pass granted to you in the voice of Gojo Satoru: “Make yourself at home” – a sentence of so many words that leased this space to you indefinitely, made this abode yours absolutely. Made you feel at home.

That same voice now punctured your thoughts as your fingertips held on to the traditional wooden partition.

“Okaeri, sensei!”

“Oh!” you turned in surprise to his mop of white hair, his long body sprawled at the centre of the tatami floors, from where Satoru beamed at you with his rows of brilliant teeth.

You snapped the wooden partition closed behind you.

“You! You’ve got a lot of nerve barging into my office today and scaring off my patient like that!” you stomped into the room towards the angelic man who kept smiling at you faultlessly, seemingly without a clue.

He kept on smiling and even starting to point a clueless finger at himself, as if asking, “are you talking about me?” – all the way until you reached him and rooted your legs into the floor before him like two pillars.

“Yeah, you! Yuito-san already blabbed to my other patients that there is some possessive indecent Gulliver in my office. Didn’t you know it’s a small town? Rumours go around just like that!” you snapped your fingers to illustrate your point.

But Gojo didn’t seem particularly bothered – though, more…mystified? His blues above his shades swirled into the distance with contemplation as he started to get up and brought two long fingers to his chiselled chin.

The emergence of his giraffe-like meters made you pause and you stared at his looming face, the cottony fit of his ivory long-sleeve tee, the unfolding of his roomy grey pants, and the shimmer of his moonstone skin as it reflected the sunlight with each of his moves.

His blue globes rolled within the milky whites of his eyes, refracting the rays of sunlight every which way, to look at you once more. He unwittingly interrupted your respiratory functions again as your heart skipped a beat and your anger diluted.

“Possessive indecent Gulliver, huh?” he slowly echoed you with his lips morphing from one perfect shape to another, as one corner of his smile tugged up in emerging delight.

Your awed brain was a tad slow in registering what he said, but one by one his words trickled down through your convolutions.

A tick of your wristwatch. Two more.

“THAT is the part that’s important to you?” you exclaimed loudly, throwing your hands up in exasperation.

But Satoru caught them mid-air, his large fingers curled around your wrists, and his forearms kissed yours. Inside the frame made of your raised arms, he tilted his head, spilling his smile and snowy bangs to the side.

His voice was profound, intimate, and meant just for you to hear when he spoke, “I don’t want to do things that harm you. If I did, I’m sorry."

Disarmed, eyes wide, you stared into his sincere blues propped up by his useless black shades.

“But at the same time, I want these people to talk about me in your office. Me in your home. Me in your life,” his lips continued to move beautifully, as his oceanic gaze flowed down to your mouth, before lifting deliberately back up to meet yours.

Your brows quivered as he continued, feeling all too acutely how his thumbs had started rubbing soft circles over your pulse points.

“And I want them to know that you’re celebrating your birthday with me.”

At this proclamation his lips slowly stretched into a broad, brilliant, genuine grin that held nothing back – whereas your brows skyrocketed and eyes expanded in sheer surprise.

“How the fuck did you know my birth date?” you erupted, arms still raised up and within his hold.

Satoru’s blues jumped between your eyes, before he said with an obvious tone, “It’s on your dossier.”

“It’s on my dossier,” you both spoke in the same breath since you remembered soon enough that he had a whole freaking file on you – your birth date being one of the least sensitive bits of info in it.

You extricated your wrists from his hold and he let you. Shaking out your arms, you set your bag down on the floor.

“Aaand I maybe was there as your nurses surprised you with a cake…” he added after a moment.

“You were spying on me all day?!” you gawked at him.

“Only until they started singing Happy Birthday…” he admitted, raking a hand through his silky hair.

You came to a sudden realisation. “Until they sang…? But that was at the very end of the workday, like at 5! You left my office around 1 – just how long were you snooping arou–”

“Speaking of!” he clapped his hands together all of a sudden, moved behind you, placed his large palms on your shoulders and began leading you into the next room, whilst signing triumphantly, “Uuuu–reshii na kyou wa!”

“Ugh,” you rolled your eyes but your grin was betraying your undeniable joy.

In the next room, through the open partition you noticed a low kotatsu table with a perfect birthday arrangement on it. Your breath held and your eyes teared up behind your glasses despite yourself. It was breathtaking – the care, the attention, the time he’d put into it.

You could see it from the balloons that rose up from the table with words “Happy Birthday” on them, from the bottle of expensive champagne lodged in a bucket of ice, the vase with freshly cut red roses, the plates of fresh hors d'oeuvres – which you were sure he didn’t make himself, as you’d noted over the time you lived in the same house his annoyance with all crafts tiny, but he didn’t have to as they were lovely and made your mouth water already – and the regal item of them all: the beautifully crafted birthday cake atop a cake stand at the centre of the table, with unlit candles stuck into it in a perfect circle.

“It’s not much but…” Satoru said behind you, kissing your ear shell with his breath, before breaking out in another obnoxiously loud bout of, “Tanoshii na kyou wa!”

You chuckled, though your eyes were still teary and blurring up. Gojo Satoru spent time on this for you. Gojo Satoru, who had a million things on his mind: the fate of the whole country for one, the safety of his several students for two, and maybe even the future of the entire jujutsu world for three. The man who was the pillar and support for millions. He did all this, put you first before those millions, even if just for a few hours, and then dared to make light of it.

You smiled through your happy tears. How dare he?

The man in question continued to vocalise behind you, loudly and with obvious exaggeration, as you two came up to the decorated table.

“Satoru, the candles on the cake aren’t lit…” you quietly motioned to the cake on the table that had its candles stuck into the frosting but none were yet blazing with any fire.

“Tanjoubi omedetou!” he sang without missing a beat, but the index and middle fingers of his hand quickly flicked towards the cake and the candles lit up with bright orange fires just like that.

Barking out laughter at his “magic trick”, you shook your head at him, while he continued to bellow in his melodic voice, “Outa wo utaimashou!”

You rolled your eyes at him again, your grin no longer possible to hide, and you approached the low-set table with your cake on it. You lowered yourself to the floor and so did Satoru, plopping his butt on the tatami right next to you.

The burning glow of its rows of candles reflected in your eyes, with the brightest lettering sitting in the centre: “Happy Birthday, y/n!”

You searched for the word ‘sensei’ after it (the one Junko and your nurses used for you), or for the impersonal ‘-san’ honorific (the way any other acquaintance would’ve done for you. Though, you may have settled for ‘-sama’ in the case of Satoru…). But no, it was just ‘y/n. Just ‘Happy Birthday, y/n!’

No honorifics. No qualifiers. Like you were Satoru’s family. Like you were his closest lover. Like you were his.

Was he perhaps lazy with the lettering and was hoping you wouldn’t know the intricacies of the Japanese language? You looked to him by your side, his long legs bent before him, black shades long slid down his nose, blue eyes sparkling brighter than diamonds.

“Happy birthday, baby,” he said simply and cemented it.

‘Baby’?

The pit of your stomach churned and tingled while your heart raced.

You were his.

Reassured by his captivating smile, you turned back to the candles burning on your cake in orange tandem, and with a wish so sacred and deep to your heart, you blew them all out, inhaling the bittersweet smell of smoke and frosting.

But the moment you did, instead of the hearty applause you expected as with any other candle blowing – what came instead was a sudden and heated kiss from Satoru who broached you from your side.

The same mouth – yours – that blew out the flames on the candles got captured in a flame of a different kind. Satoru’s large hand cupped your cheek, holding and guiding your face into the perfect angle for him to kiss you deeply, smoothly, thoroughly. As he seamlessly removed both your glasses and set them on the floor, just for a moment you’d lamented not having tasted the sweetness of your birthday cake, but all of that dissipated when you tasted the sweetness of his mouth, drowned in the velvety smoothness of his touch, and melted within the smelted ore of his embrace.

The way his fruity lips glided against yours, the way he held you – how he drew you in, held your face up, stroked your skin – the way his breath replaced oxygen inside your lungs – all of this, oh god, it wasn’t kissing. It was more than that, more than any type of kissing could ever be.

All of your tiredness melted away in the face of the heat that swirled and wetted like a whirlpool your core. Raking through the silky white texture of his hair, you moaned into his mouth, kissing back with lust, abandon, with everything.

When Satoru scooted closer, when his long legs opened up and cradled you in between his thighs, when his decadent woody scent was all you could smell, when his heart tried to touch yours through his chest – it was not kissing. It was tasting. It was greed. It was demanding. Symbiosis. No – parasitism, like he couldn’t live without you. Like he had to nibble on your lips and suck on your tongue to live another minute.

With such desperation did he envelop you in the heat of his arms, drawing you fully to himself, lighting your joined hearth in between his own thighs, holding you atop them and kissing up towards your lips. A salmon swimming upstream. A swan craning its neck to drink the first thaw of a frozen waterfall to slake its thirst. Heavy ocean whitecaps reaching for the Moon as she rose high up, just like you. Such was his yearning as his strong fingers imprinted your skin through your clothes and dragged them shamelessly up, fingerprinting your spine, pawing at your nape, and pushing your lips down into his own.

Though you were hovering, it was impossible to not feel the hardness of him – engorged, domed, full and filling his trousers so much that it brushed up on your centre and tried to fill you too.

“Ahh…Satoru,” you were already in moans and liquid against his lips.

He kissed your chin, tracing his cheek down your thorax, relishing how you vibrated against him. How you were in his arms. How he could mould you in his hands. How he could encircle them around you and no, definitely, not trap you. Not make you his forever. Not let you go – ever.

“y/n,” he spoke your name against your skin, drawing a moan of satisfaction from you at how it sounded in his mouth.

“Yeah?” you barely managed to word.

He tilted his head back and you saw two cauldrons of blue magical potion roiling beneath you (douse me!).

“Don’t spend another birthday without me,” the cauldrons spoke to you in his voice like a magic spell.

But it was needless.

Cauldrons were unnecessary. Any magic was wasted.

You couldn't spend a day without him anymore.

#no cure #no cure birthday special #no cure bday special #jjk #gojo satoru #gojo satoru x reader #gojo satoru x you #gojo satoru x y/n #gojo satoru x black!reader #gojo x you #gojo fluff #gojou x y/n #gojo fanfic #gojo imagine

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no-side-us · 2 months

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The Invisible Man, Ch. 2 - Mr. Teddy Henfrey's First Impressions

I thought this chapter illustrated well Griffin's basic tendencies and how he tries to force himself into niceties when he knows that's how he'll get what he needs. Whereas in the first chapter Griffin was dismissive of Mrs. Hall's attempts to draw out information, here Griffin willingly gives her what she wants:

“My reason for coming to Iping,” he proceeded, with a certain deliberation of manner, “was ... a desire for solitude. I do not wish to be disturbed in my work. In addition to my work, an accident—” “I thought as much,” said Mrs. Hall to herself.

But he only gives her what she wants, with just enough to explain the strangeness he knows she's been curious about. He's being careful, telling her about some nebulous "accident" he knows she already suspects, while also telling her he's a scientist to explain the lab equipment and desire for isolation. And all of this is because at the end of the day, he needs Mrs. Hall. She's the innkeeper and thus can help him he gets these things. He needs her, so he's playing nice. And when that's done?

“Certainly, sir,” said Mrs. Hall. “And if I might make so bold as to ask—” “That I think, is all,” said the stranger, with that quietly irresistible air of finality he could assume at will. Mrs. Hall reserved her question and sympathy for a better occasion.

He dismisses her just as quickly as he did before. And it's interesting in comparison with how he treats Mr. Teddy "Clock-Jobber" Henfrey. At first Mr. Henfrey was going to leave before Griffin says otherwise:

“But I’m really glad to have the clock seen to,” he said, seeing a certain hesitation in Mr. Henfrey’s manner. “Very glad.” Mr. Henfrey had intended to apologise and withdraw, but this anticipation reassured him.

Griffin is doing the same thing, being polite, playing along with the norm, so it'll all work out the best for him. I assume he needs the clock for his experiments in addition to just being a generally useful item to have working properly. But it's also much less important than privacy or his lab equipment, so when Griffin realizes Teddy is "humbugging" he becomes really upset.

He looked up as if to take aim with that introductory shot. “The weather—” he began. “Why don’t you finish and go?” said the rigid figure, evidently in a state of painfully suppressed rage. “All you’ve got to do is to fix the hour-hand on its axle. You’re simply humbugging—”

I love this scene. It's a conglomeration of things Griffin finds annoying: another person, wasting time, attempting to socialize. I'm sure on some level he also feels this rage with Mrs. Hall or really most people, but again, since in this case Teddy is much less important in the grand scheme of things, Griffin has a harder time suppressing the rage.

Moving on, one thing I want to note is that Griffin is telling the truth when he says he's a scientist, or "experimental investigator" as it's referred to here. And this truth impresses Mrs. Hall. I don't remember if this is explicitly stated later, but I think one reason Griffin probably felt more comfortable moving his experiments to Iping, aside from the isolation provided by a small country village, was because he doubts anyone here would be smart enough to figure out his work. Griffin will also exhibit his streak of self-superiority later, so I wouldn't be surprised if he does say something to this effect. Mr. Hall does take a look at a sheet of Griffin's math without deriving anything from it:

And after the stranger had gone to bed, which he did about half-past nine, Mr. Hall went very aggressively into the parlour and looked very hard at his wife’s furniture, just to show that the stranger wasn’t master there, and scrutinised closely and a little contemptuously a sheet of mathematical computations the stranger had left.

This is also coupled with the sort of disbelief in regards to Griffin's invisibility. In a very vivid scene at the beginning, Mrs. Hall sees Griffin's invisible face:

But for a second it seemed to her that the man she looked at had an enormous mouth wide open—a vast and incredible mouth that swallowed the whole of the lower portion of his face. It was the sensation of a moment: the white-bound head, the monstrous goggle eyes, and this huge yawn below it.

But she assumes it was a trick of the light and moves on. Griffin is trying to make sure people won't see his work, and the only way the people of Iping could ever figure it out would be if they saw him, but if they did see him, there's also a layer of rationality that would prevent them from realizing it. But obviously that will only last for so long cause they do eventually figure it out, though that's for another chapter.

Anyways, Griffin's reputation spreads! First to Mr. Henfrey who then tells Mr. Hall about it. Henfrey is already speculating about Griffin hiding from police or being some sort of scam lodger:

And yet again, “Seemingly not. If the police was wanting you you couldn’t be more wropped and bandaged.” He told Hall how his aunt at Hastings had been swindled by a stranger with empty portmanteaux.

More rumors will spiral from here, and these two suspicions are sort of a summary of what they comprise: Griffin being some criminal/swindler/liar/conman, hiding from police or tricking the people of Iping or both. Again, I think if the book wasn't so literally titled "The Invisible Man," we the reader would be attempting to figure out which one of these theories is true.

I don't have much else to say. I actually found this a pretty funny chapter: Griffin's behavior, Mr. Hall's meaningless gestures of power, all good stuff. I look forward to the next one.

#the invisible man #the invisible mail #invisible man #tumblr tags are weird #cause “the invisible man” and “invisible man” are two different tags #a post tagged only one won't show up in the other #but also if you search “invisible man” you get posts from both tags #cause search results are different from clicking on tags #evidently #strange #hg wells

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ohc-and-the-music-tapes-archive · 23 days

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Review of shows by Brian Dewan, the Music Tapes and Nana Grizol at The Vera Project, Seattle. Seattle Weekly, 20 February 2009.

"It’s easy to belittle the Music Tapes for their experimental, whimsical ways, but live, it’s quite an enjoyable spectacle. I mean, Julian made a drum out of a giant soup pot and a drumstick out of a small electric blue dodgeball, bouncing the thing in time to the music. It doesn’t get much better than that."

"And yet, there’s a genuine sweetness about Julian’s songs. The 7-Foot-Tall metronome only performed once– “he has a broken arm,” Julian explained– but Static the singing television made a few appearances, as did Badger the saw, which is the same saw Julian Koster played on NPR."

Music Tapes performed at the Vera Project on Thursday, Feb. 20. Photo by Garrett Mukai.

Last night’s show was, hands down, one of the most bizarre shows I’ve ever witnessed. Believe you me, I have seen a lot of weird shit go down on a stage…but nothing quite like this. Your Heart Breaks, Clyde Petersen’s songwriting project, opened. While I was standing there being charmed by Clyde’s stage banter (which I like at least as much as, if not more than, her songs themselves), I saw a distinguished-looking gentleman wearing a green blazer walk up behind me to listen to the music. Because I was probably the fourth-oldest person in the room– the median age in that crowd was about 18– I admit, I made an erroneous assumption. “Aww,” I thought to myself, “someone’s dad wouldn’t let them come to a show alone.”

Surprise! Turns out that guy was not someone’s overprotective papa at all, but Brian Dewan, one of those artists who write jarring, abrasive songs with lyrics about as subtle as getting hit in the face with a tire iron. The dude practically abused the old autoharp he played, strumming it so hard I thought the thing might just give up and break, all whilst singing songs in a surprisingly pleasant voice. Except the songs were about the end of the universe. And putting your money where your mouth is. Literally. “Eat it!” he shouted. “Eat it!” I was flummoxed. Happily, he took breaks from the autoharp abuse to play the accordion, though the instrumentals seemed more of a cursory, deliberately obnoxious accompaniment to his weird-ass poetry than actual music. Then, when it was over, I overheard somebody meowing (yes. Like a cat). Then I saw Julian Koster walk by, carrying a plastic camel attached to the end of a stick, with a little hollowed-out bowl where its hump should’ve been. I laughed– but then again, I have a tendency to quack like a duck when I’m irritated. Obviously, we weirdos were all in the right place. Nana Grizol, on the other hand, was the most “normal” (if you will) act of the evening. A big band with trumpet, baritone trumpet, clarinet, harmonica, a shitload of stringed instruments and two drummers. Though skeptical at first, I eventually decided that the band’s bright, brassy pop songs and exuberant optimism were quite charming; meanwhile, the crowd bobbed along to the music like quail. Adorable.

Afterward, Brian Dewan returned and projected a series of illustrations that told a fable, which he narrated, about a cock and hen. I’ll save you some time and just tell you that everyone dies at the end. There were some uncertain chuckles. Nobody seemed to know what to make of that dude. I still don’t. Then the Music Tapes came out; first, Julian Koster played a song by himself, but then some of the folks in Nana Grizol came out to support. It’s easy to belittle the Music Tapes for their experimental, whimsical ways, but live, it’s quite an enjoyable spectacle. I mean, Julian made a drum out of a giant soup pot and a drumstick out of a small electric blue dodgeball, bouncing the thing in time to the music. It doesn’t get much better than that.

I tend to prefer Music Tapes songs that have more fully-fleshed out instrumentals; both Julian’s voice and his banjo strumming have a tinny, twanky timbre that accompaniment can offset. Alone, those two things are almost too intense for me. It’s the sort of music that feels more like a conceptual performance art installation than an actual pop band that someone might want to listen to on a road trip. In other words, this is not and will never be Neutral Milk Hotel. And yet, there’s a genuine sweetness about Julian’s songs. The 7-Foot-Tall metronome only performed once– “he has a broken arm,” Julian explained– but Static the singing television made a few appearances, as did Badger the saw, which is the same saw Julian Koster played on NPR. Julian came down to the floor so Badger could sing “The First Noel” for us, which was lovely, and really made me wish I lived in the Midwest for a second so I could’ve seen one of his recent saw-caroling shows in its entirety. We all sat down around him like kindergartners watching their teacher read them a storybook. After performing “The First Noel,” Julian asked us all if we wanted to play a game. Like the enthusiastic kindergarten class we resembled, we said yes. The camel-on-a-stick reappeared to reveal its purpose; turns out his little hump-bowl held paper and pens. We were, Julian explained, to write down a memory without telling anyone what memory we chose. We then gave the little pieces of paper into the soup pot that had served as a drum earlier, and trouped outside so that we could set the little pieces of paper on fire after picking one at random to read aloud. We then lined up, single-file, to leap over the pot filled with flames. Like obedient kindergartners. Then, when only a few people remained, the last piece of paper not to catch alight was plucked carefully from the fire, then read aloud before the rest of the people made their little leap.

We then all received small bells– there were actually not enough of them for all of us– which were to later serve as noisemakers. The Music Tapes’ last song was one about a memory, Julian explained, and when we heard something, a word, a note, anything that reminded us of the memory we’d chosen, we were to begin ringing and passing along our bells. As all this was happening, the baritone player wandered about the crowd, playing his instrument. And then the show ended. And we filed out like kids on their way to the school bus. The whole way home, I tried to come up with some sort of powerful symbolic meaning that would justify what I’d just done, and failed. I thought about how it is that musicians can inspire crowds to do things that, in any other context, would be absolutely absurd. And yet, it’s good to perform rituals, and good to perform them with one another, because even if it seems ridiculous to leap over a flaming pot of other peoples’ memories, it’s not as ridiculous when you’re doing it with 50 other human beings. Maybe that’s the point. There’s no real rhyme or reason to why we do things. But when we do them together, it gives our existence– and our actions– meaning.

#the Music Tapes #Brian Dewan #Nana Grizol #Julian Koster #7-Foot-Tall metronome #articles #2009

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olivia-anderson-fanfic · 9 months

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Yuu can do it!

Part 28

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Masterlist

Kuroki woke to Enma mumbling in his sleep. He did that a lot. Today, Kuroki caught the words ‘stop her…!’ which… meant it was probably a nightmare.

He glanced at the time. It was about ten minutes before Enma usually went running…

Yeah, no need to debate then. He reached over Ito and smacked Enma in the arm.

The boy shrieked and fell out of bed, hitting the ground in a series of loud thuds, and (worst of all) dragging the blankets with him.

Ito and Grim slept on. Must be nice to be a deep sleeper.

Kuroki leaned over Ito to peer at Enma, who was glaring at the ceiling for the second time that week. He really had something against it, apparently.

“You good?”

Enma sighed and looked over. “You know – and I’m just spitballing here – but you could just poke me or, I don’t know, say my name and see if that wakes me up?”

“I mean, yeah, but that’s less fun.”

Enma groaned and sat up. After a few moments of deliberation, he cracked a half smile. “Thanks for waking me up.”

He shrugged. “It was an excuse to hit you.”

“Of course it was,” Enma teased, reaching up and ruffling Kuroki’s hair.

Which was just evil, like bedhead wasn’t embarrassing enough. But also…

“It was!”

“Mhmm.”

“I’m not lying!”

“Of course not.”

“Don’t look at me all knowingly when you know nothing!”

Classes that day were… interesting. News had spread fast throughout the dorms, mostly because Ace couldn’t keep his mouth shut about how he was ‘totally going to end the tyrant's reign of terror’ to save his life, and now everyone in Heartslabyul and Ramshackle couldn’t seem to sit still.

Even Enma had struggled to listen to the teachers that day, which should illustrate just how infectious the school’s excitement was.

Apparently, no one had challenged the Heartlabyul Dorm Head since Riddle won during his first week of school.

Yeah, no, no one cared to look away from the clocks on the wall the entire day.

(Outside of Kuroki, who had taken it upon himself to handle bets. Someone had to.)

Kuroki has been abandoned by his friends.

Enma had wanted to change into ‘something more fitting for the occasion’, whatever that meant, and Ito had tagged along to help him, and Grim was ‘coaching’ Ace and Deuce in how to throw a punch like a meter away and there was really nothing stopping him from joining either group…

But all of that was irrelevant. Kuroki has been abandoned. He is very sad.

Until Enma and Ito came back, and suddenly all traces of depression were forcibly ejected from his body, because:

“Enma what the fuck are you wearing?!” Kuroki choked out, trying not to laugh.

The other three spun around, like sharks smelling blood in the water (or, rather, like teens sensing a chance to make fun of someone), and Kuroki no longer felt bad about laughing because everyone else was, too. Even Ito was coughing into their hand to muffle laughter.

Enma was wearing… well, Kuroki wasn’t really sure, to be honest. A long, somewhat kimono-like outfit but with thicker fabric and a helmet of sorts, though the front looked like a sideways jail cell.

They couldn’t really see Enma’s face through the bars, but Kuroki was pretty sure the boy was blushing when he said, “It’s cultural! Where I’m from, swordsmen wear this when facing each other in battle!”

Ace snorted. “Okay, then why don’t Ito and Kuroki know it?”

“I lived in a different area than Kuroki and Enma,” Ito explained. And then they turned their face away to sneeze into their arm.

(Enma dug around in his bag for his handkerchief, and they sent a tiny smile his way as they lifted it to their nose delicately.)

In the meantime, though, Ace and Deuce looked at Kuroki. Who could only shrug. “Do I look like a sports guy to you?”

Ace and Deuce accepted that answer very quickly. Almost insultingly so.

Kuroki narrowed his eyes at them.

Deuce hesitated for just a moment before turning to smile at Enma. “If it would be okay with you, may I wear your helmet?”

For just a second, Enma lifted a hand to his heart, as if touched. And then he seemed to realize that he was doing it, because he tried to play off the movement as him just hesitating to take off the helmet. He wasn’t able to hide the blush or tiny smile on his face though, so he just looked away from them as Deuce slipped the helmet over his own head.

Luckily for Enma, he would be given the free reign to blush without too much teasing, because Crowley chose that exact moment to divebomb into the clearing.

He smiled at all of the unfortunate first years that he had just spooked. “Everyone ready? How about you two get to your positions?”

Crowley did not receive an answer.

But, apparently, there hadn’t been much of a choice to begin with, because he grabbed Deuce and Ace by the arms and dragged their still-stunned bodies toward the center.

The Yuus and Grim didn’t hesitate to follow after, though Grim was much faster, immediately running over to the spray-painted line in the grass that marked how close spectators could be. The Yuus took their time, but not entirely by choice. Ito… was hacking up a lung into Enma’s handkerchief. Enma looped an arm around them, taking most of their weight to help them get there. Enma and Kuroki spared each other looks of concern.

They weren’t the only ones who weren’t having the best time, though. Cater and Trey stood by Riddle, talking to each other in hushed tones, their foreheads wrinkled with worry.

Cater, hesitantly, lifted a hand. “Riddle, what about today’s afternoon tea?”

“You know that the rules stipulate that I take my tea every day at 16:00 sharp.”

“Yeah… but it’s past 15:30… maybe we should call this whole thing off…?”

“I won’t be late,” Riddle scoffed.

“He thinks he’s already won!” Ace said, his knuckles white where he gripped his pen.

Deuce scowled. “He’s barely even looking at us.”

“Rosehearts-kun, their collars, please?” Crowley cut in before the two could forgo their wands in favor of an all-out brawl.

Riddle waved his pen lazily, and Ace and Deuce’s collars disappeared instantly. They both sagged in relief.

“Finally,” groaned Ace, shaking out his hands like one would a limb that had been numb for a while.

Deuce sighed, smiling faintly, tipping his head back as far as it could go now that he had the ability to do so freely again. “Much better.”

“Enjoy your moment of freedom,” Riddle taunted.

“Okay, I may have done something to try and give Ace and Deuce an advantage, and I kind of fucked up, but you guys have to promise you won’t get mad,” Ito whispered hurriedly.

“What did you do?” Kuroki said, a sinking feeling settling into his gut.

“Promise,” Ito said, almost begging.

Crowley held up a seemingly normal mirror. “Once this mirror shatters upon the ground, the duel begins!”

Kuroki and Enma glanced at each other, before nodding, however warily.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Grim said, and it was hard to tell whether he was talking about what was going on with Ito or the duel.

“Greatgreatgreat,” Ito mumbled, mostly to themself, slowly removing their hand from their shirt.

A hedgehog tumbled out, rolling down the slight ramp they’d made with their leg, into the grass.

Aw, cute, Kuroki thought absently.

And then he looked up at Ito, everything hitting him at once.

Ito was allergic to hedgehogs. They’d been holding one against their bare skin since they’d gotten back from helping Enma with his clothes, at the very least.

And he understood what Ito’s plan was, he did, it was a good one, Riddle would definitely freak out over the presumed rule being broken when he saw the hedgehog was out and it might just throw him off enough for Ace and Deuce to get a shot in…

However. The duel was suddenly the last thing on his mind.

“I meant to let out the flamingos, but I couldn’t find —.”

“WHAT?!”

Every head in the clearing turned their way.

Crowley jolted in surprise at the sudden outburst. The mirror slipped from his fingers and clattered to the ground, but no one paid it any mind.

Enma started dragging Ito away from the tiny ball of cuteness and murder. “GET AWAY FROM IT! YOU'RE ALLERGIC!”

“A hedgehog?!” Riddle yelped the moment his eyes landed on the pink little guy, his eyes wide.

Trey frowned a little, but there was real panic hidden in his eyes. Still, he tried to stay calm, keeping his voice as even as possible as he said: “You’re allergic?”

Cater didn’t bother with a facade, hissing curses under his breath. He knelt to scoop up the little guy to help get it away, scanning the grass all the while for any more ‘escapees’.

“Oh dear!” Crowley said, his hands covering his mouth, terrified.

It was then that Ace finally realized that the Headmaster’s hands were empty and therefore the mirror had shattered, and that technically the duel had started, and quickly nudged Deuce.

The pair shot a cauldron Riddle’s way.

Riddle nearly got blown over, but he noticed the frankly gigantic thing heading his way at the last possible moment and sent it off-course with a gust of wind of his own. Within a second, he had waved his wand, and Ace and Deuce were collared once again.

“FUCK,” said Ace, almost falling over with the force of the spell.

“To use your own friend’s allergic reaction…” Riddle hissed. “Just how terribly did your parents raise you?”

Deuce paused where he had been heading over to check on Ito, and then whipped around.

He slammed his fist into Riddle’s jaw, sending the small boy backward a couple of steps. Riddle looked at him with wide eyes.

“Do not talk shit about my mom,” Deuce hissed.

Riddle, however stunned, still managed to look smug. “If you don’t want me to say such things then, perhaps, you shouldn’t prove me right.”

“SHUT YOUR SPOILED LITTLE MOUTH!” Ace yelled.

The redhead jerked in surprise, hand frozen where it cradled the bruise blooming on his jaw. “Wh… what?”

“I can’t take this anymore! Forget Riddle, forget the duel, forget all this shit! I’m done!”

“You two…!” Riddle said, his head jerking from Deuce to Ace and back again.

“Kids are not extensions of their parents! If Deuce and I are shitty, then that’s on us! And if you are shitty then that’s on you!”

“What are you even…?”

“Yeah, you had the helicopter mom of helicopter moms, okay? But you are not her! Can’t you think for yourself?! You call yourself the ‘red sovereign’? You’re a baby that’s good at magic!”

Riddle scowled, the tip of his pen glowing a deep red. He pointed it at Ace and Deuce. “Shut up shutupshutUP! My mother was right, and that means I am right, too!”

“Riddle…” Trey said quietly.

He looked around for help, catching Kuroki’s eyes for just a moment to send a pleading look, but Kuroki neither disagreed with Ace and Deuce enough to stop them nor was he currently interested in leaving Ito’s side.

Cater had magically swapped Ito’s clothes for the suit he’d made again, trying to minimize the amount of hedgehog residue still touching them, but it wasn’t enough. A duplicate ran off, looking for a box of hand wipes in hopes that they could at least prevent things from getting worse.

Enma didn’t even look over at Trey. “Can you lift your arms above your head? It should open up your chest and let you breathe better,” he said.

Ito shook their head rapidly, practically smothering their own mouth with the handkerchief. “Not – not my chest. It’s –.” They wheezed, their free hand clutching their throat. “I can’t… what’s the word?” Tears formed in the corners of their eyes. “Mierda. Mierdamierdamierda.”

“That’s okay, Ito-chan,” Cater said, trying for a smile. “Just concentrate on trying to breathe, okay?”

Trey swallowed thickly, realizing he was very much not going to get any help. “How about we all just calm down?”

“Yes,” said Crowley, pinprick eyes concentrated on Riddle’s wand, his lips tight with worry. “The duel is over, and the challengers are disqualified on account of their physical violence. If you fire off that wand, you will be written up for breaking school rules!”

Riddle hesitated on the last sentence.

And then an egg slammed itself into the side of Riddle’s head, spilling yolk down his cheek.

The boy whipped around, his face reddening in anger once again. “Who threw that?!”

There was a moment of hesitation.

Egg Guy stepped up. “I did.”

“No, it was me,” Lackey said, pressing a hand to his chest.

And then everyone was stepping forward, claiming that it was them that had thrown the egg.

“Are you going to punish all of us?” Lackey said, smirking.

Riddle looked at everyone with wide eyes, and in that moment it became obvious that it was sinking in how much people in his dorm hated him.

But then he laughed, a high, almost maniacal sound. “You think you’re fed up? I’m the one that’s fed up with all of you! No matter how strict I am, no matter how many heads I remove, you all insist on breaking the rules! Clearly, none of you value your heads, so I will be taking them from you!”

Everyone’s eyes widened as they realized that Riddle actually could and would punish all of them. People started rushing backward, trying to get away, and yet…

“OFF! WITH! YOUR! HEAD!”

Collar after collar snapped over their necks. A few people raised their wands, trying to at least have a fighting chance, but Riddle was so much stronger.

“Ha! See! None of you can stand up to me! My adherence to rules was correct!”

“Rosehearts-kun! Cease this improper behavior at once!”

“Riddle!” Trey pleaded. “Stop, please!”

Ace, however, laughed. “What did you say to Deuce? ‘If you don’t want me to say such things then, perhaps, you shouldn’t prove me right’? I call you a baby, and now you’re throwing a temper tantrum!”

“YOU TAKE THAT BACK!” Riddle screeched. A tree nearby lifted from the ground, roots and all, and the leaves rustled as they were forced into a finely tuned point. “RETRACT THAT STATEMENT OR I WILL SKEWER YOU WHERE YOU STAND!”

Kuroki shot to his feet. Okay, they’d definitely let this get out of hand. In their defense, their usual common sense and local person with empathy’s lips were currently turning a horrible shade of blue.

Their heads swung back and forth, not sure whether they should stay and help Ito further or go and try to talk Riddle down, too. God, there were two of them, but neither of them wanted to move from their current spots helping Ito. Why couldn’t they just be in two places at once?!

Ace, for a moment, seemed to regret everything, eyeing the tree. But then he shot Riddle a smile. “Do it. Prove me right,” he dared.

Riddle’s nostrils flared. He pointed at Ace, and the tree shot his way.

Cater cried out as the tree slammed into him, branches slicing through him like butter.

Kuroki’s head whipped around to where Cater had just been, and was surprised to find him still there, holding his chest and breathing deeply.

The duplicate, piece by piece, shot back to Cater, leaving the bloodied tree to fall to the ground limply.

Ace stared at the blood pooled at his feet. The box of wipes laying there, red staining the pale blue packaging and smiling bears on the cover. He looked at Riddle. “You… you actually tried to kill me!”

Riddle, however, turned his attention onto the real Cater. The boy was propped up against a nearby tree, breathing hard, a hand on his chest where his alternate self had been run through.

“You, too, Cater?” Riddle said. “And here I thought you, at least, understood… but no matter! I will have to take your head, too!”

But, when Riddle lifted his wand to do just that, nothing but playing cards came out.

And the collars around the necks of the Heartlabyul students dissolved into confetti.

“WHAT?!” Riddle screeched. He lifted his pen again, trying repeatedly to collar them all again, but to no avail.

It clicked.

He whipped around, looking at Trey with glassy eyes. His voice was strangely quiet when he asked, “That’s your magic, isn’t it?”

Trey swallowed thickly. And then he nodded. “My magic can overwrite characteristics for a short time. So, I turned ‘your magic’ into ‘my magic’.”

“No… even you?” Riddle asked, his voice breaking on the last word. “Even you, who knows how much I sacrificed for this?”

“Riddle, please,” Trey begged. “Just listen to us.”

“But you…” Riddle lifted a hand to his head, as if he were feeling faint. “You were raised by such lenient parents. But your magic, it’s stronger than mine. That… that means… she didn’t have to… was it all for nothing?”

Riddle finally broke down crying.

But his tears were tainted a horrible, inky black as they spilled down his face.

#local author stalls writing a fight scene once again #yuu can do it!#twisted wonderland #twst #twst fanfic #twisted wonderland fanfic #yuu twst #twist yuu #twst yuu #twst grim #grim twst #enma yuuken #kuroki yuuya #ace trappola #riddle rosehearts #deuce spade #trey clover #cater diamond #heartslabyul

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jennycalendar · 2 years

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there are so many things that stood out to me as i watched the dark age in full for the first time in a very long time. the standout is the fact that this is an episode that has something very clear to say about jenny -- insidious, quiet, not at all the larger point of the episode, but clear. and what it has to say is that she’s impermanent.

on some level, i was expecting some degree of narrative antipathy towards jenny as i continued to watch this show. i wasn’t expecting to see it this clearly and this early. i’ve talked before about how surprise and innocence both throw jenny under the bus in a way i find unfair, limiting, and lazy, but the dark age does it too! this is a consistent pattern with her! she’s presented as something that directly contradicts information we’re given later in canon: someone who cannot handle the reality of the man that giles is. the episode is structured to demonstrate jenny as someone who enjoys the unserious, flirtatious romance of her connection with giles, but who balks at the reality of being truly involved with him, and who flinches away from the man that he really is. it is done so in a way that is not halfhearted. it is incisively deliberate -- in the framing, in everything.

we begin with giles/jenny’s romance in bloom, emphasizing in particular that jenny is eager. she is forward. she is direct about wanting to sleep with him, and the way that she describes him is incredibly key to this as well: she refers to him as a sexy fuddy-duddy. her attraction to him is illustrated within the episode as something that stems from him being adorable and old-fashioned, and the episode itself demonstrates that while the adorable, old-fashioned librarian is a facet of him, it’s not all that there is. we’re given jenny’s and buffy’s reactions to this in tandem at the end of the episode -- jenny flinching away, buffy drawing closer. this is also incredibly important.

constantly, consistently, this episode juxtaposes jenny and buffy. they are placed next to each other in the computer lab, joined by their joint disbelief that cordelia would overlook such a key detail about giles. the conversation they share is one about giles, with buffy turning to jenny for guidance re: how to help giles and jenny -- this is important -- having NO IDEA. jenny and giles share an intimate scene in his apartment, as do giles and buffy -- yet the key factor is that the intimacy between giles and jenny, the moment of comfort, is entirely false. it is a manufactured illusion that a demon is utilizing against him. the intimacy between giles and buffy, in contrast, is something real -- an admission about his past that we never actually see him share with jenny. again, the end of the episode contains similar parallels. giles attempts to express his desire to remain in jenny’s life, and jenny, now fully informed about the kind of man he is, moves away from his touch. buffy seeks giles out and expresses her appreciation for him, entirely as he is, + how grateful she is to know him as a complete individual. how this makes her life easier.

i obviously did not enjoy this. i can’t pretend at objectivity as i write this up, and it’s still a constant war with myself as i try to figure out a way to write this in any way that isn’t just SOOOO obviously biased (don’t think that’ll work, though, lmao), because i personally don’t like the way that this episode just staunchly refuses the possibility that jenny could love giles as he is. this feels like an episode intended to be the kiss of death for giles and jenny’s relationship, and taken in and of itself, it’s actually a really convincing argument for them not being able to work. we’re shown the depths of buffy and giles’s relationship, but so much of it is about placing buffy and giles’s relationship right next to giles and jenny’s relationship in order to demonstrate how ill-suited jenny is for giles. she’s weak. she’s easily infected. she’s unable to cope with the reality of closeness with giles. she’s a liability to him and unsympathetic to his isolation. buffy, meanwhile, ADAPTS to the reality of closeness with giles, EVOLVES this episode to protect and support him, rescues HERSELF when someone attempts to make her a victim of eyghon. these are all things that the dark age illustrates with aplomb. we see giles sitting with buffy, spilling his guts -- we never see him that candid about his past with jenny, even as she herself will later be candid about her past with him.

and that’s the thing, too! this episode demonstrates such an INSANE double standard when it comes to the way giles handles secrets vs. the way jenny handles secrets. when point-blank asked to explain his deal re: a secret that is actively putting absolutely everyone in danger, giles refuses, snapping back with particularly vicious anger and telling buffy to “stay out of it.” he is determined to handle this shit on his own, and as ethan points out, this is not necessarily the best course when it comes to actually keeping people safe -- yet this episode presents him as a sympathetic figure. a flawed individual who deserves to be loved, understood, and accepted. multiple episodes later, jenny is THROWN AGAINST A DESK, and buffy’s furious demands for the truth are immediately met with complete, earnest honesty on jenny’s part, as well as complete and total cooperation with anything and everything that the scoobies demand of her & throw at her (think willow’s pointed brush-off, buffy’s dismissive cruelty, GILES COMING TO ASK HER FOR RESEARCH HELP AND TREATING HER LIKE SHIT IN THE SAME BREATH) -- yet she is presented as someone who has gotten her just desserts.

one could quibble about the magnitude of the secrets involved, but eyghon is presented as less of a threat in large part because the only person it ever actually threatens is jenny. much like angelus, the only person that the monster ever actually harms is jenny -- and both times, she is presented as responsible for it to some degree by virtue of wanting something from giles. it’s striking that jenny’s significant romantic overtures towards giles (wanting to sleep with him, telling him she’s in love with him) are always paired with some sort of harm inflicted upon her -- death, or something only narrowly escaping it. it’s striking that in this episode in particular, jenny’s desire to sleep with giles becomes something monstrous, utilized to try and tempt him -- and when he doesn’t succumb, she herself becomes something entirely unrecognizable. it’s key that giles never succumb to the temptation that is jenny. the individual that is jenny exists only hypothetically, and only in the margins.

this episode is insistent about presenting jenny as a road that will only lead to misery for giles. it works as foreshadowing for passion, certainly, but it’s also determined to highlight the fact that the problem lies within jenny herself. she isn’t able to handle the supernatural. she’s not as strong as she thinks. what she loves about giles isn’t real, and when faced with the reality of him, she flinches back. giles himself says it: “i don’t think she’ll ever really forgive me.”

thing is, though, SHE DOES. and only three episodes later! and THIS is where my little blorbo agenda shows up with baffling intensity, because this episode’s thesis statement about jenny JUST DOES NOT MAKE SENSE when looking at EVERYTHING WE ARE GIVEN ABOUT HER. she makes the decision to get back together with him, despite the clear implications in the dark age that all she enjoyed about him was the “sexy fuddy-duddy.” she is revealed to have intense ties to the supernatural, despite the clear implications in the dark age that this isn’t a life she can handle or wants to be a part of. the dark age is saying something about giles and jenny’s relationship that doesn’t match up with what canon says later, which is that she makes the CONSCIOUS CHOICE to come back to him, and that she has ALWAYS been a part of this world that she’s theoretically too terrified to continue living in with giles.

i feel that there are plenty of ways to emphasize the most important theme of this episode -- which is, of course, buffy coming to recognize giles as a flawed adult -- without also having to emphasize jenny’s inability to recognize giles as a flawed adult! she’s a plot device in this episode, a TOTAL nonentity: she’s something that can demonstrate that giles is complicated. she needs to be a shitty girlfriend so that we can understand that giles is HARD to understand. quite honestly, i’m starting to understand where some of the less savory takes on jenny are coming from, because this episode in particular leans into the idea of jenny Just Not Understanding Giles Enough. jenny Not Being Good Enough For Giles. fun fact: the first time i watched this episode with my mom, her take was to say, dismissively, “jenny can’t handle it.” i think that that’s an important anecdote to slot neatly in here. if taken totally at face value, and if one already might resent jenny for any reason (shippy or otherwise), this episode can easily and quietly feed into that resentment. jenny is shown Not Handling It.

yet, as ever, the messaging re: jenny is so inconsistent -- a by-product of her status as a Sexy Lamp, which is really in FULL SWING this episode -- that even this statement cannot remain true within the greater context of her largely hypothetical character arc. though she is demonstrated as someone who Doesn’t Understand Giles, someone who Can’t Handle Him, the show goes on to draw back the curtain and reveal that 1) she wants to be with him & 2) she actually has her own little Tragic Backstory that neatly matches his! the way she’s treated this episode -- the way the episode frames her as pulling away from giles explicitly BECAUSE she can’t handle what he’s done to her -- is not consistent with the notion of her returning to him, nor is it consistent with her backstory. it does not make sense.

(honorable mention to the foreshadowing of passion, which saturates the eyghon confrontation on a level that i truly didn’t realize until watching it now -- not just angel saving jenny, but how he saves her. how jenny-as-eyghon enters, and buffy steps in front of giles, but her furious attempt to block jenny is aborted and she’s thrown to the side. how jenny-as-eyghon is inches away from giles, from doing what she’s been “waiting to do for a long time,” before angel pulls her roughly away from him and wraps his hands around her neck. that is RIGHT THERE, people.)

(and btws this post is dedicated to @korinainspace + @alltheangstmygifttoyou bc y’all were very gracious about me going actually insane as we watched this and i greatly appreciate it. i hope you two are getting some excellent sleep. <3 )

#celia's buffy rewatch 2022 edition #meta #jenny calendar #btvs #lmao no idea what to do with all of these thoughts. hopefully they are at least relatively coherent!#i have very complicated feelings about this episode now that i've watched it and that makes me sad :(#all of my btvs takes are just literally never what i expect them to be as i watch it is deranged #anyway a little bit nervous about this because it's my first totally unhinged overanalytical jenny take in a really long time #and y'all have been getting the soft tosses for a year or so methinks bc i've been a little busy and tired #but if at least one person is like Celia I'm Feeling Unwell because of this post i shall feel encouraged

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gffa · 1 year

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I felt about about looking up the ending for Death’s End before finishing these last 200 pages of the book, but I was so desperate to know where all of this was going, and I felt bad about that at first, like I’d ruined the surprise for myself. But as I’m still going through these final chapters, I’m gaining a new appreciation for the decision. I don’t think it would have worked to look it up before I read the book ahead of time, I had to experience the majority of the story without expectations, and maybe it would have been even better had I stuck to that. But I’m gaining a new appreciation for what this series does, why it had to be told the way it was, why all these big and small desperate choices being made all along the way. SPOILERS FOR THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM SERIES BEYOND THIS POINT.

I’m at the point where Cao Bin is taking Cheng Xin on a tour and they’ve gotten to Lightspeed II, which is empty and utterly eerie for it, because the flickering light is spooky as hell. Turns out, it’s the space dust falling into a black hole that’s 5km away, just a tiny one, is what’s making it like this--and it’s connected to the research into the Black Domain project, where they would create a black hole to lower the speed of light in the Solar System so they would no longer be a threat. And it struck me. That’s it, that’s what this whole story is about. All these civilizations just like humanity, desperately looking for a way to just survive, being forced into this warfare for existence, so they create black holes to show that they can never escape their own system and won’t be a threat, and it rips apart the fabric of the galaxy just a little more. Or every time an advanced civilization comes along and will annihilate them by destroying the plane of existence they live unless they re-engineer themselves to be able to live in one lower dimension, which rips apart another layer of the universe. I spent so much of this book wondering if humanity would find a way to stand with the other titans of the galaxy, if their ability to learn these concepts within mere centuries would save them, if they could learn to navigate the higher dimensions, if they would learn how to create light-speed travel, etc. And that’s it, that’s the trap! Every step they take, whether it makes them more powerful or deliberately handicaps them, whether they do it to themselves or another civilization does it to them, it’s another step on changing the fabric of the universe, until it rips another dimension away, until it lowers the speed of light in the galaxy, until eventually the whole thing is going to collapse everywhere. Knowing the end of the story, knowing where all of this is going, adds another layer of horror to that tiny little black hole off the side of Lightspeed II, one that’s not necessarily affecting anything, other than people can’t live here, but it slammed into me everything else that’s been going on, everything humanity has been desperately trying to achieve to save themselves, and all of it, all of it, is just helping bring their own eventual death on, because that’s the trap. If you leave everything alone, others will kill you. If you handicap yourself, you’re destroying the galaxy around you. If you keep progressing, you’re ripping into the fabric of the universe. There was never any way out of this, once you cross a certain threshold of progress. It’s chilling, but I can’t say it’s without hope. The universe doesn’t have to be forever for it to be worth something, all those lives that lived their time in the ways they could, all the people that got to experience things or had their friends and family around them, that still mattered, even when the bigger picture was much darker. I think I’m glad I knew the ending exactly where I did, it helped me articulate a lot of the feelings I had about the series, and I gained a hell of an appreciation for why it was structured the way it was. Every step of the way was an illustration of why the universe is the way it is, goddamn.

#the three body problem #the three body problem spoilers #lumi.txt

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naivesilver · 8 months

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One of those Eliana plot moments I was dying to reach, deliberately sprinkled with some family angst 💗

✍️(◔◡◔)

There are days where Emma thinks the world must be out to make things as difficult as possible for her.

This should not be one of those days, and yet, predictably, here they are. In a way it was almost easier at the beginning of this ordeal - Gold showed up with some new cronies, sure, but that's on par with the course. It's arguably part of their town's routine, by this point.

Then those cronies took August. That, Emma suspects, was where everything started picking up speed as it went to hell.

She spares a glance at Eliana, who is pacing around like a caged tiger, her movements jerky and impatient. Emma can't exactly blame her - even if her brother hadn't been the one who got taken, she must be still riding the high of his rescue, full of adrenaline and pent up energy - but it is an unnerving sight, muddy footprints tracking across the hospital floor notwithstanding.

Emma sighs, forcibly returning her attention to the book pages that have given them all so much trouble lately. In the brief bout of lucidity he had at her house, August casually informed her that that is where their mysterious Author is, so now she's on her own trying to puzzle out how to get him out - her friend lost consciousness shortly afterwards, which made him of little help, with the addition of having to figure out where to go to get him checked out.

In Emma's defense, she did propose the convent right off the bat, and she still wagers it would have been the better choice; magically sturdy and magically knowledgeable, it’d have been the perfect place for their needs, so they could continue worrying about pretty much everything else. Eliana, however, fought against that option so strongly that it was impossible to make her change her mind, and, as Emma has learned the hard way in the past few hours, most people will capitulate rather than arguing with someone whose face is deliberately spattered with Cruella De Vil's drying blood.

The sound of approaching footsteps invades her train of thought. The sheriff looks up, expecting Whale or one of the members of his staff, but is instead met with Regina's flat expression.

The mayor is still playing double agent, technically, but the only other supposed ally of Gold is on the opposite wing of the hospital, bound to her bed and with enough gauze wrapped around her neck to satisfy a mummy. Even if she were to spot Regina, which is unlikely, it would simply look like another attempt to swipe the illustration of the door from Emma’s hands, albeit in a more crowded environment than usual.

“Still no word from Gold,” Regina announces, her gaze moving between the other two women. “He’s probably huddling somewhere with Maleficent until he gets another bright idea, since this one worked so well.”

Emma sighs, stashing away the pages again. The less people see them, the better, even at this point. “I don’t know if that’s better or worse, honestly,” she says, her voice terse and unamused. “Did you come all the way up here just to tell me there was no news?”

“I wish. No, Gold’s off the radar, but you’ve got another visitor.”

“Really? Who?”

“The Mother Superior. She’s come to check up on August, since they used some…unusual magic on him.”

For a brief, surprisingly lucid second, Emma feels a stab of regret about not having asked Regina to speak in private. She doesn’t get much more time than that, anyway; a second seems to be enough for Eliana to register what she’s just heard, freezing on the spot halfway through her brooding - her head swivels around, looking at the mayor with her purple-ish eyes as wide as saucers, but her face is completely expression-less, a waxen mask stained with red from the chin down.

Then, what feels like just another second later, she rushes past them both, stomping out of the door without looking back.

“Crap.” Emma stands up so abruptly the rickety hospital chair almost falls backwards, cursing more under her breath as she grabs Regina and sets out on Eliana’s trail. “Did you really have to say it where she could hear? Where is the Mother Superior, anyway?”

Her friend all but glares at her, though mercifully she falls in line with Emma pretty easily, as if picking up on the urgency of the matter. “At the entrance. I told her to wait until I asked if August could have visitors. But what-”

“That girl went for Cruella’s jugular only a few hours ago, do you think it’s safe for Blue of all people to be around her?”

“Well, if Blue couldn’t guess that her kid would be here, that’s on her, not me,” Regina scoffs moodily. “Personally I’m on Eliana’s side- that dog lady wanted Henry, Emma. If she’d gotten to him like she planned, I wouldn’t have stopped at the jugular, and neither would you.”

The problem is, she’s right. Emma has nothing against Eliana. Eliana is, by and large, a nice enough person - she grew up with Ruby, and Henry likes her, and August, who despite everything is still one of Emma’s closest friends, thinks the world of her, like the besotted younger brother he is. She might have a penchant for butting heads with her mother and Emma’s, sure, but she doesn’t look the type to go for unwarranted violence, and besides, what Regina said is true: without her, Cruella De Vil would have tried to take Henry instead, in the hope of luring his family out for good.

But Emma’s personal opinion matters little and less, right now. She is still the sheriff, and she is still the Savior: while babysitting a young woman who’s barely gotten off the adrenaline rush of biting a chunk off a villain is not her top priority, she’d rather avoid having a matricide in her hands anyway, in the midst of all that chaos.

Thankfully, the Mother Superior is still relatively in one piece when they stumble into the hospital's hall, though she looks far from pleased. She and her daughter are both small women, nearly of an height, but where the fairy's wearing sensible shoes and exuding her customary air of authority, Eliana has turned into a looming, haunting presence, as though her wild hair and the way she's standing up ramrod straight were making her appear larger than life.

"Nobody asked you to come," Emma catches her hissing as they draw closer to the pair. "You're not welcome here."

Blue scoffs, with the same look of annoyance one might have after stepping on a chewed gum. "This is not the time for your childish games, Eliana. I need to make sure your brother is in good shape, and- oh, God, what happened to you?"

"You did." Eliana leans forward so that she's almost nose to nose with her mother, her voice lowering so much it's almost inaudible over the din around them.

"You're what happened to me, and to August. So many of the things Gold did to him, they were because of what you did to him first - look at yourself, Mother. You're a fucking disease. I'm not letting you get close enough to poison my baby brother again."

"I'd thank you to avoid that kind of language when you speak to me-"

"Or what?" The question is delivered with a sort of hysterical giddiness, but none of that shows up on the young woman's face, save perhaps for a brief glint in her eyes, a sharp, pestering flash.

"What will you do to punish me? Will you make me stand in the corner? Will you let August get hurt again? I am tired of having to chase away his monsters myself just because you can't be arsed to do your duty. And you didn't pass anything useful down to me, otherwise I'd have needed less time to burn that cursed island to the ground, back then."

Eliana points at the crusted blood with surprising ferocity, all but livid with anger. "But this? This is yours alright, Mother. This is how you would have solved things, too, if you weren't too proud to get your own hands dirty, so don't tell me you're here to help, now. You already did more than enough when you gave us both life."

She spits the word out so venomously that it catches even Emma off guard, though the sheriff still takes the split second the Mother Superior spends faltering to cut between them, wary of possible escalations. "Okay, ladies, that's enough. Blue, thanks for checking in, but I think we're managing just fine for now. We’ll call if we need anything. Eliana- you need to get some sleep. August will be fine. He's in good hands."

"He is," the younger woman agrees readily - except she doesn't look that much younger, at present. She is still fresh-faced and minute, at a first glance, but when her eyes raise to meet Emma's there's a fury in them that feels ancient, burning blue and purple like gas fire.

"I trust you with him, Emma Swan, and I trust the mayor, but I do not trust her. She already let him die once; she might do it again if you don't keep an eye on her."

There's a sharp intake of breath from Blue, and suddenly the nun is struggling against Emma's flimsy separation, face contorted in anger. "You're going too far, child," she says, her proverbial calm straining. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Call me child one more time, I'll choose some new names for you as well. What do you say about liar, uh? Murderer and liar, maybe?"

"You dare-"

"Yes, I dare, Mother!" Eliana explodes, clutching at the sides of her head as though her skull were splitting in two, fingers twisting in her tangled curls in a way that must be at least a bit painful and yet shows no sign of stopping.

"You have no idea of what you've passed down to me, of what- what I've heard in that forest, and you still judge me for how I've acted all these years, but this is on you, Mother. Gold hates you. That's why he tricked me and why he hurt August. None of us would be here right now, if you'd just done your job with him. You should be ashamed. You-"

"What's going on here?"

There’s a beat where Emma almost thanks whatever divine intervention might have just saved her arm from being torn apart by the mother and daughter barking on either side of it. It only lasts a beat, however, as when she raises her eyes she finds out the new voice belongs only to Marco, standing in the hospital hall with his hat in his hands and a concerned look on his face.

“Great, it’s a family reunion,” Regina mutters, acidly, as Blue takes the chance to compose herself and turns around to address the man directly, as though she hadn’t just come out of an hysterical catfight in a public place.

“Geppetto, please, control your daughter better- she’s in a state, right now. She’s not fit to look after anyone.”

She probably expects Marco to side with her, just as Emma’s own father has gone along with some of her mother’s worst ideas; judging by the way her expression freezes, however, she must not be expecting him to stiffen and say, evenly: “She is your daughter, too. Not just when it suits you.”

He walks past them to reach Eliana, then, and only hesitates a moment before stepping to her side and wrapping an arm around her chest, at once protection and holding. He is not an extraordinarily tall man, Marco, but the girl looks pretty much dwarfed by his grip, even if anger is still dripping from her every pore - Emma feels safe enough to step away, then, though she keeps her guard up, just in case.

“My girl,” the carpenter says frettingly, scanning his daughter’s features up and down. “What happened? I thought it was your brother that- Is that blood? Are you hurt?”

Eliana doesn’t respond immediately, eyes still staring vacantly in her mother’s direction, so it’s Regina who steps in once again, her tone dry but not devoid of any admiration. “She is what happened to some old friends of mine. Your girl got August out- without her we’d still be running in circles.”

“And that was very brave of her,” Blue interjects, somewhat irritated, “but no one knows for sure what Rumpelstiltskin did to August yet. Emma, you know it better than I do- if it’s dark magic, then the sooner we get rid of it, the better. We’re only wasting time with this farce.”

“You’re the only one wasting any time here, Mother.” Eliana speaks softly and haltingly, but her gaze is still hard as steel, despite everything.

“My brother is fine where he is. Touch him again and I will eat you alive. This will be your only warning.”

Marco hums pensively under his breath, his eyes flitting from the girl in his arms to Regina and Emma. “If Eliana says there is no danger, then I trust her. Emma? Have you seen my boy yet?”

“Whale thinks he’ll be okay,” the sheriff replies, picking her words cautiously. “Sort of. He’s going to need some time to rest and recover, but that’s about it.”

“Then we don’t need your help right now, Mother Superior. You can leave my children alone, if you please.”

It’s a low blow, lower than many would expect from a man as mild-mannered as him. It’s easy to guess Blue might be of the same opinion, too - she looks absolutely floored by the remark, enough not to be able to get even the proverbial last word in, and it’s a miracle the whole hospital doesn’t fall onto their heads as she leaves, so enraged she appears to be.

Still, she does leave, and Emma turns back to Eliana, dread pooling in her gut. The girl hasn’t torn her eyes from her departing mother yet, either, but something has changed in her all the same; it’s as if she were being taken by a full body tremor, one that picks up pace when Blue finally walks out of the door and threatens to make her buckle at the knees, with only her father’s presence keeping her upright.

It occurs to the sheriff that she has never seen them so close to each other, before. There is some strain in that relationship, to hear August and Granny tell it, and though they must have exchanged a few words in Emma’s presence at some point, it was nothing like this - Eliana shakes and shakes, run through by shivers as though she’d gotten stuck in a blizzard, and Marco seems at loss of words over her reaction, cradling her cheek with his free hand like an additional point of support.

“Marco,” Emma ventures, ever so carefully, “August’s still sleeping. You can go see him if you want, but she really needs to get some rest too. Everything else can wait.”

“No.” Eliana squirms in her father’s hold, an uncharacteristic pleading note in her words. “I don’t want to. I can’t.”

The man shushes her gently, pulling her even closer. “Of course you can. We’ll go see your brother, and then I’ll take you home. It’s alright.”

She shakes her head brusquely, sagging further on herself. “Papa,” she says, and it’s barely more than a hoarse croak, tears pooling in her eyes and spilling down her cheeks. Gone is the ageless air she was sporting before; now she looks like a child, and she sounds like one, too, a little kid tired out at the end of a sugar rush. “Papa, I think I did something awful. I don’t know what got into me.”

“Oh, my girl.” Marco presses a kiss to the top of her head, in such a tender gesture that Emma feels prompted to look away and give them their privacy.

“I know that’s not true. You’re alright- Eliana, my sun, I’m so proud of you. It’s alright. You’re safe, and so is your brother. Everything will be fine, I promise.”

In the corner of her eye, Emma catches Regina turning around as well, gaze stubbornly fixed on the ceiling. The sheriff imitates her, and then thinks, idly, that she shouldn’t be feeling so gloomy about everything, about this heartwarming scene that’s unfolding behind them even as she tries to pretend she can’t hear anyone sobbing over the buzzing of the neon lights overhead.

She shouldn’t be, and yet she is, because that persistent worry that something’s bound to go wrong still clings to her, and has not left the room with Blue, as they, Eliana included, must all have hoped it would.

#au: appalachian wine #oc: eliana #fanfic #ouat #emma swan #august booth #beloved he's the motor behind everything as usual #but hey you know what he ALSO is? a little brother whose sister has gone to great (and violent) ends to keep safe 🥰#she fought tooth and nail - literally! ahdkjhjkashjkas #marco #he is there too. my explosive guy.#all jokes aside he is a genuinely good dad who in the context of this au fucked up when faced with an impossible choice #he lied to the face of royals and magic users for his son's safety he'll do it again if it keeps his daughter from harm #lia.........she's processing #she'll be fine (eventually)

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ausetkmt · 7 months

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An August poll by UC Berkeley found that most Californians oppose paying cash reparations��to the descendants of the enslaved.

As a supporter of reparations, I found the results disappointing. But not surprising. Most of the state’s 40 million residents probably don’t know our dark history of enslavement. The poll didn’t provide that context, making it hard for people to feel responsible for something that happened long ago.

I grew up thinking mistakenly there was no slavery in California.

I got that impression in the fourth grade, the time when California students study our state’s history. My 1963 textbook, “California: Story of Our Past,” presented an idealized version of the conquest of California, with Indians delighted to meet the “kind and brave captain,” Juan Cabrillo, the first European to explore the coast. There was no mention of the deliberate killing of Native Americans or how they were forcibly kept at the 21 missions.

Fortunately, students today learn a more nuanced view of California history, including how Native Americans resisted colonization.

But the history of African Americans in California is not widely taught. And that is influencing public policy.

California was admitted to the union in 1850 as a free state, one where slavery was illegal. But slavery was integral to California’s origins, as two new studies, the recently released report by California’s Reparations Task Force as well as “California, A Slave State” by Jean Pfaelzer, illustrate.

As many as 1,500 people were enslaved in California, brought by their Southern enslavers to work in the gold fields. When some miners went bust, they sold off the men they enslaved. A June 17, 1852, notice in the San Francisco Herald advertised a “Negro for Sale” for $300, according to Pfaelzer.

California not only neglected to enforce the state’s slavery ban, it also passed harsh laws curtailing the rights of African Americans. The first governor of the state tried to ban African Americans from settling here. California’s version of the Fugitive Slave Act was more onerous than the national law.

I am a fifth-generation Californian who has written two books on the state’s history, but I didn’t learn about its slave-holding past until I read the task force’s report in June.

The lack of knowledge of the harm government did to Black residents may account for the poll, which shows that 59% of those queried oppose cash payments, even though 60% believe that Black Californians are still affected by the legacy of slavery.

A main reason for the opposition is “it’s unfair to ask today’s taxpayers to pay for wrongs committed in the past.”

But the poll didn’t detail the “wrongs committed in the past,” leaving respondents to rely on information they had already acquired.

One of the important aspects of the task force’s report is its exploration of how harms to Black Californians continued long after the Civil War. Government policies denied African Americans access to homes and loans through redlining, segregated them in substandard schools, and over-policed them.

The task force recommends numerous remedies, not just cash payments, to repair this harm, such as easy access to home loans, free education, and community-based health and cultural centers. None of these options were mentioned in the poll.

In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom apologized to Native Americans for the state’s role in nearly obliterating them. It’s time for California to acknowledge the harms it did to its Black residents.

So far, Newsom has been mostly mum on the task force’s recommendations. He may be waiting until January when the Legislature will address the report.

But that is too late. If an important part of repair is shedding light on historical harms, officials must educate voters about California’s dark history. Only then will people realize that reparations are not handouts, but a debt owed for past harms. And without that fundamental realization, support for reparations will remain low.

#Reparations #california #Freedmen #Black Freedmen #Opinion: Why support for reparations in California should be greater

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mydaroga · 1 year

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Initial Thoughts on Hunter Davies’ The Beatles

I am thinking about posting quotes/notes I kept while reading, for my own edification if nothing else, but for now, here’s a few thoughts on the book as a whole.

I really liked it. But I’ll cut for length in case you don’t care why!

I know John said, later, that it was sanitized and ‘fake’ and all the rest, but I think his opinion was colored by several things: the fact they did deliberately suppress several facts about his family as well as Brian’s sexuality, as well as his general turn against that whole period. I understand why he felt this way, and he’s a right to, as it’s his life and he’s close to it. But that was not my experience of the book at all. I don’t agree with all of Davies’ opinions, but I think his attempt is honest and as forthright as it can be given the requests made of him. I do think he knows these men as well as one could given the parameters, and his observations and insights are interesting. Indeed, far more illuminating than Norman’s Shout!, which is the first bio I read and full of unspoken bias and facts that have since been debunked.

One of the redeeming features of this book is that, in the forward and afterward(s), Hunter takes pains to illustrate where he went wrong and why, while also arguing the case as to why he left the bulk of the book intact upon further printing. I think this makes it a really valuable historical document--he says outright that he got things wrong, so it is unfortunate if, say, people keep using him as a source to say John was born during an air raid, but he’s also honest about it left as is, we still have a record about where future inaccuracies come from.

The book also says a lot, inadvertently, about Beatles fandom and study, in that it reads unlike any other bio I’ve read. It’s not at all a fan mag, glossy hagiography. But at the same time, it’s got some of the breezy tone missing from ‘serious’ scholarship. It doesn’t know what it is, yet, because while I’m not an expert on 60s pop biography I don’t think this thing existed yet, in full form. I think Davies is creating something, maybe not by himself, but as part of a cultural movement where celebrity is changing and stars are becoming more than flash in the pan style makers. They are becoming public figures we look to and study, worthy of that distinction or not. And Davies is trying to split the difference between hot off the presses celebrity hype and being a book of historical record. And I think that’s why the style reads strangely, to me. Because he knows, somewhere deep down, that this is Actually Important, but there doesn’t yet exist a cultural format for that. Elvis was also Important, as was Sinatra or whomever, but I’m not sure anyone knew how to write about that yet. I think it’s part of a shift in our culture, and it reflects that.

I also think it’s a great picture of where the Beatles were at that time, of what they were going through in those months just before it started to go bad, and in that sense it’s also invaluable. As Davies says, he had no idea what was coming, but when you read it now, you can see the cracks. So as a total bio of the band, obviously it’s lacking. But as a document of what it must have felt like before you realized it was falling apart, it’s essential. Maybe no one’s saying everything they’re thinking or feeling, maybe certain prurient details are left out, but this is by no means scraped clean of their rougher edges. They curse, they admit bad behavior, John is already saying everything’s a fraud, Cynthia’s admitting they wouldn’t be married if it hadn’t been for Julian. This isn’t the glossed over Beatles at all--it’s just the Beatles before they, or we, knew the full story. And that makes it, along with Love Me Do by Michael Braun, actually unlike any other book out there.

Any thoughts?

#like i said i might post my notes/quotes i kept #but i have been very lazy lately so i wanted to get this out there while i had the will #the beatles #beatles books #kris reads hunter davies #hunter davies #kris talks a lot

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inceptionart · 2 years

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Closing out our artist highlight event for Inceptiversary is Koyori @sequiteur! Read on for her thoughts on art, and you can find all of her brilliant and super cool artwork here!

🎨 When did you start creating art for the Inception fandom, and what is your inspiration?

Only about a month ago! I’d love to take part in something like Inception Big Bang eventually. I like drawing portraits and fashion, and Inception has some very beautiful people dressed in impeccable costuming. Mostly right now I’ve been doing lots of sketches of Arthur.

🎨 Tell us about your creative process, and which part do you enjoy the most about it?

My creative process begins with procrastinating on actual work, unfortunately! I’m in grad school right now and I use my tablet to make figures for papers and presentations, but when I’m procrastinating I’ll open up a blank canvas and start drawing instead.

My favorite part is testing out new brushes and tools and learning new techniques to change up my workflow. I primarily use Clip Studio Paint for my digital art, and Clip Studio Assets is a fantastic resource for user-created brushes and other materials. I like to browse the top downloaded materials every few months to see if there’s anything new that I want to try out.

🎨 Link us to your first and latest artwork, and how your style has evolved since then?

My first digital artwork was this portrait of Samirah al-Abbas from the Magnus Chase series. The latest is this portrait of Arthur from Inception. I think my main improvement has been more deliberation in placing my brushstrokes, since you can see in the Samirah piece that a lot of the time, I’m kind of just guessing at where hard and soft edges should be, and there’s a lot of busy detail in places that shouldn’t draw the viewer’s eye.

🎨 What is your absolute favorite piece of art that you've made, and why?

This is a tough question, and unfortunately I don’t think I can discuss a piece for Inception, since I just started drawing for this fandom. I like this fanart I did for an alternative version of Fate/Grand Order’s Hans Christian Andersen, since the lighting is interesting, there’s a clear focal point, and you can still see the sketch lines; I feel like I often fall into the trap of over-rendering, and this piece largely avoids that problem. I had no idea what I was trying to do when experimenting with blend modes to create the colors for his feather pen, but I like the end result. I think it was a happy accident with a simple round brush and color burn.

🎨 What is something about Inception that you really want to make art for someday, and why?

There are lots of scenes from my favorite Inception fics that I’d love to illustrate, too many to count! Off the top of my head, I love "in this part of the story" by gunsandbutter and really want to paint her version of a younger Arthur back when he was in the military.

🎨 Give a shoutout to your favorite Inception artists here!

I’m still getting to know Inception fandom, so I’m sure there are lots of great artists out there whose work I just haven’t seen yet. So far, I really adore @mizunoir’s work for Inception Big Bang 2022, an artist named sin-repent whose work someone recommended in the Inception discord server, and keelain’s artwork for a past Inception Big Bang.

🎨 Anything else you'd like to talk about art and the Inception fandom in general ❤

It’s really cool to be just joining a fandom that’s been going strong for more than ten years by now; there’s such a wealth of fanworks and interesting content to sift through, that I don’t think I’ll ever get to the bottom of. Mostly I just want to thank all the organizers and participants of Inceptiversary for being so welcoming – this has been a really awesome experience!

#inception artist highlight #inceptiversary #inception #koyori

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dwellordream · 2 years

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Initial Impressions of HotD, Episode 4

be warned there are spoilers below.

i have read fire & blood, but i am not judging the show as to its accuracy towards the book, as i had major issues with fire & blood, particularly in regard to how grrm wrote the female characters and handled the Dance.

this is not an evaluation of it as an adaptation but on its own merits.

At least they finally gave poor Borros Baratheon something to do. I suspect the Baratheons are not going to play much more of a role in this show than they ever did in F&B.

There’s no way that kid is Benjicot Blackwood, unless they’re aging him up a good 20 years, but the Blackwood v. Bracken feud shout-out was fun, I guess. I don’t know that we actually needed to see someone die or hear people calling each other cunts in front of the royal princess (that seems like it’s pushing it) but whatever.

I like how we now see Rhaenyra confined to a ship to travel back to KL, instead of a dragon. It reflects how she is increasingly more confined in her role as heir, which ostensibly gives her more freedom than ever before.

Daemon wearing the ugliest fucking crown as King of the Narrow Sea is giving huge Theon as Prince of Winterfell vibes.

Personally I don’t think Daemon will ever forgive Viserys for exiling him the first time, so his very deliberate move for family reunion feels very calculated and blatant to me.

Viserys and Daemon mocking Alicent’s polite suggestion they tour the tapestries pretty much illustrates how much Viserys takes every woman in his life for granted. He still condescends to Alicent after several years of marriage and dismisses her like a child.

Alicent is understandably jealous of Rhaenyra’s tour. She never got even the semblance of a choice in spouse. There was no flirting or courting. Every facet of her life is controlled and decided for her. While Rhaenyra doesn’t have a wide range of choices either, she at least does have some autonomy as a dragon rider and heir.

Rhaenyra and Alicent are are really on the verge of rekindling their friendship at the start of this episode, so of course Daemon is going to be the spanner in the works.

It’s not clear if Daemon is legitimately in denial that Rhaenyra will never have as much choice and autonomy (at least, not without serious public backlash) as a man would, if he truly believes that as a Targaryen, she should be ‘exempt’ from any sort of sexist pushback about who she weds or fucks, or if this is all a deliberate manipulation to try to goad Rhaenyra into doing something impulsive and losing her position as heir. I lean towards somewhere between options 2 & 3. I don’t think Daemon is this feminist king, but I do think he sees Targaryen women as a whole step above ‘other’ women of ‘lesser’ bloodlines.

Here Rhaenyra explicitly states part of her reluctance to marry is because of a fear of death in childbirth, but I don’t think this was communicated very well before now. The show doesn’t choose to show her doing much as heir beyond seeing suitors. If the implication is supposed to be that Viserys literally will not allow her to do anything else but respond to marriage proposals, I think we should at least see Rhaenyra trying to politick outside of proposed betrothals.

Fire & Blood never really mentions Viserys being threatened by Laena wedding the sealord’s son, but here there is a much more threatened response to it, which I guess makes sense.

Alicent’s expression while cradling Helaena is absolutely vacant and miserable. She looks so uncomfortable. This comes right before Rhaenyra finally getting some joy and curiousity by sneaking out for a reason.

Rhaenyra’s joy at being referred to as a boy is really cute and the transphobic shit many fans have expressed in response to trans and nonbinary people relating to it is very shitty.

Rhaenyra being infuriated after she’s mocked by the smallfolk at the show and coldly responding to Daemon, “Their wants are of no consequence.” seems like really deliberate foreshadowing for some future actions she might take as queen, but I think it would have been better if the mummer’s play actually listed some specific reasons Rhaenyra is unpopular with the common folk beyond ‘she’s a girl’. The insinuation that the smallfolk are just stupid and sexist by nature and would never ever accept a woman seems kind of lame.

The contrast between Rhaenyra enjoying a night out on the town while Alicent is forced to submit to Viserys’ ‘attentions’ is very blatant, obviously, but I think they do a good job of showing how dull and unfulfilling Alicent’s marriage is, as well as the total lack of interest in her comfort or pleasure. Meanwhile, Daemon pushes Rhaenyra to pursue her own pleasure, but he clearly has a vested interest in seeing her publicly shamed and removed as heir.

That Rhaenyra doesn’t even try to hide her appearance again once Daemon reveals her seems weird to me. Does she really think this will never get out, or is she confident she can bullshit her way through it regardless?

Again, Daemon acts as if this brothel is a gender-neutral place of free love, but of course, married or single women are typically unable to visit such places without serious backlash. In a pseudo-medieval setting, this is really catering to men exclusively, and men of means, at that.

I think Daemon may be feigning interest in Rhaenyra at first, but he clearly has some attraction beyond just deceiving her. The show very much downplays a dynamic that in F&B is essentially grooming. Obviously incest is the name of the game in anything ASOIAF related, but Daemon has known Rhaenyra as his young niece since she was a little girl. She has grown up with him as an older male figure in her life, a relation of some authority. Even if were to exclude the obvious taboo of incest, the age and experience gap is severe. There’s no moral way for such a relationship to occur.

Of course, I don’t think anyone would ever call Daemon ‘moral’, and the music during the scene is jarring and creepy, not particularly romantic, nor is the dark, dingy lighting. That said, is it depicted as an abuse or violation of any kind... no, not really. While that may be the consequence of Rhaenyra’s biased POV, I think the show could be a little more frank (especially since it purports to be much more in tune to abuse of power, women’s rights, and sexual violence), about how fucked up this is.

I have no desire for them to add a scene of Daemon assaulting Rhaenyra, but I think you could imply that she is very much in an imbalanced dynamic here, rather than later make it a girlboss moment of her tricking Alicent and ‘playing the victim’. Because in reality, familial incest is an abuse, ESPECIALLY between older women/men and young men/boys or women/girls, and it has real victims.

Rhaenyra’s attraction to Criston feels like it comes out of nowhere. I know she gave him her favor at one point, but that just feel like silly teenage goofing around to me. I never felt like she was crushing on him much before this. He’s kind of just there lol. The scene of her ‘seducing’ him is uncomfortable because he seems genuinely upset and unwilling at first, and while he does eventually reciprocate, it’s not really a scene of mutual passion and longing.

The question of who has more power here is contentious. Criston could ruin Rhaenyra’s reputation with damning claims about her, but she could do the same to him, and Viserys would probably believe his daughter over Criston, who is from a very minor house.

The show continues to do Mysaria dirty. We could have had her and Rhaenyra meet, even briefly, in this episode. Instead we get Daemon reviling her for no reason and more of the stupid ‘exotic is sexy’ accent.

Rhaenyra and Alicent are back at their old weirwood tree, but it’s not for a tender reunion. Alicent’s rage about this is I think tied to her feeling like she’s losing Rhaenyra to Daemon, and also, I think, some bitter resentment of the fact that she never even had the chance to explore these kinds of things. There was no opportunity for Alicent to be besmirched by anything, because her whole life is so tightly controlled.

“So I could be a remedy for your political headaches?” Well, Rhaenyra... it sucks but that’s essentially what arranged marriages are in this context. Having her be this incredulous about it seems odd. Why not show her pursuing marriage alliances of her own accord in an effort to shore up her own power, before Viserys interferes?

Overall I liked this episode more than the last, but not as much as 1 & 2.

#hotd #word to the wise

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