#Joyce is at the top now which makes her feel guilty every time
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Robin has a nut allergy
Just a little snippet of Robin being allergic to nuts with some Steddie on the side. I hope you guys like it and please leave your thoughts in the comments!
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It’s a well known fact within the Party that Robin is allergic to nuts. Whether it be because of genetics or her lesbianism that had her allergic to even being in the vicinity of nuts, male or otherwise, she was deathly allergic. And ever since an incident involving carrot cake, walnuts, and an ambulance ride to the ER, everyone knew it.
She didn’t have an Epipen herself (they were too expensive and she’d rather die before spending $600 on something that might save her life) but Hopper now had three of them on his person at any given time. And Steve had stolen one of his emergency pens to put in the Beemer in case of emergencies.
Either way, it had been a long time since she’s needed one and a long time since she had any sort of allergic reaction. Robin felt secure with her friends. With them, she didn’t have to check all of the ingredients on food containers or worry about one of them trying to murder her with concealed tree nuts, unlike her parents. Or so she thought.
Because when she stepped into the Hopper-Byers’ house one afternoon on what was supposed to be her introduction to her first DnD campaign, her throat swelled shut. Within seconds she was choking, her face turning red and her eyes watering. She couldn’t breathe.
She clawed at her throat in an effort to get air in. She vaguely felt Steve pulling her out of the doorway of his house and distantly heard him yelling at Eddie to grab something from his glove box. Meanwhile, Robin was panicking. She couldn’t get enough air in and her muscles were starting to weaken. She could feel her body fighting itself as it responded to the airborne molecules of nuts in the air.
Her vision was tunneling and her breaths were labored by the time she felt a sharp stab in her right thigh. Immediately, the swelling in her throat started to lessen and her vision began to clear. Her chest heaved for the air it was deprived of and her ears tuned back into her surroundings.
“C’mon Eddie, help me pick her up. We have to get her to the hospital. Let’s go!”
“Hey Stevie, calm down. She’s fine now. We’ll get her to the hospital and she’ll be okay. I’ll drive, you just hold onto Robin.”
“What even happened? She was having an allergic reaction?” She thinks that was Jonathan but she couldn’t be sure with her eyes still closed.
“She’s allergic to nuts. Especially pecans and walnuts,” that darling voice was Will’s. She’s recognize his soft tone anywhere.
“Oh my god! I was making pecan pie, I forgot! I feel horrible!” That was Joyce, no one else could sound so hysteric.
The rest of the conversation escaped her as Steve and Eddie set her in the Beemer and took off towards the hospital. She nodded off in Steve’s arms in the back of the car and Eddie drive like a bat out of hell to get her help.
When she woke up, she was resting on a hospital bed with IVs in her hands and a blanket pulled up to her chest. Night had fallen and Steve and Eddie were still by her bedside, curled up on a single chair with their limbs wrapped around each other.
Knowing she was safe in the presence of her best friends, she let her eyes slip closed and went back to sleep. There would be apologies made in the morning and hysterical promises made but for now, she would rest in the presence of her capital P platonic soulmate and his boyfriend, her other best friend. Everything else could be dealt with later.
Permanent tag list: @doubleb11 @nburkhardt @zerokrox-blog @newtstabber @i-less-than-three-you @carlyv @pyrohonk @straight4joekeery @trippypancakes @conversesweetheart @estrellami-1 @suddenlyinlove @yikes-a-bee @swimmingbirdrunningrock @perseus-notjackson @anaibis @merricatty @maya-custodios-dionach @grtwdsmwhr @manda-panda-monium @lumoschild @goodolefashionedloverboi @mentallyundone @awkwardgravity1
#Robin keeps a list of people that try to kill her through her by nut allergy#Joyce is at the top now which makes her feel guilty every time#You can't tell me Robin isn't allergic to nuts in canon#My mom always tries to kill me through walnut use too#I've had two reactions in the past 24 hours because this lunatic wanted to make banana nut bread in the house#stranger things#robin buckley#steddie#mentions#fanfic#steve harrington#eddie munson#chief hopper#joyce byers
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I love your idea about exploring what the gut energy, emotional/heart/image energy and head energy would look like within the same type, without assigning it to fixes!!! This actually makes a lot more sense to me. Do you have any ideas about what this would look like for, say, 6s? (or any other number you feel like writing about) Thank you :)
I haven't had a lot of time to think about this, so I'll just throw this out there as a hypothetical. Let's use 6 as an example, because I am the most familiar with it.
We all have a 'stance' within our type -- dependent types (including 6s) are 'thinking repressed,' which means while they are a dominant thinking type, their thoughts are often unproductive because they go in circles (questioning, second-guessing, over-analyzing, asking tons of questions of 'experts' who seem to know what they are talking about, never finding enough answers, and not sure what to do with the data they have gathered or whether it is 'accurate' or not, all of which gets them nowhere).
Other types tend to have a particular order of their stances -- for example, within the same stance, 1s are doing > feeling > thinking. But 6s are either feeling > doing > thinking, or doing > feeling > thinking. The 6 takes in information with their thinking process, and then either decides to DO something about it or decides how they feel about it before taking action on it. This could indicate why some 6s are more emotional than others.
For example, Veronica Mars is a feeling > doing 6. Why? She makes emotionally reactive decisions, such as when she decides to arrange to have someone's car crushed when bearing a grudge. She makes a lot of purely emotional relationship decisions, about who she is going to be romantically entangled with. Since she's an ENFP 6w7, I'll pick another ENFP 6 for the doing > feeling comparison -- Joyce from Stranger Things. She moves straight from her fears into direct action and is rather combative as a result (you need to find my kid, Hopper, and I mean NOW!). She's using 'doing' to serve her 6 fear center (and becoming assertive), while Veronica is using 'feeling' to support her 6 fears (and becoming emotional).
So what would these centers look like independent of tritype, as pure 6 energy? What does a 6 value? Things like being thoughtful, generous, and kind, doing what's best for everyone, being fair and calling out people who are elitist or superior, being an 'every-person' (relatable), staying busy and productive / having a good work ethic, and loyalty. The cp6 has more respect for people with strong boundaries, because they throw up their own strong boundaries; the phobic 6 sees people with strong boundaries as being unreasonable, shutting people out prematurely, or not giving things a chance.
The 6 ding center (gut center) stays busy 'doing' to avoid anxiety. They like to have a plan for their time, so they do not feel like they are 'wasting' their time being non-productive; 6s more than any other number likes to have an advance idea of what they are going to do and accomplish (even if they don't wind up sticking to it), because it gives them a sense of 'control' and structure in an uncertain world. A plan helps them get everything done, and lets them move dutifully from one task to another. 6s love to-do lists, and commit to finishing their projects. Organizing helps them feel in control / on top of life, and get things done rather than just endlessly think about them (I need to be making PROGRESS... moving toward completion). The doing 6 may feel guilty about wasting their time and struggle to take time off, feeling that they should be contributing in a worthwhile way.
The 6 feeling center focuses on connecting to others through their shared humanity; I am no better than you, and you are no better than me, we are here together and should be fair to each other, I should attend to the common good. They hate anything that seems elitist, condescending, or dismissive or devaluing of a person's experiences. 6s connect through their experiences as a way to make themselves approachable; they want the common good. Since they value loyalty above all, they may be loyal to a fault to those they care about or love, and fall into self-hatred and recrimination if their own fear prevents them from taking a stand in their loved ones' defense (phobic; the cp6 will assert themselves more forcefully). They hate fear holding them back from speaking in others' defense, but also may not want to risk alienation or causing offense (if phobic), so they feel torn between their need to avoid abuse/attack and feeling disloyal for not challenging others. Since they value loyalty above all, they will hate themselves if fear stops them from taking risks on others' behalf (for example, wanting to be there for someone, but believing themselves incapable of doing what needs done and allowing that to thwart them from 'doing' -- "I should get on that plane to go be with them... but I also have all these fears that I can't do this on my own"). They will attend to others' needs out of a desire to connect or to problem-solve, while wanting everyone involved to "win." This 6 may second-guess their own motivations and be unsure of their true feelings.
Here's my theory.
The 6s that favor feeling over doing are more emotional. The 6s that favor doing over feeling are more driven and detached.
You can take this a step further given their social stacking
Soc 6 - others' feelings and expectations and ideas about me frame my self-perception and set up standards I am expected to uphold and fulfill (I am duty bound to participate in something larger than myself). The doing 6 is more driven to fulfill these roles, the feeling 6 has a greater anxiety about connecting to others and avoiding attack.
Sp 6 - I desperately need and want to stand on my own two feet, to be independent, and to trust my own thinking, so I try and do things myself before consulting others or participating (I don't want to impose when I can think this through or do this myself). The doing 6 is proactive in obtaining this knowledge / independence for themselves; the feeling 6 wants to do it, and knows they should, but may struggle more with feelings of self-doubt.
Sx 6 - I adjust myself to my lovers' expectations and their feelings, ideas, and thoughts about me reinforce my views about myself; I am anxious about connections and fearful others may come between us, but also more risk-taking than the other 6s since I follow my passions for as long as they last, and I like to model myself after an appealing idea of what is attractive (this will depend on what my society values and what I intend to do to shift it to be unique / attractive to certain people, and unattractive to others without endangering myself). The doing 6 will be more proactive in chasing a high, but also more pragmatic about these connections; the feeling 6 will generate way more feelings and anxieties centered around intense these emotional connections and be more emotionally reactive to threats (this person is trying to steal my lover away from me!).
Just my two cents. Something to think about, in terms of potential manifestations of the other types.
Just as a handy guide:
The aggressive types (3, 7, 8) are feeling repressed. Because 3 is also a dominant feeling center, either thinking or doing takes precedence over their thinking (a more analytical and strategic 3, or a workaholic 3); for 7, it goes thinking > doing > feeling; for 8, it's doing > thinking > feeling.
The withdrawn types (4, 5, 9) are doing repressed. Because 9 is doing dominant, either feeling or thinking drives their actions (a more emotional 9, or a more analytical 9); for 4, it goes feeling > thinking; and for 5, it goes thinking > feeling.
The dependent types (1, 2, 6) are thinking repressed. See above for 6. 1 is doing > feeling, and 2 is feeling > doing.
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when steve goes into labor early, he finds himself craving his mother's presence in a way he never has before.
he's always loved her, even if she never really loved him. growing up, she always just sort of avoided him - his eyes were so big and open and honest as he toddled about proclaiming his own love for just about everything under the sun - his nonna, the roses growing, and his mama. and she knew she should have loved him. hell, she wanted to love him, but she just couldn't. and since she couldn't love this little being who seemed entirely made up of love, she distanced herself.
and maybe as a child he didn't know, he was gullible enough to believe that she was just busy, just couldn't come play or couldn't help him plant a new flower, but he grew up and he saw everyone else's mother do so much better. and it stung. it did worse than sting, it ached in a way he just couldn't explain. and when he was fourteen he finally broke down and asked her why she didn't love him, and he'd hoped that she'd tell him otherwise but she was drunk and all she could do was break down and cry and ask for his forgiveness. she didn't remember it the next morning but steve's been haunted by the memory ever since, the knowledge that his mother doesn't love him.
of course he always knew his father despised him, there was no question of that. and now that he's having a baby of his own his aversion to the elder Harrington has only worsened. john harrington is a cruel being, he never should have been allowed near ant child, and steve was determined to keep him away from this one no matter what. he's already told the man he won't be allowed in the hospital, but his mother is supposed to be there. but it's the dead of night and the baby is coming early and as much as he cries for her there's no possible way to get her there in time.
still, billy's heart tugs at the way steve whimpers and says "i - i need her." but the thing is, billy knows the infamous misses harrington. and she doesn't deserve to be there when steve gives birth. but he knows exactly who does.
he does feel a little guilty about calling at such a ridiculous hour, but he isn't surprised when joyce answers, soft and groggy.
"hello?"
and billy pauses, because he doesn't know how to word this. he doesn't know how to tell her that steve's hours away from being a father instead of week, that he's crying for someone who doesn't love him, that billy himself is a little terrified. but in the end it just comes out on its own.
"he needs his mom."
and so joyce shows up at four in the morning and steve sobs against her because he's only ever been ready for the theoreticals. this isn't him reading a book on pregnancy, this isn't one of the kind mothers of hawkins sharing their delivery stories. this is steve, his stomach contracting miserably, his back and hips screaming, his heart racing because he's about to be in possession of a tiny little human being who's going to need him for everything. and this is also steve, barely in the third decade of his life, no real plan for his own future, staying up most nights because he's scared of monsters - monsters he'll now have to protect his baby from. and he doesn't know how to put those fears into words so all he can do is cry, and joyce, she gets it, she always does, and so she strokes his hair and soothes his fears as best she can.
and then there's claudia of course, who's been there since steve's first ultrasound, and she never leaves his room for long, not if she can help it. she holds his hand and wipes his tears and steve feels safe. claudia's always called him the older son she never had, and he feels more like steve henderson than steve harrington in those moments.
the kids won't leave either, because of course they won't. eleven and will overheard joyce on the phone the night before and when hopper tries to get them to school they outright beg to stay home because focusing is impossible knowing their honorary neice or nephew could be born at any second. and hop wants to make them go, but ultimately he can't. and once they get the all-clear, they call the others, and the next thing steve knows he's surrounded by a gang of not-quite teenagers looking him over for any problems and loudly expressing their excitement. and it's endearing, because it reminds steve that this kid has a plethora of babysitters at the ready - even if mike tries to act like he doesn't care, which is decidedly false judging from the panic that crosses his face when steve's hit with a nasty contraction.
dustin refuses to go home even as night falls, and max tells susan she's spending the night with eleven - which is true, but they're both staying at the hospital as well, hopper watching them while joyce stays firmly by steve's side.
on his right, as has been the case for the entirety of his pregnancy, is billy. holding his hand, pushing his hair out of his face, comforting and praising him through steve's low whines and pained groans. he doesn't know how many hours he spends pushing but it hurts like nothing else, like his body is being torn from the inside, and he wants it to stop but he needs to keep going. so he does, he grits his teeth and he pushes through everything, and in the end he's rewarded with the first wail of a human being.
and he doesn't cry right away.
not that he can, his body is catching up with that the hell just happened, his breath is still coming in quick, shaky gasps, and he feels like he's only hearing joyce, not listening. nothing feels right until he's given the solid six-pound weight of his baby on his chest. she's so pink, and her cries are subsiding slowly, but steve runs a trembling hand over the top of her head and realizes she's got the same dark fuzz from all of his baby pictures and then it smacks him in the gut.
this baby is his.
and he holds her close and cries because the amount of love in his chest is too much, he hurts with the intensity of it.
nikita rosaline harrington is her name, and billy tears up a little bit because of it. she's a pretty little thing, her nose is tiny and scrunches up whenever billy runs a fingertip down the tiny bridge of it. she's got her father's eyes too, big and brown and curious, billy's never seen anything more precious - or he thinks so, until he watches steve stare at her with the same eyes and nearly has a heart attack at how sweet the two of them are. and he doesn't need to complicate things right now, not when steve's finally catching his breath after months of hardship, but he knows in his heart this is his family. that's his baby, that's his - well, his steve. and he kisses them both on the forehead and promises he'll take care of them. he's not the dick responsible for knocking steve up, but it's an honor to do this, to step in.
to prove he's not like neil. he can be a dad, and a damn good one at that.
and steve, who doesn't even like letting nancy drive the party to the arcade without him being there, he trusts billy wholeheartedly to raise this baby with him. billy doesn't take that lightly.
joyce and claudia spend a good hour fawning over nikita, they've gotten her so many gifts and she ends up in the little cap claudia made and the outfit joyce got. max and eleven are just as thrilled, max kisses her chubby little cheeks and eleven stares at steve in awe for literally creating a life. will talks to her quietly and holds her like he never wants to let go, even though he does in order to let hopper hold niki for a bit.
there's never been a question about who her grandfather is. neil and john are simply unfit, and hopper's been a pseudo-dad to billy and steve, he's the only one who gets the grandfather status. there's a whole mix of emotion on his face as he bounces the cooing baby, telling her how nice it is to finally meet her and how he's gonna enjoy spoiling her rotten. when he finally gives her back to steve, the man has tears in his eyes.
"you did good, kid," he tells steve, runs a heavy hand over his hair before patting billy on the shoulder.
dustin holds her the longest, of course. he quickly comes to adore the fit of his finger in her curled palm, and he tells her about all the things he's going to teach her as she grows up. steve's fondly amused at how easily dustin takes to carrying nikita, in the same way steve got used to dragging dustin around. every time the curly-haired kid remembers to look up at the other people in the room, he gives steve the brightest grin, eyes crinkled with merriment.
"you have the coolest dad ever, niki," he informs her proudly, and steve's finally beyond the need for cool points but it's touching nonetheless.
mike and lucas meet her in the morning, and lucas immediately charms the baby with a little song as he rocks her back and forth. he declares himself the fun uncle, which dustin protests, but steve and billy know lucas is correct. mike is the only one who just knows how to hold a baby, thanks to a baby sister, so he takes nikita from lucas like it's nothing and stares at her little face for a long time. the emotion there isn't something steve can read, but he sees the way mike draws her closer after a moment and smiles.
mike's a protector, even if he likes to act like he doesn't care sometimes. and steve, who's just as protective, knows that niki is beyond safe with him.
when robin meets the baby she nearly screams. but then she remembers how new those little ears are and settles for the biggest grin as she swipes niki from billy and walks about, cooing all sorts of nonsense to her little neice. "she's too cute," she gushes, planting a kiss to the baby's forehead. "i'm taking her home. sorry, dingus." and steve protests, but they both know she isn't about to walk out of there with a baby. robin loves kids, but she doesn't think motherhood is for her.
it's certainly not for everyone. and that thought doesn't occur to steve until his mother shows up, nearly a day after niki is born.
he watches her go to pick nikita up and his heart twists and he wants to reach over and take her back. his hands stay clenched under the blanket as the woman smiles at the baby, then at steve himself.
"you made a cute one, i'm not surprised," she muses, and then she says, "don't you just love her?"
and steve, he can't really respond to that.
billy's his saving grace, picks up on the shift and ends up gently convincing misses harrington to come back another time. when he turns back to steve, the brunette has tears already streaming down his face.
"why couldn't she -?" he tries, but billy doesn't need him to finish that sentence. he moves closer and wraps steve up in his arms and for the first time decides that he hates both harringtons, not just john.
because steve's easily the most loveable soul he's ever stumbled across. he looks at nikita and all he can see is a little steve, and he hates the boy's parents for refusing to love the vulnerable little soul they brought into the world.
#steebie writes#stranger things fanfiction#stranger things au#co parenting au#harringrove#steve harrington#billy hargrove
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The 100 best novels written in English: the full list
After two years of careful consideration, Robert McCrum has reached a verdict on his selection of the 100 greatest novels written in English. Take a look at his list.
1. The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (1678)
A story of a man in search of truth told with the simple clarity and beauty of Bunyan’s prose make this the ultimate English classic.
2. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)
By the end of the 19th century, no book in English literary history had enjoyed more editions, spin-offs and translations. Crusoe’s world-famous novel is a complex literary confection, and it’s irresistible.
3. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726)
A satirical masterpiece that’s never been out of print, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels comes third in our list of the best novels written in English
4. Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (1748)
Clarissa is a tragic heroine, pressured by her unscrupulous nouveau-riche family to marry a wealthy man she detests, in the book that Samuel Johnson described as “the first book in the world for the knowledge it displays of the human heart.”
5. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749)
Tom Jones is a classic English novel that captures the spirit of its age and whose famous characters have come to represent Augustan society in all its loquacious, turbulent, comic variety.
6. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (1759)
Laurence Sterne’s vivid novel caused delight and consternation when it first appeared and has lost little of its original bite.
7. Emma by Jane Austen (1816)
Jane Austen’s Emma is her masterpiece, mixing the sparkle of her early books with a deep sensibility.
8. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)
Mary Shelley’s first novel has been hailed as a masterpiece of horror and the macabre.
9. Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock (1818)
The great pleasure of Nightmare Abbey, which was inspired by Thomas Love Peacock’s friendship with Shelley, lies in the delight the author takes in poking fun at the romantic movement.
10. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe (1838)
Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel – a classic adventure story with supernatural elements – has fascinated and influenced generations of writers.
11. Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli (1845)
The future prime minister displayed flashes of brilliance that equalled the greatest Victorian novelists.
12. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)
Charlotte Brontë’s erotic, gothic masterpiece became the sensation of Victorian England. Its great breakthrough was its intimate dialogue with the reader.
13. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)
Emily Brontë’s windswept masterpiece is notable not just for its wild beauty but for its daring reinvention of the novel form itself.
14. Vanity Fair by William Thackeray (1848)
William Thackeray’s masterpiece, set in Regency England, is a bravura performance by a writer at the top of his game.
15. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)
David Copperfield marked the point at which Dickens became the great entertainer and also laid the foundations for his later, darker masterpieces.
16. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s astounding book is full of intense symbolism and as haunting as anything by Edgar Allan Poe.
17. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
Wise, funny and gripping, Melville’s epic work continues to cast a long shadow over American literature.
18. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)
Lewis Carroll’s brilliant nonsense tale is one of the most influential and best loved in the English canon.
19. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868)
Wilkie Collins’s masterpiece, hailed by many as the greatest English detective novel, is a brilliant marriage of the sensational and the realistic.
20. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868-9)
Louisa May Alcott’s highly original tale aimed at a young female market has iconic status in America and never been out of print.
21. Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871-2)
This cathedral of words stands today as perhaps the greatest of the great Victorian fictions.
22. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (1875)
Inspired by the author’s fury at the corrupt state of England, and dismissed by critics at the time, The Way We Live Now is recognised as Trollope’s masterpiece.
23. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884/5)
Mark Twain’s tale of a rebel boy and a runaway slave seeking liberation upon the waters of the Mississippi remains a defining classic of American literature.
24. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
A thrilling adventure story, gripping history and fascinating study of the Scottish character, Kidnapped has lost none of its power.
25. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome (1889)
Jerome K Jerome’s accidental classic about messing about on the Thames remains a comic gem.
26. The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle (1890)
Sherlock Holmes’s second outing sees Conan Doyle’s brilliant sleuth – and his bluff sidekick Watson – come into their own.
27. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)
Wilde’s brilliantly allusive moral tale of youth, beauty and corruption was greeted with howls of protest on publication.
28. New Grub Street by George Gissing (1891)
George Gissing’s portrayal of the hard facts of a literary life remains as relevant today as it was in the late 19th century.
29. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (1895)
Hardy exposed his deepest feelings in this bleak, angry novel and, stung by the hostile response, he never wrote another.
30. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895)
Stephen Crane’s account of a young man’s passage to manhood through soldiery is a blueprint for the great American war novel.
31. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)
Bram Stoker’s classic vampire story was very much of its time but still resonates more than a century later.
32. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899)
Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece about a life-changing journey in search of Mr Kurtz has the simplicity of great myth.
33. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (1900)
Theodore Dreiser was no stylist, but there’s a terrific momentum to his unflinching novel about a country girl’s American dream.
34. Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901)
In Kipling’s classic boy’s own spy story, an orphan in British India must make a choice between east and west.
35. The Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903)
Jack London’s vivid adventures of a pet dog that goes back to nature reveal an extraordinary style and consummate storytelling.
36. The Golden Bowl by Henry James (1904)
American literature contains nothing else quite like Henry James’s amazing, labyrinthine and claustrophobic novel.
37. Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe (1904)
This entertaining if contrived story of a hack writer and priest who becomes pope sheds vivid light on its eccentric author – described by DH Lawrence as a “man-demon”.
38. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (1908)
The evergreen tale from the riverbank and a powerful contribution to the mythology of Edwardian England.
39. The History of Mr Polly by HG Wells (1910)
The choice is great, but Wells’s ironic portrait of a man very like himself is the novel that stands out.
40. Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm (1911)
The passage of time has conferred a dark power upon Beerbohm’s ostensibly light and witty Edwardian satire.
41. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (1915)
Ford’s masterpiece is a searing study of moral dissolution behind the facade of an English gentleman – and its stylistic influence lingers to this day.
42. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915)
John Buchan’s espionage thriller, with its sparse, contemporary prose, is hard to put down.
43. The Rainbow by DH Lawrence (1915)
The Rainbow is perhaps DH Lawrence’s finest work, showing him for the radical, protean, thoroughly modern writer he was.
44. Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham (1915)
Somerset Maugham’s semi-autobiographical novel shows the author’s savage honesty and gift for storytelling at their best.
45. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920)
The story of a blighted New York marriage stands as a fierce indictment of a society estranged from culture.
46. Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)
This portrait of a day in the lives of three Dubliners remains a towering work, in its word play surpassing even Shakespeare.
47. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (1922)
What it lacks in structure and guile, this enthralling take on 20s America makes up for in vivid satire and characterisation.
48. A Passage to India by EM Forster (1924)
EM Forster’s most successful work is eerily prescient on the subject of empire.
49. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos (1925)
A guilty pleasure it may be, but it is impossible to overlook the enduring influence of a tale that helped to define the jazz age.
50. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)
Woolf’s great novel makes a day of party preparations the canvas for themes of lost love, life choices and mental illness.
51. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
Fitzgerald’s jazz age masterpiece has become a tantalising metaphor for the eternal mystery of art.
52. Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1926)
A young woman escapes convention by becoming a witch in this original satire about England after the first world war.
53. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)
Hemingway’s first and best novel makes an escape to 1920s Spain to explore courage, cowardice and manly authenticity.
54. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (1929)
Dashiell Hammett’s crime thriller and its hard-boiled hero Sam Spade influenced everyone from Chandler to Le Carré.
55. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (1930)
The influence of William Faulkner’s immersive tale of raw Mississippi rural life can be felt to this day.
56. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
Aldous Huxley’s vision of a future human race controlled by global capitalism is every bit as prescient as Orwell’s more famous dystopia.
57. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932)
The book for which Gibbons is best remembered was a satire of late-Victorian pastoral fiction but went on to influence many subsequent generations.
58. Nineteen Nineteen by John Dos Passos (1932)
The middle volume of John Dos Passos’s USA trilogy is revolutionary in its intent, techniques and lasting impact.
59. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (1934)
The US novelist’s debut revelled in a Paris underworld of seedy sex and changed the course of the novel – though not without a fight with the censors.
60. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (1938)
Evelyn Waugh’s Fleet Street satire remains sharp, pertinent and memorable.
61. Murphy by Samuel Beckett (1938)
Samuel Beckett’s first published novel is an absurdist masterpiece, a showcase for his uniquely comic voice.
62. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (1939)
Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled debut brings to life the seedy LA underworld – and Philip Marlowe, the archetypal fictional detective.
63. Party Going by Henry Green (1939)
Set on the eve of war, this neglected modernist masterpiece centres on a group of bright young revellers delayed by fog.
64. At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien (1939)
Labyrinthine and multilayered, Flann O’Brien’s humorous debut is both a reflection on, and an exemplar of, the Irish novel.
65. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)
One of the greatest of great American novels, this study of a family torn apart by poverty and desperation in the Great Depression shocked US society.
66. Joy in the Morning by PG Wodehouse (1946)
PG Wodehouse’s elegiac Jeeves novel, written during his disastrous years in wartime Germany, remains his masterpiece.
67. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)
A compelling story of personal and political corruption, set in the 1930s in the American south.
68. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (1947)
Malcolm Lowry’s masterpiece about the last hours of an alcoholic ex-diplomat in Mexico is set to the drumbeat of coming conflict.
69. The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen (1948)
Elizabeth Bowen’s 1948 novel perfectly captures the atmosphere of London during the blitz while providing brilliant insights into the human heart.
70. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)
George Orwell’s dystopian classic cost its author dear but is arguably the best-known novel in English of the 20th century.
71. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (1951)
Graham Greene’s moving tale of adultery and its aftermath ties together several vital strands in his work.
72. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951)
JD Salinger’s study of teenage rebellion remains one of the most controversial and best-loved American novels of the 20th century.
73. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (1953)
In the long-running hunt to identify the great American novel, Saul Bellow’s picaresque third book frequently hits the mark.
74. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954)
Dismissed at first as “rubbish & dull”, Golding’s brilliantly observed dystopian desert island tale has since become a classic.
75. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
Nabokov’s tragicomic tour de force crosses the boundaries of good taste with glee.
76. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
The creative history of Kerouac’s beat-generation classic, fuelled by pea soup and benzedrine, has become as famous as the novel itself.
77. Voss by Patrick White (1957)
A love story set against the disappearance of an explorer in the outback, Voss paved the way for a generation of Australian writers to shrug off the colonial past.
78. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
Her second novel finally arrived this summer, but Harper Lee’s first did enough alone to secure her lasting fame, and remains a truly popular classic.
79. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1960)
Short and bittersweet, Muriel Spark’s tale of the downfall of a Scottish schoolmistress is a masterpiece of narrative fiction.
80. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
This acerbic anti-war novel was slow to fire the public imagination, but is rightly regarded as a groundbreaking critique of military madness.
81. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962)
Hailed as one of the key texts of the women’s movement of the 1960s, this study of a divorced single mother’s search for personal and political identity remains a defiant, ambitious tour de force.
82. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)
Anthony Burgess’s dystopian classic still continues to startle and provoke, refusing to be outshone by Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant film adaptation.
83. A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood (1964)
Christopher Isherwood’s story of a gay Englishman struggling with bereavement in LA is a work of compressed brilliance.
84. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1966)
Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel, a true story of bloody murder in rural Kansas, opens a window on the dark underbelly of postwar America.
85. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1966)
Sylvia Plath’s painfully graphic roman à clef, in which a woman struggles with her identity in the face of social pressure, is a key text of Anglo-American feminism.
86. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth (1969)
This wickedly funny novel about a young Jewish American’s obsession with masturbation caused outrage on publication, but remains his most dazzling work.
87. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor (1971)
Elizabeth Taylor’s exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life facing the changes taking shape in the 60s.
88. Rabbit Redux by John Updike (1971)
Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, Updike’s lovably mediocre alter ego, is one of America’s great literary protoganists, up there with Huck Finn and Jay Gatsby.
89. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977)
The novel with which the Nobel prize-winning author established her name is a kaleidoscopic evocation of the African-American experience in the 20th century.
90. A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul (1979)
VS Naipaul’s hellish vision of an African nation’s path to independence saw him accused of racism, but remains his masterpiece.
91. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)
The personal and the historical merge in Salman Rushdie’s dazzling, game-changing Indian English novel of a young man born at the very moment of Indian independence.
92. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (1981)
Marilynne Robinson’s tale of orphaned sisters and their oddball aunt in a remote Idaho town is admired by everyone from Barack Obama to Bret Easton Ellis.
93. Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis (1984)
Martin Amis’s era-defining ode to excess unleashed one of literature’s greatest modern monsters in self-destructive antihero John Self.
94. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (1986)
Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel about a retired artist in postwar Japan, reflecting on his career during the country’s dark years, is a tour de force of unreliable narration.
95. The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald (1988)
Fitzgerald’s story, set in Russia just before the Bolshevik revolution, is her masterpiece: a brilliant miniature whose peculiar magic almost defies analysis.
96. Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1988)
Anne Tyler’s portrayal of a middle-aged, mid-American marriage displays her narrative clarity, comic timing and ear for American speech to perfection.
97. Amongst Women by John McGahern (1990)
This modern Irish masterpiece is both a study of the faultlines of Irish patriarchy and an elegy for a lost world.
98. Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997)
A writer of “frightening perception”, Don DeLillo guides the reader in an epic journey through America’s history and popular culture.
99. Disgrace by JM Coetzee (1999)
In his Booker-winning masterpiece, Coetzee’s intensely human vision infuses a fictional world that both invites and confounds political interpretation.
100. True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (2000)
Peter Carey rounds off our list of literary milestones with a Booker prize-winning tour-de-force examining the life and times of Australia’s infamous antihero, Ned Kelly.
Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com
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will finding out about mikes nightmares at a sleepover one night. mikes never told anyone because he always felt like he had no right to, because of everytging wills been through. will just cuddles him and tells him that of course he’s gonna be there for him, always. they’re both so in love.
[ part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 ]
crossposted to AO3
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“We’re gonna hang with the Party tomorrow, yeah?” Mike asked as he searched through his dresser for a too-large t-shirt. It had the Hawkins High mascot on the front and he cringed to himself about being one of those people wearing their high school’s logo.
Will though hummed an affirmation from his perch on Mike’s bed. “Lucas said he’s coming over in the late morning. We’ll bike over and grab Dustin before heading to Max’s place.”
“And from there, we go into town for lunch.” Mike took off his shirt and absentmindedly stretched his arms up. He could feel Will’s gaze on him and he smiled to himself before grabbing a pair of boxers. “I’m gonna shower; feel free to snoop around or whatever.”
“Your room hadn’t changed a bit since I was gone, Mike.” Will scoffed but slipped off the bed as he padded his way to Mike’s side. “I doubt you have something to hide that I need to snoop for.”
Mike froze and really tried his best not to glance over at his desk where his antidepressants and anxiety medications resided. The bottles were in a black bag on his desk hidden away in a corner. There was something about seeing the transparent orange bottles that reminded Mike of his inability to take care of himself without aid and that reminder wasn’t one he wanted to literally see every time he came into his room. He still hadn’t found a way to tell Will about his meds or the therapy or how he heard his parents fighting and a divorce might be down the line. Will had enough issues to deal with anyway. Now that they were boyfriends, it was harder for Mike to keep the secret.
Friends don’t lie. Boyfriends especially shouldn’t lie.
Yet, here Mike was, lying through obfuscation. Never saying exactly what’s up and leaving things vague enough to not be questioned.
A wave of nausea struck Mike’s gut and he turned to his door with a shudder. “Yeah. Anyway, shower. I’ll be quick.”
Mike left the room with a quick peck on Will’s cheek. His mind was racing through various emotions, landing guilt and regret and anger and self-deprecating thoughts laced with anxiety and anguish. By the time he got to the bathroom, which wasn’t far, Mike was having some trouble breathing and he hated it. He hated the panic, the shaking of his hands, the way he couldn’t maintain basic control of how his body reacted. What type of leader was he to be losing it in the bathroom face to face with his gaunt and paper-white pale reflection? His freckles stuck out even more against his pallor skin and the boy closed his eyes with a deep breath.
Breathe, Mike remembered his therapist saying when he had an anxiety attack in the very first session where she asked him how he felt powerless about losing his friends. Breathe, focus on the five seconds you hold in your air, and then let the thoughts flow out of you as you breathe out.
Mike did as previously directed until he could no longer feel his hands shaking. He turned on the water and showered for a few minutes, taking a little more time to let the warm water massage his back with gentle pressure and calm his tense muscles. He dried off and changed in the bathroom before heading back to his room with a whistle. Will was flipping through an old comic book but looked up when he heard Mike enter the room.
Mike nearly dropped all his clothing at the sight before him. It wasn’t anything new persay; Will often word Mike’s clothing if he stayed over without packing a bag, but this—Will wearing Mike’s old t-shirts and pyjama shorts, Will wearing his boyfriend’s clothing—was definitely shocking at least. It struck Mike again that Will was his boyfriend and it wasn’t a fantasy he had been trying to ignore for years. It was only five days since Christmas Eve when Joyce and his mom accidentally revealed to the two boys that they liked each other, so it was still fresh enough in his mind, but little things like Will in his room wearing his clothing made Mike realize all over again that the boy of his dreams was really his boy in real life.
“God, I love you,” Mike whispered hoarsely, tossing his clothes in the hamper before rushing to the bed. He grabbed Will’s face and tilted his chin to kiss him. Will melted into the kiss with a soft hum. “I love you so much.”
“Love you, too, Mike.” Will pulled away and reached out to take Mike’s hand. “Any reason you’re suddenly telling me?”
“Do I need a reason? I get to tell you how I feel every day for the rest of our lives. You can bet your ass I’m gonna take every chance I can.” Mike watched Will blush furiously and he couldn’t help but kiss him again. “You and me? Best thing I’ve ever done.”
Will pulled at Mike’s shirt and flopped with him onto the bed. It was too small for the both of them, what will Mike’s height already making the bed a little too small for him on his own, but they made it work. Mike unfortunately had to squirm his way out of Will’s arms to turn off the lights but he was quick to return to Will and curl up next to him.
“Have you been thinking about any New Year’s wishes?” Will asked as darkness began to settle in the room.
“Not really. One of my wishes ended up being a Christmas gift so I have nothing else to desire really.”
“You’re talking about me, aren’t you.”
“No, I’m talking about the new Zelda game Dustin bought me.” Mike nudged his boyfriend and then leaned in for a kiss. He missed and hit only the corner of Will’s lips, which made Will laugh.
“I love you,” the smaller boy whispered in a content sigh. “It’s crazy that we can say that now. I don’t have to be afraid of loving you because you love me, too.”
Mike nodded and took a hand to Will’s hair as he brushed his fingers through it. “I was really scared I would lose you so I never said anything. And then El came into our lives.” Mike closed his eyes. “I love her but I was wrong for trying to force her to be with me. I knew it wasn’t working but I still tried. I thought we could work it out.”
“Hey, she forgives you, you know. She also thought it could work it out. She wanted it to work out just as much as you did.”
Mike still felt guilty for it all. For wanting El while loving Will. For trying so hard to ignore where his feelings really lied even though at the end of the day he still imagined waking up in the morning next to Will for reasons he never wanted to explore.
“I hurt her and I know she’s still in pain about it. She can barely stand to be in a room alone with me.”
Will overlayed Mike’s hand with his own. “Heartbreak takes time to get over. You were her first love and letting that go is painful. We should know.”
Mike laughed sarcastically. “Yeah and we failed miserably.”
“I’m glad we did,” Will kissed Mike’s nose. “My point though is that El needs time to heal and learn to be your friend again. She forgives you, trust me. She didn’t want to end things but she knew what would be best when she called it quits.”
Mike closed his eyes and listened to Will’s slow breathing. “Yeah. Do you think she’ll be happy about you being with me?”
“Of course.” Will hummed. “We’ll tell everyone on New Year’s Eve as planned. Only two days away. Get some rest now, okay?”
“Mmhmm.”
Sleep came easily when his mind managed to stop worrying about his friendship with El. The sleep itself? Mike could barely remember what he dreamt about. Things were hazy and unclear but there was blood and screams. Screams from his friends, from the people he swore loyalty to, from his mom who knew nothing and he hated the fear he had with telling her the truth. It consumed him until he couldn’t breathe, until he couldn’t hear anything but someone shouting in the distance. It was faint against the background of El’s sobbing, of her screeches as she pulled the wriggling slice of the Mind Flayer from her leg. Faint against the screams of Will burning for hours from the inside out, tears streaming down his face as he writhed in agony. Faint against the worries of his mother finding him vomiting in the bathroom one night from crying so hard and taking him to therapy that very next day despite having school.
(And god, how embarrassing it was to miss track meet and come the next day with a doctor’s note because Mike couldn’t get a stupid fucking handle on his runaway thoughts.)
“Mike!”
The boy woke from his terrors with a choked gasp, legs flaying as he struggled to escape from the blankets that suffocated him. There was a hand on his arm and he tried to pull away from it with all the strength he had, which was a lot thanks to his extra curricular studies. Mike tumbled off the bed and the shock of the fall managed to bring him back to reality. Will was hovering over the edge with wide eyes and fright screaming in his posture. Mike blinked his way out of the remains of his nightmare and felt guilt filter to the top of his emotions.
“Will,” he gasped shakily, feeling the wetness of tears drenching his cheeks. “Will, I—I didn’t mean to.”
Will climbed off the end and knelt beside Mike. He took Mike’s face in hand, ever so gentle and soft, and kissed one of the tear streaks his nightmare had drawn on his face. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m right here, love.”
Mike couldn’t stop crying. “It’s not—it’s not usually this bad.”
“What isn’t?”
“My dreams.” Mike closed his eyes and Will kissed his eyelids, a featherlight touch on his wet skin. “My nightmares.”
“Is it often?” Mike nodded. “How long?”
“Since the Snowball.” Will tensed and Mike pushed the boy’s hands from his face. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Mike, you were crying in your sleep and kicking around and yanked yourself from my hand so hard you catapulted yourself from your bed.” Will took Mike’s face again and pressed their foreheads together. “You can talk to me about these things. You’re not alone.”
“That’s what my therapist keeps saying and yet here I am, still fucking doing this!” Mike motioned to himself on the floor and then collapsed in on himself. “I can’t make it stop, I can’t tell anyone about the truth, I can’t control myself even with my medications and the therapy sessions, it just gets bad again after everything is good.”
“Mike,”
“And sometimes, I don’t sleep and I won’t take my sleep meds so I don’t have to face that shit again, don’t have to see El sacrifice herself or you—I thought you were dead, Will. I thought it was real.” Mike covered Will’s hands with his larger ones. “I thought you were gone forever and I never got to tell you how I feel.”
“Mike, I’m here. I didn’t die. I’m right here with you.”
“Yeah, that’s the problem though. I haven’t actually been tortured or attacked or possessed or anything. I was just there. A witness.” Mike laughed hoarsely. “I stood by and watched so many people die. I was supposed to be a leader, keep the party together, and I split us up being so selfish and I just—I have no right to be having these damn nightmares when you and El have been through so much worse. And I know your mom told me not to discount my experiences but I can’t stop thinking about how pathetic I am to be like this when—,”
Will put a hand over Mike’s mouth and fixed him with a steady glare. “Listen to my words, Michael,” he started sternly, pulling his hand away to continue cupping Mike’s face. “We are all a little fucked in the head thanks to the Upside Down. And yeah, El and I are probably the two most fucked by it all but that doesn’t mean your trauma and experiences are invalid. My mom is right; don’t sell yourself short. You have the right to feel what you do.”
Mike’s lips were pulled into a thin pale line but he nodded and Will continued. “I was on meds too, remember? My mom used to always call ahead and make sure I have them on me whenever we would have a sleepover. It’s okay to need professional medical help. You don’t have to face this alone. You don’t have to control it alone.” Will pressed a kiss to Mike’s lips. “And I know you can’t tell your therapist everything, I know you can’t tell them about the Upside Down or the demogorgon and Mind Flayer, but you can talk to me just as I can talk to my mom or Jonathan or El these days. You’re not alone, okay? I’m right here.”
“Will.”
“Hush, babe, I’m not finished.” Will swept a hand back into Mike’s hair. “You saved me you know. You saved me and El multiple times.” Mike wanted to shake his head but he didn’t want to interrupt Will so he merely pressed his lips fimer together. Will of course noticed that. “I’m serious, Mike; you really saved us. You gave us something to fight for, a future to live for, with you and all our loved ones. You gave us hope and strength. You trusted me when I was the most untrustworthy person in the room. You were strong for all of us when we needed it, Lucas and Dustin, too. You are our leader, our DM, and you carried us through all that shit. Give yourself credit.”
Will pressed his lips to Mike’s temple and climbed to his feet. “C’mon, let’s get some sleep okay? Good days come and go like bad days and that’s nothing to be ashamed for. It’s never gonna stop but you can have control. You’re healing, Mike, and that means sometimes the wound is still gonna flare up. But eventually, it’ll scar over. Until then, take it one day at a time.”
Mike nodded and took Will’s hand, letting the smaller boy drag him back to the bed. Will wrapped Mike up in his arms and hugged him tightly. “I love you, understand? I love you no matter what. I’m always here for you on good and bad days.”
“I love you, I love you, I love you,” Mike gasped into Will’s arms, burying his face in Will’s borrowed t-shirt. “I’m so lucky to have you.”
“And I’m so lucky to have you, too, Mike.” Will dragged his finger down the bridge of Mike’s nose. “Now, let’s sleep so Dustin won’t be on our asses about taking so long to get him.”
At that, Mike laughed into Will’s chest and allowed himself to relax into his boyfriend’s arms. When he woke, he looked up into loving green eyes and felt for the first time in a while that yeah, he wasn’t alone and things really could get better. Still, when Will pressed him into the mattress with a mixture of kisses and tickles, Mike knew that this couldn’t last. Will didn’t live here anymore. He wouldn’t always be there to console Mike about the terrors of the Upside Down that still haunted him.
Mike needed to fess up and tell him mom the truth.
————
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A Buffy rewatch 4x22 Restless
aka a trip to the show’s psyche
Welcome to this dailyish text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and go on an impromptu rant about it for an hour. Is it about one hyperspecific thing or twenty observations? 10 or 3k words? You don’t know! I don’t know!!! In this house we don’t know things.
And today’s episode is a challenge to talk about. Not because there isn’t stuff, but because there’s so much stuff that you just know that everyone already dissected each and every beat of this episode. All we have left is to enjoy it.
First of all, I’m just gonna leave this video here for you in case you haven’t watched it yet. It does a wonderful job of dissecting a lot of the core details of the episode that you might miss without further research (like the Sappho poem Willow’s writing on Tara’s back or even who the band members are during Giles’ musical exposition scene).
youtube
As an addition to that, I must say that I’ve also been guilty of listening and re-listening to the Once More With Feeling soundtrack even before I started this rewatch. And that album has a Restless track (as well as a Hush one), so I already had those haunting melodies stuck in my head.
So… I was very much in the head space for Restless, and as a result, I don’t have much fresh thoughts to share about it now. But I’ll try.
Because even if this is an episode that everyone already took apart to pieces a million and ten times, it’s still one that we go back to again and again. For instance, when I, personally, try to dive into Xander’s or Willow’s characters, this is one of my first go-to episodes.
Buffy’s arc is evident throughout the series, and what we get of Giles isn’t necessarily all that defined in this episode, but Willow and Xander? Restless is a neat corner piece of the puzzle that’s their character motivation.
Willow’s dream is also an interesting one because it’s perhaps the most disrupted out of all. The video above already mentions Xander’s masturbation joke (where the show takes a hit at its own metaphor), and how that’s a scene where we leave Willow’s perspective - but the scenes from the play are also weirdly out of PoV.
Tara and Willow are talking between the curtains as we cut to dream Riley, Buffy and Harmony acting out their absurd play. Twice. So if we consider that we’re in Willow’s dream, it’s almost like she’s disassociating, or getting detached from her own sense of self. Which doesn’t necessarily have to translate to reality, dreams are dreams after all; but it does work with the theme of her dream, which is identity.
I will also say that I don’t view the implication that Tara’s talking about Willow’s sexuality with those lines about how ‘they’re going to find out’ as a red herring. It’s merely that there’s also another, deeper layer to Willow’s insecurities when it comes to her identity. And how the two are connected, since… well, I’ll probably have a separate rant about that later on, in which I’ll be undoubtedly citing Restless too.
Meanwhile we’ve got Xander’s dream. And one of the best and worst parts of Xander’s subconscious is the inappropriate sexualization of some of his friends.
I think my favorite two details about how Xander pictures Joyce and then Willow and Tara is how in some scenes, their mouths aren’t even moving as they’re talking. It heightens the fantasy nature of these scenes and highlights the way Xander’s dream objectifies these women.
The other is the fact that after each of these scenes Xander almost immediately finds himself back in his basement.
It shows how Xander’s always reaching for the unattainable, but it never ends up being what he actually needs. Or even wants. What Xander wants is love, but the shadow of his upbringing will always loom over him. He doesn’t know what he’s searching for, because he didn’t grow up experiencing it.
When the show makes it clear that the monster Xander’s been running from at the top of the stairs leading from his basement is his father, it’s one of the most lowkey chilling moments of the show. It’s not surprising, given all that we’ve already learned, but it’s still shocking, seeing it on full display.
As for Giles’ dream, I guess the one thing I will challenge the above video review on is Willow’s use of “Rupert”. Since this is Giles’ dream, my reading is that it says much more about how he sees Willow as a peer, rather than Willow’s own perception of him (which is still valid though, because she did have a crush on him, bless her heart).
This will of course have much more significance in season 6…
And then there’s Buffy.
One thing that I want to point out right off the bat, is how Buffy’s dream is about isolation, and the whole point of it is that she can’t find her friends. The people that are most important to her.
So consider then the characters who do appear in Buffy’s dream: Anya and Tara, or course, the two love interests of her friends who she hasn’t had a chance to establish her own relationships with yet. Her mom, who she’s been distant from throughout the season, and is unable or unwilling to bring back into her life.
…And Riley.
The fact that Riley appears in two forms also seems to underline that he’s someone that Buffy feels distant from in some ways. When dream Riley is with Adam, he is representing something that’s perhaps beyond his character. But then he also appears in street clothes, calling Buffy a “killer” (the same thing Forrest called Faith when she was inhabiting Buffy’s body).
It perhaps foreshadows that Buffy could never fully share the Slayer parts of herself with Riley. Or at least that that’s how she feels on a subconscious level.
I also read somewhere that they wanted to have David Boreanaz as Buffy’s guide and to be the one giving voice to the First Slayer. Which I found odd, because I thought Eliza Dushku would’ve been a more natural first choice for that… But I just did a quick wiki fact check, and apparently the plan was to have her for the scene in Buffy’s bedroom, and him in the desert.
Instead, out of necessity both of these parts have been given to Tara. Which then makes it interesting that the script only calls out her desert appearance as her not being part of Buffy’s dream, and being “borrowed”.
The implication here is that while she may not have been the production’s first choice, her earlier appearance in Buffy’s dream is intentional in-universe. Which plays well with what I earlier mentioned about Buffy choosing characters she felt a distance from at this point for her dream, especially since we transition to this after Anya’s brief appearance as dream Buffy’s college roommate. And Tara being the intuitive magic muffin she is makes her the perfect prophetic conduit.
(Also, Buffy/Tara is real, there, I said it, you can quote me on that.)
I can of course see the same scene playing out with Faith too. It would’ve once again established the shared dream universe of the slayers, given that Buffy talks about the bed they made in Faith’s dream earlier in the season. This scene is a callback to their shared dream in Graduation Part 2 too, with the direct reference to the clock as well.
The drawback of Buffy’s dream and perhaps the entire episode is the portrayal of the First Slayer herself. A “primitive” African girl that we’ve “evolved” from who couldn’t even form her own words, and whose hair Buffy makes fun of.
So… that’s not good.
Otherwise Restless is still my most favorite presentation of dreams in media. This is largely true for the entire show of course, but Restless puts those previous dream sequences on steroids, and just goes off.
The combination of what the episode reveals about the characters, the fun easter eggs and massive foreshadowing, and the absurdity that makes it all truly dreamlike… We could be here all night, all day, write essays and perhaps dissertations, and there’d be still stuff to talk about.
I just love this weirdo season finale a lot.
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No Scissors Required (Byeler Fic)
Description:
Joyce is changing Will’s sheets when she finds a tear in the bottom of his mattress. Upon further investigation, she finds he’s hidden a notebook, and even though she knows she shouldn’t, she opens it, finding some incriminating photos of a certain male celebrity and even more incriminating drawings of a certain male best friend. Joyce knows she shouldn’t meddle, but she can’t help it. Sometimes a mother knows best.
Angsty but has a (kind of) happy ending.
No Scissors Required
It’s 4 pm on a Sunday. As the daylight slips away and with it the promise of a productive weekend, Joyce is attempting some form of damage control.
She’s doing okay: she’s got dinner on the stove, a load of laundry whirring in the dryer, and neat stacks of envelopes, bank notices, and coupons divided on the kitchen table, waiting to be opened and handled and filed appropriately. She’ll get to that, of course. Right after she’s had a cigarette.
It’s one of those rare afternoons where it feels like the dust has settled, and that she’s finally got a handle on things. A small, spiteful part of her wishes Lonnie could see her doing so well. She then thinks of Hopper, feeling equal parts buoyed and daunted by the potential in their future, then, remembering Bob, instantly guilty. She tables that thought for now, but resolves to call the police station first thing tomorrow morning, certain she can conjure up something to be worried about by then. Hopper will know it’s a ploy, but he’ll appreciate it. He can’t seem to work up the nerve to call her unless it’s under silly pretenses either.
Will’s studying in the dining room. He told her for what, but she can’t keep track. Everyday, it’s something new, something for “organic chemistry” or “advanced calculus” or “studio art” or “classical poetry” (meanwhile, Joyce herself can’t remember ever taking anything but ‘math’ and science’). She trusts him to handle it himself; is continually amazed by his composure, his perseverance, his seemingly infinite capacity for information and instruction; balks at how much he seems to absorb. School is the one realm in which she won’t meddle; the one thing that seems to have stayed the same, even after everything. If anything, Will’s become more involved, taking on more responsibility, working harder, longer hours. Still, he sees his friends regularly, and though she wishes he’d spend just a bit more time having fun, she figures it’s all a necessary distraction.
She can barely see him over the piles of books and paper, just the top of his head bobbing every now and again, more aggressively when he’s erasing a mistake. She feels such strong fondness for him. She and Will have always been close, and continue to be even as Will and his friends careen ungracefully into adolescence, but still she finds herself, like any mother, wondering: What is he thinking? What is he feeling? What does he worry about? Is he okay?
He’s fourteen now, in his first year of high school, the same age she and Lonnie started going out. True, we didn’t date consistently until much later, she concedes, and for the briefest of moments her mind flashes back to Hopper. She wonders, not for the first time, if maybe Will’s found himself a- well, not a Lonnie.
But she knows the answer. Will spends too much time at home, too much time studying, too much time with her, or Jonathan, or his friends. And even if he didn’t, Joyce knows that Will is too careful, too cautious, too used to hiding his feelings. But she also knows it’s more than that. Will’s never expressed interest in anyone, at least not to her. In fact, as long as Joyce can remember, Will has looked so discomfited at any mention of romance, at any allusion to any sort of love life he may or may not have, that Joyce has stopped bringing it up. She’s even considered that maybe he’s not interested in that sort of thing at all.
But Joyce knows that’s not true. She just knows. And she’s tried, albeit in roundabout ways, to address whatever it is that flusters him. She speaks in cautious, neutral terms. She avoids pronouns. She never asks direct questions, instead making statements, testing the waters, waiting for him to agree or disagree. Things like, she’s kind of cute or he’s got nice eyes, don’t you think? or I just read in the school newsletter that the Snowball’s coming up. (Normally he responds to her questions with noncommittal shrugs but that one earned her a sharp so what?). And, she’s not sure why she feels so compelled, but she tells Will she’s proud of him as often as she can. She tells him how much she loves him, and how she’ll continue to do so forever, no matter what. Still, Will won’t budge, and Joyce worries, worries, worries.
The timer on the stove goes off, and Joyce jerks her head towards the sound. The laundry’s ready to come out of the dryer.
She’s unloading the warm sheets into a basket when she notices a loose thread hanging from the corner. She pulls at it, hoping it’ll snap, but it only ensnares more fabric. Annoyed, she begins to rummage through her sewing box, looking for scissors. They’re nowhere to be found.
“Will?” She calls.
“Yeah?”
“Do you have the scissors from my sewing kit?”
There’s a pause. “They’re in my room,” Will calls back, sounding slightly guilty.
“Baby, I thought we agreed you would use your own scissors for art projects?”
“Sorry! Yours are better.”
Balancing the laundry basket on her hip, Joyce walks into Will’s room, where the scissors in question are resting on his desk atop a nondescript pile of magazine paper scraps. Joyce notes the mess: clothes litter the floor, Will’s bed is unmade, and there are open books everywhere.
“Will, honey, your room’s a mess!” She calls.
“Sorry! I haven’t had time to clean it.”
Joyce feels a pang of guilt. “I know. I know, you’ve been working so hard lately.”
She sighs, eyeing the unmade bed. Normally, Will prefers to clean his own room. Joyce figures it’s a consequence of all his time spent in Hawkins Lab being poked and prodded and examined; that he’s eager to preserve his privacy and personhood in whatever little ways he can. Joyce doesn’t mind. She indulges him when she thinks it’ll help him cope, and knows, secretly, that if not for Will it would probably never get done.
The longer Joyce stands there, surrounded by teenage mess, the more she feels the urge to do something nice for him, for studious, brilliant, thoroughly decent Will, who’s studying so hard just meters away. So she decides she’ll clean his room, just this once. Because, she reasons, he shouldn’t study for hours and have to return to clutter. Surely he won’t mind. She begins to strip his bed of its bedding, replacing it with the soft, warm, forest-green sheets she’s just removed from the dryer, taking pains to smooth out every crease. She likes this, trying to make things comfy. It makes her feel most like a mother.
She’s pulling the fitted sheet over the fourth and final corner of the bed, when it comes loose on the left side of the other end. Joyce tries to pull it back over the edge, but it won’t budge. Frustrated, she lifts the mattress up, trying to get leverage. And that’s when she sees it.
There -- inconspicuous, but there nonetheless -- is a long slit cut into the underside of the mattress. Joyce almost doesn’t know what she’s looking at, until she reaches out and touches it, and realizes that the edges of the crater fold back. She reaches inside, and her hand makes contact with something thick and paper. A book, maybe? Her heart begins to thud as she pulls it out.
It’s a notebook. Nothing special. Just a beat-up, spiral notebook with a red cover. She knows she shouldn’t open it. She knows it’s a violation of Will’s privacy, that it would be wrong to trespass like this, that whatever is in there is clearly meant for Will’s eyes and Will’s eyes only. But Joyce can’t help thinking: What is he thinking? What is he feeling? What does he worry about? Is he okay?
So she opens the notebook. A stack of photos falls out, scattering all over the cluttered floor.
Joyce curses to herself in a whisper-shout, dropping the notebook, closed, onto Will’s bed. She drops to the ground, frantically assembling the photographs, trying not to make a sound. And she’s so caught up, and there are so many of them, that it takes a few seconds for her to even look at them properly.
The first one she sees doesn’t strike her as odd. It’s a black and white photo of River Phoenix, standing on what seems to be a balcony in New York City, looking over his shoulder at the camera. It’s a good photo, she thinks, but she isn’t sure why it’s been hidden. Confused, she looks through the photos she’s already collected, then at the other ones still around her on the ground. She begins to notice a pattern: some are in color, some not, but all are of River Phoenix. River Phoenix with long hair, with short hair, with hair wild and big, wearing wire-rimmed glasses. In one, he’s holding a guitar, and his shirt is only buttoned up halfway. Joyce stares at that one the longest. They’ve all been cut out of different magazines and newspapers (is this what he’s using my scissors for...?), meaning they’d been collected from different sources, over some length of time. But why? Why these photos? What exactly does he do with - And then it clicks, and Joyce knows exactly what she’s looking at.
Her fingers begin to tremble. She glances at the red notebook perched on the side of Will’s bed, just above eye-level. She grabs it and stares at it for what seems like forever, until finally resolving to open it. What she finds when she does is almost worse than the photos.
What she finds is sketchaftersketchaftersketchaftersketch of a face she knows all too well. It’s Mike Wheeler, as animated in Will’s drawings as he is in real life, displaying the full spectrum of human emotion. Will has drawn Mike sitting down and standing up, from all sorts of angles, and in a comprehensive range of styles. There’s cartoon Mike, for example, the protagonist in what looks like the beginnings of a comic book set in Hawkins High, drawn impeccably in sleek black ink. There are rough, imprecise renderings done in charcoal pencil that smear and blend into one another. There’s one particularly impressive full-page pencil sketch of Mike talking into a walkie talkie, his hair wild and big, wearing wire-rimmed glasses. It’s not just sketches, though - Will’s masterful drawings are interspersed with doodles and phrases written in his distinctive chicken-scratch. Mike’s full name is spelled out several times, alternately in cursive and in block letters. And all of Joyce’s suspicions are confirmed, all at once.
Joyce can’t help it when her nose starts to sting and she feels tears. She’s not angry, no. Not disappointed. Not disgusted. Joyce, in this moment, feels a sober sort of pride. She’s proud to know that Will feels love, in the same way that any parent rejoices when their child first begins that tricky, exciting ritual. For a few seconds she’s reminded how grown he is, how frighteningly close he is to leaving her. But this is what she’s always wanted for him, for as long as she can remember. She thinks, horribly, of the times she’d lie awake at night, imagining a future where Will is happy and in love, praying that it offers him some respite from a world full of Lonnies. She wonders if Mike knows about the drawings, or the sentiment attached. She figures he doesn’t, and if he does, it’s probably not because Will told him.
So she’s sad, too. She has sensed, from a very young age, that Will was different, and that his path would be a little darker, a little more treacherous. For the first time she really understands that Will knows this too. After all, there’s a reason the notebook is in the mattress. It breaks her heart.
“Mom?” Will’s voice calls from the living room. Joyce freezes.
“Mom?” Will calls again. Joyce curses to herself, rushing to tuck the photos into the notebook and shove the whole thing back into the mattress.
Will walks into the doorframe just as Joyce finishes making the bed.
“Yes, honey?”
Will’s brow wrinkles. “Did you change the sheets?” He asks.
“Um, yeah.” Joyce says, trying to conceal how hard her heart is pounding.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Will says sharply. Then, softer: “I mean. Thank you. But you really didn’t have to do that. I like doing it myself.”
Joyce shrugs. “I know. I just thought you’d appreciate a mother’s touch.” She’s trying very hard to add humor to her inflection, not sure if he’ll buy it. Will smiles, forgiving. Joyce wraps her arm around him, kisses his temple despite the eye-roll it gets her, and grips him just a little too tight.
She feels guilty for the rest of the day.
----
It’s 1 am on Sunday morning, one week after Joyce first discovers the notebook, and the boys are all asleep on her living room floor.
They’d all gone to see Back to the Future at the Hawk earlier that night, returning to the Byers’ house afterwards to continue the fun. Once the shrieking and the laughter die down, and Joyce feels confident that they’re asleep, she ventures out in search of a glass of water. She moves quietly over the carpeted floors, but stops at the threshold of the kitchen. She can hear faint whispering, barely intelligible, coming from the behind the couch.
“I guess I’m just relieved,” she hears someone say. It’s too raspy to know who for sure. “There’s a part of me that hasn’t accepted that we’re finally together after all this time.” Joyce knows that voice. That’s Mike.
“Yeah. Me too.” This voice is weaker, sleepier, and she immediately recognizes it as Will.
Who? She thinks. Who’s together after all this time?
“...especially because I thought it would never happen.” Mike again. What would never happen?
“What would your parents think?”
“I’m not going to tell them.” Wait a second. Are they-?
“Well, yeah. But if you did?”
“Are you kidding me? They’d flip.” Is Mike-?!
“Really?”
“Uh, yeah. Can you imagine my dad’s reaction? With everything that’s going on in the country right now? Honestly, some shit is just too weird. Even for Hawkins.”
“What about at school? Are we supposed to pretend?” Joyce is frozen, she can’t believe what she’s hearing.
“Do we have a choice?” Mike says, softly.
“I guess not.”
“I guess we have to wait and see what Hopper says.” Hopper? Joyce thinks, confused. What the hell does Hopper have to do with anything?
“Does he want us to call her Jane, or El?”
Jane?
Mike laughs. “She’ll always be El to me.”
And then Joyce realizes that they’re talking about Eleven. Of course they’re talking about Eleven.
Mike starts to speak again. “But everything will be how it’s always been. You know, at school. Nothing’s going to change.” His voice is laced with something cautious. Will laughs softly, as if trying to bury it, whatever it is.
“What are you talking about? Everything’s going to change.” And Joyce swears she can hear the regret in his voice.
----
It’s 6 pm on a tuesday, three days after the sleepover and ten after Joyce first finds the notebook, and Joyce is finishing up a shift at Melvald’s.
She feels happy. She’s got a lot to look forward to. Jonathan is bringing home takeout from the diner, club sandwiches and french fries, and Will will come home excited and talkative after A.V. club. (And, of course, Hopper happened to stop in today, looking for hair clips for El. He of course played it off like he was overwhelmed, but it was impossible to miss how happy he was to again be participating in the rituals of having a growing daughter. What about these ones? He’d asked. Joyce tells him that the ones he’s picked, bright pink with acrylic bumblebees, look a little young for her, don’t you think? Oh. Well, you know, it’s been a while. Well, you know her better than I do- I only have boys. She does like pink. Then get them! He smiles. They smile. Bitchin’.)
Will and Jonathan will be home a little later than usual, with Will coming from A.V. club and Jonathan from work, so she has just enough time before they arrive, Will first and then Jonathan, to set the table and smoke a cigarette in the quiet emptiness.
Their family dinners, infrequent thanks to work and academic commitments, always seem to make everyone happier. Joyce remembers Sunday morning after the sleepover, how Will looked more subdued than usual, how he hugged Mike goodbye somewhat tersely and watched him ride his bike down the driveway until he disappeared, and thinks: he needs it.
She waves goodbye to Donald and heads toward the exit. The automatic doors open when she nears, but Joyce stops short at the threshold, staring at the magazine rack.
--
It’s 6:18 on a Tuesday, three days after the sleepover, ten days after Joyce first finds the notebook, 18 minutes after she has what she hopes isn’t a terrible idea, and Joyce is waiting in the kitchen for Will to get home.
She’s standing in a part of the dining room where she knows she can’t be seen from the door, watching and waiting for it to open. She’s relieved when it does and Will walks in. He kicks off his shoes and sheds his jacket in seconds, and Joyce is warmed by how eager he seems to just be home. “I’m home!” He calls, but Joyce doesn’t say anything. Not yet.
Will lets his backpack drop to the ground with a thud and collapses onto the couch. He sits there a minute, idle. Come on. Joyce wills. Pick it up.
Almost a minute passes, and then Will seems to notice something on the coffee table, something Joyce can’t see from where she’s standing. His eyes are wide as he looks around, thisaway and thataway, to check if anyone’s there. Cautiously, he picks it up.
It’s a copy of People Magazine, with River Phoenix on the cover. It’s not Mike, Joyce thinks, but it is something.
Joyce watches as he flips through it, and when a pink blush creeps over his cheeks, she knows he’s reached the centerfold -- a glossy, full-page photo of River Phoenix, without a shirt on, posing behind a wire fence.
And it’s perforated. Able to be ripped out of the magazine neatly and cleanly, to be hung up on a wall or folded into a spiral notebook and shoved under the bed.
No scissors required.
Notes:
1. The last time I wrote fanfiction was in high school and I can say with some certainty it is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever produced, so ridiculous that when I went looking for it a couple months ago I knew I just had to distribute it to all my friends alongside a “reader’s companion” (yes- a reader’s companion to my erotica) highlighting everything cringeworthy. Point is I'm new to this, pls be nice!
2. This is not erotica. They’re 14. Not. Erotica. Not even close. Not even a little.
3. I know it’s a bit anachronistic. River Phoenix hadn’t even starred in Stand By Me by the time this fic is supposed to take place, but I really think that Will would be into him because he’s artsy and sensitive and beautiful, AND because he and Mike remind me of Chris and Gordie.
4. thanks eversomuch to @otpgod1 for their kind words of encouragement in publishing this!
#byeler#byler#will x mike#mike x will#will byers#mike wheeler#Joyce byers#Jim hopper#jopper#fanfic#will Byers is gay#gay will byers#angst#stranger things#stranger things 2#stranger things s2#stranger things season 2#myposts#lucas sinclair#dustin henderson#jonathan byers#Joyce POV
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Uganda – where security forces may be more deadly than coronavirus
Image caption
Eric Mutasiga’s mother, Joyce Namugalu Mutasiga, has to support his family after he was killed by police
In Uganda, at least 12 people have allegedly been killed by security officers enforcing measures to restrict the spread of coronavirus, while the country has only just confirmed its first death from Covid-19. Patience Atuhaire has been meeting some of those affected by the violence.
Joyce Namugalu Mutasiga speaks to me as she fries small pancakes, known as kabalagala, over a woodfire, her words coming out in short, crisp sentences punctuated with long silences.
“Somebody is moving away from you and then you shoot him? At least they would have said sorry, because his life will never be back, and now I am going to struggle with the children,” she says, straining to bottle up her emotions.
The 65-year-old is now the main bread-winner for a family of eight.
Image caption
Mrs Mutasiga wants the police to apologise over the death of her son
Two of her grandchildren, aged three and five, too young to grasp the full scale of what has befallen them, run across the yard pointing to a car in the yard: “Take a photo of daddy’s car!”
In June, nearly three weeks after he was reportedly shot in the leg by a Ugandan policeman, Eric Mutasiga died from his wounds. His last moments were in an operating theatre in the country’s Mulago Hospital, according to his mother.
The 30-year-old headteacher was one of those allegedly killed by security forces enforcing a coronavirus lockdown.
Image copyright
Getty Images
Image caption
Members of the security forces have been enforcing the lockdown measures
The killings are believed to have been at the hands of policemen, soldiers and members of an armed civilian force called the Local Defence Unit (LDU).
Since March, they have been jointly manning roadblocks to ensure that people stick to the control measures, including a ban on motorcycle taxis (known locally as boda bodas) and a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
Many Ugandans are wary as they approach these roadblocks not knowing what might happen, but on 13 May trouble came to Mr Mutasiga’s home.
As well as running the Merrytime Primary school, the father of three had a small shop next to his home on the edge of Mukono, about an hour’s drive east of the capital, Kampala.
On that Wednesday, policemen and members of the LDU were arresting people found breaking the lockdown rules by working after 19:00.
‘You didn’t train me’
Mr Mutasiga’s employee, a young man working at the chapati stall outside the shop, had just been detained.
“I begged [the policemen] to forgive him. The two officers debated amongst themselves whether to let him go,” the headteacher later explained to local journalists.
Then, as people gathered round, things got heated.
“One of the policemen started to say I wasn’t the one who trained him. He said he could even shoot me.
“As I turned to leave, [one policeman] shot in the air. I turned to see what happened, and saw him aim directly at me.
“The bullet went right into my left leg and I fell. They got on their motorcycle really quickly and rode away.”
He made those comments as he was being wheeled into hospital – the police have not verified his account.
BBC
Some family members have suggested we go to court. But the police have not revealed the shooter’s identify, so who would I sue?”
His family had hoped that he would make a full recovery.
“We stayed in hospital awaiting surgery, but every time we asked, the health workers told us that the wound was bad, they couldn’t operate,” his mother says.
Mr Mutasiga was eventually taken to the operating theatre on 8 June where he died, she adds.
The death certificate shows that he died directly from gunshot wounds.
Mrs Mutasiga stares at the ground, taking a moment to compose herself.
She feels let down by the entire government system, saying: “Some family members have suggested we go to court. But the police have not revealed the shooter’s identify, so who would I sue?”
Farida Nanyonjo is angry.
Her brother, Robert Senyonga, died after being beaten.
Around midday on 7 July, she received a call from his employer. She was told that she had to get to the eastern city of Jinja fast, as Mr Senyonga had been repeatedly struck by the butt of a gun wielded by someone believed to be from the LDU for riding a motorcycle.
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The beating left the 20-year-old, who worked as a farm manager with multiple fractures to the skull.
Ms Nanyonjo got to him late at night and then returned with him to the capital, where he was referred to hospital.
“We made it to Mulago at about 2am, and spent the rest of the night on the ward floor. I approached a medical worker for help, but was asked for money. He was finally given a bed in the morning,” she says.
It took a lot of haggling, and a couple of days, before Mr Senyonga could be scheduled for surgery. And by then, it was too late.
‘Died in my arms’
“I am extremely angry. They beat him, but even the top hospital in the country could not give him proper medical care,” Ms Nanyonjo says.
“My brother died in my arms.”
For this family, the void left by their departed will be impossible to fill.
The LDU earned notoriety in the early 2000s when it was first created. Its personnel were accused of carrying out extrajudicial killings or of turning into gunmen for hire.
In the end it was demobilised. Ugandans were therefore apprehensive when it was revived in 2018.
Image copyright
Allan Atulinda
Image caption
Recruitment for the Local Defence Unit attracted huge interest in 2018
Critics say the force puts guns in the hands of young, poorly trained people who are unable to reduce the tension in a confrontation.
The army has now withdrawn all LDU personnel from deployment, for retraining.
President Yoweri Museveni and other senior officials have condemned the reported attacks but when the BBC contacted the various security agencies implicated, none of them wished to give us a statement in response to the allegations.
Rights groups argue that the problem is systemic.
“We’ve found that security forces have been using Covid-19 and the measures put in place to prevent its spread as an excuse to violate human rights,” says Oryem Nyeko, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.
But these problems have been known for many years, he says, and “we need to explore reforming a system that emboldens people to commit abuses”.
Families say the judicial process is often too convoluted to navigate, but there have been successful prosecutions in two cases in the last five months. One involving a soldier and the other a member of the LDU.
The soldier who killed Allen Musiimenta’s husband was jailed by a military court for 35 years after being found guilty of murder four days after the incident.
But she is not satisfied.
“The soldier got his punishment, but I won’t get my husband back,” Ms Musiimenta says.
Coronavirus in Uganda
Total number of cases
Benon Nsimenta, who was due to be ordained as a reverend in November, was gunned down on a highway in the western town of Kasese on 24 June.
He and his wife had set off for their village home on a motorbike. They had a document from a local councillor indicating that the vehicle was theirs and not a motorcycle taxi.
“The soldiers who stopped us didn’t even take a minute to ask questions. One of them crossed the road, raised his gun and shot my husband in the neck,” Ms Musiimenta says.
“We did our family projects together, talked through everything. We made plans for our children’s future. How I am supposed to pay for their education by working our small farm?” she trails off, overcome with emotion.
Football coach Nelly Julius Kalema survived his alleged brush with the security forces – but only just.
On 8 July he was rushing a friend’s sick girlfriend, Esther, to a clinic on a motorcycle. It was already curfew time.
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Media caption‘The police are killing us, not coronavirus’
They were allowed through a roadblock, but then some people on a motorcycle, who he says were policemen, waved them down.
Mr Kalema says he asked if he could find a safer place to stop just ahead. He says one man took out a baton and hit Esther hard on the neck. She screamed, and fell.
“I lost balance and rammed into a concrete slab, on which I hit my head,” he says, lying in a hospital bed.
The accident left him with a deep cut on the head, the scalp hanging by a few inches, that had to be stitched back. Esther survived with a broken leg and had to undergo surgery.
Image caption
Nelly Julius Kalema’s wound on his skull can be clearly seen
The police declined to comment on his allegations.
When we met, Mr Kalema had been in hospital for nearly a week, his head constantly throbbing.
“I have been lying here thinking I shouldn’t have to feel lucky, because I had no fault in the accident. How many of us must die or be maimed before the security forces change their methods?” he wonders.
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Not Fade Away, Conversations With Dead People, Graduation Day pt. 2
Hi! Thank you for the ask! I NFA and Graduation Day are favorites too. CWDP... not so much. Let’s see:
Not Fade Away
My favorite or second favorite episode! The best series finale I’ve ever seen. This episode is quite controversial. I know many who, like me, think it is brilliant, and many who lament the abruptness of the ending. There’s so much I could say about this episode, including how it connects to the season, but I’ll settle for the essential analysis.
This episode works wonderfully as a series finale because it does what series finales must do: it honors the show (and not the season necessarily) and represents, in 40 minutes, everything we love about Angel.
To honor Angel (both the show and the character) is to honor its mission statement - that started back in Amends, which isn’t even an Angel episode. Buffy’s words to Angel “Strong is fighting. It's hard and it's painful and it's every day. It's what we have to do and we can do it together.” inspired Angel to fight for himself and, later on his own show, for others.
Angel himself never stopped fighting but throughout the show had to learn and re-learn what he was fighting for: “If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do, ‘cause that's all there is. What we do, now, today. I fought for so long, for redemption, for a reward, finally just to beat the other guy, but... I never got it. [...] All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because I don't think people should suffer, as they do. Because, if there is no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.".
After his epiphany, Angel never looked back and also taught others what he had learned the hard way: “Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It's harsh, and cruel. But that's why there's us. Champions. It doesn't matter where we come from, what we've done or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world was what it should be, to show it what it can be.”.
Angel knows how to make a statement, he knows that even if you can’t win you have to fight, because the smallest act is everything we’ve got against the universe. Angel must fight W&H because, like he told Buffy, evil is there to be fought, not necessarily to be won. Angel had to show the world what it could be and lead the way for other champions and fighters. It doesn’t matter where he came from, what he suffered or even if he made a difference, he decided to live what could be his last minutes as the world should be to prove what it could be. “Let’s go to work”, he said. I can’t think of a better way to close the show and Angel’s arc. Despite his shortcomings during season 5, I knew who the Angel from NFA was and I loved him.
There’s an existential theme to this episode (and to the show as well) that has always been represented by Angel and his arc. But Gunn’s own contribution to this episode was also an important existentialist one that justified the ending of the show itself. Gunn spends his last day helping his friend, Anne, at her shelter. When helping her move some boxes, he asks her: “What if I told you it doesn't help? What would you do if you found out that none of it matters? That it's all controlled by forces more powerful and uncaring than we can conceive, and they will never let it get better down here. What would you do?”. Anne’s answer is simple: “I'd get this truck packed before the new stuff gets here.” And nothing else is said on the subject.
Although the most prominent theme of the episode is existentialist in nature, there’s also an absurdist theme represented by Wesley’s character. Wesley’s journey was largely one of pain, sacrifice and meaningless loss. He kidnapped Connor, but his plan failed and he ended up friendless and with his throat slit, he finally got the girl and lost her violently, he tried to kill a member of the Circle of Black Thorn and died having failed. Unlike the potential deaths of Angel, Gunn, Spike and Illyria, Wes didn’t die in battle victoriously and with purpose, but rather meaninglessly, wasted away on the floor, in the arms of an illusion. Wesley’s journey is an absurd, pessimistic one that counters the show’s lesson that fighting is worth it and that life as a meaning, a design, even if it’s a small one. Whereas Angel fights but wins, Wesley fights and loses. I like that. It’s tragic but adds a touch of realism to the show. Not everything has a meaning or a purpose. Somethings are just absurd.
Earlier in the day, Wesley and Illyria had discussed what his perfect day would be. Wesley, in that absurdist vein, answered: “There is no perfect day for me, Illyria. There is no sunset or painting or finely-aged scotch that's going to sum up my life and make tonight any... There is nothing that I want.”. However, there was something Wesley wanted, but couldn’t have: Fred. So Illyria offered to become her and Wesley refused: “The first lesson a watcher learns is to separate truth from illusion. Because in the world of magics, it's the hardest thing to do. The truth is that Fred is gone. To pretend anything else would be a lie. And since I don't actually intend to die tonight, I won't accept a lie.“.
Mercifully and true to his words, when Wesley realizes he is going to die, he finally accepts the lie: “Would you like me to lie to you now?”. Wes sees “Fred” for the last time and dies in her arms. If you listen closely, you can hear my sobs. That was the most beautiful, poignant death scene I’ve ever seen.
Lastly, I’d like to mention Spike, Lorne and Lindsey’s stories. Spike finally gets some credit for his bad poetry - a surprising but fitting ending for his character, the “fool for love”. Lorne gets a sadder, controversial ending. He kills Lindsey. All I’ll say on the subject is that Lorne had a choice and chose to help Angel. And Lindsey, well, he was more demon than man at that point.
Rating: 10/10
Conversations with Dead People
I’m not particularly fond of this episode. I also confess that I don’t remember it well. Mostly, my dislike for it comes from the conversation between Buffy and Holden.
What many might call a introspective, clever conversation, I consider to be psycho babble and pretentious drivel. Like many, “psychology” students portrayed in tv and movies, these “experts” sound very little like actual psychologists and more like people who like to name drop Freudian concepts like “ego”, “id”, “Oedipus” so they can sound more knowledgeable.
I disliked how Buffy spoke of Spike. One of the major problems in this season is how victimized Spike is and how villanized Buffy is. Following the unhealthy Spuffy relationship from season 6 which culminated in the AR from Seeing Red, there’s a lot of bad blood between Spike and Buffy that the writers decided to not address or to address rather badly. Giving Spike a soul immediately shifted the blame from Spike, giving him a chance to escape judgment. However, the writers passed judgement on Buffy instead. She admits herself that she is to blame for their dynamic, because she used him, and implies feeling guilty for whatever she did while depressed and in a “relationship” with a manipulative, abusive, soulless demon.
Perhaps this episode could’ve done something useful and helped Buffy acknowledge that her guilt was misplaced, which would’ve caused a much needed shift in Buffy and Spike’s dynamic. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen and their dynamic became more and more co-dependent and gross. Spike used Buffy as a clutch, Buffy felt guilty so she clung to Spike, Spike isolated Buffy and Buffy relied more heavily on him, and so on and so forth.
I’m also not convinced by Buffy’s “inferiority complex about her superiority” complex either (see what I mean about pseudo psychology?). Sounds like a gross simplification to me,
Regarding the Willow/Cassie and Dawn/Joyce parts, my only comment is that I was unimpressed by both. Tara/Willow doesn’t interest me much so I think it’s natural that Cassie didn’t spook me. I will concede that The First was used more effectively in this episode than in most of the other season 7 episodes.
My rating: 6/10.
Graduation Day, Part 2
My second favorite season 3 episode and one of my top 10 best Buffy episodes! I very much adore it.
Graduation Day (both parts) in one of the most intense episodes of the Buffyverse. As it happened with Surprise/Innocence, Graduation Day, parts 1 and 2, are immensely successful at constructing a heavy, suspenseful, dangerous atmosphere to keep the audience hooked and expectant.
Following the Buffy/Faith fight and Angel’s poisoned state, the stakes are high on GD pt. 2. Faith is in a coma, and Buffy has no slayer blood to feed to Angel except her own. Despite bite scenes being a common occurrence in vampire fiction, Joss Whedon only once resorted to that cliché and did it cleverly enough that it didn’t seem like a cliché at all. It was convenient that the poison’s antidote was slayer’s blood because it forced Buffy’s hand regarding Faith. However, it was also a clever way to put the final nail in the coffin for Buffy and Angel’s relationship. What better way to contrast their opposite natures then through Angel drinking Buffy’s blood? Whereas Buffy gives life, Angel takes it, Buffy dies and Angel lives. They can’t co-exist together, not as lovers, not as friends, and not as enemies. That bite scene is perhaps one of my favorite Bangel moments ever. I loved how it was directed. Buffy and Angel falling in slow motion on the floor was quite dramatic, and the music was also. The scene was definitely erotic (the final consummation of Buffy and Angel’s love, because Buffy giving Angel her blood was an act of love) but it was not completely romanticized, it had a very disturbing vibe to it.
I also loved Wesley and Cordy’s epic kiss, the preparation for taking down the Mayor (not with humus) and every little moment that led up to the battle. Graduation Day part 2 has less filler scenes than the first part, one of the reasons why I find it superior.
The epic battle was indeed epic. It was the perfect tribute to the high school years and to Joss’ original concept of Buffy being about surviving high school. The Sunnydale High students’ survive high school both literally and figuratively. They fight as one, united for the first time in acknowledgment of the supernatural. Buffy kills the Mayor quite creatively, but first he snacks on Snider (RIP).
Buffy and Angel’s parting kills me a bit inside, and the final shot of out heroes, as well as Oz’s words, fills me with intense longing and nostalgia. This episode is one of the hardest for me to watch for this very reason. It’s the last of the best Buffy seasons and the end of an era.
Rating: 10/10.
Tell me your 3 favorite BtVS/AtS episodes and I’ll give you my brutally honest opinion on them
#ats#btvs#my episode reviews#not fade away#conversations with dead people#graduation day part 2#thanks#this took much longer than expected#I've wanted to talk about not fade away for ages#scienceofficer-winifredburkle
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Life is Strange One-Shot: The Void
*Unused Chapter in ‘The Calm Before The Storm’*
( I recommend reading ‘The Calm Before the Storm’ before reading into this one shot. Some things may be confusing)
~Max~
-2016-
I wake up to the feeling of Chloe's lips being pressed against mine, "Good Morning, my love," She whispers. I smile and kiss her back, "Good morning to you, too". "Did you sleep well?" Chloe asks once we pull away. "Well enough," I reply sitting up a little. Chloe's once warm smile fades, "I heard you wake up in the middle of the night". I nod, "Yeah, I know". "Nightmare?". "Yeah,". "Same one?". I nod again and shrink back into the sheets. "Can you tell me about it?". "No," I answer quickly. "Are you okay?" Chloe asks, genuinely growing concerned for me. I simply shrug, "I guess,". "Then why are you crying?". I blink, feeling a few warm tears roll down my face, "I don't know... I just am". "*sigh* Well, I'm right here when you need me," I nod and curl up in her arms, tracing the tip of my finger over the details on her tattoo. She shivers with pleasure, "I love you". "Me too,". "I'm proud of you for talking about what happened, but... maybe you should take smaller steps.The 'Remembering' is the hardest part". "I know," I reply softly. "You're a lot calmer that you were a few months ago," Chloe whispers, kissing my neck a few times, "I like it". "I can tell," I say, returning her kisses. It's true... ever since I told her about the voice and started talking to David about 'that' week, I feel like I've been given new energy. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. The panicking a loud noises and quick movements hasn't stopped, which is worrying, My nerves seem to be in check one moment and then, I'm panicking over the tiniest of things. The way Chloe looks at me when that happens just... bugs me. I'm afraid she sees me like some kid who always needs to be protected, "Chloe?" I say as she continues to nuzzle my neck. "Mmhm?" she mumbles. "I want you to come with me today when I talk to David". "Why? It's not like I'm going to help anything". I shift away when she tries to give me a hickey, "I'm going to tell him about the dream... a-and y-you need to hear it too". She blinks a few times, reading my semi-panicked expression, "Uh, o-okay. If you want, I'll be there". "T-thank you," I mutter weakly, letting out a weary breath. I lean back into my partner's warm embrace and allow her to continue to kiss me. Her kisses trailing from my forehead to my neck and shoulders, then stopping in the middle of my chest. She stops, her body hovering over my own. I can feel her warm inviting breath on my face. I wait for her to make the first move but... she speaks instead. "Max, would..." Chloe begins but seems hesitant to continue, "Would you ever want to go back and do it all again? Fall in love I mean..". I smile smugly and wrap my arms around her shoulders and pull her down on top of me, "I fall in love with you more every day we're together, I wouldn't ask for it any other way". I kiss her, and she kisses me. We continue to kiss and it ends like it always does.
"So how does this all work?" Chloe asks as she absently fiddles with my hair as she drives. My head is resting on her shoulder and our body are pressed up against each other. We're so close I can feel her heartbeat Boom Ba Boom Ba Boom. "We just talk... whatever I feel comfortable with," I reply softly, her heartbeat is kinda making it hard to stay awake. "Do you talk about us? Like what we did during that week?". "I confessed that we were the ones who broke into the Blackwell swimming pool that night... he wasn't happy but he said love will make you do crazy shit". She nods in agreement, "Anything else?". "Uh, no, nothing I can think of off the top of my mind. Why?". "I don't know... just curious". "Mmhm..." I say, slightly unconvinced. I close my eyes feeling as I drift off to a place that neither a dream nor reality. I call this place the void. It's rare that anything ever happens here, so I'm mostly left alone with my thoughts. On occasion, though, a memory will slip into my quiet place and bubble up into a vision of sorts. I'll be half aware of what's going on in the real world and fully aware of what's happening in my mind. I get confused sometimes, unsure of what to believe... both seem so real. For now, I'm left with thoughts of Chloe and me in the Blackwell pool. Ah, to be young again. *sigh* that was only three years ago and yet it feels like a whole lifetime ago... or... another life entirely. "Oh, Look, There's an Otter in my water,". Huh, only Chloe could be so blatantly obvious, It took a few more flirtatious conversations for me to fully get it... what she was doing... It wasn't Chloe just being Chloe, she was trying to see how far I'd go, she wanted to know if my liking her back wasn't just all in her head. "Your powers are changing everything, Max. Especially you... I can already tell". "-And you make me feel like I still have a reason for staying in Arcadia Bay,". "Don't look so sad... I'm never leaving you". There... that's the one that did it. That's when I realized I was in love. Huh, I sorta wiSh she'd tried to kiss me there instead of her room... it woulda been really sweet and romantic... and kinda hot. The hum of the engine dying down lulls me out of my trance and when I open my eyes I see we've arrived at Chloe's house. "Did you have a nice nap?" Chloe asks, with a suspicious grin, watching as I sit up and yawn. I nod and blush, "Yeah...". "Still tired from this morni-". "Nope!" I say quickly, feeling a bit guilty. After we...*ahem* you know? I kinda dozed off... or, so I'm told. I felt really bad since well... 'that' is supposed to be special... d-don't get me wrong, it was a-and... a-and... I'm gonna stop talking now. I blush even more and clear my throat. "It's okay... you can admit it... I'm losing my touch," Chloe says in a mock tone that I don't pick up on at first. "What?! No, no way... you're amazing, Chloe... n-never doubt that. I- I'm s-sorry I fell asleep... I just...". "God, Max, I'm joking," She says, resting her hands on my shoulder, "I know you're kinda freaking about talking to David but... I'm going to be with you all the way". I blush again. "Oh my god, I didn't mean that kinda All the way... unless you're up for another round". Chloe wiggles her eyebrows seductively and I playfully punch her arm, giggling a bit, "Dork". "Oh, but I'm your dork and you can't get enough of me,". I giggle again, "My god are you horny". She sticks her tongue out at he and hops out of the truck, coming over and opening the door for me. We walk up to the front door hand in hand. David greets us warmly along with Joyce (who leave a few minutes after we arrive). Alright, so... what do you want to talk about today?" David asks, handing me and Chloe glasses of water. "Umm, well," I begin shyly, "I've been having this dream...well, nightmare more like, ever since we escaped the Bay... I- I haven't t-told Chloe what it's about yet but uh...". I reach over and squeeze her hand tightly, wishing I'd never even mentioned the dream. Well, I could always... no. Fuck that, I made a promise. I'm going to keep it... for better or worse. "Take your time, Max..." David says, sensing my utter hesitation to continue speaking. I swallow hard and take a long, slow breath but loose my confidence and hesitate even more. "Can you start by telling us where your dream takes place?". I stiffen up a bit, somewhat caught off guard, " W-where?". David nods, patiently. I look up at Chloe and sigh... she's not going to like this but... I need to get this off my chest. So, forcing myself to speak up, I simply say two words and the room falls dead silent.
The cold atmosphere of the 'Dark Room' sends a sharp shiver down my spine. I can feel 'his' hands on me, he's not hurting me or defiling me... his hands are just there... touching me. Manipulating my body into odd poses. "Such a perfect composure," he whispers into my ear, "The slightly unconscious model is always the easiest to work with... so vulnerable and precious". 'His' hands stop, resting on my face. His ice cold fingers start brushing themselves through my hair. I shudder with disgust and shift away, moving from the position he'd worked so hard to get me in. "Stay Still! Now you've ruined my perfect shot, bitch! He yells. I move again and something smashes against my head. A foot. "I said to fucking STAY STILL!" Pain explodes into my mind as the foot comes down again, sending me into a spiral of darkness. "Don't make me end this sooner than it should, Max". Something is jabbed into my neck and I'm pulled back into reality... but my body isn't responding. My mind is awake, but my body is asleep. I'm paralyzed. "Trust me when I say this, Max... People will care when you die tonight" he says. He... no, he is no longer a 'he' but and 'It". A foreign entity to this lateral plane. A DEMON. It calls to me again, saying that I deserve to die... how my 'Gift' wasn't longed for this world. "You are my prize for hard work and a job well done, so I intend on using you to the best of my ability". My stomach churns when it touches me again, the short high from the drugs withers and I'm left with a sinking feeling deep within my chest. It's as if my very soul were being sucked from my body. Cold hands touch my bare skin and I want to scream, but can't. Its hands intend to hurt... slow... painful endless death. A word escapes my lips, sending violent shivers through my husk of a body, "Chloe". I can see her... on the ground a few feet away. She stares at me with unseeing eyes, a hole in her forehead and blood spilling out onto the cold linoleum floor. I say her name again... and again... and again and again and again until something is shoved into my mouth. A shirt... m-my shirt. I shiver again. Its hands... Its hands.... HANDS HANDS HANDS!
"STOP!" Chloe screams, shooting to her feet and rushing to the kitchen sink where she throws up. David dismisses his daughter and pours his attention onto me, "Max?". In my mind I go back and relive the moment where we found Rachael dead in the junkyard, the smell of rotting, warm flesh stuck in the air."I loved her. How can she be dead? What kind of world does this? Who does this?". I can smell it... I can smell death. Familiar to me as any other smell, but I can smell it in reality too. I held Chloe until she stopped crying as rage took over. "I have nothing!" she'd said once I'd finally convinced her that maiming herself wasn't going to fix anything. "Everybody who ever loved of cared about me is gone!". "I'm here," I'd said calmly... unsure of what I actually meant. She punched the hard ground then stood up and punched through a broke down bus window until her hands bled and I was forced to rewind.I couldn't stop her at first, so I just kept rewinding and rewinding until she had to focus her attention on my ever bleeding nose. Blood... some much blood. It's everywhere... suffocating... no air... I- I can't breathe...I - I can't breathe.
I panic in reality, seeing a mix between what happened and what didn't. "It was a dream... it was a dream.... Dream, dream DREAM!" I mumble, shivering and shrinking back into the cushions. I wrap my arms around my head, and just... stop moving. I taste it before I feel it. Blood. Blood is flowing out of both my nostrils, making it hard to breathe. I start shaking, even more, wheezing harsh breaths. "Chloe, Get in here!". A mixture of voices from the void fade and warp into reality. I dig my fingers into my scalp, hoping to silence the ambiance of voices. "Oh, Max... such a perfect display of innocence". "Max, come on... don't do this shit again... y-you promised you wouldn't". "Stop moving you dumb cunt!". "Shit... her nose...god...ugh". "Is she... is she breathin'?!". "If you had just paid a little more attention to your school work, instead of playing detective with that whore, you might have seen all this coming". I continue to shiver, feeling leaving my body. "God dammit, Max... Breathe! It's okay, you're safe... no one's going to hurt you". "Quit holdin' your breath, kid... you're gonna hurt yourself," David says, his voice leaking in from true reality. Huh?... I'm not holding my breath... Am... a-am I? I test his theory and let myself relax and sure enough... I exhale, sending relief throughout my body. My mind untangles and separates itself from the void, allowing me to see, hear and feel true reality. "Oh, thank god... You're okay... you're okay". I flutter my eyes open and see I'm lying flat on the floor... my face damp with blood. I cough a little and struggle to move, "Chloe...". "Hey, it's okay... just stay still... you're going to be fine,". "What... happened?". "Not sure, kid... you mighta had a panic attack or something," David says, "We're gonna take you to the hospital just to make sure everything's in check,". I protest a little by forcing myself to sit up as if to prove I'm alright but I slide back down when I see Chloe's face. She's terrified. I've never seen my partner look so... scared. "Okay...". They both seem a little taken aback my sudden submission since they both know I'm not keen on admitting I need help, but they nod and help me get to my feet. "Slowly... careful, now..." Chloe says, allowing me to place almost all my weight on her. "How... long was I out?". "Huh? You... you didn't pass out, Max... you just kinda zoned out... kinda like when you'd skip through realities. You were a still awake, your eyes wide open and you were just muttering nonsense". I continue to shiver despite not being cold. Chloe gives me an odd look, "You didn't...". I shake my head slowly, "I promised I'd never... do that again". She nods, "Just making sure...". I cough again, sputtering up a bit of blood that drips down the back of my throat. I look at the splatters on my bare hand and start feeling queasy. Chloe seems to notice and holds me a bit tighter... she knows I'm a bit squeamish around blood, especially my own. It's not the blood that startled me... it's my hand... my hand itself. It's shaking... violently. I make a fist, trying to steady it but... it doesn't work... I continue to shake. Am I finally losing it? After all these years has the mental scarring finally caught up with me? Well, Max Caulfield... I believe you are about to find out...
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June has flown by and I can’t believe it’s already July! The highlight of June for me was going to see Kraftwerk with my husband and it was absolutely brilliant. I still can’t believe that we managed to get tickets to see them!
I’m still going through my medication changes so I’m very up and down depending on where I am in the reduction plan. I was offered a new kind of treatment to potentially help with pain management and the person who is doing the treatment has ended up working with me on my PTSD. It’s been amazing for me to finally be shedding those symptoms, and once we’ve worked through those I’ll be starting on the pain protocol to see if it can help me cope better with my pain levels. It’s very draining, mentally and physically, but it’s worth it to be finally dealing with some very traumatic memories.
I also wanted to say here that I am so grateful to all of you who keep reading and sharing my posts, to those of you who comment and check in to see how I am. I honestly can’t tell you how much it means to me. I feel terrible that I’m not managing much time online at the moment and aren’t keeping up with all of your blogs just now. I promise that when I feel stronger I will be back commenting and catching up. In the meantime though – thank you so much.
Here are the 15 books I read this month:
Be Awesome by Hadley Freeman
Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
The Lie of the Land by Amanda Craig
Fabrice Muamba: I’m Still Standing by Fabrice Muamba
One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus
A Year Lost and Found by Michael Mayne
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The Things We Thought We Knew by Mahsuda Snaith
Exquisite by Sarah Stovell
The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
Labor Day by Joyce Maynard
The Law of Similars by Chris Bohjalian
Based on a True Story by Delphine de Vigan
Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld
Guilty Innocence by Maggie James
The Hidden Legacy by G. J. Minett
June Blog Posts & Reviews:
I wrote my regular blog posts this month – my Weekly Wrap-Ups, WWW Wednesday posts and my Stacking the Shelves posts so I’m pleased that I didn’t miss any of those. I didn’t manage to write as many reviews as I’d hoped but I did get five reviews posted which is better than nothing. I also had two fab guest posts from authors Kate Vane and Emily Benet.
Here are the reviews I shared in June:
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I Know My Name by C.J. Cooke
The Lie of the Land by Amanda Craig
The Things We Thought We Knew by Mahsuda Snaith
Exquisite by Sarah Stovell
One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus
Here are my blog posts from June:
Kate Vane wrote a guest post for my blog all about choosing the title of her novel The Former Chief Executive
Emily Benet wrote about her perfect hen night in celebration of her brand new novel The Hen Party
The state of my TBR:
As any of you who read my weekly wrap-ups will already know, my plan to reduce my TBR this year has gone completely awry! Books are my pick-me-up so when I’m having a tough time I end up looking at books online and often end up buying one or two. My TBR is now very out of control, not helped by the fact that I didn’t read as much this month as I normally do!
I began this year with a TBR (this is books that I own) of 1885 books and it now stands at 1981 owned but unread books! My aim now is to just really try not to let it get over 2000. I need to get back to at least not buying anymore books than I can read in a month so that my TBR doesn’t get any bigger. My willpower is weak at the moment though.
So far this year I’ve read 129 books, and my target for the year is 200 so I’m definitely on track to achieve that. My Goodreads Mount TBR Challenge to make 100 of those books ones I owned before 31 Dec 2016 is on track. Of the books I’ve read so far this year 52 count for this challenge, which I’m very pleased about.
At the beginning of this year I started tracking my reading and book buying on a spreadsheet for the first time and I’m finding it fascinating to see the patterns in my reading. This is something I’ll definitely be continuing with. I decided to show my stats every three months so it’s that time again!
As I said above I’ve read 129 books this year so far, which amounts to 43,464 pages! I’m really interested in keeping an eye on my total page count as well as books read as it means I’m reading for enjoyment, regardless of how long a book is, rather than focusing on shorter books to get my books read numbers up. Most of my books fall into the 300-399 pages bar but you can see I have read a couple of much longer books as well as a few shorter books. The average length of book comes in at 339 pages, which I’m pleased with.
I’ve used Goodreads to track my reading for many years now and I enjoy the stats that I get from there but it doesn’t give a great deal of info. One thing I’m really enjoying about having my own spreadsheet to track other data, and it’s fascinating me to see the breakdown of author genders. This year I’m not consciously picking authors by gender so this is purely how my reading naturally has been. It’s interesting to see that in the first six months of this year 70% of my reading has been books written by female authors.
I read quite a lot of non-fiction last year and wanted to keep that up this year. It was my aim to try and make sure that at least a third of my reading was non-fiction or memoir. Of the 129 books I’ve read so far 35 are non-fiction, so this isn’t quite on target but I have had a month where I’ve needed escapism and fiction so it’s not surprising. I feel sure that my non-fiction mojo will come back and I’ll end up being back on target. I am reading a wide variety of genres in general though, so I’m pleased overall. The genres I read most of are general fiction, thriller and non-fiction.
I’m also tracking how I acquire my books, which is also interesting to me. I’m happy to say that I buy the majority of my books, or have received them as gifts. I do get quite a lot of books from NetGalley and from publishers, which I am so grateful for but I think it’s good to see that I’m buying more books than I get sent as I do want to always support authors by buying their books, as well as reviewing them.
How was your June? I hope you all had a good month and that you read good books. Did you read many books? What was your favourite book of the month? Please tell me in the comments, I’d love to know. Also, if you have a blog please feel free to leave a link to your month’s wrap-up post and I’ll be sure to read and comment back. 🙂
June Wrap-Up post! June has flown by and I can't believe it's already July! The highlight of June for me was going to see Kraftwerk with my husband and it was absolutely brilliant.
#Amanda Craig#Books#C.J. Cooke#Chris Bohjalian#Curtis Sittenfeld#Cynthia D&039;Aprix Sweeney#Delphine de Vigan#ebooks#Emily Benet#Fabrice Muamba#G. J. Minett#Hadley Freeman#Joyce Maynard#Karen McManus#Kate Vane#Maggie James#Mahsuda Snaith#Michael Mayne#Monthly wrap Up#Paula Hawkins#Quarterly Stats#Read#Sarah Stovell
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where security forces may be more deadly than coronavirus
Eric Mutasiga’s mother, Joyce Namugalu Mutasiga, has to support his family after he was killed by police
In Uganda, at least 12 people have allegedly been killed by security officers enforcing measures to restrict the spread of coronavirus, while no-one has been killed by the virus itself. Patience Atuhaire has been meeting some of those affected by the violence.
Joyce Namugalu Mutasiga speaks to me as she fries small pancakes, known as kabalagala, over a woodfire, her words coming out in short, crisp sentences punctuated with long silences.
“Somebody is moving away from you and then you shoot him? At least they would have said sorry, because his life will never be back, and now I am going to struggle with the children,” she says, straining to bottle up her emotions.
The 65-year-old is now the main bread-winner for a family of eight.
Mrs Mutasiga wants the police to apologise over the death of her son
Two of her grandchildren, aged three and five, too young to grasp the full scale of what has befallen them, run across the yard pointing to a car in the yard: “Take a photo of daddy’s car!”
In June, nearly three weeks after he was reportedly shot in the leg by a Ugandan policeman, Eric Mutasiga died from his wounds. His last moments were in an operating theatre in the country’s Mulago Hospital, according to his mother.
The 30-year-old headteacher was one of those allegedly killed by security forces enforcing a coronavirus lockdown.
Members of the security forces have been enforcing the lockdown measures
The killings are believed to have been at the hands of policemen, soldiers and members of an armed civilian force called the Local Defence Unit (LDU).
Since March, they have been jointly manning roadblocks to ensure that people stick to the control measures, including a ban on motorcycle taxis (known locally as boda bodas) and a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
Many Ugandans are wary as they approach these roadblocks not knowing what might happen, but on 13 May trouble came to Mr Mutasiga’s home.
As well as running the Merrytime Primary school, the father of three had a small shop next to his home on the edge of Mukono, about an hour’s drive east of the capital, Kampala.
On that Wednesday, policemen and members of the LDU were arresting people found breaking the lockdown rules by working after 19:00.
Story continues
‘You didn’t train me’
Mr Mutasiga’s employee, a young man working at the chapati stall outside the shop, had just been detained.
“I begged [the policemen] to forgive him. The two officers debated amongst themselves whether to let him go,” the headteacher later explained to local journalists.
Then, as people gathered round, things got heated.
“One of the policemen started to say I wasn’t the one who trained him. He said he could even shoot me.
“As I turned to leave, [one policeman] shot in the air. I turned to see what happened, and saw him aim directly at me.
“The bullet went right into my left leg and I fell. They got on their motorcycle really quickly and rode away.”
He made those comments as he was being wheeled into hospital – the police have not verified his account.
“Some family members have suggested we go to court. But the police have not revealed the shooter’s identify, so who would I sue?”https://ift.tt/2HfCbR7;, Source: Joyce Namugalu Mutasiga, Source description: Victim’s mother, Image:
His family had hoped that he would make a full recovery.
“We stayed in hospital awaiting surgery, but every time we asked, the health workers told us that the wound was bad, they couldn’t operate,” his mother says.
Mr Mutasiga was eventually taken to the operating theatre on 8 June where he died, she adds.
The death certificate shows that he died directly from gunshot wounds.
Mrs Mutasiga stares at the ground, taking a moment to compose herself.
She feels let down by the entire government system, saying: “Some family members have suggested we go to court. But the police have not revealed the shooter’s identify, so who would I sue?”
Short presentational grey line
Farida Nanyonjo is angry.
Her brother, Robert Senyonga, died after being beaten.
Around midday on 7 July, she received a call from his employer. She was told that she had to get to the eastern city of Jinja fast, as Mr Senyonga had been repeatedly struck by the butt of a gun wielded by someone believed to be from the LDU for riding a motorcycle.
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The beating left the 20-year-old, who worked as a farm manager with multiple fractures to the skull.
Ms Nanyonjo got to him late at night and then returned with him to the capital, where he was referred to hospital.
“We made it to Mulago at about 2am, and spent the rest of the night on the ward floor. I approached a medical worker for help, but was asked for money. He was finally given a bed in the morning,” she says.
It took a lot of haggling, and a couple of days, before Mr Senyonga could be scheduled for surgery. And by then, it was too late.
‘Died in my arms’
“I am extremely angry. They beat him, but even the top hospital in the country could not give him proper medical care,” Ms Nanyonjo says.
“My brother died in my arms.”
For this family, the void left by their departed will be impossible to fill.
The LDU earned notoriety in the early 2000s when it was first created. Its personnel were accused of carrying out extrajudicial killings or of turning into gunmen for hire.
In the end it was demobilised. Ugandans were therefore apprehensive when it was revived in 2018.
Critics say the force puts guns in the hands of young, poorly trained people who are unable to reduce the tension in a confrontation.
The army has now withdrawn all LDU personnel from deployment, for retraining.
President Yoweri Museveni and other senior officials have condemned the reported attacks but when the BBC contacted the various security agencies implicated, none of them wished to give us a statement in response to the allegations.
Rights groups argue that the problem is systemic.
“We’ve found that security forces have been using Covid-19 and the measures put in place to prevent its spread as an excuse to violate human rights,” says Oryem Nyeko, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.
But these problems have been known for many years, he says, and “we need to explore reforming a system that emboldens people to commit abuses”.
Families say the judicial process is often too convoluted to navigate, but there have been successful prosecutions in two cases in the last five months. One involving a soldier and the other a member of the LDU.
Short presentational grey line
The soldier who killed Allen Musiimenta’s husband was jailed by a military court for 35 years after being found guilty of murder four days after the incident.
But she is not satisfied.
“The soldier got his punishment, but I won’t get my husband back,” Ms Musiimenta says.
Coronavirus in Uganda. Total number of cases. Total number of coronvirus cases in Uganda Figures were recalculated on 21 May.
Benon Nsimenta, who was due to be ordained as a reverend in November, was gunned down on a highway in the western town of Kasese on 24 June.
He and his wife had set off for their village home on a motorbike. They had a document from a local councillor indicating that the vehicle was theirs and not a motorcycle taxi.
“The soldiers who stopped us didn’t even take a minute to ask questions. One of them crossed the road, raised his gun and shot my husband in the neck,” Ms Musiimenta says.
“We did our family projects together, talked through everything. We made plans for our children’s future. How I am supposed to pay for their education by working our small farm?” she trails off, overcome with emotion.
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Football coach Nelly Julius Kalema survived his alleged brush with the security forces – but only just.
On 8 July he was rushing a friend’s sick girlfriend, Esther, to a clinic on a motorcycle. It was already curfew time.
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They were allowed through a roadblock, but then some people on a motorcycle, who he says were policemen, waved them down.
Mr Kalema says he asked if he could find a safer place to stop just ahead. He says one man took out a baton and hit Esther hard on the neck. She screamed, and fell.
“I lost balance and rammed into a concrete slab, on which I hit my head,” he says, lying in a hospital bed.
The accident left him with a deep cut on the head, the scalp hanging by a few inches, that had to be stitched back. Esther survived with a broken leg and had to undergo surgery.
Nelly Julius Kalema’s wound on his skull can be clearly seen
The police declined to comment on his allegations.
When we met, Mr Kalema had been in hospital for nearly a week, his head constantly throbbing.
“I have been lying here thinking I shouldn’t have to feel lucky, because I had no fault in the accident. How many of us must die or be maimed before the security forces change their methods?” he wonders.
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