Doctor Who episodes that aired on the 4th of December…

In 1965, The Traitors (the 4th episode of The Daleks’ Master Plan)

My Ranking of Every Hercule Flambeau Episode (S01-S08)

There are some spoilers for S7 and S8, but they are fairly vague and pretty much the sort of thing that you might see on the official press release. So not true spoilers as such. Also this is totally subjective and the result of my own personal biases. It’s also behind the cut because it’s looooonnng. 

8. The Two Deaths of Hercule Flambeau (s06e10)--

So, this episode is *fine*. It’s hardly the worst episode of the show, but it’s easily the weakest of the Flamby eps, despite their being a few isolated moments I enjoy. (Hercule getting a long overdue bedroom scene for one :P)

My main gripe is with this episode is the uneven way Lisandra Flambeau is written. The script seems to flip-flop over whether we are supposed to find her sympathetic or not.  On one hand,  many scenes imply that she genuinely loves Hercule despite them having a shotgun marriage after only a few days of knowing each other. On the other hand, she does not hesitate for a minute before poisoning an innocent (Fr. B) for no other reason than to hurt Flamby, which makes her lose a lot of sympathy points.

And as a result, it seems to make Flambeau seem like more of arse than normal for betraying her, while somehow also absolving him of responsibility for doing so, because she turns around and does *THAT.*

And ngl, it does make me a little uncomfortable that while the character of Lisandra (as an Italian) is possibly not meant to be interpreted as a POC, the actress portraying her definitely is. (Sara Martins is of Afro-Portuguese descent).  Which makes the uneven characterization (and underwritten-ness) seem even more glaring, especially  when compared to that of the other (white) women in Flambeau’s life (his first love Rebecca and his daughter Marianne, arguably Lady Felicia as well). It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth even if  in all likelihood, the part wasn’t written with Sara Martins in mind.

I think a much more interesting approach to Lisandra would be to have intending to betray Flambeau all along. Maybe she had her own agenda for seducing Flamby, meanwhile he thinks he’s the one using her for his plan. Maybe she does develop some feelings for him along the way, but it only makes her hesitate for a moment before going ahead with her original plan. That way, she keeps her agency and isn’t reduced to the “woman scorned” stereotype while also leaving the writers free to ship Flamby with others in the future without seemingly endorsing guilt-free adultery .

Other random note: I can’t take  parts of this episode seriously because the “Crown of Lombardy” is very obviously Guinevere’s crown from BBC Merlin with no attempt to alter or disguise it. 

7. The Daughter of Autolycus (s04e05)--

Not gonna lie, I am not really a fan of “character has long lost relative that we’ve never heard of until now” plots. And that goes double when said long-lost relative is a child or sibling. As such my low ranking of this episode is partly due to unconscious personal biases against that trope.

That being said, if we had to get a long-lost relative that we’ve never heard of until now plot, I’m so glad we got Marianne--even if it takes her another episode to really live up to her potential. 

I have to knock off a few more points for Nero Hound as a villain. For one thing, he was played by Nancy Carroll’s real-life hubby, but they didn’t let let him interact with Lady F at all. Such a *waste.*  Also Nero Hound is far too similar a name to Nero Wolfe, and I’ve definitely confused them on more than one occasion). He’s also rather generic in my opinion, even compared to some of Flambeau’s other “generic mobster” rivals/associates like the ones in S8.

However, there are some moments in this episode I genuinely like--particularly the theft “imagine spot” and Flambeau’s bishop disguise in general. Plus, the scenes where Flambeau and Marianne appear together are excellent, as are the hints that Marianne will become a redemptive trigger in Flambeau’s life.

6. The Judgement of Man (s03e10)--

Again, the low ranking of this one may be due to personal biases.  In this case, I’m still low-key bitter--five years later-- at the BBC marketing department for baiting me with the idea of Flambeau actually interacting with the rest of the squad (esp romantic tiems with Lady F)  and then giving me the absolute minimum of Felicia/Flambeau flirting and no Flambeau/Sid and Flambeau/Mrs. M interaction.

But there are other reasons why this is in my bottom 3 Flambeau episodes. 

Honestly, I feel like an equally compelling episode about the Vatican’s complicity in Nazi art theft could’ve been made without having to insert Flambeau in it. I mean I suppose it does make sense to have the art thief character  in the art episode, but still I feel like both Flambeau backstory and important historical lesson about Nazis, the Church, and Jewish art suffer from being crammed into the same episode. 

That being said, Mrs. McCarthy’s duchess disguise in this episode cleared my skin, watered my crops, etc, which is why I’ve ranked it higher than the previous two. 

5. The Folly of Jephthah (s08e05)

It loses a few points because I got very exited about the idea of Marianne becoming Bunty’s thief gf cool new friend, and yet in the episode itself, they only shared one scene and didn’t really interact much in it. That being said, I did like like that Bunty and Mrs. M had a bigger role in this episode than the squad usually gets in Flambeau episodes. 

Overall, I feel this episode works a lot better than most of the other “backstory-heavy” Flambeau episodes, because we’ve already gotten the Marianne-related exposition out of the way and can focus more on allowing her character, Flambeau’s and their relationship with each other to develop.

I’m also a bit smug in that I predicted (or at least hoped for) this exact character arc for Marianne within a few weeks of “The Daughter of Autocylus” airing and that my hopes came to fruition so beautifully.

It doesn’t particularly impact the ranking too much, but I do feel like this episode deserves a special shout out, because it has established a (hopefully-continuing!) pattern of Father Brown calling Flamby  almost exclusively by his first name, which is a major significant step in their bromance and deserves recognition as such. 

4. The Blue Cross (s01e10)--

As someone who was first exposed to Father Brown through reading the stories for a college course, I always find it especially interesting to look at the episodes that were adapted from Chesterton. 

This episode is neither the most faithful book-to-show adaptation (which is probably “The Three Tools of Death”) nor is it the best (imo “The Sign of the Broken Sword’) , but it is arguably the most significant. “The Blue Cross” was the first ever Fr. Brown story and is probably the most well-known. It’s also the first real look we get at the character of Flambeau, who (in the stories and arguably the show as well) is probably the closest thing we get to a clear character arc.

The show keeps some of the important elements of the short  story: Flambeau’s clergyman disguise, the switching of the packages. But it also has the challenging task of upping the relatively low stakes of the story, as well as introducing a major recurring character that resembles his book counterpart but remains distinct enough to justify the fairly different direction show canon is taking him. 

The show does this reasonably well--if not particularly imaginatively. I do enjoy some of the touches (I’ve written an entire meta before about Flamby’s reading material on the train and how it relates to his character)--particularly the show’s choice to have Flambeau fixated on religious art specifically (RIP for Flambeau’s Dairy Company though. It will always live in my heart).

Unfortunately in the adaptation, loses a few points for not really using the show-original characters particularly effectively. It loses still more for Flambeau’s characterization in this episode . He comes across as much more  serious and menacing in this episode than in all the others. It works okay when we consider this as a standalone episode but provides some glaring Early Installment Weirdness when we compare it to other episodes. 

3. The Penitent Man (s05e15)--

So as the rest of this list  will testify, I have strong preference for the “fun” Flambeau episodes over the more series ones. This is the exception that proves the rule--the  serious, cerebral, melancholy episode that simply “works” for me in the way that some of the others have not.

A lot of it is due to the more-intense-than-usual Flambeau character focus that goes into this. Sure, we’ve met his (presumably ex-by-now) wife, his daughter, and his first love by this point, but all of those episodes focused primarily on Flambeau as an extension of the relationships with others. (”The Judgement of Man”  in particular is far more Rebecca’s story than Hercule’s.)

Whereas this episode is very definitively focused on Flambeau himself and allows more nuanced exploration of two of the most defining facets of Flambeau’s character:  (1) his fascination with religion--and spiritual salvation in particular--  as  something he seems to resist and crave in near equal measure  (2) his almost masochistic streak of recklessness.

Even though Flambeau’s supposed “piety” is revealed to be all part of his heist plan, there are strong hints that his desire for redemption and atonement are at least somewhat genuine, even if he is not  ready to pursue them just yet. 

Off topic, but a few random things of note in this episode: this episode all-but-confirms bi!Flambeau, wet!Flambeau at the end is extremely relevant to my interests, Father Brown attempts to smuggle Flamby a lock pick from the beginning and has the audacity to say “ I only use it when I get locked out of the presbytery.”

Also, it has this iconic exchange:

Goodfellow: What is that awful smell?

Father Brown (covered in sewage): It’s me

2. The Honorable Thief (S07e10)-- So nearly all of the Flambeau-centered episodes from S3 on  have been a little preoccupied with filling in some of the gaps in Flambeau’s backstory, which is *fine*, but honestly, I feel like in doing so, they’ve really lost sight of why we fell in love with the character in the first place. 

 He’s vibrant and clever and funny and over-the-top. But most importantly, Flambeau is a lot of fun. Therefore, it follows that episodes that feature him should be a lot of fun too. 

And well... they are all fun in some way,  but they aren’t as fun as they really could be. John Light is insanely charismatic, but charisma can only go so far when the episode in question is a downer.

Fortunately, this episode is the furthest thing from a downer imaginable. It’s absolutely delightful from start to finish. The plot is serious enough to keep things engaging, but also light enough to keep us from getting too distracted by angst. 

I’m also incredibly biased in favor of this episode, because it finally gave me the Felicia/Flambeau ship tease I’d been passionately hoping for (if not really expecting to get after “The Judgement of Man” disappointed me). But it was so much and so good, and I wasn’t ready for it.

In a broader sense though, this episode really delivered with Flambeau/squad interaction in general--which was a key component that has been missing from most of the other episodes. And the Father Brown & Flambeau interactions were also has heartwarming and funny as they always are.

If I have one tiny little gripe with the episode, it’s that Daniel is not Sid. He has enough broad similarities with Sid that I can’t help but wonder if the episode was originally written with Sid and then hastily re-written when Alex Price couldn’t return. That being said, he was a likable enough guest character in his own right, and I wouldn’t mind seeing him again.

1.  The Mysteries of the Rosary (S02e05)-- Perfection. Not only is this THE definitive Flambeau episode, but is also one of the best episodes of the show overall. It has everything: the birth of bearded Flamby, bromantic road trips, a treasure hunt, great guest turns from Anton Lesser and Sylvestra Le Touzel.

I think part of the reason this episode resonates so strongly with me is that it’s really the first proper sense that we get of Show!Flambeau as a character. Sure we officially met him in “The Blue Cross,” but considering he didn’t show up until halfway through the episode and was in disguise for most of it, we didn’t really get much of a sense of who he is.

This episode changes all that and sets Flambeau up as the character we will know and love for the rest of the series--charming, urbane, funny, passionate, a carefree carpe diem exterior masking (or overcompensating for?) a sense of uncertainty and conflictedness.

Somewhat off topic, but as great an episode as this is for Flambeau’s character, it is nearly as wonderful for both Sid and Father Brown’s characters. We get to see Sid’s  ease with Father Brown, the casual camraderie that the two of them have--as well as Sid’s protectiveness (and jealousy) when Flambeau decides to gatecrash their bromantic road trip. 

Honestly, there are so many things that are great about this episode that I don’t think I could possibly list them--but one little detail that really struck my the last time I watched was that the first proper glimpse we see of Flambeau in this episode (we see him in shadow in a flashback before) involves him  saving Father Brown’s life.  Whereas the last proper glimpse we see of Flambeau is after Father Brown has saved Flambeau’s life.  Thematic reversals. Cinematic parallels. We love to see it. 

Journey to Middle Earth - Chapter 9

Summary – What if JRR Tolkien never gave Thorin a love story… because the person that was meant to be Thorin’s was not yet born when he wrote the Hobbit? Sara journeys from her world to Middle Earth after an accident, with a mission. To change something about the Hobbit story… but she is not sure what. What she does not know is that while trying to prevent something from happening, something new might arise between her and the dwarf prince….even if it is not on the agenda!

Warnings – None, no explicit scenes, some kissing, violence, frightening creatures, mentions of abuse.

Pairings – Thorin Oakenshield x OC

When Sara was awake, she was not nearly as surprised at her environment as she should have been, but then again, it wasn’t every day that you knew that when you woke up, you would be falling into the depths of an underground city inhabited by goblins.

That was the plus side of things. The downside of it was that while it looked rather dangerous and painful in the movie, it had never dawned on Sara how much it would actually hurt to be hurdling down a stone shoot and then to land atop and amidst a pile of large dwarves who, while they barely beat you in height, definitely outweighed you almost four fold in some of their cases.

This harsh reality was what Sara discovered when she found her arms and legs battered and bruised, the knees of her pants having ripped, and the skin scraped till it bled. For some magic reason, her hands were untouched, mostly because when she had started to fall, she had curled up in a ball to keep herself from having any of her limps slammed off her body by the impact and had kept her hands close against her chest.

The first thing that popped into her mind once she managed to suck in a breath of air even though her ribs were straining to hold up the weight of a certain large dwarf by the name of Gloin, was that she had forgotten to grab her backpack!

Looking around, she saw that most of their supplies had landed underneath them and she scrambled to look for her bag. She knew that the goblins would take their things, so she had to work fast. When her hand finally landed on the rough leather bag, she pulled it from where it was stuck beneath Bombur’s behind. Opening the flap, she hastily grabbed her notebook and the other small contents, shoving them down the neck of her white shirt. After this was done, she pulled her leather jacket closer around her and buttoned it up the front, hoping that it would hide the slight bulge that her belongings made in her shirt.

She tossed the bag to the side but not before ensuring that her pistol was well hidden in her boot. And just in time too for she heard the screech of goblins and swallowed with dread.

Being petite wasn’t the only issue as she was hauled to her feet. She could barely see thanks to her forgetting to braid her hair before sleep so her hair was all in her face and she couldn’t even get a second to brush it away as one of the goblins grabbed her wrist and dragged her along.

It reminded her of all those mornings when Omar and Ryder would wake her up on the mornings of her birthday and would blindfold her before carefully maneuvering her downstairs to where the rest of the family had prepared a surprise birthday breakfast.

Needless to say, her brothers were not always careful of where they were leading Sara and quite a few times she came downstairs with a bruise on her forehead from her brothers having failed to notice her walking straight into a wall. Now that Sara thought about it, she would gladly have a thousand bruises on her face than having to be led blindly along a not so stable path to the one place that Sara wished she had missed in the journey to the Lonely Mountain.

When Sara finally came to a stop, the goblins released her arms and she quickly rubbed them to get rid of the horrible, grubby feeling that their hands had left behind on her wrists. Finally, with her hands free, she brushed her hair out of her eyes to find herself face to face with a headful of dwarf hair…. Oh… it was Fili.

The young dwarf was scanning everyone around him till his eyes rested on the girl behind him and his face seemed to relax in relief, having been looking for her.

“You alright?” he whispered, wrapping an arm around her and keeping her partially hidden behind his body.

Sara nodded, “Not so bad considering where we are, who we’re captured by and how little sleep I got last night.” Fili chuckled at that before quickly removing his cloak and wrapping it around her, pulling the hood up, “Don’t let them know that you’re a girl.”

Sara was about to ask ‘why’ but then she realized that she knew the answer and if she asked, she would appear naïve and stupid. Before the girl could barely pull the cloak closer around her body, they were pushed and banged around as the goblins began to search them, removing all their weapons from their possession.

The bow Kili gave Sara and her swords were torn from her back and thrown on the ground but she kept her eyes on them. When Gandalf arrived, she wanted to be able to grab her swords as quickly as possible.

“Who would be so bold as to come armed into my kingdom?” the goblin king inquired. “Thieves? Assassins!?” “Dwarves,” one of the goblins replied.

“Dwarves!?” the goblin king inquired.

Sara quickly hid further behind Fili who pulled her closer. “Found them on the front porch.” “Well don’t just stand there!” the king cried. “Search them! Every Crack! Every Crevice!” Sara gulped. She completely forgot about that part! Please…. Please don’t touch her! Please just think that she is Fili’s pet monkey! Please! Her prayers either went unheard or it was just not her day because a goblin noticed her and tore the cloak from her body. Fili tried to grab it back from him but by the time he got it back, another goblin had snatched Sara by the arms and dragged her to the front.

“Well, well,” the goblin king remarked, drowning out the shouts that the dwarves were making. “What do we have here?”

“Let her go!” Sara could hear Kili yell and from what she could gather, it sounded like the others were struggling to break free.

“looks like a little kitten washed in with the boars,” the goblin king snorted before approaching Sara.

The girl kept her head down, not even wanting to look in the creature’s direction. However, she didn’t have a choice when he reached out with his staff and poked her stomach. Sara shot him a glare which only seemed to encourage him, and he stuck his staff between her legs, riding up her skirt. Luckily, she wore pants, but this annoyed Sara.

“Leave me alone,” the girl hissed.

The goblin king chuckled, only pushing his staff further up between her legs which caused the dwarves to begin to shout, yelling insults and screaming at the Goblin King to stop.

The goblins completely ignored them, and the dwarves wondered why Sara didn’t fight back. The goblin king also seemed intrigued and leaning forward, touched her stomach with the tip of his staff.

“Not going to bite kitten?”

A smirk worked its way onto Sara’s face before she looked him straight in the eye. “Kitten’s don’t bite. They scratch.” Even Sara did not quite know what happened next but she had drawn the small dagger from the back of her belt and driving it into the handle of the goblin king’s staff, wedged it in so deep so that when she wrenched her arm back, the staff went flying with it and hurtled across the keep.

“Cover your eyes!” She screamed.

The dwarves reacted just in time and either ducked their heads or buried their faces in the crooks of their arms as a bright brilliant blue light seemed to appear from nowhere, knocking everyone even the Goblin King back.

When the light finally faded, Sara found herself smiling at the sight of Gandalf standing there, his sword drawn and staff at the ready.

“Take up arms,” he demanded. “Fight!”

Sara quickly sheathed her dagger back into her belt before rushing forward to grab her bow and double swords. Just as she was about to grab her bow, she saw that there was another hand near hers, grabbing for another weapon nearby. Sara lifted her eyes and immediately they locked with a pair of striking blue eyes. Thorin looked her straight in the face, a look in his eyes that she couldn’t read but for some reason… it scared her.

As quickly as it happened, it was gone and Thorin had jumped to his feet and began slashing at Goblins. Sara shrugged before grabbing her bow and loaded it.

“Run!” Gandalf yelled, grabbing Sara by the elbow and pulling her along.

Sara did not know how long she was running but all she knew was to keep her feet moving and shoot down any Goblin who got too close.

She began to feel dizzy, not quite knowing why but things began to go fuzzy and she couldn’t quite concentrate on any target. This did not go unnoticed by Gandalf who quickly disposed of a goblin that was getting close to the girl.

“Fili! Kili!” the wizard called. “Take care of Sara.” The two boys were at her side in an instant, Kili supporting her while Fili protected them.

“What’s wrong?” Kili asked, feeling her head, only to find it a normal temperature.

“I don’t feel so right,” Sara stuttered. “I don’t know what it is…”

The two young dwarves looked at Gandalf who obviously knew what was going on, “it is the altitude and the stench.” He explained. “considering her…. condition…. She is more sensitive to smells and things that don’t usually faze people.” “You make it sound like I’m a hormonal pregnant woman,” Sara remarked sarcastically as she weakly leant against Kili.

“You’re also adapting to this environment Sara,” Gandalf explained. “Your body is changing to adapt to this environment and the situation we are in is not helping.” Sara groaned, “Just peachy.” “Hurry now!” Gandalf called.

Kili wrapped Sara’s arm around his shoulder, slipping one of his arms around her waist so he could partially lift the girl. He soon discovered that the girl barely weighed a thing to a point where he settled for lifting her onto his back in a piggyback fashion and he barely noticed the extra weight.

“Aren’t you eating?” he asked as Fili took down two goblins.

“Who keeps track of that?” Sara groaned against his shoulder. “Besides, I never have an appetite…. At this particular time….” “Oh,” Kili muttered, turning crimson when he realized what she was talking about.

Fili glanced over at his brother with a smirk, having heard the exchange, “I pity your wife Kili. She’s going to think you’re a teenage boy discovering the wonders of reproduction.” Kili tilted his head to the side, “What does that mean?” Sara and Fili exchanged partially horrified looks before Fili went back to clearing a path for Kili to carry Sara.

Before Sara could even begin to clear her head, she felt Fili rush over and wrap his arms around both her and Kili as they began to plummet…. Wait…. When did they run into the goblin king? Was she really that out of it?

When they made contact with the ground, she was squashed like the turkey in a sandwich between Fili and Kili. Fili got off her instantly and lifted her into his arms so Kili could get up. Weakly, Sara tried to stand up, but her knees buckled.

“GANDALF!” Kili yelled.

Sara could barely open her eyes, so Fili slipped his arms around her and lifted her onto his back.

“Only one thing will save us,” she heard Gandalf say. “Daylight!”

*******

“Eight… nine… ten… thirteen… and Bombur, that’s fourteen,” Gandalf counted.

Fili and Kili stopped running and Kili helped his brother set Sara down she was sitting against a tree.

“How is she?” Gandalf asked.

“Like I want to throw up,” Sara replied in a low grumble.

The two brothers looked at Gandalf for guidance, the wizard nodding, “She’ll be fine. She just needs air. That stench would make anyone sick.” “What happened to the lass?” Dwalin asked, getting the attention of the other dwarves.

Thorin walked over before crouching in front of Sara, stroking her cheek.

“Are you alright?”

Sara nodded but refused to look at the dwarf prince, “I am fine. Just felt a little sick is all.”

Thorin bit his gum before looking away, irritated that Sara refused to meet his gaze.

“Bilbo,” Sara muttered, “Where is Bilbo?”

Gandalf looked around, suddenly realizing that there was no sign of the little halfling. “Where is our hobbit!?”

“Curse the halfling, now he’s lost!” Dwalin groaned.

“I thought he was with Dori!” Gloin snapped.

“Don’t blame me!” Dori argued.

As they began to argue about who had seen Bilbo last, Sara managed to compose himself and rose to her feet.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Thorin started. “Master Baggins saw his chance and he took it. he has thought nothing….” The dwarf prince stopped when a voice overpowered his ranting.

“Do not finish that sentence,” Sara growled, leaning partially against the tree.

The girl had tried to talk herself out of speaking out but when she heard the words drip from Thorin’s tongue like venom, she snapped.

“it’s the truth,” Thorin objected.

Sara pushed herself from the tree and stormed over ot Thorin, “no. the truth is, you’re jealous. You are jealous of what Bilbo has, a home. He has one and you don’t, which makes you jealous.” “He is weak,” Thorin hissed.

Sara raised an eyebrow, “I am weak.” “No you’re not,” Thorin objected. “You are… you’re…” Sara took a step closer, so she was close to Thorin’s face, “I’ll tell you what I am. I am a girl from a world where dragons, orcs and goblins are all just made up creatures in a storybook. I am a girl who had the perfect family and the moment my parents died; I broke. I am a girl who died, leaving my younger brothers either alone in the world without a family or worse, dead. I am a girl who woke up in the land of her dreams, only to learn that the reason she ended up here is to change a course of events. I am a girl who has one duty and that duty is to ensure that the line of Durin does not die. I am a girl who has one job but is failing because the storyline is changing and every time she looks into the blue eyes of the dwarf she is supposed to be protecting, she loses her mind and cannot even form straight sentences. I. Am. Weak.”

Sara didn’t have to look away from Thorin’s eyes to know that everyone but Gandalf was staring at her in stunned surprise.

Thorin’s blue eyes were wide in shock and his lips parted slightly. Sara stepped away form hi, not breaking her gaze before speaking again.

“You can come out now Bilbo,” she muttered.

There was the sound of ruffling leaves as said Hobbit scrambled forward.

“How did you know I was there?” the hobbit inquired.

Sara did not reply but turned and walked away from the dwarves to stand a good distance from them, her back to them.

“What does it matter? He’s back,” Gandalf said, trying to break the tension.

“It matters,” Thorin objected. “I want to know. Why did you come back?”

Bilbo smiled, “I know you doubt me and always have. But like Sara said, I think of home and that is why I came back. Because it is true I have a home, but you don’t and I will try everything I can to get it back for you.”

Silence enveloped the group and Thorin looked across the clearing to see Sara standing still but he knew she had heard the whole thing. What he didn’t know was that the words Bilbo said sent a wave of worry through the girl’s heart.

“What did Sara mean about a ‘storyline’?” Ori asked, breaking the silence.

Gandalf was about to answer when a howl sounded from above, “No time for that. Run!”

*******

“Sara!” Fili yelled, “Up! Jump up!”

Sara looked around to see that while she was helping Bilbo dislodge his sword from the warg, everyone else had climbed up the trees.

“Hurry!” Kili cried.

Sara rushed to the nearest tree and a hand reached down to her. having no time to think about refusing, she took the person’s hand and was hauled into the tree.

Instead of being helped up, she was practically lifted onto a branch so that she had her arms around the trunk, someone standing behind her, shielding her from whatever was coming. Sara couldn’t turn her head to see who it was but her nose was suddenly filled with the scent of cedar, sweat and pine… oh great!

Sara was about to try and escape the cage of Thorin’s arms when she heard his voice come out in a hoarse whisper yell.

“Azog!”

Sara bit her lip. Not this! Anything but this! Seeing the fight with Azog and Thorin on screen was one thing but to see it in person… she knew she wouldn’t be able to stand it.

“Thorin,” the girl whispered, catching Thorin’s attention instantly.

“you knew?” he whispered, his eyes radiating pain and betrayal. “And you didn’t tell me?”

Before Sara could reply, the tree had begun to tilt before it ran into the nearest tree. Sara quickly jumped across. When she looked around, she found Thorin on the same branch as her, bearing down on her like a bear.

“How could i!?” she snapped, “If I had avenged my dead family and thought the monster to be dead but you knew he wasn’t dead, would you have told me?”

Thorin faltered before turning to look away from her. Suddenly, the tree they were in also began to lean till it fell on it’s side, half hanging off the cliff.

Sara quickly climbed up and knowing what would happen next, decided to go against her plan of following the storyline, at least just this once.

“Thorin,” she said sternly, looking Thorin straight in the eye, “Do not provoke him! Do not attack him!” Thorin’s blue eyes met hers and it seemed like they were having a staring contest, waiting to see who would falter first. Thorin sighed and was just nodding in agreement when he saw Sara’s eyes widen in fright before she slowly looked down.

The dwarf prince followed her gaze before he choked on his own air. Protruding through Sara’s abdomen was a long orc arrow! Sara couldn’t tell what happened next but she faintly remembered hearing Thorin’s heart breaking cry, followed by a few more cries from the others. She remembered the soft smell of cedar and pine as Thorin caught her in his arms. Then she felt him pass her to someone else. She tried to tell him to not provoke Azog but she could barely breathe. Everything faded to darkness and the last thing she heard was Fili’s voice whispering her name.

******

Sara slowly cracked her eyes open, groaning at the pain that punctured her abdomen. She slowly cracked her eyes open, only to see Oin hovering over her. she saw the old dwarf open his mouth to announce that she was awake to the others when Sara held up her hand weakly. She put her finger to her lips and the dwarf nodded in understanding. Gently he helped her sit up and the girl saw that they were on the eagle’s crest. She could see the faint outline of the eagles flying off in the distance. Of all the times to pass out and miss something, it had to be when the eagles came!

Sara’s attention was drawn to the rest of the company who were standing with their backs to her, looking at the Lonely Mountain in the distance. The girl was just about to smile when Kili just had to turn around and catch sight of the girl sitting up.

“Sara!” the young dwarf literally shrieked as he sprinted over to her side.

The rest of the company rushed over to the girl. Sara suddenly felt like the new Greenie who got sent up in the box to the Glade from The Maze Runner as over a dozen heads towered over her from all sides.

Kili threw his arms around Sara but the girl cried out in pain. Fili reached down and grabbed his brother’s right ear, pulling him off Sara.

“She just got shot by an orc!” Fili scolded.

Sara clutched her abdomen in pain as Gloin and Oin helped her lay back down. Gandalf pushed through and gently lifted Sara’s shirt to reveal the black puffy wound on her upper left hip.

“Kingsfoil,” Sara muttered. “Do we have some?” Gandalf smiled and nodded, drawing said plant from his bag and wetting it with some water from his pouch, pushing it onto the wound and began to chant elvish. Sara cried out in pain from the contact and many of the dwarves moved to stop Gandalf when Sara spoke.

“Please tell me Bilbo and Thorin made up,” she said through gritted teeth.

Everyone looked at Thorin who looked as if he had just seen a ghost before he turned bright crimson. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

Sara rolled her eyes before turning to Kili. Thorin was too proud and stubborn but Kili wasn’t. the girl grabbed Kili’s left ear and pulled him down to eye level.

“Tell me Thorin apologized and gave Bilbo a hug and apologized for doubting him.” She whisper growled.

Kili’s face radiated fear as he spoke in a rush.

“Thorin apologized and gave Bilbo a big hug and apologized for doubting him.” Sara smirked when she suddenly let out a grunt of pain as Gandalf finished cleaning her wound. Oin washed away the black puss and kingsfoil before wrapping the wound in a clean bandage.

Sara sat up and pulled her shirt down only to see that the company were still standing over her.

“I’m just guessing here, but do you all usually hover over people when they’re being patched back together?”

The dwarves took the hint and scurried off to set up camp. Fili and Kili stayed behind though to slowly help the girl to her feet. Sara noted that Kili was still rubbing both his ears from having had them pulled violently so she turned to Fili.

“After i…. passed out….did Thorin…” “Did Thorin literally break everyone’s eardrums with his blood curdling yell and then proceeded to do exactly as you had told him not to and provoke Azog so much that his warg bit him and then knocked him out, resulting in Bilbo having to go in there and rescue him before the eagles arrived and brought us here? Oh yeah.”

Sara wanted to laugh but she knew it wasn’t the time, so she let the two brothers help her sit down near where Gloin was making a fire for the night.

*******

Thorin looked up from where he was seated to see that across the fire, Sara was lying sort of set off from the others. The company were all sound asleep except for Gloin who was on watch, sitting near the edge of the cliff about twenty feet away. Fili and Kili had offered to sleep on either side of Sara to keep her warm but she had politely declined so as to not let herself be crushed by the two sleep rollers.

Rising to his feet, the dwarf prince walked around the fire to where the girl lay to see her lying on her back under her blanket, looking up at the stars.

“Cant sleep?” he asked, noticing that her eyes were wide open but he got no response.

He slowly sat down next to the girl before looking up at the sky.

“It is quite beautiful out,” he mused.

He didn’t expect a reply but he got one.

“Why?”

Thorin looked down at the girl to see that she had turned her head slightly away from him so that he couldn’t get a good look at her face.

“Why did you do it when I told you not to?”

Thorin felt his heart drop, “Sara…. I…” “I know I have a lot of secrets and I haven’t told you everything, but I was afraid that if I did, something would happen and everything would go wrong. But that’s not why. I didn’t tell you to avoid Azog because I knew something you didn’t. I did it because i….i….i couldn’t watch you fight and die when I could do something to prevent it. I couldn’t lose you…. Not like that. I distanced myself from you with the fear that if I got too close to you, it would distract me from my duty and would result in you dying. But when everything went black and I felt you let go of me…. Knowing that you were going to fight Azog… I knew that I while I feared losing you, I was more afraid of you dying without me telling you how I felt about you.” Thorin reached over and turned her face to look at him and that’s when he saw the tears, pooling in her beautiful doe eyes.

“Sara,” he said gently reaching down to pull her into his arms, cradling her head close to his chest. “I am so sorry. When I saw you fall…. No life in your eyes, your face ashen white… I just…” Thorin felt tears of his own trickle down his face when suddenly a warm hand touched his face and wiped it away. Thorin looked down to see Sara looking up at him, her eyes reflecting the stars. Slowly the girl leant up before brushing her lips gently across his. That was the only permission Thorin needed. Threading his fingers through her hair, he crushed his lips onto hers, snaking his other arm around her waist.

Sara gasped in pain when his hand grazed her wound and Thorin pulled back.

“Sorry…. I’m sorry….” Sara chuckled softly before bumping his nose with hers.

“Stay here?” She whispered.

Thorin smiled before pulling his cloak off and lying down on the ground next to her, pulling the cloak over the both of them.

Sara curled up close to him, keeping their eyes locked. Thorin wove his legs around hers and cupped her waist with his hands, pulling her impossibly close.

Gently he leant over to reconnect their lips when he heard Sara whisper something under her breath.

“What was that?” he whispered.

Sara smiled before whispering it in his ear. Thorin felt his heart freeze before he caught her lips in a strong, hungry kiss before pulling back. Gently he planted a gentle kiss on her forehead before burying his face in her hair.

“I love you too.”

******

Sara shivered as she listened to the loud roaring of Azog and the wargs. Of course, even though Thorin had just sent Bilbo off to find out how close the pack was, she knew that they were only a couple leagues away. She listened intently, waiting to hear the roar of Beorn but so far, they were too far from Beorn to hear him… yet.

The girl gnawed on her fingernails, not caring that her fingers looked ghastly. She always had the bad habit of biting her nails till they were so short that they hurt to move. The only way she could keep herself from biting them was paint them and the slightest sign of the pain chipping, she would start to pick, peel and chew them again. Her mother assured Sara that it was either a nervous or concentrating habit. Sort of like stress relief. Since entering Middle Earth, she hadn’t painted them obviously and with everything happening, they didn’t even look like nails anymore.

How was she going to tell the company about her knowledge of their fates? She knew she couldn’t tell them any details, whether it was about Erabor, the dragon, the elves, the spiders, deaths…. None of it because the slightest knowledge could trigger a change in the timeline, making Sara’s job near impossible. She honestly preferred the storyline being like it was in the movie. That way, she knew right when and where something would happen, and she could be prepared.

Sara let out a squeak of surprise when she peeled a piece of nail from her finger, splitting the nail and catching a bunch of skin, making it bleed. Thorin was at her side in an instant, taking her hand into his and examining the damage.

His blue eyes lifted as he looked at her. “You bite your nails?”

Sara looked down, biting her lip, “Yeah… it’s a bad habit.” The girl looked up when Thorin touched her chin, lifting her eyes to meet his to find a smile on his face, “it is relief from stress.” Sara’s eyes widened, “How did you know?” “I had a similar problem when I was a child,” Thorin replied, smiling. “My sister Dis hated it, but I had a habit of always wanting to do something with my fingers. Of course, the first thing that came to mind was chewing but instead of my nails, I chewed the skin around my fingers. I peeled so much skin away that my fingers looked like someone had taken a chisel to them.” Sara chuckled, trying to imagine Thorin biting his fingers. “How did you stop?”

“I found other things for my hands to do,” Thorin replied. “By then, Dis was older and constantly needing someone to braid her hair so that was what I did. When she grew out of that, I started getting into archery and swordsmanship.” Sara smiled, “I haven’t found a hobby that can distract me from biting my nails… they look horrible.” The girl almost choked on her own air as Thorin sat down next to her and brought her hand up to his face before kissing her knuckles, one at a time. When he came to the finger that was bleeding, he planted a kiss on the bleeding wound. Taking the sleeve of his shirt, he wiped away the excess blood before applying pressure to her finger by wrapping it in his palm and squeezing.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to the inside of her wrist, letting his lips linger there longer than need be.

Sara felt her face heat up at these words and she was just about to go hide somewhere (preferably behind Gandalf) so Thorin didn’t see her blush when Bilbo returned at a full sprint. Thorin rose to his feet and approached the hobbit.

“How close is the pack?”

“Too close!” The hobbit replied, skidding to a stop. “Couple of Leagues but no more. That is not the worst of it though.” “Have the wargs caught our scent?” Dwalin asked.

Bilbo shook his head, “They will soon but we have another problem.” “Did they see you?” Gandalf asked, not noticing that his choice of words made Sara’s heart drop.

“No that’s not it,” Bilbo panted. “But there is something else out there!”

While the others were getting information out of the small hobbit, Sara bit her lip and began to gnaw on her fingers again. There was something wrong. Why was the dialogue not like in the movie? Did her presence disrupt the timeline like that? What if something happens to her or she does something…. It was one thing to just be there and for the dialogue to be different but what about actions? Would actions of the storyline begin to change because of her presence in the story!?

“SARA!” Fili yelled, catching the girl’s attention, “RUN!”

The girl realized that the dwarves had begun to run out of the clearing with Gandalf. She jumped from her spot and rushed after Fili, allowing him to grab her hand and pull her along at a faster pace. Curse dwarves and their impossibly strong endurance!

******

Sara sighed as she flopped down on the pile of straw, letting her bag fall to the ground and rubbing her sore arms. She flinched when she pulled too much on her wound but quickly wiped the pain off her face when the dwarves approached from having ensured that the door of the stable was locked.

As everyone chose their spot of Beorn’s barn for the night, Sara felt many of them glancing over in her direction. She knew why. Since the Azog and warg attack when it was revealed that she knew something that they didn’t, there had been no time for her to explain her situation to them but now, being safe in a barn protected by a giant skin changer bear, this was the perfect time.

When she saw Ori, Nori and Dori whispering to each other, occasionally glancing in her direction, Sara finally lost her cool. Standing up, ignoring the searing pain in her abdomen, she walked across the barn to the huge table and climbed up onto the seat that was almost as tall as her.

Reaching into her bag, she drew out her sketchbook and laid it on the table before flipping to the first pages, showing her first attempts at drawing the Hobbit members. By then, the dwarves had gathered around, having gotten a look from Gandalf which basically told them to pay attention.

“When I said that… in my world, there were stories about this world… that wasn’t the whole story,” Sara began. “I know about Kuzdul, dwarves, elves, the Lonely Mountain… all of it… because of the stories from my world but… there are more details about this world that I didn’t tell you.”

Fili and Kili must have sensed how tense and nervous the girl was, so they climbed up onto the stairs on either side of her and Fili placed a hand on her shoulder to offer comfort. Sara smiled at the blond dwarf before taking a deep breath.

“In my world… there is a book called: The Hobbit. It…it tells the stories of certain people in Middle Earth and how they defeat evil.”

“The Hobbit?” Gloin inquired. “As in the halfling?”

Sara nodded, “The story is about Bilbo’s adventures…. To help reclaim Erabor.”

The dwarves’ eyes all widened in surprise. “You mean…. You already knew about this journey before you came here?” Dwalin inquired.

“Yes,” Sara replied. “And I know what happens the rest of the time…”

“That’s how,” Balin whispered. “That is how you knew when and where all those things happened… the trolls, Radagast, the goblins…”

Sara nodded, keeping her face hidden behind her hair. “That’s the hard part.”

The dwarves all frowned in confusion until reality dawned on Kili, “Does…. Something bad happen?” Sara sighed, “I cannot tell you. All I can say is… some things happen that are hard to accept… and if you know about them then….”

“It will change the course of events,” Gandalf intervened, noticing how uncomfortable Sara was. “it is like knowing about your future, it could change the course of events.”

“But wouldn’t that be a good thing?” Dwalin inquired. “It could prevent them from happening.” “Not necessarily,” Gandalf replied. “Knowing if something is going to happen might not prevent it from happening but might result in it happening at a different time and place.”

Slowly, everyone looked at Sara who had bitten her lip hard to keep from crying at the thought of the future events.

“That is why I am here,” Sara sighed. “I know what is going to happen and I am going to try everything in my power to stop some things from happening but…I cannot even tell you about the good things that will happen.”

Silence enveloped everyone present and Sara felt her heart sink. This was what she feared the most. They would find out that she knew more about them than they did and were going to shun her.

“How do we know that this isn’t just a joke?” Dori inquired, not believing what he had just heard.

Sara sighed and turned her notebook around before showing everyone the sketch that she had been looking at…. A sketch of the Fellowship of the Ring. She knew it was a bad thing to tell them about their futures, but they were not associated with the Fellowship… it would be okay if they knew a little about it.

“Is that Gandalf?” Balin asked, pointing at Gandalf in the drawing.

Sara nodded, “This is a course of events that occurs about 60 years from now. These people will all journey to destroy an evil relic.”

“Is that a dwarf?” Fili asked, pointing at Gimli in the picture.

Sara bit her lip. Should she tell Gloin that his son would one day do this? Well, if Gloin hadn’t been born yet, maybe it wouldn’t have been a good thing to tell him but… Gimli is already alive and a young dwarf…

The girl glanced at Gandalf who seemed to know what Sara was thinking and gave her a reassuring nod. Sara sighed before nodding.

“Yes, he is a dwarf… his name is Gimli.”

Everyone froze before turning to look at Gloin who’s eyes had widened.

“My wee lad?” the dwarf asked.

Sara nodded, “Yes Gimli.”

Silence enveloped everyone once again and Sara closed her notebook, starting to feel like she had almost gone too far.

Rising from the seat, she headed out the back door of the barn into the back yard, leaving her notebook on the table. Not caring if they saw the sketches.

She had located the small well in the corner of the back yard and had sat down on the stone wall, staring down into the water below.

She sensed a presence behind her and turned to see Thorin standing there. The first thing she noticed was her sketchbook in his hand, but she also saw that he had his finger marking one particular page.

“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice soft and gentle.

Sara sighed, “I don’t know. The reason I held back all that information from you is because I fear it myself… I am afraid that I will not be able to keep those things from happening…” Thorin walked over and sat down next to her but facing the opposite direction. “Why do you think that?”

“Because some things have changed,” Sara explained. “The things said, who says them… some things have begun to change… and I wonder if my presence here will begin to change things.” Thorin nodded in understanding, “I am sure your presence is changing things from how they were supposed to be. But I wouldn’t be worried about it.”

“But what if something bad happens?” Sara asked, turning to look at him, raising her voice slightly, “What if something terrible happens just because of my being here?”

Thorin turned to look at her, realization crossing his face, “Is that why you distanced from be back in Rivendell?”

Sara turned to look back into the interior of the well, “Maybe… with my being here, there is another person that you all are worrying about and that extra worry could cost one of you your life! If it weren’t for my being here, we wouldn’t have argued!”

The girl was cut off when Thorin cupped her face in his hands and turned her to look at him, “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have fallen in love.”

Sara felt her heart jump at those words, but her worry overcame her joy and she shook her head, “You don’t know that…”

Thorin smirked when he saw the deep blush cover Sara’s face, “In the story, did I find love?”

Sara hesitated before biting her lip, “No…”

Thorin smiled but noticed that her lip had two red marks where she had bitten on her lip to keep from crying earlier. Leaning down, he brushed his lips dangerously close to hers. “Good.”

With that, he drew her face closer to hers and pressed his lips to hers. Sara melted into the warmth of his embrace, allowing one hand to fall against his chest and she could feel his heartbeat through his clothes. He tangled his fingers into her bright red hair and kept her close as he showered her lips with desperate kisses.

When he pulled away, he nuzzled his lips and nose against her forehead, keeping his hands cupped beneath her chin.

“Don’t ever be afraid to tell me these things,” he whispered.

Sara smiled at his words before her heart dropped. He had no idea the things that she wished she could tell him… namely… his upcoming death.

You’ve probably heard that the schedule for the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival (TCMFF) 2019  was published earlier this week. TCMFF is scheduled for April 11-14 and this year’s theme is Follow Your Heart: Love at the Movies. As you can imagine, such a broad theme allows for all sorts of relationships in movies and in that sense the offerings don’t disappoint. There’s something for everyone – from traditional romance to bromance to love in pure evil form. What’s important is that for the 10th consecutive year, classic movie fans will have a love affair with movies in Hollywood.

As has become tradition on this blog I’ve put together my planned schedule for discussion sake. I tried to go a bit beyond my comfort level this year choosing new-to-me fare in more slots than ever before with a dear coming home at the end the festival. This will be my seventh year in Hollywood for this event and the excitement has not waned. There’s simply a lot to look forward to.

Also exciting is the fact that I will be playing a dual role at TCMFF 2019. I’ve mentioned my media credentials to cover TCMFF in the past and that is true again this year. In addition, I will also be one of about 30 Brand Ambassadors. I don’t know many details of this post yet, but follow me on social media and we’ll learn together.

Now to my picks…I hope some of you will chime in with yours. If you’re a blogger and publish a pre-TCMFF post be sure to leave me the link in the comments so I can include it in this post. I enjoy comparing people’s picks and think others do as well. Here we go…

  Thursday, April 11

I’m betting the biggest crowd aside from Grauman’s for the official opening night feature, will be at the Egyptian for Howard Hawks’ enjoyable Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and its iconic images. Although I adore that movie, which features Marilyn Monroe in standout comedic form, I plan to attend the 35MM screening of Hobart Henley’s Night World (1932), which I’ve never seen. Sara Karloff, daughter of the legendary Boris Karloff, will do the introductory honors alongside writer Susan King. Spending some time at a Karloff speakeasy is simply too good to pass up and it’s a fantastic way to start the festival.

Next I’ll likely meet bunches of people I know at the Egyptian for the Nitrate screening of Irving Reis’ The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer (1947) starring my love Cary Grant, the lovely Myrna Loy, and the popular Shirley Temple. This is the first of several movies featuring Cary Grant this weekend and I plan to stare at him every chance I get. Almost.

  Friday, April 12

Friday morning poses a bit of a dilemma for me. There’s the film noir staple The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) opposite pre-code Merrily We Go to Hell (1932) opposite Judy Garland’s only drama appearance in The Clock (1945) opposite the enjoyable High Society (1956). I decided on Dorothy Arzner’s pre-code featuring Sylvia Sydney, Fredric March and a pre-stardom Cary Grant. How can I go wrong with that combination?

Following that movie I’ll have a bit of time before the Club TCM presentation of The Descendants: Growing Up in Hollywood. This presentation may be as close as I’ll ever get to the idea of “Legacies” I’ve been hoping for, which calls for a panel of children of classic stars. In attendance at The Descendants presentation will be Cary Grant’s daughter, Jennifer. This means I’ll be one degree away from the greatest Hollywood has ever seen.

The next Friday block poses another slight problem. My choice of screening is Garson Kanin’s delightful, My Favorite Wife (1940) at the Egyptian, but skipping Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) is not easy. The reason I’m going to see Cary and Irene Dunne, besides the fact they’re wonderful, is due to the next screening, which will likely be a popular one.

For the 5:30 to 8:00 PM block on Friday I plan to watch the new-to-me Vanity Street (1932) directed by Nick Grinde followed by John Reinhardt’s Open Secret (1948). I think these two films will have long lines because the others screening in the slot are much newer movies. That means die-hard “old” movie lovers have my choices as their choices as well. Robert Wise’s beloved The Sound of Music (1965) is also screening in the slot and that eases my worries a bit.

Next I go to go see Jean Negulesco’s Road House (1948) starring Ida Lupino and Richard Widmark. The other movie I seriously considered in this slot is the premiere restoration of Anthony Mann’s Winchester ’73 (1950). Watching at least one important Western at the festival has become a tradition for me. If I skip Winchester the tradition will be broken, which is tough.

This year I am making it a point to attend at least one midnight screening and it looks like Joselito Rodríguez’s Santo Contra Cerebro Del Mal (1961) is the choice. It’s exciting to watch a movie in Spanish at TCMFF and, although I am familiar with the Santo superhero character, I’ve never seen one of his films. This should be a heck of a lot of fun.

  Saturday, April 13

What hit me immediately upon perusing the Saturday morning line-up is that I might not make it into Grauman’s at all the entire festival. Can you imagine? One of the two golden age films screening at the historic theatre, Fred Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity (1953) opens the day there, but I am going for science fiction and Rudolph Maté’s When Worlds Collide from 1951. The movie stars John Hoyt, Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, and Peter Hansen. Rush will be in attendance to introduce the film with Dennis Miller. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Barbara Rush on a couple of occasions and she couldn’t be more down to Earth, a truly lovely person who will no doubt offer interesting tidbits about the making of When Worlds Collide. 

From possible world annihilation I will venture into the jungles for the special presentation of the 85-year old Tarzan and His Mate (1984), the only directing outing by legendary art director, Cedric Gibbons. One of the first film courses I ever took was taught by a film historian and author obsessed with the nude swim scene and its artistry. I’ve seen it, of course, several times, but never on a big screen so this one is exciting.

Before you continue down my schedule, know that the rest of Saturday is a web of sacrifices for me. Foregoing a few screenings to ensure entrance in the ones I cannot miss is the order of this day. With that I continue…

Following Tarzan I’ll be visiting with Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer in Leo McCarey’s Love Affair (1939) celebrating its 80th anniversary. This will be introduced by Dana Delaney who is a great classics fan in her own right. Although I have no reservation about enjoying this film, which I haven’t seen in quite some time, it would not be my choice if not for the rest of the day’s offerings. For instance, I think I’d enjoy the Tom Mix Double Feature immensely and would attend that if not for Rowland Brown’s Blood Money (1933) hailed as “the ultimate pre-Code film” on the TCMFF page and I’ve never seen it. Blood Money follows in the next slot and if I see Tom Mix I won’t have time to get to it. That’s the deciding factor for me. I’ll also be truly sorry to miss the Hollywood Home Movies presentation at Club TCM yet again.

The worst block of the entire 2019 TCMFF for me as far as decisions go is the Saturday evening offerings after Blood Money. My good friend Laura of Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings mentioned the rarity that will be the screening of George Marshall’s Life Begins at 40 (1935) and she should know as she takes full advantage of the numerous classic screenings available in the Los Angeles area. The problem, my dears, is that if I go to Life Begins at 40 I won’t make it to what I believe will be an unforgettable experience, Mervyn LeRoy’s The Bad Seed (1956) poolside with Patty McCormack in attendance. I’m super excited about this one as I consider McCormack’s portrayal of Rhoda one of the all-time great child performances and an impressionable evil. That said, this decision comes at a great cost because while I’ll be watching this terrific film, Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, two stars that mean the world to me, will be Indiscreeting in a nearby theater. This actually hurts to think about, but this will be my first ever screening by the pool at the Roosevelt and I couldn’t look forward to it more.

  Sunday, April 14

Another tough choice opens Sunday with Peter Lorre’s fantastic performance in Karl Freund’s Mad Love (1935) screening opposite George Cukor’s Holiday (1938), but in the end Cary Grant wins as does Diane Baker’s introduction. Touch one though.

My choice for this next block may change depending on the TBA. I’m hoping it’ll be Indiscreet in which case that’s where I’ll be. Barring that happening I may well forego movies and attend two Club TCM presentations in a row, which would be a first: Hollywood Love Stories and The Complicated Legacy of Gone With the Wind are both enticing and likely to be entertaining and informative.

Finally, I arrive at the end of the weekend with the two final screenings. These are no-brainer choices for me. The first is Clarence Brown’s A Woman of Affairs (1928), the third picture to team Greta Garbo and John Gilbert and their final silent film together. Present for the introduction will be Kevin Brownlow and Leonard Maltin. This screening will also be accompanied by a live orchestra performing a score composed and conducted by Carl Davis and it should be spectacular.

Now talk about thrilling. This will be a nitrate presentation of Irving Cummings’ The Dolly Sisters (1945) starring one of my idols, superstar Betty Grable and June Haver as famous vaudeville entertainers, Jenny and Rosie Dolly. This movie strays far from the real story of The Dolly Sisters who were known more for their dark beauty than for their talent, so if you’re looking for biographical drama look elsewhere. However, if enchanting entertainment, the wonderful fluff I adore that’s important enough to get a Carol Burnett parody, if what you’re after then look no further. This one means a lot to me. Remember, Betty Grable was my idea of the biggest star in the world. Oh oh…I may cry during this screening. With John Payne as Grable’s love and character greats S. Z. Sakall and Sig Ruman, The Dolly Sisters screening cannot come soon enough even though it ends my TCMFF 2019.

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There you have my picks and ideas on this year’s festival. It all adds up to 16 movies – a decent number for me – three Club TCM presentations, and numerous new experiences. I hope to run into you in Hollywood, but if not follow me on social media for the latest from TCMFF 2019.

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It’s always fun to compare notes with friends so I’m including links to a few other bloggers’ TCMFF picks. I love reading how everyone makes his/her decisions on such things and hope you do too.  If your blog post is not included leave the link in the comments section and I’ll be happy to add it to this list.

Check out the choices of Pre-Code.Com

    My Picks for #TCMFF 2019 You've probably heard that the schedule for the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival (TCMFF) 2019  was published earlier this week.

Watolock Figure Skating AU

So this all came to me at once and I wrote a lot of plot points and possible moments down. I’m not much of a fic writer so if you want to force yourself through this disconnected block of text, have fun! I sent this to the Miss Sherlock Discord but I’ll give it its moment in the Tumblr tag lmao.

Sherlock began as a rising star in the junior figure skating community when she was 15, holding an excellent track record of consecutive wins. She had excellent technical skills and creative flair. Her interaction with fans was minimal but she remained popular regardless. 

Unfortunately her teenage years appeared to be the peak of her career when her abilities began to crash after the death of her parents (and some other secret angsty backstory involving figure skating) soon after she turned 20. She began crashing in competitions and her renowned self-choreographed routines fell flat. Her heart and soul was no longer in it.

The only time she feels fully at ease on the ice in her early 20s is in private.

Wato is a hobbyist when it comes to skating. While she is fascinated by the sport she is by no means a religious competition follower and while she could probably list a handful of names she's read about, she wouldn't be quick to recognise. Admittedly she is a bit of nerd surrounding the physics of figure skating jumps.

She uncovered years old tape recordings of the Olympics in her parents' attic and pored over the figure skating footage in her free time while getting through high school. (I honestly just needed an excuse for her not to be a Figure Skating Fangirl who would know Sherlock immediately).

She continues to practise into her college years when she has short breaks between working for her medical degree. It's always in public rinks and it is never more than a hobby.

Kimie Hatano is the rink owner. Gentaro Reimon is Sherlock's coach. Tatsuya Shibata is a pairs skater.#

Their first encounter is at the end of Sherlock's private rink time. She begins to unlace at the back to avoid being rudely talked to or god forbid, asked a question.

Enter the public. Among the groups of friends and couples, a shorter frantic woman stumbles in. She's hefting an assortment of bags and dressed terribly in Sherlock's opinion. Sherlock watches her hastily tie her laces connected to her ratty old skates and push in earphones before she steps onto the ice amidst the rush. For some unknown reason she seems to stand out despite the lacklustre attire. Her expression is just so full of will and determination.

She is soon gliding effortlessly and stepping rhymically across the ice the best she can amidst the admittedly sparse public. There are stammers and blips occasionally and it would be a lie if Sherlock didn't admit one or two falls escaped the woman. It wasn't completely fluent but the beauty and luminescence of the her character easily erased the most minor of errors.

She begins to slide into more advanced step sequences before launching into a series of single jumps. Sherlock hadn't been aware, hadn't even considered the thought, that what she'd seen had simply been a warmup for this assumed amateur. She throws herself without almost any hesitation, catching herself when she underestimates a landing. She continues, never letting the proud glow leave her eyes.

There's a moment where she seems to *prepare* herself, remaining motionless on the ice and taking a breath before she sets off again. Moving with unexpected strength and a spark in her eye. Jump. Sherlock holds her own breath as she sees this woman take off with the clear ambition of a toe loop. One revolution. Two. Three. Landing. Slicing into the ice on the right back outside edge, she lands with only a slight wobble. An almost flawless triple toe. Sherlock is enraptured. Of course, she can do such moves in her sleep but, here she is... Awestruck.

Frozen in place, Sherlock doesn't appear to notice the glee and surprise on the woman's face as she pushes herself to the exit, breathing heavily and reaching for a discarded bottle of water by her bag.

Sherlock practically falls out of her seat in an attempt to catch the woman during her break. Sherlock knows how much she herself despises being interrupted. She fills with a strange emotion as she approaches slowly in the building afternoon crowds. Nerves? She has not been noticed. She could still turn away. No, not Sara Shelly Futaba! She's a figure skating prodigy... with nerves of steel! And really she should take note of potential competition that could jeopardize her consistent wins.

Sherlock: Who's your coach?

Wato, pulling out her earphones: Eh? Sorry?

Sherlock: Do you have a coach?

Wato, looking bemused.

Sherlock, taking in Wato's scuffed and worn skates and attire: No! Of course you don't. What am I thinking! 

Wato, quickly growing angry and scoffing in disbelief.

Sherlock, failing lamely: No no... No! Sorry I just... Uh, what's your name? 

Wato: Tachibana... [Sherlock is clearly waiting for her to elaborate] Wato.

Sherlock: [to herself] Tachibana Wato... Listen- [cut off by phone buzzing, glances away] Ugh..! Listen- [Wato has disappeared; initiate frustrated Sherlock stomps and hair mussing]

Sherlock rushes out instantly, knowing she has no time to hunt down this newly named mystery girl without incurring the wrath of her ballet instructor. She spends the whole lesson a little out of focus and enamoured by Wato. It certainly doesn't go unnoticed. She's endlessly teased by Shibata on the sidelines as her (usually flawless) form is corrected. Sherlock obviously gives him a murderous look and already has 4 possible scenarios in which she can end his career.

The next time she's at the rink, she casually attempts to ask around about a Wato Tachibana. Yet we all know that Sherlock lacks any semblance of discreetness and of course Kimie Hatano, rink owner and Sherlock's designated moral support, knows the "sweet girl who has been showing up for about a week now and oh! She is so lovely, she'd probably even like you, Sherlock! Whoops, I didn't mean that..! Anyway, since you like her so much I'll introduce you both!". Cue Sherlock indignantly denying any interest but not denying the offer.

Mrs Hatano is endlessly encouraging Sherlock to speak to Wato but let's face it... She's a hopeless lesbian. 

Wato has just returned from a gap year in Syria she took in pursuit of her dream as a doctor. She was doing training as a nurse and was further encouraged to chase a higher medical career. Now in the summer building up to her final year in university before she enters medical school she is taking her free time to pursue an outside hobby she enjoys to lessen the pressure of such a demanding course.

She becomes close friends with Mrs Hatano during her visits and praises Wato each time she sees her but Wato is much too humble and even unaware to admit she's any good. Mrs Hatano remarks on her days as an ice dancer and all the many incredible men and women she met (in more ways than one). Wato laughs along at her stories that would be unbelievable if they weren't coming from her lips. Sherlock is often seen moping in the sidelines lamenting her inability to approach Wato after their awkward first encounter.

After some long, hard talks with Mrs Hatano Wato decides that she can afford to fish out money for a few lessons, purely to occupy her summer *obviously*. Sherlock, who is usually opposed to assisting any beginner's lessons jumps at the chance when Mrs Hatano mentions Wato. 

However, the instructor insists she just show what she can do first lesson while Sherlock is lurking in the back of the rink seating. Wato gets off to a shaky start due to her nerves but is soon smoothly gliding across the ice and doing moves, slowly increasing in difficulty. Amid this she is periodically throwing out single and double jumps. Sherlock is convinced she needs to speak to this girl and maybe advise her on how to improve her technique. Sherlock can already see the magic if Wato were to improve her rotations and unstable landings. Although these things never come out quite as smoothly she skates...

So unfortunately the first time they speak sherlock unintentionally comes off as pretentious and the two get into some verbal combat despite being interested in each other.

Kento definitely approaches Sherlock later and she pouts and mopes about how badly she handled that situation but that Wato was *totally* in the wrong too..!

Sherlock thought she was being constructive when advising wato on her technique but she was just pointing out everything wrong. She didn't have time to get to the positives before Wato was offended and began the verbal warfare.

They also both make the mistake of going to Mrs Hatano, wondering how they could apologise. Mrs Hatano, of course, has a genius idea: Coffee. However, when both women arrive and suddenly there's four coffees between the two of them. There's a lot of uncomfortable fumbling and light blushes as they talk over each other attempting to defend themselves. Sherlock tries to act cold and unaffected but they're eventually both giggling. 

Conversation is still awkward as they both lace up before Wato's first proper lesson but Sherlock lightly nudges Wato before shoving a piece of chocolate in her hand. Before Wato can reply Sherlock has turned away, shoved on her skate guards and marched off. And lucky she did because she may have melted if she saw the soft smile Wato had on her face.

Next thing you know Sherlock is pretending nothing happened and patiently leading Wato in a beginner's class. Sherlock notoriously doesn't have the patience for *anyone*. Period. On the side we have a slightly stunned Mrs Hatano. Sherlock is so caught up in explaining successful landing technique in detail that she doesn't even notice them. Shibata films it as "blackmail material" but Sherlock steals his phone. Before deleting the video she sends it to herself... because Wato looks so cute in it but she'll never let anyone in on that.

As first professional lessons usually go, Wato falls over an unimaginable amount of times by over-rotating on her jumps and Sherlock rushes over each time to check that she's alright.

Wato, grinning: You know I'm getting a medical degree, right?

Sherlock, holding the sides of her face gazing very intently at Wato's pupils: You can't determine your own concussion!

They probably look in each other's eyes for a few moments too long before clearing their throats and getting back to practice.

Sherlock leads Wato through the appropriate motions by lightly placing her hands on Wato's hips and waist and demonstrating the leg and arm movements for better balance. It's all in the name of sport yet it ends up achingly intimate.

By the end they are both glowing and Wato is gazing up as Sherlock rambles about everything and nothing all at once and she can't take her eyes off her. They end up beside each other once again, yanking off their skates and mindlessly discussing breathtaking routines from *decades* ago because of course Sherlock has endless knowledge on all her interests. They end up sat there late into the afternoon as the public passes in front of them and Mrs Hatano brings them drinks and snacks. 

Wato talks about her school life and how exhausting it can be but how much she adores it. Sherlock laughs at her affably for not following modern skating competitions. Wato jokes that Sherlock isn't as popular as she claims she is. Conversation is cut short when Wato cheekily requests to see one of Sherlock's apparently *incredible* routines. Sherlock stalks off with a less than friendly farewell and Wato has to use all her energy not to chase after this woman she's barely known a day.

Sat speechless she confides in Mrs Hatano who halfheartedly mentions Sherlock's "moods", although it seemed like more than a mood to Wato.

They each spend that night pondering the fun they had and just how much they want to see and speak to each other again.

The next time that they meet Sherlock stomps up to Wato with a phone number and a proposition. The number is to organise additional practises with Sherlock who gets extra rink access because "it's practical, Wato! Don't be dense!" The proposition is an invitation to witness one of Sherlock's routines privately during one of the previously mentioned additional practises. Sherlock requests that she set the date for it but Wato quickly agrees.

It takes a week more of practises in the presence of Mrs Hatano and various instructors before Sherlock finally approaches Wato to make good on her offer that night.

When Wato enters the rink it is the quietest she's ever seen it. She doesn't even see Mrs Hatano shuffling about. Admittedly it is quite late in the evening on a Sunday. She calls out, spotlights flash and as she blinks Sherlock appears from the other side of the rink all booted up with a long, *extremely fashionable* coat draped around her. Wato laughs loudly at her dramatics and Sherlock badly covers a smile as she skates to the centre of the ice.

Wato shades her eyes from the lights as she tries to see who's in the tech booth although she's almost certain she already knows. She hears a  yell of "catch!" before feeling the impact of a coat on her face. Before she can protest Sherlock has assumed her opening position and she is... *dazzling*. Her outfit is delicately sequined and elegant.

The music sets off at a somber pace and Sherlock possesses all the majesty and grace of a prima ballerina. The pace picks up and though she feels slightly wobbly in front of this new audience she slices through the air, elevating herself half a metre off the ice and landing with perfect balance.

Sherlock does the most impossible choreography and Wato is *beyond* amazed. She is void of speech or even breath to fully convey the beauty of what she'd just seen.

Sherlock bows deeply after showcasing one of her early successful routines and twirls, waving timidly to the audience of one.

As Sherlock begins to exit the ice Wato rushes over and grabs her arm as she sings her praises. Sherlock goes to shake Wato's arm off in habit but is stuck halfway through putting on her skate guards by Wato's fascinated expression and sparkling eyes.

Since this is just a very long sneak peak of my ideas... I’ll stop here. Feel free to send me asks with your thoughts and questions about this AU though. I am very invested in it.

Arrow FanFic | Dinah x Laurel | A Christmas Miracle

Part 4 – The Miracle (AO3 Link)

A vicious chill threads through the alleyway outside the Carmine Kanigher Shelter, sending waste detritus of modern civilization skittering in every direction.  Mice and rats flee for cover as fat flakes of snow begin to fall.  Soon the entire area will be blanketed in a carpet of fluffy white powder.  A Christmas Miracle for Star City courtesy of a recently reunited father and daughter duo of certain...arctic talents who are in town for the first of what will become the annual Team Flarrowgirl – a universally reviled portmanteau courtesy of one Ralph Dibney – Christmas extravaganza.  

Pushing off the cinder block he’s occupied for the second time tonight over the past few minutes, Marv adopts a toothy grin.  He already worked his seasonal miracle, which if his best friend Nora’s spotty accounting of history unrelated to her dad can be trusted is taking place right about...now.  Nervously, he lifts the sleeve of his jacket to check the vitals monitor on the modular biometrically keyed device wrapped around his wrist, finding all readings back within ideal parameters whereas only hours before they were fluctuating wildly.  Just to be sure his efforts were indeed successful, he pinches himself in several places to ensure his central nervous system is still functioning correctly that he is still corporeal and has not disintegrated due to a seismic shift within the causal domino chain that will eventually result in his birth less than six years from his present location in spacetime.  

As a reward for a mission accomplished, he sifts through the menus on what Nora calls their Vibe-rators – bless the innocent, adorable, perpetual child that she is, Nora has yet to grasp why nicknaming the gadgets that in honor of their esteemed inventor, their beloved Uncle Cisco, was not quite the honor she thought it was – and quickly deactivates the artificial aging matrix produced by some seriously shway tech that, savvy as he is, even he doesn’t fully understand.  He also unilaterally decides to never adopt the pseudonym Marv ever again.  

Honestly, what was I thinking going with that? Quen shakes his head, chuckling ruefully as the answer dawns on him. There is a longstanding Christmas Eve tradition in his house of watching Christmas movies all evening until everyone is too tired to keep going, and this year they are breaking out amongst other titles both of Macaulay Culkin’s Home Alone films.  Double-dipping those gems before bed is, in his opinion, just about the perfect way to cap off a perfect Christmas Day with his family.  Which is why he has to get a move on or he’ll be late and his Moms will not be happy.  Nor will Aunt Sara and Aunt Ava, who are actually supposed to drop by this year instead of ducking his Mom’s invite with some lame explanation of a temporal anomaly that needed fixing like, pronto.  Come to think of it, Maya, his older sister by a year and a half, is coming back home from a work thing in National City for the annual Lance family Christmas and will almost certainly use his tardiness as another excuse to hit him.  And Quen can’t have that.  She has enough reasons as is without adding valid cause. Plus, his damn shoulder has been abused enough by his sibling’s iron fists, thank you very much!

Glancing back toward the street he’d watched a younger, more hardened version of his softer mother approach him from, the familiar tug of welcome memory pulls him under its sway. His Ma is still a knock-out according to all his friends, who often break out an ancient acronym he chooses to ignore so as to not require a bleaching of his brain, so the age difference was not that jarring.  But it was beyond weird to see her so restrained and world weary.  

Of his parents, his Ma is the positive one, the tactile huggy, kissy, slightly smothery mom who sings while she cooks, dances as she cleans, and who cried – on camera! – at his graduation...every last one of the four so far.  So many wonderful memories of her flash by that he can hardly sort through them all. Her singing him to sleep while he was little and really, really sick while his Mom cradled him close to her chest and rocked him in her favorite rocking chair.  The absurd, bonkers, overboard, birthday bashes she organized for both him and his sister every friggin’ year until they were old enough to insist she dial back the adorable insanity.  The way she would stand to the side giggling uncontrollably at his ultra-competitive Mom once he got old enough to regularly beat her at basketball or soccer or video games.  How a few stern words from her spoke volumes more than a profuse tirade from his Mom ever could amongst one of the many lectures he endured regarding the vital importance of taking responsibility for one’s own actions.  How she always smells like an amazing blend of vanilla and cinnamon and can with a single enveloping hug and a lingering forehead kiss banish every iota of hurt, confusion, pain, and fear plaguing her children, even when they are fully grown adults.  His Ma is a lionhearted woman who loves with every last ounce of her strength, and it was more than a little disconcerting to witness her holding that ferociousness ransom in the obviously fading hope that a rescuer might appear to set it free.  Thankfully, he is a devoted son who is willing to brave her wrath to secure her happiness, which he did by pushing her toward a certain irritatingly complicated blonde.  

The various images of his Ma, heartwarming as they are, mingle with one of his other mom as he watched her first set foot in the shelter.  Looking for all the world like she didn’t know what the hell she was doing there, all the while unwilling to surrender an inch to fear or doubt, she was yet so fragile he was afraid to even breath in her general direction lest she shatter into a million pieces.  He had to get to know her first before he risked ingratiating himself to the point she would grant him permission for one stilted hug.  

He’d like to say that it shocked him to see her so walled off, the woman who carried and nourished him inside her body for nine months and then endured unspeakable pain to deliver him safely into the world, but it didn’t.  His Mom has always had trouble letting people in, which in combination with her frightening dark side could make her a foreboding person to approach.  From his first memories, he can recall glimpsing fleeting specters of what he’d witnessed in earnest while on this escapade in the past: a simmering rage and innate cynicism fueled by pain that only his Ma can assuage.  Once or twice he was the unlucky target to bear the brunt of an outburst that scared him witless, and scared his Mom even more – so much so that she would sequester herself in the bedroom or the spare bathroom until she calmed down or his Ma intervened to soothe the offended beast back into her thick iron mental cage.  He never really understood why his Mom got that way sometimes until just last year, about five months after his eighteenth birthday, when he learned about Black Siren.  That wasn’t a happy time for him, or for his Mom.  He had always known she had a troubled past, but that...that shook the foundations of his essential being, made him doubt his own moral and ethic core, and worst of all caused him to doubt his Mom’s ability to love.  It took both his Ma and his Uncle Ollie teaming up to knock some sense into him for him to get his head out of his ass and to stop avoiding and start talking to his Mom again.  

And now?  Well, now he’s glad he knows about Black Siren, because if nothing else, this trip into the past has given him a reality check as to just how awful his Mom’s life was to have molded her into the hateful person she was before his Grandpa took a chance on her that his Ma later picked up and ran with.  Once, and fortuitously, she got to the shelter early enough to join in a group session with the therapist that visits the facility once per week.  He had to sit there silently and listen as she got roped into sharing, then grit his teeth through the empathetic agony of her divulging a lot more than she had originally intended.  The things she went through before she met his Ma...Quen shudders at the very thought.  The silver lining to that intolerable experience is that at least he has a reference to work with dealing with her occasional mood swings.  

Also, this foray has given him a new, unique perspective into how much his parents love each other.  To have overcome so much adversity just to be together is, quite frankly, astonishing.  Nora has told him so many times that his Moms’ love story rivals that of any epic parental romance within the group of kids belonging to the venerated members of the Justice League, but he never quite believed her.  How could he when they were competing with the likes of Superman and Lois Lane, the Green Arrow and his Overwatch, the Flash and Iris West, and Supergirl and her mysteriously broody governmental handler all the kids simply know as their favorite Aunt Alex.  But those precious hours surreptitiously watching them interact in the kitchen and during the post-dinner clean up operation afforded him a view that, while slightly biased, was able to recognize that same divine spark between them that he sensed whenever he was around his friends’ folks.  It was nice, so nice that his heart is still soaring high in the clouds above, to be given the immense privilege of bearing witness to the event that will begin an inevitable spiral into his – and his sister’s – future conception upon a recovered Kryptonian Genesis ship.  And come what may, be it unavoidable tragedy like Nora’s Uncle Wally getting imprisoned outside the timeline by Abra Kadabra, or some catastrophic event like Darkseid himself descending upon his Earth tomorrow, he won’t be forgetting this adventure any time soon.  It has ignited in him a flame of hope that cannot be quenched and solidified a belief that will endure until his death that love really can conquer all.

“Well, I guess you guys will see me in five years and twelve months on the dot” he says, his gaze turning instinctively to the apartment in which he knows his parents to be making the first baby steps toward a future they have both risked life and limb to protect multiple times.  “Good thing it’ll be sooner for me.  Just hope you guys don’t kill me when I tell you where I’ve been for the past month...”

And with the press of a button upon his Vibe-rator – he snickers at the thought of the name – Quentin Nicholas Lance disappears from view to join his best friend for their return trip to the future.  He is not seen again until many years later. Twenty-four years,  ten days, seven hours, and thirteen minutes to be precise, which is two minutes late and of no consequence to anyone but Maya, who uses that as an excuse to hit him.  

Damn that punchy brat.  

Quen rubs his sore arm, but the smile on his face remains until he is engulfed by two pairs of arms that officially ring in another Merry Christmas for the Lances.  To his unending delight, in addition to a new Quantum Tablet, his Moms pulled some really big strings to get him into the Air Force Academy.  He can’t wait to tell Nora!  And as he rushes to dial his bestie up on his Vibe-device, he gives them both the biggest hugs he can muster up.  He doesn’t see how their eyes catch over his shoulder, glowing with love for each other and pride for their child and happiness over his happiness, but then again he doesn’t really need to.  He sees it every single day.  Nor would it have registered even if he had caught it.  He is far too excited to think of little else than realizing his dream of becoming a pilot.

Merry Christmas to me! He thinks as he hears Nora’s voice chime through the tiny, nearly impervious subdermal implants designed by his Uncle Cisco that were wired into his ears after a childhood accident his Mom still hasn’t forgiven herself for rendered him deaf.

“Hey!  You’ll never guess what I got for Christmas!”

Nora does guess, the know-it-all brat, but his enthusiasm doesn’t diminish one iota. This is, after all, the best Christmas ever.  And not just because he got everything he wanted, but because he got to watch his parents take the final steps in their journey falling in love.  How many kids get to make that boast?  Not any he knows of besides Nora.  

Quen has an extended family that loves him, a bright future ahead of him, a sister that would fight the world for him, and Moms who love him – and each other – more than he could ever begin to describe.  And that makes him the luckiest kid alive.

THE END 

Visceral

[8/20]

Rating: Mature

Warnings: N/A

Pairing: Sara Lance/Alex Danvers

Summary: Alex believed them to be two sides of the same coin.

N.B.: Also posted on AO3

Alex awoke feeling bittersweet from the dream. There was a pang in her heart for something lost, though she’d never had it to begin with. Like all the dreams of Sara, it felt something that had happened last week. Her memories didn’t slip away like a real dream, but they felt distant. The wounds in her heart didn’t.

“What’s with the face?” Winn asked.

Alex looked over at him, her mouth parting with a lie ready on her tongue, but it was as if the words turned to ash. “Just a dream.”

“Oh,” Winn said, nodding his head. “Look, I know it’s hard for you, with… And I don’t have much experience there, but…but for what it’s worth, you made the right decision.”

Alex gave an incredulous look, before the meaning of his words hit her. Maggie, she realised and fell that all too familiar feeling of longing. Maggie who had felt warm and safe. Maggie, who’d she been prepared to marry, easily. She missed her, and yet, she didn’t feel the wave of heartbreak come rolling over. 

Had her heart caught up with her brain at last?

“It’s not about Maggie,” she said. “But…thank you.”

Winn showed off a smile before looking at the GPS app he had open. The highway was relatively straight and they were managing to keep out of the cities, sticking to roadside cafés for the time being. Still, they were only day one, edging on day two, and she could already tell that Winn was exhausted.

“Pull over at the next stop. I’ll take over.”

“What? No, it’s been like four hours.”

“You’re more tired than I am. The next stop is in twenty miles, just…pull over. We’ll re-fuel and stack up on coffee.”

As it was, Winn allowed her to take over, and Alex drove for another twelve hours before switching again to squeeze in more sleep. Between the both of them, Alex could fall into a deep sleep for a few hours, waking refreshed to take over and Winn could fall into a shallower one for almost six hours whilst listening to whatever playlist, podcast or audiobook he was up to, coming out of it groggy, but ready for a few more hours.

In the rest of the trip, Alex dreamt of Sara only once more. Sara was…quieter. In the dream, they drank and spoke snippets of their lives as they sat in the same room, Sara having fallen asleep at the table again –– though she assured her it that she had since slept in a bed. “More than I can say,” Alex told her. 

It’d been received with a half smile, as Sara’s mind was far from present. Rather than pushing her to say what was happening, Alex poured her another drink and began telling her a story an embarrassing story about Kara recent discovery alien alcohol.

It felt like a lazy dream. One where the distant felt grander between them as whatever sat on Sara’s mind, continued to bother her. 

Alex awoke as dawn was breaking. They were pulled over at a petrol station. The bright light must have awoken her, she thought, looking over to where Winn was at the counter, paying for gas. Getting out of the car, Alex stretched her legs, arching her back. Her ass was sore from sitting down for so long. She couldn’t wait to arrive at the hotel they’ll be staying at. 

“You’re awake,” Winn said, handing her a coffee and a takeaway container of bacon and eggs. “Don’t worry, we’re still on schedule.”

Alex shook her head, stifling a yawn. “A meal that doesn’t come in a packet is important after so many days on the road.”

Winn nodded, taking a tomato sauce covered hot chip, and stuffing it into her mouth. “So important,” he echoed.

Alex shook her head, climbing into the driver’s seat as she took the keys from Winn. Her eyes stung from post-sleep exhaustion, but the roadside coffee, which tasted like tar, was doing a decent job of waking her up. 

“How much further?” Winn turned to ask her. She looked at the maps app on her phone to see where they were at.

“Not much further. We’ll hit the border checkpoint today. Before then, we should stop and change to look like our cover.”

‘Right, husband and wife. Coming up for a wedding.”

“Exactly.” It was an easy enough cover. One that allowed Winn to shrug and play the guy who didn’t know much about anything, and gave room for Alex to lie as required. All Winn had to do was remember that his name in this was David Whyte, with her own being Rachel Whyte. They would just disappear in a sea of names with other people, dressed in bland clothes that didn’t stand out. 

Alex had to forgo all her favourite jackets, sticking with a few jumpers she’d raided from Kara that would go well with a few pairs of “mum-jeans”, button up pastel shirts and sneakers. She even brought out the blonde wig to give her very image of middle-class woman who just wanted one weekend away from her kids.

Winn, however, dressed drown from his usual style, with a pair of baggy jeans, faded shoes and a plain, white medium t-shirt that he paired with a Make America Great Again cap. “No one will want to talk to me with this,” he said, pointing to his hat as he came out of the restroom. Alex noted that he’d also forgone shaving, giving an unkempt bristled look to his face that went well with his attire. 

There they were, she had to admit, catching their reflection. They looked like another two middle class conservatives who thought that the world revolved around them alone.

Getting through the border was easy. They were stopped, their passports were looked at and then they were allowed through with a nod. The person’s smile seemed stiffer than Alex was used to, which was reiterated again when they checked in at their hotel a few hours later, having arrived in the city. 

This wasn’t a conservative city, but Alex did notice that when people caught sight of Winn’s hat, most of them ducked their eyes away, not wanting to engage in any sort of conversation longer than necessary. A few, however, gave a small nod before moving on. 

Excellent. 

Alex and Winn moved their bags into the room. The bedroom, being a family room, had a king bed, kitchenette and a pull out sofa. Winn very gently requested the bed for his back, having twisted a muscle on the drive over. It didn’t bother her too much. The sofa mattress was surprisingly firm and comfortable as she tested it out for fifteen minutes as Winn set up his gear. 

Alex set up her surveillance gear. They’d be relying on Merkel to get a bug in the room without the CIA knowing, but it was nothing the woman wasn’t experienced in. 

“How long until they arrive?” Winn asked.

“The DEO was told to expect them tomorrow, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d be setting up base, soon,” she said. It wasn’t a hotel, like they were staying at, but rather a building marked down for demolition. Alex could already see that there workers in fluorescent yellow and orange walking around the building. It rose a red flag, as all the checks for the building should have been completed weeks ago by the construction crew and it wasn’t meant to be demolished until next week, the day after everyone was set to leave. 

She watched the workers go around, some of them hanging out and chatting to one another as others moved materials around. Even with the telephonic lens she had, she could barely get a glimpse of what was going on inside the building. 

However, Alex had spotted one of the side entrances they were using and had set up some of her gear to keep a watch there. After-all, they were only here as support. No doubt the DEO would be careful to watch the back entrances. But after a few minutes of watching, Alex put good money on the crew being CIA. 

“So I get that we’re doing general surveillance to see if the CIA is sneaking about. But what about the take down that’s happening. How are we going to get access there?”

“You won’t,” Alex said. “I will be. J’onn gave us the blueprints of the map. We already know what the DEO will be doing, and Merkel will keep us up to date if there’s any last minute change of plans. Don’t worry about it. Go, have a shower and get some food for us.”

“I can keep watch,” he pointed out. “Besides, no offence Alex, but you’re just as much in need of a shower as I am.”

Alex knew it. She also was feeling the familiar thirst for a whiskey since it had been three days –– not including dreams –– since she’d had a drink. It’d been a while since she’d been on recon duties and had to suppress that need. She never drank on duty, she barely touched a drop while on call, but recon: endless waiting, staring, waiting, watching, waiting. Not even paperwork, just sitting still and staring through a lens…

It was meandering work at best, one she faced as someone else might have faced their tax obligations after it had built up for a few years.

“Go to the bathroom first. I’ll go in next.”

With only a brief hesitation, Winn took to the ensuite bathroom as Alex watched the alleged construction workers. They would need to get a better look. There was a coffee shop across the road on the western side that she could see. It’d be a good as place as any to get a better look. 

After Winn came out, who appeared to have not taken a shower but maybe brushed his teeth or something, she took a shower and savoured the feeling of hot water and soap on her skin. Just having the shower made her feel more awake that a coffee, but nonetheless, she dressed again in her clothes, tucking her hair away in a cap before pulling the wig on. Then, she carefully applied make up until she was satisfied that no one would recognise her.

Winn did a double take at her as she came out of the bathroom whilst pulling a white, crocheted beanie onto her head for the added touch.

“You…look different as a blonde,” he said.

She smiled, feeling her lips slide against the gloss she’d applied. “Thanks David. I’m glad that you finally noticed.”

“That is…creepy. Does Kara know you can do that with your voice?”

Alex laughed, dropping her voice back to her own, natural pitch and tone. “Not really. Kara doesn’t tend to see me in any undercover roles.”

“No, that makes sense,” he said, nodding. “So, where are you off to looking like that, eh?”

Alex smiled at his attempt to dress his voice. “Coffee shop. You good to keep watch here?”

“Yep. Definitely. Bring me back one of those frappes?”

“Sure,” she said, shaking her head as she exited out of the room.

She went downstairs, exiting out of the lobby onto the street. It was a nice street, clean with a steady stream of people. There was the odd tree here and there, but mostly there were tall buildings. If Alex was to take a guess, she would say the demolitions site, only six stories tall, had been sold to some commercial entity that was looking to build taller buildings for either office spaces to lease out, or apartment complexes. 

At the lights on the corner of the street, she made a small glance to crew at the site. Out the front of the demolition building there was what looked to be telecommunication engineers looking over a hole into where the fibre-optics were. Bright, yellow and black fencing was laid out around them as they dug around the telephone and internet cables, seemingly doing something.

Then, the pedestrian light flashed and she walked with the a group of others, all of them seemingly individuals in a crowd, rather than couples or groups, as they made their way to the other side of the road and then waited at the lights to get to cross over to what had been diagonal from her original lights.

She pulled out one of the burner phones J’onn have given her in a sleek, lavender case with all her undercover identity and “bank” cards that would be of no use if her phone was stolen. The ID was more for protocols. If something were to happen, even something as simple and terrible as her being hit by a car, as soon as her name was input with the DOB in her location, it would alert DEO that something had happened and they would probably need to cover it up.

The lights flashed and Alex made her way across to where the shop was. The coffee shop looked to be a small business. A quick glance over the options told her that Winn’s desired mocha frappe was not going to be an option. They were a simple place, marketing as a healthier, organic  option with allergy-aware meals.

Going into the line, Alex made use of her phone by take a instagram worthy selfie to get a better look at the construction behind her. Nothing of immediate interest but she had a small view from the camera.

“Hi, how are you today?” the shop assistant asked as she arrived at the front of the line. 

“Can I get two tall flat whites, full cream in both. One without sugar, one with two in a to-go cup, preferably with the takeaway holder?” She asked. 

“S-sorry?” the woman said, caught off guard and having only taken down half of her order.

Alex repeated the order, slower with condescension lacing her tongue to fit in character. The woman, who had smiled so brightly in beginning, had dimmed by end of the transaction and a small pocked of guilt dripped down Alex’s throat. She wasn’t the first, nor would she be the last, rude customer. But she’d been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

It was one thing to be undercover, it was another to actually be rude to a hospitality staff member. The woman, no older than twenty-five if she had to guess, with thick rimmed glass and a round face looked as if she was regretting her own existence. 

Alex remembered face-to-face customer service work; it only served to make her feel more guilty as she realised that she’d been, well, a mega-bitch as she’d once bitched about her own customers back then. 

Taking out cash, she handed over the requested amount over, before then placing an additional hundred-dollar bill, out of guilt, into the tip jar and walked away to the stand where everyone else was on their phones, waiting to hear their name or order called out by the barista.

She caught a glimpse of the woman’s pleased surprise as her eye noted the dollar amount on the note, and the woman’s expression seemed much less dimmed, though it certainly wasn’t as bubbly as it had been before. And really, what was a hundred dollars going to do in the long-end?

Alex knew she shouldn’t be careless, just in case someone here, or working in the café was undercover as well, but in all honesty, at the end of the day, she felt that giving the tip was the right thing to do.

When her coffee order was called out and handed over in a cardboard takeaway box, Alex had enough information for the moment on the site. She went back to the hotel, to where Winn was and gave him his coffee. “No mocha frappe’s, sorry.”

“Worth a try,” he shrugged, taking sip of the coffee and leaning back against the couch. “What did you find out?”

Alex took a sip of her own. It was made well, good coffee beans done by an experienced hand. Much better than the tar coffee she’d had that morning.

“They’ve already set up,” Alex told him. “We can still run surveillance, but they run a tight ship. It looks like they’ve been here a few days. I don’t know how they’re covering from the original construction crew, but it’s the CIA, so who really knows what they get up to.”

Winn nodded. “They’re probably bugging us back, somehow. Isn’t that what government agencies do. bug each other as much as we do it to the international and criminal people.”

Alex frowned. “Probably,” she said, taking another sip of coffee. “Anyway, go take a shower and we’ll work out shifts.”

Winn was in the shower close to forty-five minutes before he stepped out of the bathroom, bringing in a gust of hot steam along with his very pink self. Alex had to admire his dedication to the hot water, he looked like he had a light sun burn across his skin.

“So you drove last, I slept last, so you sleep first,” Winn decided. 

“I can go without sleep longer than you.”

“So your shifts can be longer, who cares. But you should try to be as regular in sleep as possible before shit goes down.”

There, Alex found her own arguments weakened. She should sleep. Keep herself at least moderately rested to face whatever challenges were thrown at them. For next half hour, they discussed a decent twenty-four hour surveillance that allowed enough time for Winn to also do his thing while Alex overlooked the construction site. Bathroom breaks were factored in, much to Winn’s instance, and times to get food since they didn’t want the hotel staff seeing the surveillance gear set up.

After making sure the Do Not Disturb sign was hung out of the room, Alex set up the sofa bed for herself and climbed into it to find, with relief, that it was actually comfortable. Within moments she had drifted into dreams, and then her dreams eventually stopped as she awoke in the room to Sara looking at her surveillance. 

“Where’s Winn?”

“Who?” Sara asked, taking a peek through her scope to across the road. Unless Alex had seriously overslept, it shouldn’t be this dark. There should have still been some light out.

“You met him, in that Nazi world. He was the guy who helped us.”

“Oh, haven’t seen him,” Sarah shrugged. “Guess you didn’t dream him into the space?”

It was probable, but in Sara’s world, she’d dreamt of Amaya and Ray. Though there was a good chance that they had actually been asleep, maybe she couldn’t faction in an awake Winn. 

“You do have some nice goods,” Sara said, unlatching her sniper to get a look at it. “I once owned something like this, way back in my old life, but I prefer to be up close and personal now.”

“Up close and personal gives them a chance to fight. We’re trained to shoot to kill, not to mortally wound.”

“So was I,” Sara said. Her face was still as it met Alex’s and there was something there, not quite a reflection or a mirror, but something familiar at least that made Alex realise that they weren’t all that different. Two sides of the same coin, maybe. Government agent versus assassin for hire, there was only a thin veil that really divided the two in terms of morality, Alex thought.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said. Sara eased, pushing away from the sniper to stand up.

“No harm done,” she said. “I guess neither of us really know what the other’s life was like.”

For a moment, Alex felt herself about to joke about Sara sleeping inside of a mountain again, before she realised that it wasn’t the time or place. Instead she sat back, quietly watching as Sara moved around the hotel room.

“No booze?” Sara asked.

“Nope. Recon duty involves me remaining dry.”

“Lame.” Sara shut the minibar, which had its alcohol removed at Alex’s request on the drive over. She knew herself too well to allow even a price tag marked up by 300% for a bottle of wine to remain in the room when she was this bored. 

Not that she found herself bored as Sara threw herself on the king-sized bed and stretched out. “Nice bed, at least.”

“I’m glad you approve.” Sara offered a smile, but there was something brittle in its appearance. “Everything okay?” she asked.

“Peachy,” Sara responded.

Alex came and laid down beside Sara, folding her arms underneath her head as they both looked up at the ceiling. “How’s the whole thing with your team and Mallus?”

Sara was quite, her lips pursed as if she wanted to hold back the worlds before she looked up at Alex. “We have the death totem now,” she said. 

“The death…totem?”

“Yeah, it’s like Amaya’s Spirit Totem or Zari Air one, but it can summon the dead as ghosts and, I don’t know, do all this other stuff.” There was a pained way that Sara waved her hand with a careless gesture. Alex didn’t know what to think of the totem, but she knew that something that could summon the undead was on a whole new level of dangerous.

“Can it summon anyone?” she asked.

“You got someone in particular you want to see again?”

Alex frowned, thinking back at all the people that had left her. “No. But there are enough ghosts in my head without having to be actually confronted by them.”

Sara turned, rolling over to look at her with a weak smile on her lips. “I suppose everyone has skeletons in their closest.”

“Not the way you and I do.”

Alex wasn’t a fool. She knew what an assassin for hire meant and the possibilities of such a profession. No doubt, Sara had more than one skeleton in her closet. It wasn’t something to brush past, and yet, what did it matter if Sara’s hands were covered in more blood than hers, or vice-versa. Both were still covered in blood. Neither one of them was innocent. 

What mattered is who they were trying to be, now.

“Do you know the difference between an assassin and a government agent?” Alex asked.

“Is this a set up for a joke?”

“Partially.”

“One has better outfits,” Sara responded.

Alex smiled briefly, she didn’t envy the white leather, finding comfort in her uniform.“Government sanction,” she answered. “That’s the dividing veil between morality. Maybe not even morality, but at least legality. There’s a twisted dynamic of power, too.”

Sara blinked, before considering the underlying words of what she was saying. Her lips became pursed, a line forming between her brow. Alex could see that Sara wanted strike back with a defence but that she needed to consider the depth of what was being said, first. Or consider Alex’s feelings, maybe. 

The thought came as Alex found their fingers wound together, unsure if she had reached out, or if Sara had herself. But suddenly, the woman was playing with her hand again, before giving it a final squeeze and pulling away.

“One day, we’ll share our stories over a bottle of whiskey in person,” Sara said, as if to say  that she needed to know Alex better first before she could come to a conclusion. “I can’t promise that you’ll be able to say the same after that.”

“Maybe you’ll see it my way.”

“Maybe,” Sara said, sounding like she didn’t believe that at all.

They were from two different worlds, in more ways than one.

Alex watched as Sara closed herself off, pushing back emotionally to allow herself to rest on a bed. Then, as the quiet elongated between them, Alex snuck a look at the woman and watched her drift asleep. Sara’s face seemed to ease, as her muscles gave way to sleep, her lips parting with the exhale of a slow breath.

And then, Sara fell into her dream again and the world slipped away from Alex too, as she fell back into her dreams. They were not good dreams, they were not nonsense ones, but neither were they nightmares. Only a reminder that she had once been someone else, before Supergirl had come to the DEO, before there had been another option to all of this.

Alex awoke to the beginning of dusk, as the sky turned topaz and rose. 

Winn was at the scope, looking down at the other building, muttering to himself as if he’d always been there. There was a jarring moment where Alex adjusted to this reality, before she considered her dream. Her brain had certainly been capable of drawing other individuals before, and it had no problem with Sara’s colleagues twice before. 

So…what was going on there?

Warning: Spoilers for Who Killed Sara Season 2

Who Killed Sara? season 2 once again leaves audiences with a cliffhanger as it raises more questions than it answers in the final moments of the season finale. Since José Ignacio Valenzuela's compelling whodunit drama premiered on Netflix in March 2021, the series has jumped to the top of the streaming platform's charts, becoming its most popular foreign-language series ever released in the U.S.

In Who Killed Sara? season 2, Alex's search for Sara's killer turns into an investigation of Sara’s double life. Meanwhile, the corpse found in Alex's backyard is finally identified, and many questions from Who Killed Sara season 1 are answered as the characters are stripped of their so-called masks. But as the final scene in the season 2 finale revealed, the story isn’t over yet.

Related: Love, Death & Robots: Pop Squad Ending & Meaning Explained

By the end of the Netflix show's second season, there are several more murders, leaving Moncho, Elroy, Lorenzo, Clara, and Sara’s father all confirmed dead and Marifa presumed dead. Having faked his own death, César Lazcano is considered legally dead as well. While all of their killers have been identified and some have been brought to justice, the biggest question from Who Killed Sara? season 1 remains the same - who killed Sara? Everything there is to know about what happened to Sara and who is really responsible for her death has not yet been revealed. Instead, Season 2 ends on yet another cliffhanger.

While it doesn't resolve the title question, Who Killed Sara?'s season 2 finale does answer several questions from the previous season, such as the identity of the body buried in Alex's backyard, which turned out to be Sara's father, who César shot and killed to save Sara's life. Season 2 also confirmed that Marifer was the person behind Diana the Huntress and that Nicandro wasn't really dead like Alex thought.

The Netflix show also revealed that Mariana, though not responsible for Sara's death, was indeed a killer. Based on a montage scene in the season finale, it also looks like she was the one who locked Rodolfo in the sauna room. The sequence, which imagines Mariana looking back on her crimes, includes Rodolfo trying to escape from the sauna. We also see Mariana come face to face with her victims, as Elroy, Clara, and Sara all come back to haunt her. The scene has led to speculation over whether Mariana might be speaking to the dead because she, too, has died. But it’s also possible that she’s having a psychotic break over the guilt she feels for all of those sins she’s been carrying around. This would also make sense given the mental health themes that are presented throughout the series.

Just when it looked as though Who Killed Sara? season 2 had revealed the identity of Sara’s killer, the final moments of the finale presented another plot twist. Nicandro, presumedly on the phone with Sara’s psychiatrist, Dr. Alanis, indicates that that “they” were behind Sara’s death. But we know that Marifer is the one who cut the rope, causing Sara’s accident. So who exactly Nicandro is referring to and how they were responsible for Sara’s death remains a mystery. This is the biggest question left at the end of season 2, and it provides clues about where the story is headed in season 3.

Related: Love, Death & Robots: The Drowned Giant Ending Explained

Based on the conversation, it appears that Nicandro, his father, and possibly Dr. Alanis are complicit in Sara's death. After Elroy tells Nicandro that Sara was behind his accident and attempted murder, Nicandro and his father may have gone to Dr. Alanis for help, asking him to step in and put Sara away in a mental hospital. The files Nicandro goes through in that final scene suggest that Sara was part of a psychological experiment. If that’s the case, it could explain how Nicandro and his father are involved in Sara's death along with her psychiatrist.

By the end of Who Killed Sara? season 2, as more gets revealed about the true identity of the characters, how we see them evolves over the course of the series. Not only is Marifer confirmed to be both Diana the Huntress and Sara’s half-sister in season 2, but she also turns out to be the villain of the story. Likewise, the not-so-sweet-and-innocent Clara turns out to be Marifer's sister and sidekick in her schemes. Meanwhile, Elisa finally stands up to her father and everything he stands for by burning down the casino, Chema sacrifices himself to protect Alex from more jail time, César turns out not to be completely heartless after all, and Mariana goes from being at the center of her family to ending up all alone in the end.

César’s evolution is perhaps the most surprising of all, given his cruel and careless nature towards everyone including his children throughout the series. While he shows up for his daughter in the end, César doesn’t do the same for Chema, who takes the blame for Sara's father's murder - a crime that César committed. In his final scene of the second season, César says that the only debt he owes is to have a child and name him Alex, so he doesn’t appear to be eager to come out of hiding to save Chema in season 3. Still, given that César manages to fake his own death and come back to life later in the season, it’s not unreasonable to assume Sara could have done the same. This plot element in season 2 may be hinting at Sara’s return in season 3. A body still hasn't been shown yet, after all.

In the Who Killed Sara? season 2 finale, Nicandro, in the doctor's office, looks through a folder labeled “SG first patient of the project” with a drawing of Medusa on the cover. According to the Greek myth, Medusa was one of the three Gorgons - often described as monstrous, winged, female figures with snakes for hair. In this case, the symbol is likely a logo for the project mentioned on the folder, which could have something to do with the electroshock therapy treatments that Sara received in season 2. But it could also indicate that there was another, more secretive experimental study that Sara was a part of before her death.

Related: For All Mankind Season 2 Ending Explained

The Medusa myth has long been used in the field of psychology and psychoanalysis. Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman described the “Medusa Complex” as a dissociated state resulting in fear-based paralysis that’s brought on by the conflict between the idealized, perfect image of one's self and the world versus the reality of it. This closely resembles Sara’s apparent psychological state throughout the series. In the days leading up to her parasailing accident, she begins to have an increasingly distorted view of both herself and those around her, believing that everyone is out to get her. Of course, given the characters' complex personalities, it could be that Sara was right to suspect there was a plot against her.

As the show progresses, it's revealed that what known about each of the characters is only one side of the story. Who Killed Sara? season 2 opens with an episode titled “The Two Faces of Sara,” and there is a deeper meaning behind the title. By focusing on the dual nature of Sara’s personality from the start of season 2, the series harkens back to Roman mythology and the “The Two Faces of Janus.” According to the myth, Janus represents time and duality. Depicted as having two faces, Janus is said to symbolize both past and future, and the transition from one stage to the next. It’s also where the term “two-faced” comes from. While the first episode hones in on Sara’s double life, it quickly becomes clear throughout season 2 that she’s not the only one hiding their true self. By revealing the “two-faced” nature of its characters, the series continues to explore themes around relationships, identity, and family lineage, examining what it means to be a family and how this extends beyond one’s biological connections. This is portrayed through several examples: Marifer discovering Sara’s innocence, the truth behind their relationship, and their father’s true, evil nature; Alex telling Chema that they are family after he loses Lorenzo, Clara, and their baby; and César’s proclamation that Alex was the son he'd always wanted.

In Who Killed Sara season 2, family members betray each other, enemies become friends, and vice versa, as the story continues to blur the lines between who is a friend or foe. These themes relate back to the ending’s big reveal — Nicandro’s betrayal in the final scene. In the penultimate episode, Nicandro tells Alex, “We were never friends.” There is a double meaning here, hinting at the fact that Nicandro is still an enemy in disguise. Like the family ties, the bonds of friendship ebb and flow throughout the series.

Who Killed Sara continues to be a show about how nothing is as it first appears. The final scene and revelation of the Medusa project indicate that there may be more victims, and Sara's death could be part of a much larger crime. In Who Killed Sara, there are always more layers of truth to reveal beneath the surface of things, leaving room for almost anything to happen heading into season 3.

More: Netflix: The Best New TV Shows & Movies This Weekend (May 21)

Who Killed Sara Season 2 Ending Explained: What The Final Scene Means from https://ift.tt/3vesLMW

Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Five

Alright, let's get this over with.  As if I'm not in a bad enough mood watching this shit after the last episode, now Dish has to be fucking stupid; so that when I cue up Part Five, now all of a sudden my DVR controls won't respond properly.  If I try to hit pause, it skips forward; and if I try to skip back, it fucking skips forward and it's doing that with all of my programs - not on any other tvs in the fucking house, mind you, just mine.  So now I gotta bring this up using the fucking CW seed or whatever their streaming option using Roku is. And is if to answer why it urks me to have to go so round about to watch the last installment, apart from just regularly being disappointed in Dish; it's being stuck watching stupid ass commercials and the first one up is some asshole dancing in a sprinkler so he can take selfies of himself..... Fucking Dish...

Well, Kara got lucky that she didn't accidentally blow her sister's head off... Yeah, of fucking course Lex is getting the Nobel peace prize in whatever fucking Back-To-The-Future-II-esque nightmare this new earth is going to turn out to be that the heroes now have to fix.   Someone going back and get the fucking sports almanac from Lex and fix this shit. Huh, I honestly had my doubts that they'd actually have the balls the merge all of the earths into one; and of course with a nearly full episodes ahead, that may not stay way, but it still raises an interesting prospect that I had pretty much discounted. A Commercial Aside - I think the Liberty Mutual commercial with the who keeps flubbing his lines has finally broken me... it's just so stupid, and yet, having done community theatre and some voice work, I've had more than my share of moments where I can't get the right fucking words out of my mouth; and between him wanting to enter from the water and saying "Libtery Biberty".... I give up... Oh, yeah, "Nash" Wells is supposed to be part of this; and its at this point that I think the writers just remembered this as well.... Why the hell is J'Onn communicating with Sara and Ray telepathically in the bar?  It seems more conspicuous that they seem to be answering questions no one else heard him ask; and when he uses his power his eyes turn red.  But more importantly, he didn't say anything that didn't need to kept quiet. What memories did J'Onn give everybody exactly?  I mean, surely he didn't have some sort of cloud back-up for everyone's individual memory; so a lot of what he's passed along to them would be from his perspective, right? You know, J'Onn helping bring the major players back up to speed is one thing; there's arguably nothing wrong with that, but the way he's going about it is kind of questionable.  I mean, he's going into other people minds and monkeying around; and the blunt way he gave Caitlin's memories back struck me is kind of creepy.  Like, under any other circumstance, that wouldn't be cool to just walk and, boom, here's some thoughts and memories you didn't have before, including ones that make you hate this guy you were treating a second ago.  Hope that's cool, but you can definitely trust that everything I just implanted in your brain is fine and on the up and up. Don't get me wrong, it's a shortcut to give back the necessary characters the knowledge they need to have; because they couldn't be bothered to actually have them present at the logical point in the story where they would have gotten to keep their memories organically.  So instead we're just going to do a deus ex machina to reset everyone's memories to where they need to be; and we're going to do that as quickly and with as little thought as possible, because we had five fucking episodes to tell this story and we're terrible at our job.... Wait a second....God dammit, wait just one fucking minute...God dammit.... now there's only one earth and one version of all or most of these characters.....so now the one and only fucking Wells is Nash God damn fucking Wells????  God damn it! This is even more of a reason why, if they were going to make a Wells Pariah, which I will admit is a generally cool concept if they had bothered to actually fucking use either Wells or Pariah; then they should have made it Harry Wells from Earth 2, so that we'd have already had some history and established background for the characters and also so that when the dust settles, assuming this whole one earth dynamic sticks, that the one Harrison Wells that remains is the Harrison Wells that should get to remain.  The one anyone actually fucking cares about and has actual history on the show. And what about that history?  How do they explain the clusterfuck that is Harris Wells/Harry Wells/HG Wells/Sherloq Wells and now "Nash" Wells?  Is it just going to be one going with a split fucking personality?  How about the Wells who was actually indigenous to Earth 1 and killed by Thawne?  He just gets supplanted by Nash, because Nash just happened to be around during the Crisis? Sigh......I know this is technically the "Legends" installment of the crossover, but.....augh...did they have to drag fucking Beebo into this.....? You know what, fuck it, bring on the Beebo!  For that matter, I want them to find a real, living fucking alien or demon creature that the Beebo doll turns out to have been modeled on; he's not malevolent or anything, more like a baby Yoda or Gizmo who starts traveling with the Legends.  He can be Mick's pal or something. "Is this seriously happening right now?" Hey, that's my line, stay in your lane Diggle. Okay, just how powerful is Mick's fire gun?  Because anything shooting out a beam of fire that's like two city blocks long and does significant damage to something as big as a giant ass Beebo, is pretty much going to just disintegrate anything else of average size or closer proximity.  Does he have a "Stay Puff Marshmallow Man" setting? "Hey, Kate's here too!" Way to blurt out the secret identity of one of the other masked heroes, Kara.... How do they have time for this?  Not only this C-line story bullshit, how the fuck did Sara have time to change and get out into the field with Barry?  I mean, I get him going to get her, but what, did he dress her too?  Because that's just weird. I'd have laughed my ass off if the Mick of New Earth was a teetotaler. So 30 minutes in and they've finally teed up the climax of the Anti-Monitor res-surging and whatever they're going to try and do to stop him.  Yeah, they definitely knew what they were doing when they were pacing this shit out..... I guess they got tired of shelling out money for bad Martian Manhunter CGI and decided to go with practical effects for his suit at least.  Still don't know why they don't bother trying to do make-up for his martian appearance. Okay, couple of things - first, the Anti-Monitor's an idiot for not just mowing down the capes while they were speechifying.  Second, bullets?  We're going to stop this universal threat who has his own personal force field.... with bullets...Sure..... And third, "For Oliver"? ....I....... No.  Just no.  I get the sentiment you're going for and it just doesn't work for me; especially since I have little faith that this is actually the last we've seen of him.  Not to mention that I'm not sure half the people there even know Oliver well enough to really give a shit, even if he did sacrifice himself to reboot time.  It'd be like someone shouting, "For Mike!" "Yeah, for Mi...wait, who the fuck is Mike?" Thank God it wasn't Nightwing who sacrificed himself for the universe; it'd be a little more awkward if all the heroes charged yelling, "For Dick!" Well guys, I guess you know what you need to do....

It's really too bad they don't know any other speedsters that could help out; or you know, other heroes of any kind.  Like a guy who knows actual magic or a guy who can turn into steel.... Man, by the way Ray, Ryan and Wells reacted, you'd think Barry was some sort of screw who was likely to..... yeah, I'm kind of surprised he didn't accidentally press the button and shrink himself into oblivion..... What the fuck was up with the overly dramatic music underscoring Supergirl's super-slow flying towards the Anti-Monitor?  Were we supposed to think she was about to sacrifice herself to save Superman?  Was she not aware of the plan they were about to attempt?  Was Ray's arrival meant to be this event's "On your left" moment? What would have been better is if there had been a situation where it was clear that what Kara was about to attempt in order to save her cousin could be fatal and right before she makes contact, Routh-Superman swoops in joins her, either helping her double the blow, thus, somehow reducing the potential injury by spreading it out; or taking her place to save her and the other Superman, even at the possible expense of himself. And of course it fucking works on the first try, no hitches; they come up with this last ditch plan to stop this veritable god and it just fucking works..... Oh yeah, I forgot about Lyla... what the fuck, so they're not even going to bother picking up the story thread of the Anti-Monitor somehow possessing her and using her to kill the Monitor? Well shit, they brought back "baby" Sara.  And somehow JJ's still there too.  Are they twins?  Because unless they're twins, this isn't really baby Sara at whatever age she'd be now; it's some other kid they conceived and happened to name Sara. Can I just say, as an older brother I can almost guarentee JJ didn't actually want his sister to come play with him.  I mean, it's not impossible that this coincides with the five minutes a week that twp siblings that age will to share and not get into a fight over both wanting to use burnt sienna at the same time, but the odds of those five minutes being consecutive are astronomical. Wait, how does Superman not know he has two sons?  He wasn't at the dawn of time (for some asinine reason).  Or, I'm guessing, this was just contrived dialog to reveal yet another change that instead of Superman having just one kid he now has two; and we're supposed to think that he had to ask to clarify what Lois meant by "the boys" because that's also his nickname for her boobs? Honestly, they dicked us around too much with Oliver's fate for me to care or believe he's actually dead; no matter what they show us, regardless of any world wide moment of silence or whatever they're doing.  There's still two whole episodes of Arrow left of that series and we're to believe that Stephen Amell doesn't appear in either of them?   And if they're going to try and make it seem like he's gone and not have him appear at all in the next Arrow episode and then hold out for one last goodbye with him appearing at the very end, probably with fucking Felicity, it's too late; they've tried to milk this twice already and both times have fallen flat and a third times is definitely not going to land.  I don't care if he lives or dies anymore; I think it's stupid to kill him off and they've lost all credibility that I just can't believe any claims of him truly being dead at this point. O......kay....... So the multiverse was reborn, yet for some reason, some of the Earths got merged, but not all of them.  So what's on Earth 38?  Or whatever Earths Black Lightning or Nash Wells were originally from?   Hmm, I get the whole Justice League tableau they're going for, but there's just something that looks silly about these guys just....really enjoying their office chairs; and in the middle of a run down hanger, no less - it lacks an iconic look and looks more slapped together. And I get the Superfriends Easter egg at the end, but seriously, this abandoned Star Labs research facility that "no one knows about", what, had an alien monkey or whatever sitting in a crate with a single banana for however long the last time anybody stopped by? What’s with the the lack of mention of Mia, William and Connor in this final installment. What the fuck happened to them? I kind of get the idea that with the rebooted history, and Crisis being undone, they wouldn't have been brought to the past in the first place, but that just seems to make a lot of their arc pointless. And it seemed to be setting up the whole Green Arrow and the Canaries thing, setting it in the present and Oliver giving Mia her own suit. All of which is pointless if it's been undone and they have to go to the trouble of setting that all up some other way. God, this crossover sucked

Imagine If They Had Just Made Them Gay: SuperHero Edition

Out of all the numerous movie categories out there, the superhero genre has always struck me as insanely queer. Maybe it’s all the tight, spandex outfits. Or the overly common “outsider / sociality reject” theme that can be found in almost every superhero movie known to man. But, regardless of the reason, most superhero movies tend to be one good, sweaty grappling fight scene away from being dubbed an LGBTQ+ instant classic. So then why aren’t there more queer superhero movies? Simple. Superheroes, by our antiquated societal definition, are supposed to be the epitome of hyper masculinity. They are super muscular, insanely good looking, and always manage to not only save the day, but also win over the affection of the damsel in distress while doing so. And of course, this naturally means, they can’t be associated to anything that remotely goes against those stereotype. Like being female. Or queer… Or, god forbid, being a queer female. Yes, there have been some great strides made over the past few years to fix this general disparity and we are finally starting to see more of an overall variety when it comes to types of superheroes on the big screen *cough* Wonder Woman *cough*, but there’s still a long, long way to go. So, while I sit and wait for Hollywood to finally make my dreams come true and produce a honest to god queer female superhero movie, I pass the time by playing a few rounds of “Imagine If they Had Just Made Them Gay” with some of my all-time favorite superhero movies.   Power Rangers (2017) Now, I know what you’re thinking… Power Rangers? Seriously? Out of all of the one to choose from in the vast lexicon of superhero movies, why Power Rangers? Isn’t it just a cheesy, big-screen version of the painfully bad 90’s kids TV show? Well, three reasons. One, the Power Rangers Movie is actually good… like surprisingly good, in an modern day Breakfast Club, extra angsty sorta way. Don’t believe me? Go on and watch it for yourself. Don’t worry. I can wait… Done watching? Good. Now, let’s continue. Secondly, the Power Rangers is one of the rare examples of an ensemble superhero movie that features more than one female lead. Crazy, right?  But, sadly, it’s the truth. The Avengers? Black Widow. Fantastic Four? Sue Storm. The Justice League? Wonder Woman. You get the point. And lastly, it’s the first superhero movie to feature a queer character. Granted, I use the word “queer” loosely because this is only hinted at in one scene where Trini (aka the Yellow Ranger) gives an indirect “coming out” speech after being asked if her problems were “girl problems.” But, at the same time, though, given her steady wardrobe of flannels and beanies, and faux shaved side of the head hairstyle, little to no verbal confirmation is actually needed. Trini, in short, is one rainbow flag away from a one woman pride parade. So, given all of the above, plus the overwhelming amount of Trini / Kimberly (aka the Pink Ranger) “getting to know you” deleted scenes, why on earth didn’t they just take it one step further and make it a full-fledged queer falling in love story? Absolute head scratcher, right? Well, I still hold out hope for there being one in the next movie (that’s if Lionsgate comes to their senses and finally green lights a sequel), but in the meantime, imagine if Power Rangers went a little something like this… Kimberly Hart. Once head cheerleader and ex-teen royalty of Angel Grove High, falls from grace after leaking a nude pic of her ex-best friend to her then boyfriend. (side note: still have sooo many questions as to why she had this pic to begin with. Is this a straight girl thing? Cause, if not, it so screams gay in a “I have memorized every Tegan and Sara song known to man” sorta way.) After giving herself an impromptu bob in the high school bathroom during Saturday detention, Kimberly happens to stumble upon four other high school social rejects late one night at the local quarry and they proceed to make a life changing discovery in the way of five oddly colored, intergalactic gems. Quickly coming to the realization that they suddenly now all possess superpowers thanks to the mysteriously gems, the group returns to the quarry the next day in an attempt to figure out what the hell is going on. And it’s at that very moment, that Kimberly’s whole life changes… Cue Trini. Angel Grove’s very own death metal loving, yoga practicing, resident pocket-sized queer. She’s feisty, sarcastic, and knows just how to impress a girl with her climbing up the side of a rock face and then leaping over an enormous cavern skills. Unable to hide her gay, Kimberly stumbles her way through a painfully awkward conversation where she tries to turn on the charm and convince Trini to come with them. And when that doesn’t work, she decides to just bite the bullet make a move (literally) but grabbing hold of Trini, throwing them right over the side of a cliff. And so begins the all too familiar “is it or isn’t it a date” montage. It’s all fun and games, until a gold obsessed villain named Rita shows up and decides to pay a late night visit to Trini. Rita proceeds to rough Trini up as a warning to the rest of the rangers and in the process fully ticks off Kimberly. Out for blood, Kimberly convinces the rest of the rangers to go after Rita. But, like most novice superheroes, the are beyond ill prepared and not only do they get their asses handed to them but the run also results in Billy ( aka the Blue Ranger) getting temporarily killed. After a quick regroup back at the ship for a prep talk and a minor supernatural resurrection, the rangers go after Rita once again, this time sporting brand spanking new suits and prehistoric themed vehicles. An epic battle ensues and in a sudden life and death moment, the light bulb finally clicks for both Trini and Kimberly. They want to be together… No, scratch that. They NEED to be together. And right now. With the burst of extra motivation, Kimberly and Trini lead the charge and help the boys send Rita on a one way trip to deep space and then sneak off to celebrate with one another… again… and again… and again…   Hancock (2008) Again, I know what you’re thinking… Power Rangers is one thing, but Hancock?  Not only is it a mediocre movie at best, it’s not even based off of a pre-existing comic franchise. I whole-heartily agree that Hancock has its fair share of problems. For starters, the main one being the casting of Will Smith as Hancock himself. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Will Smith. There are roles that are just good fits for him and then there are the other ones–the ones like Hancock. And then there’s Jason Bateman. Jason Bateman always plays one type of character and one type of character only… Michael Bluth. And Michael Bluth should never ever exist within a superhero movie. But, looking beyond its problems, Hancock does have something going for it that most superhero movies, more often than not, tend to severely lack–an original and unique story. Hancock’s plot at its core is an unrequited love story. Two superheroes, who are destined to find one another time and time again regardless of the situation, yet the mere presence of one another is so toxic that being together will eventually lead to their deaths. Sound vaguely familiar? Like something you might’ve seen in real life once or twice? That’s because this plot could also double as a description for roughly 65% of all queer relationships. Who hasn’t had a friend (or ten) break up with the same girl time and time again only to get back together with her a few months later because “they can’t help themselves”? So, given that it’s plot is insanely queer to begin with, imagine if Hancock went something like this… (Sidenote: My photoshop skills are good, but not THAT good. So, every time you see Will Smith, just imagine an amazing actress instead… Like Samira Wiley) Hancock, a rough around the edges queer superhero, is known for two things. Protecting the citizens of greater Los Angeles from a wide array of criminal activity and creating an insane amount of collateral damage while doing so. In short, Hancock has a MAJOR perception problem. But does she care? Chalk it up to years of being dubbed an “outsider” or a superhuman sized chip on her shoulder, but Hancock just doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks about her. She’s a superhero and that means show up, kick some ass, and save the day. End of story. There’s just no need for anything (or anyone) else. But, then one day, Hancock’s world is turned upside down when she happens to save the life of a lovable but super generic PR specialist named Ray. Beyond grateful, Ray makes it his personal mission, not only to befriend Hancock, but also to help her turn her public image around. New clothes. New attitude. And of course, new social circles. Hancock begrudging goes along with it all, including agreeing to attend a family dinner, where she happens to discover that Ray’s wife Mary looks oddly familiar. And suddenly… BAM! Hancock finds herself inexplicably drawn to Mary. She simply can’t get enough of the woman and needs to be around her 24/7. Mary, though, wants nothing to do with Hancock. She’s not only strangely standoffish, but seems to make up an excuse to leave the room whenever Hancock appears. Dying to win Mary over, Hancock attempts to learn more about her and in the process discovers that Mary, in fact, is a superhero as well. But before Hancock can confront Mary on this unique shared similarity, Mary falls deathly ill and is hospitalized. No one seems to know what the problem is and to make matters worse, Hancock is affected as well, but only when she’s in proximity to Mary. Hancock is pushed to the brink of insanity while trying to unearth what is causing Mary’s illness. Unable to handle her feelings, she goes on a crime-fighting bender and after being hit on the head by a flying piece of debris, suddenly remembers who exactly Mary is. Mary is Hancock’s eternal soulmate and, in a cruel twist of fate, also her ultimate kryptonite. Lifetime after lifetime, they are destined to find one another, only to inadvertently poison each other to death by their mere presence. Not wanting to put Mary through anymore unnecessary pain and suffering, Hancock decides that the only sane and logical thing to do is for her to disappear forever and live out the rest of her life in utter isolation. She goes to see Mary one last time to say her goodbyes, but for she can carry out her plan, Mary stops her. Thanks to modern technology, there’s a way they can be together and yet be apart at all at the same time… So, what do you think?  What other superhero movies do you think would be better if they had just made it gay? http://dlvr.it/PjNdz1

Legends of Rogue One Ch1

Here you go guys, the first (second?) chapter of CC Rogue One AU. My goal is to update once a week. Hope you all like it as much as the last one.

Can also be read on my sparkly new AO3 (x)

                                        Unwilling Partners

Sara takes in her surroundings as the soldier walks her through the base, ducking under X-wings, or stepping around moving carts and droids. He leads her into what she assumes is the very heart of the resistance. Holo screens and a large table, men and women manning countless stations. He motions her to a chair near a holo-table and she accepts. The footman stays off to her left, other soldiers scattered around the room, no doubt keeping an eye on her. One in particular catches her attention.

               He’s leaned against one of the glowing screens, foot planted against the side and arms crossed over his chest. He’s clean shaven, the silver in his dark hair showing starkly in the light. He’s watching her, but before she can take in more, a new man enters. This one obviously a soldier, tall and thin but muscular. He adjusts his glasses as he looks at the small clipboard in his hands. “You’re currently calling yourself Leana Hallic, is that correct?” He asks, not waiting for her response before beginning to list off her most recent rap sheet. Her eyes wander back to the leaning figure, finding that he’s watching her just as intently. “Imagine if the Imperial authorities had found out who you really were, Sara Lance.” Her eyes snap back to the older man, “That is your given name is it not?” he’s staring her down, “Sara Lance, daughter of Quentin Lance. A known imperial collaborator in weapons development.”

               A new figure walks in, a light-colored outfit  beneath a tan coat and mild yet confident gate. Likely a political entity, and if descriptions are worth anything she suspects it is Rip Hunter; a major player for the rebellion. “What is this?” she demands, watching the man who leans against the table across from her.

               “It’s a chance for you to make a fresh start,” As he speaks the other man takes a nearby seat. “We think you might be able to help us.” He motions toward the younger man, who in turn pushes off the screen to move closer. “This is Captian Leonard Snart, Rebel Intelligence”

               “When was the last time you were in contact with your father?” He drawls, stopping a few feet back to look down at her.

               “Fifteen years ago,” She replies coolly.

               “Any idea where’s he’s been all that time?” His voice and expression are both carefully neutral, arms still crossed over his chest. But now that he’s closer she can see the crystal blue of his eyes; and the intelligence gleaming there.

               She thinks over her answer for a moment, finally turning her head to face him. “I like to think he’s dead, makes it easier.” It’s not a lie, she long ago gave up hope of seeing him again…to be honest most days she wasn’t sure she even wanted to.

               “Easier than what? That he’s been a tool of the Imperial war machine?”

               “I’ve never had the luxury of political opinions,” she responds, allowing her eyes to scan the room once more.

               “Really? When was your last contact with Ra's al Ghul?” the inflection of his voice changes; more pressing now.

Flashes of training and battles flitter through her mind, and it takes a moment before she turns to meet his intense gaze. “It’s been a long time,” her voice is thick with memory.

Leonard nods almost imperceptibly, “But he’ll remember you though,” body tilting just enough to capture her vision once more. “Wouldn’t he? He might even agree to meet you, if you came as a friend?” For a long moment, they simply hold one another’s stare; each searching for a chip in the armor of their opponent.

“We’re up against the clock here girl,” The older man cuts in from where he sits. “So if there’s nothing to talk about we’ll just put you back where we found you.”

“Ra’s al Ghul saved my life, he raised me, but I have no idea where he is. I haven’t seen him in years.” She rushes, eyes locked onto Hunter.

“We know how to find him, that’s not the problem.” Her attention is drawn back to the spy on her left. “What we need is someone who gets us through the door without being killed.”

She runs her eyes across the people around her, “You’re all rebels, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but Ra’s al Ghul is an extremist” Rip states, “He’s been fighting on his own since he broke from the Rebellion.” He frowns, “His militancy has caused the Alliance a great many problems.” The news doesn’t surprise her, Ra’s had often told her the Rebellion was to soft. That they weren’t willing to do all that was required to win this war. After a pause he continues, “We have no choice now but to mend that broken trust.”

She almost laughs then, the idea of regaining trust once he’s lost it the most outlandish piece of the story yet. But she holds her tongue, “What does this have to do with my father,” she may be prisoner but they are not the only ones who want information.

All eyes turn to Hunter, who in return gives a slight nod toward Leonard. He faces her once more, “There’s an imperial defector in Jedah.” He steps closer to her, forcing her to look up at him. “A pilot. He’s being held by Ra’s al Ghul.” His arms have finally fallen to his sides, one hooking into his belt loop. “He’s claiming the Emperor is creating a weapon, with the power to destroy entire planets.” He pauses, watching her intently once more. “The pilot says he was sent by your father.”

An array of emotions rise up inside her. She’s trying to wrap her mind around the idea of this weapon; and stamp down the wave of hurt and anger at the thought of her father being alive and making no attempt to reach out.

Rip’s voice draws her back to the present, “We need to stop the weapon before it is finished.”

As the older soldier moves to lean forward in his seat she pulls her eyes from Leonard. “Captain Leonard’s mission is to authenticate the pilot’s story, and then if possible, find your father.”

“It appears he is critical to the development of this, super, weapon.” Rip draws her attention. “Given the gravity of the situation and your history with Ra’s we’re hoping you will help us locate your father and return him to the Senate for testimony.” As he speaks a new figure comes in from the right. A blonde woman in dark clothes, and a cloak held about her neck with an ornate clasp. She comes to stand at Hunter’s side. Sara may not have had the time to form political opinions, but she knows Moira Queen. Alderaan’s royal family are no secret, nor is her work in the Senate.

Sara keeps her eyes on Rip, “And if I do it?”

“Well make sure you go free,” he assures.

She feels the almost smile tug at her lips. It’s a long time indeed since Sara had felt free.

~

This is not an assignment Leonard wanted. When he’d gotten back to Yavin 4 his only desire had been for a shower and a little sleep. He had been about to lay down when Gideon had intruded, summoning him to a meeting with Wells, Hunter and the supposed daughter of Quentin Lance. His companion filled him in with the details of the rescue mission she’d been pulled to assist on after Leonard had given the report about the defecting pilot. At least that explained why he’d been short his co-pilot on his most recent task.

               The blonde had fire, he’d give her that. From the moment she’d been brought in the defiance had radiated off of her. It had taken very little time to recognize that she was a survivor…which also meant trouble. So when they chose to send her with him to Jedah, it only amplified his negative mood. He grabs his heavier coat, draping it over his arm before motioning her to follow him. They move silently through the hanger to where Gideon has the ship waiting just outside.

               “Captain Snart,” Wells’ calls from behind. Leonard offers a brief look to Sara before setting his bag on the ship and moving toward his CO.

               “What is it Sir?” he easily folds his hand behind his back, standing not quite at attention.

               “I wanted to say I read your report about what happened back on Kafrene,” he paused then placed a hand on Leonard’s shoulder. “You made the right call. We cannot allow any one life to put the Resistance in danger.”

               “Of course,” he drawls, shrugging the hand off and raising a brow. “What is it you want me to do?”

               The man almost smiles at him, “Quentin Lance is vital to the Empire’s weapons program. Forget what you heard in there; there will be no extraction. You find him, you kill him. Then and there.” He leaves no room for argument, and Leonard clenches his jaw to keep from snapping. Meeting the other man’s eyes long enough to offer a curt nod before turning back toward his ship.

               He forces indifference into his tone as he boards, moving to double check the communication equipment before launch. “Met Gideon?” he asks to Sara’s general direction.

               “Charming,” her tone drips with sarcasm, and he feels the slight upward twitch of his lips before slinging on his vest.

               “She tends to say whatever comes into her circuits.” He’s still setting the controls, but sees in his peripherals as she settles into one of the seats furthest from the door. “Byproduct of the reprograming.”

               As if in response he hears the clink of the droid turning from the co-pilot seat. “Why does she get a blaster and I don’t?”

               His head snaps back to Sara, taking in the way the rifle sets easily in her hands. “What?”

               “I know how to use it,” she shrugs, keeping the blaster pointed out and down.

               “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he states, moving toward her with hand out. “Give it to me.”

               She’s looking up at him defiantly and again he curses his superiors. “We’re going to Jedah,” she raises her brow, “That’s a war zone.”

               “That’s not the point of-“ he groans, taking a quick inventory of the ship. “Where did you get it?”

               Her tone is soft, false innocence, blue eyes watching him. “I found it,”

               “I find that answer vague and unconvincing.” Gideon chimes

               Her gaze is still locked on his, and he knows without a word that he’d have to fight it out of her hands. But her tone softens just slightly, “Trust goes both ways.”

               To be honest he doesn’t have the energy, or the time, to fight her for it. And frankly the idea of not having to be her sole protection during the mission isn’t a bad one. So he turns and makes his way to the pilot seat, ignoring the way Gideon looks over at him.

               “You’re letting her keep it?” The droid asks as he straps himself in. “Would you like to know the probability of her using it against you?” She continues. He just offers a glare before beginning to prep for launch on the dashboard. Seeing long metallic fingers moving to his left, “It’s high,”

               “Let’s get going,” he growls

               “It’s very high.” She adds, beginning the launch sequence. Once they are in the air things fall silent, and he’s glad to have a moment to think. Dealing with a wildcard like Sara would be a challenge in itself; but killing her father? She could become vicious, and if he wasn’t prepared the woman could do a lot of damage to both himself and the mission. On top of that Leonard had always hated being tasked with assassinations; he was a spy, an information gatherer, not a weapon.

               “Now that our passenger is asleep do you want to talk about it?” Gideon asks simply.

               He glances back toward Sara, finding she did appear to be out cold, head resting against the ship wall. Still, anyone could learn to fake sleep. “Nothing to discuss.” He replies coolly; even if Sara was asleep he couldn’t risk Gideon repeating the information. If he was going to take out Quentin he’d have to keep his cards closer to his chest than normal.

They are nearly half way there when he finally manages to doze in his seat. He doesn’t fight it, knowing his partner will wake him if anything out of the ordinary arises. He wakes shortly before arrival, forcing himself to walk through his skeleton of a plan once more. “We’re coming into orbit,” he states, “You have controls.” He slides from his seat, moving to gather supplies needed for the first part of his mission. He moves to face Sara, following her gaze out the small window to the planet below. “That’s Jedah,” he frowns, looking at the dry surface below them, “Or what’s left of it anyway.” He moves back toward the control panel, “We find Ra’s al Ghul, we find your father.”

               Gideon lands them far enough out to go unnoticed, but close enough that they can get to the city easily on foot. He slips on the heavy coat, pushing the fur lined hood off his head and tucking his blaster against his thigh before leading them out. There’s an outcropping of rock not far from the ship, and they easily climb up to get a better view of the outside of the city. Dropping his bag he lays down on the surface, pulling binoculars to his face.

               “What’s with the destroyer?” Sara asks from his side, looking up at the massive ship sitting directly above the city.

               “Because of your old friend, Ra’s al Ghul.” He responds, “He’s been attacking the cargo shipments.”

               “What are they bringing in?”

               He shifts, offering her the binoculars. “It’s what are they taking out.” She takes them and he moves to sit back on another rock to double check his bag. “Kyber Crystals; all they can get.” He explains. “We wondered why they were stripping the temple, now we know. It’s the fuel source for the weapon.”

               “The weapon your father’s building.” Gideon steps up behind them.

               Sara turns, looking from Leonard to the droid. “I think we should leave target practice behind.”

               The man follows her gaze, considering his options. “Are you talking about me?” Gideon asks.

               “She’s right,” He decides. “We need to blend in,” he’s nearly finished reorganizing his bag. “Stay with the ship.”

               “I can blend in,” she retorts. “I’m an Imperial droid, this city is under Imperial occupation.”

               Sara pauses whatever she’s doing with her bag to look up at Gideon. “Half the people here want to reprogram you, and the other half want to put a hole in your head.”

               “I’m surprised you’re so concerned with my safety,” Leonard is pretty sure if Gideon could sneer she would.

               Sara’s on her feet now, “I’m not,” she turns, walking easily toward the larger entity. “I’m just worried they might miss you, and hit me.” She places her bag roughly in the droid’s hands, then proceeds down the way they’d come.

               He feels the smile tugging at his features again; and decides that if this is where he dies, at least it won’t be without entertainment. He hits the droid on the arm lightly as he passes, just catching Gideon’s mumbled “Doesn’t sound so bad to me.” Before the loud thump of Sara’s bag hitting the ground.

Chap 2 (x)

Artist: Amie Siegel

With: Sara Regal

Venue: NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona

Exhibition Title: The Swamp of Forever. Chapter 2: Coincidence

Date: December 19, 2019 – February 28, 2020

Curated By: Carlos Fernández-Pello

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of NoguerasBlanchard, Madrid

Press Release:

The image of the Noonday Demon appears in European tradition thanks to a translation error, a mere coincidence. In the Psalm 91 of the Torah it is said: «you will not fear night fright, nor the arrow that flies from the day, nor the plague that is in darkness, nor the scourge that strikes at noon» It would be the formal resemblance between the Hebrew word “scourge” (yashûd), and the word “demon” (yeshed), which made the Vulgate translate that daytime laziness as the meridian demon.

Since then, and given the solar nature of the southern European territories, it is not surprising that the northern cultures have disqualified the Mediterranean culture for it apparent neglect and laziness, perpetuating the stigmas of that southern demon. This entity appeared precisely at the most luminous hours, around lunchtime, when the sunlight does not project shadows and bodies seem to have ceased their existence; when the spectres of digestion, sleep or fatigue confuse the imagination with perception.

Amie Siegel (1974, Chicago) has been suspending for nearly two decades that fine line that separates the conscious from the unconscious, exploring the potential of an image that expands through space and folds it, making it coincide with memory. For Siegel, the time of the image is a little bit like that daimonic noon, inhabited by secret and silent relationships that only come to light when we stop our daily routine and look, drawing another continuity between those things that the conscious world insists on separating.

Siegel’s works have been frequently described as representations of a complex economy that ties authorship with genre, value or the architectonic space. This is indeed the case with Provenance (2013), one of her most well-known moving image works, in which she describes a path that travels from the salons of different luxury apartments, decorated with chairs designed by Le Corbusier, to state buildings constructed by him in Chandigarh, where the same chairs are piled up and discarded. However, beyond the paradoxes of a speculative value system such as the luxury and art markets, Siegel’s inexorable suspensions also reveal a way of understanding time by sedimentation: as if it were Jungian archetypes of a collective unconscious, Siegel is able to reveal that the temporality of a chair at auction for $34,000 is simultaneous, it is just as real, as the time of that same chair as a disposable office supply. In her films, nothing would seem to precede or happen, or turn in circles. All the differences coexist at the same time.

For this second chapter Amie Siegel gathers a collection of works that continue that experimentation with time, revolving around Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris (1963), itself based on an homonym novel written by Alberto Moravia, Il disprezzo (1954), whose argument is, in turn, Siegel posits, largely influenced by Gradiva by Wilhem Jensen, famous for having inspired Freud in its development of the repressed.

This cascade of information is not unintended but actually a tiny sample of the system of overflowing relationships that Siegel puts into operation in the central work of the exhibition, Genealogies (2016), which explores the almost infinite chain of characters, data and images that a movie or place is able to summon when one digs into its insignificant details. Because of this, like a hallucination in broad light, Genealogies is capable to convince us that there is a delusional familiarity between Sir John Soane, the Persol sunglasses brand, the Esposizione Universale Roma, Brigitte Bardot, Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii, Alain Robbe-Grillet, softcore porn, Hugo Boss or de Chirico’s paintings, among many other references, by making all these stories coincide on the same rocky cliff on which Villa Malaparte stands, on the edge of the Mediterranean, where the motion picture was filmed.

This will also be one of the few times that Genealogies (2016) is presented in a gallery without its twin work The Noon Complex (2016), inspired by a text of the same name by Roger Caillois that argues the effects of the solar zenith on our imagination. Following that spectral logic of what does not cast a shadow, in this multichannel installation Siegel thoroughly erases Brigitte Bardot’s body from all the scenes in which it appears naked in Le Mépris. The objective of this operation would seem simple but its effect is twofold: while Siegel plays poetically with the visibility and invisibility of the film’s gender bias, in which Bardot was asked to “show more ass” to make the film a more profitable investment, the result of her absence transforms Godard’s original shots into architectural camera gestures that could now be Siegel’s own, relocating the presence of the female from being the observed to being the observer.

As if we were possessed by the noon demon itself, we attend to the exhibition of a work without shadows that is nevertheless present in the form of a partial shadow: The Noon Complex is exhibited in this second chapter of the cycle only through one of its three channels, in the form of a silent monitor, The Noon Complex (Phantom Limb) (2016). In it, we see a double of Bardot repeating the same movements that have been previously erased, reincarnating her, only in a neutral museum setting, and now it is the architectural set of the Villa Malaparte that becomes effaced.

The guest piece Mass Seat (2019), by designer Sara Regal (1989, Viveiro) also participates of this idea of a set for the body, of a bodily mould, that walks the thin line between functional furniture and abstract sculpture. Yet in this case Regal’s goes a step further when she also questions the temporality of the seat, of the pause to contemplate, when designing this modular bench in the form of a thick fluid.

The selection of works is completed with Siegel’s Body Scripts (2015) in which the artist has blocked different parts of Moravia’s original novel with the turquoise blue color of the sea, leaving visible only those passages that allude to the female protagonist, and with Surrogates (2016), a continuous slide projection highlighting the objectification of the female body as a sculpture through images of damage and repair of different classical pieces of The National Archeological Museum of Naples.

All in all, surrealist ethnography realized almost a hundred years ago that this “midday complex” of southern European cultures was in progressive decline, favoring midnight as a new “witching hour.” For Caillois, the loss of that instinct that confuses the body with space and feeds the fantasy during the vigil, was largely due to the appearance of the clock and the modern division of daytime into working hours and rest hours. In this way the demons of the imagination have been relegated to live forever separated from the light, in the nocturnal after productive time. Siegel’s work seems to confirm that, if we stop here, on the edge of the swamp, we can be sure that time will continue to coincide in broad daylight.

The work of Amie Siegel (1974, Chicago) ranges from film to photography, performance and installation. Recent solo exhibitions include the South London Gallery; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich; Audain Gallery, Simon Frasier University, Vancouver, B.C.; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and the MAK, Vienna. The artist has participated in group exhibitions at Witte de With, Rotterdam; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Hayward Gallery, London; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; CCA Wattis, San Francisco; MoMA PS1; MAXXI Museum, Rome; Swiss Institute, New York; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Siegel’s work is in public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Her films have been screened at the Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and New York Film Festivals, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. She has been a fellow of the DAAD Berliner-Künstlerprogramm and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulton Fellow at The Film Study Center at Harvard University, a recipient of the ICA Boston’s Foster Prize, Sundance Institute and Creative Capital Awards. She lives and works in New York City.

Sara Regal (1989) born on the coast of Galicia, Spain, was deeply enriched from her native environment. Upon finishing her studies in the Universidad de A Coruña she moved to London, where she gained experience working across diverse disciplines, from industrial and furniture product design to architectural interior design projects. Subsequently she mastered on Product Design at ECAL, in Switzerland, enabling her to explore and develop her own methodologies. She elaborated an intuitive and experimental approach centered on material qualities and production, with a strong influence on color trends and art direction. After her artistic residency at the HKDI, Hong Kong, she started to work for the Spanish brand Camper as an interior and set designer. Recently her work was showcased at the New York Design Week.

With many thanks to Thomas Dane Gallery London/Naples.

Link: Amie Siegel at NoguerasBlanchard

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Year in Review - Books I Read In 2017

Last year I only read about a hundred of other people's works, so I was able to note everything.  This year....was not like that.  By more committed Gutenberg-grinding, I increased that number by a factor of three.  These are the highlights, excerpted notes on stuff that I found particularly good, or relevant, or interesting.

Robert Wallace - The Tycoon of Crime Another Phantom adventure, though this one holds back the appearance of the great detective a little and actually sets up a few tricks that aren't immediately obvious.  Most are, though, and this is not a great mystery, but it's a competent enough pulp, well-flavored with brutality and gore that's almost heartrending in the modern day -- because it's a callback to the trenches of the Western Front, where bad-luck wounds, dismemberment, and poison gas were just everyday facts of life.  That look in passing into the world of the men who wrote this stuff and were looking for it in their reading is the main attraction of this nowadays, but if you're looking to read a Phantom story, this is probably the pick of the litter.

Edgar Rice Burroughs - Apache Devil There are a few pulled punches in this, but not a lot, and in addition to a gripping narrative this story also packs a lot of good craft and a more united plot than it seems at first glance.  It's interesting from the modern perspective to see Burroughs so sympathetic to the Apache in the context of his vigorous racism against "savages" from other places; some of this may be closer exposure to Native American culture and thus the greater willingness to credit them as human beings, and some of it may be him pitching to his audience, where American natives were crushed, nearly extinct, and eulogizable, while black people were making the Great Migration out of the south and creating economic anxiety.  Either way, this is a pretty good book and not as garbage in its politics as Burroughs frequently is.

Abraham Merritt - Seven Steps To Satan Merritt's Eastern lore is well-worked into this tale, and more importantly he does a good job of keeping the reader on their toes, guessing what of this Satan's tricks are magic and what are just that, tricks.  The intersection of magic, illusion, manipulation, and hypnotism is a neat contrast to the usual suspicions of occultism, and the effect is really neat in keeping this Indiana Jones adventure full of darkness and mystery.  Harry is a little too obvious a plot jackknife, but you have to get to a resolution somehow, and he doesn't stick out too much in this world of super-minds and super-drugs.  Merritt has better stuff, but this is pretty good even so.

Stella Benson - This Is The End I had a limited selection of Benson's stuff, but this is definitely the choice of the batch.  As smart and observant as ever, and with nearly as flawless and perfect a flow of language and an eye for metaphor as in Living Alone, she also turns all of this around into a punishing, apocalyptic hammer of emotional weight and import at the turn and through on to the devastating finish.  I'd been reading up on the Somme and Verdun campaigns, which would have been the backdrop offstage for this, so this may have hit me harder than others, but it's hard to see how that ending, and Benson's poetry woven in around her prose, could fail to have the same effect regardless of circumstances.

Walter S. Cramp - Psyche For real, I nearly miscopied this author's name as "Crap" when writing this out.  This one is BAD, folks.  You can introduce your characters with a physical description if you like, though it does get kind of fan-ficcy, but do not attach a goddamn alignment readout to it.  The descriptions suck, the deliberate archaisms in dialogue suck -- do not write 'thou' unless you are going to use 'you' elsewhere to show correct tu/vous formulations in older English -- the staging and plotting sucks, and Cra(m)p can't be bothered to keep a consistent tense.  This is an awful book and should have been pulped a hundred years ago rather than continuing to waste people's time and electrons down to the present.

J. A. Buck - Sargasso of Lost Safaris Everything you need to know about this insistently self-footbulleting series can be found from the episode here, where in the middle of a taut thriller about bad whites and educated natives double-crossing each other, the protagonists fight the world's worst-described dinosaur for pagecount.  No explanation, they just needed another 500 words between two chapters and so they roll on the random monster table and get a fucking Baryonix or whatever.  The 'girl Tarzan' trope is at the outer edges of reality, and Tarzan did a lot of Lost World garbage too, but too much of this is too true to life to fuck itself over by throwing in dinosaurs like it aint a thing.  Fuck this stupid shit.

Wilhelm Walloth - Empress Octavia "Death was to stalk over it like a Phoenician dyer, when he crushes purple snails upon a white woollen cloak till the dark juices trickle down investing the snowy vesture with a crimson splendor."  When you write this sentence, stop.  Just stop.  I have bad habits like this too, but nothing, even a translation from German, is a justification for throwing out a sentence like that, especially in a second paragraph.  Stop.  No. Beyond this, this is yet another Ben-Hur wannabe that is in love with its research and can't decide what fucking tense it's in.  If you are interested in Rome, read Gibbon or Tacitus, or Suetonius or Caesar himself; if you want literature, stay the FUCK away from the Bibliotheca Romana.  The plot takes directions that only a German can and would go in, in its period, but this boldness alone is not enough to excuse the poor composition and overall aimlessness.

Stephen Crane - Maggie: A Girl of the Streets I'm sure this was revolutionary when it came out, but at this distance, it feels like parody or melodrama - a lot of which is coming from the dialect, which is even more intolerable in the present than it was when this was written.  This isn't even hard dialect, and there's no need for it to be consistently phonetic rather than, like, just describing people's accents.  You look at "The Playboy of the Western World" and what that doesn't do with forcing pronunciations, and then you look back at this, and you see rapidly which one does a better job of conveying the lifestyles of the deprived and limited.  I know this is supposed to be heartbreaking, but it's completely outclassed and replaced, for modern audiences, by The Jungle, which more people need to re-read and actually understand as a labor story rather than a USDA tract.  Anything, literally anything, else you can get out of Stephen Crane is going to be better than this.

John Peter Drummond - Tigress of Twanbi Seriously, this story would be greatly improved by getting the Tarzan shit out of it.  If it was Hurree Das, picaresque Indian doctor versus Julebba the Arab Amazon with their countervailing motivations and the local allies who ended up in the crossfire of her domination war in the African bush and his attempts to stop it or at least get out with a whole skin, this tale would be significantly improved in addition to completely unidentifiable for the white audience it had to be sold to at the time of publication.  So it goes.  Drummond's side characters are significantly better than his leads or his plots, and should have held out for a trade to Stan Weinbaum or P.P. Sheehan for a case of beer plus a player to be named later rather than having to submit to this dreck.

Robert Eustace - The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings Playing like a series of Eustace's Madame Sara stories -- there's definitely something to peel the onion on there, where every villain is a mysterious older Latin woman -- the plot here moves by the usual bumps of caper and medical/forensic detection, with seldom an attachment from one episode to the next.  The individual stories are entertaining, but this is a collection, not a novel, and going from front to back is like binging a TV series in novella form.  The individual tricks range from lame and overdone to Holmesian superclass, but this would be so much better if there was an actual whole narrative rather than this point to point.

Augusta Groner - The Pocket Diary Found In The Snow If I had gotten to this before Three Pretenders, I definitely would have thrown in a shoutout callback to Joe Mueller somewhere; Groner's Austrian detective is a more modern Holmes in a Vienna at the end of its rope, and in addition to the neat characters and relatable scene dressing, the mystery here is pretty good and the inevitable howdoneit epilogue is actually interesting rather than tiresome, which is always a potential stumbling block in this sort of caper.  Most of Groner's work that I have is pretty short, but at least I'll have the possibility of re-reading her in the original German later.

Anonymous for The Wizard - Six-Gun Gorilla It's easy to see why nobody, so far, has come forward to claim this clunky Western with a hilarious concept played absolutely straight.  This is a Madonna's-doctor's-dog exercise in crank-turnery written in Scotland by Brits who have never been to the high desert, for an audience that needs to be told that bandits aren't particularly interested in mining.  As a craft exercise, there's some merit to it: anyone can write a gorilla-revenge story in Africa, or a Western manhunt, but when an editor comes to you and says "so there's this gorilla and he's a badass gunfighter, write a story to fit these illustrations and make it not suck", that's when you really have to stretch your creative muscles.  There are signs that this was a house name product or a collab rather than one author, and more insistent signs that it was a joke played on the readership to see how long they'd put up with it.  It's almost magic realist in its combination of brutality and absurdity -- who the hell knows what British schoolboys thought of it in 1939.

Robert W. Chambers - The Slayer of Souls Probably not the inspiration for that song that was on like every compilation in Rock Hard and Metal Hammer in summer 2005, this Chambers joint is either pitched perfectly for the Trumpist present -- did you know that Muslims, socialists, Chinese people, unionists, and anarchists are all actually the same, and all actually parts of a gigantic Satanist conspiracy? oh wow such deep state many alex jones -- or an incoherent stew of staunch J. Edgar Hoover fanboyism that can't keep its own geography straight, which is actually kind of the same thing so never mind.  This is exactly the sort of story that George Orwell was so hot about in "Boys' Weeklies": good, craft-wise, and definitely gripping, but utterly complicit in a way and to a degree that almost becomes self-parody.  If you can stop laughing at it, it's got the good action and aggressively-expansive world-setting of good rano-esque anime; if you can't, Chambers has better short stories and have you heard of this guy called Abraham Merrit?

Stendahl - The Red and the Black It is maybe over-egging it a little to call this a 'perfect' novel, but it is closer to that perfection than it is to any other reasonable descriptor.  The society of the Bourbon restoration may be lost to us, but the characters stand the test of time, and Stendahl moves them in time with the plot -- the way that their actions are only tenuously liked to their outcomes is a triumph of realism -- with the hand of a master.  I like Stendahl's Italian stuff too, but France in his own time is his best course, and this is his best work.

Sylvanus Cobb - Ben Hamed What's really striking about this sword and sandal mellerdrammer is how relatively non-racist it is, and how easily it accepts Muslims as real people and mostly normal.  There's a bunch of orientalism, sure, but while the Giant Negro sidekick occasionally comes off servile, he's also smart, experienced, and independent, and takes, for his characterization, an appropriately central role in shepherding the star-crossed lovers to the end of their tale.  This could easily get a banging Arab-directed film adaptation today with very few changes -- and that's not just about how good it is as entertainment, but also about how far Cobb was ahead of the curve in 1863.

Talbot Mundy - C. I. D. Another inter-war Indian thriller, this excellent spy novel pits a wide range of the native-state establishment -- corrupt priests, a venal rajah, the incompetent British Resident, a motley gang of profiteers -- against the genius and initiative of Mundy's great hope for India, the always effective, never moral Chullunder Gose.  As expected, the top agent of the Confidential Investigations Division masterfully controls the whole chessboard, pitting the various enemy forces against each other and subverting each in turn before throwing in his reserves -- Hawkes, back in a smaller role as British India yields to British-Indian cooperation, and the obligatory American, a pre-MSF doctor who starts the book looking for a Chekhov's tiger hunt.  Thing is, this is fiction, and so it's Mundy who's really keeping all these balls in the air and weaving the skein of the story into an incredibly awesome whole.  If you have problems with Kipling and Haggard, start getting into Mundy from here. A neat thing that will not go unnoticed by other pulp deep-divers is the shots-fired bit introducing the Resident's library, which is noted to feature the works of Edgar Wallace.  Whether to make a point in the story -- "every colonial section chief, no matter how actually bad, secretly thinks of himself as Sanders", which I've used in my own stuff -- or to start beef -- "people read Wallace and think he knows about the colonies, but he has actually just been to the track and his apartment and needs to stfu before idiots making policy off his 'exceptionally stupid member of the Navy League circa 1910' worldview hurt somebody" -- this is definitely a callout, and definitely intentional.

Gordon MacReagh - The Witch-Casting I'm reading these Kingi Bwana stories in order, and it is getting suspiciously clear that as long as he put in a bit of African-kicking at the start, he was free to get as smart and real as he liked later in the story -- and the amount of kicking was something that there were subtle efforts to reduce.  This one starts off with Kaffa getting the brunt of it, but almost immediately turns around on that point as King and a larger collection of nonwhite friends-as-much-as-trusties do a witch-hunt unlike any witch-hunt you'd expect from '30s pulp, with a similarly sharp turn on African traditional religion that's nearly as out of place.  MacReagh cannot completely escape his own prejudices or the expectations of his time, but this one gets as close to the event horizon as any of his stuff.

Titus Petronius Arbiter - The Satyricon The modern age has ground a lot of the obscenity off this one, which for many years was mostly famous, infamous and/or banned for its central plots of man-on-man sex; in 2017, it takes more than boyfucking to shock people.  This is probably for the better; with the false atmosphere of licentiousness cut out of it, this is as it was at the beginning, a spicy story of Roman idiots having hilarious misadventures that, by subtle exaggeration, hold the follies and fads of their time up to ridicule.  It is longer than it needs to be, and some of the jokes are poorly preserved, and this translation is contaminated by unnecessary footnotes and inclusion bodies of later forgers' porn that's been stapled in over the centuries, but it's still a good, true look at Rome as it actually was at the height of the empire, without the hagiography of a historian or the religio-political axe-grinding of the Christians.  Probably worth the struggle.

Willa Cather - April Twilights I was collecting Cather from her papers at the University of Nebraska, and had to read this in the process of reformatting it; poetry does not well survive HTML->ASCII transitions.  The deep and dark and bleak is strong here; through the classical allusions, the callbacks to Provencal troubadours, across the American landscape, the same refrain runs: "I am old and decrepit and not emotionally capable of loving other people".  So, relatable.  The widespread criticism of Cather, that she can't get herself out of traditional modes even when this is to her disadvantage, is held up by her poetry as well; there's more than a few places here where you've got to frown at a bodgingly conventional rhyme or metaphor that someone more open to modernity would almost have had to have done better.  But there are, even still parts where that traditionalism works well, and is effective; it's worth reading out for those, even at all that.

H.P. Lovecraft and others - Twenty-Nine Collaborative Stories Most of what we now recognize as the Cthulhu Mythos -- and definitely any kind of idea of Lovecraft's stuff as a coherent whole or linked world-system -- comes out of these stories as much as his own.  On his own, Lovecraft moved to the beat of his own drum and followed his ideas where they went; here, he helps friends and fans plug their fanfic into what becomes a shared universe.  The stories are not all great; Hazel Heal put up some classics here but also some stinkers, and most of Robert Barlow's contributions, especially as they range into sci-fi, are kind of eh.  Zealia Bishop, though, does yeoman service as Lovecraft's official trans-Mississippian correspondent, and Adolphe de Castro's top-class works settle Lovecraftian mysticism in real foreign lands.  It's worth getting through these: there's good stuff in here, and you also get the sense and feel of how Lovecraft actively built his 'school' -- and ensured that he was the one to influence the direction of weird fiction for years to come.

William Hope Hodgson - The House on the Borderland A true classic, this is potentially the very most black metal horror novel ever written.  The brutality of the swine creatures, the remote devastation of the time-blasted cosmos, the liminality of dreams and reality; Teitanblood and Xasthur and Inquisition hope and fail to convey this sense of unholy immensity, of uncaring timeless evil.  Hodgson hits some heights in his shorter stories, but here, he hits it absolutely out of the park.  Completely essential.

Suetonius - The Life of Claudius Claudius comes off in this one like I've observed German colonial rule as remembered in most places other than Africa: "not worse than necessary".  Suetonius doesn't miss the caprices of a guy who almost certainly was on the spectrum, and had other distinguishing impairments, but also faithfully records a lot of good works and good ideas, with less wastage and idiocy than the likes of his surrounding emperors.  The translator's appendix, as expected, freaks out about the results of Claudius' expedition to Britain, and continues to vainly expect the Roman people to want to get rid of effective and oppressive imperial rule to get back to the ineffective oppression of the senatorial republic.  How someone who translates Latin can be ignorant of "senatores boni viri, senatus mala bestia" and what that actually means in the context of government is beyond me.

Julius Caesar - De Bello Civili This is in three parts, double-text, and when I can understand what places are being talked about (still not 100%, even after all of this, on where the heck in Italy Brundusium is), it flows well and is as clear in its language as anything else of Caesar's.  Even the structure is well-laid: in book 1, Caesar starts the war, and wins a big victory in Spain; in book 2, one of his generals gets disastered in Africa; and in book 3, the epic conclusion and final battles.  Though this is still ultimately a public relations exercise, Caesar doesn't step back from his own disasters, and gives full credit to his foes: this does tend to make him look better when he beats them up, and it is curious how nothing is ever directly his fault, and how most reverses go to troops losing their head and acting without orders, which would be out of character for his faithful super-army if it didn't keep happening.  As always, Caesar leans on logistics; his focus on the relative supply situations in Spain and in Thessaly is the key to success, and a dead giveaway that this was written or at least dictated by the commander himself, and not by some biographer who wouldn't've had that experience in keeping an army fed and watered in the field.

Katherine Mansfield - Something Childish and Other Stories What's really cool in this collection of earlier Mansfield is that you get to see her evolve through the War: she's already mature, and really good, in the New Zealand and Continental tales that precede it, but after the title story (dated to 1914, with a collapse-out at the end that is a KILLER allegory for that August, even if unintended), you really start to see how the nervous stress of total war wears on a population engaged, how the greater position of women in society transforms her and her work, and leads her on towards self-discovery.  The later and more experimental stories are, in general, slightly better, but this is all good material -- and there's a hell of a sting in the tail at the end.

Henry W. Herbert - The Roman Traitor In his introduction Herbert mentions a friend who encouraged him to finish this book, without which it would never have been released.  This friend should be dug up and beaten soundly with rocks, because this rehash of the Catilline conspiracy is utterly unnecessary as a novel or as antiquarianism, and Herbert is an awful, awful writer whose torture of language and narrative structure would shame a Nero.  The day you write the phrase "bad conclave" is the day your editor should throw you through a door.  This isn't the worst book in the Bib. Romanica, but it may be the very most badly written.  Just read the actual history from Sallust and forget this stupid garbage.

Gustave Flaubert - Salammbo This takes a while to really get its feet under it and show where it's going, but once it does, look out.  Flaubert masterfully captures the brutality of warfare and the color of the ancient world, and his language is superbly translated; you put this next to the staid English garbage in the rest of the Bib. Romanica and you wonder why most of them even bothered.  The turn at the end hits like a ton of bricks, especially if you like me don't know anything about Carthaginian history and don't know what's coming -- but it's also the only possible ending for this captivating chronicle of horror, misery and nightmare.  Just excellent.

Willa Cather - My Antonia A deeply drawn narrative of love, growth, and the midwestern plains, this book is more enhanced than anything else by Cather's commitment to its place and time: childhood is always a lost world forever, but the place that Jim and Antonia grow up through is thoroughly lost a hundred years and more on, but it survives in these pages down to the dirt on the floors and the chaff under the characters' collars.  After the narrator goes to Omaha, the tale weakens a little, and the end, for modern audiences, is probably a little under-tuned, but this is Cather's flagship novel for a reason, and definitely rewards the time spent reading it.

Margaret Atwood - Negotiating With the Dead This is another lecture series like the Forster above, but coming from different source, moving in different ways, and much more about Atwood herself and the roots of her writing in the Canadian landscape and literary scene that shaped her.  There is a lot about writing as a living thing in this book, and very little about it as a process: it's kind of a synthesis-antithesis-conclusion out of Forster and Bickham, more perceptive than either and leaving Welty, poor soul so far from the modern perspective, in the absolute dust.  It may be a question of eras, or just one of sympathies -- an adequately intelligent writer of speculative fiction is going to necessarily fall in with Atwood's ideas about doing something meaningful that also keeps the lights on -- but this book, out of all of the four in this mini-course, hit the most home and told me the most about what I do that I didn't already know.  It doesn't have the coherent, lecturized feel of the Forster, but at times there are just the most amazing insights, and the craziest images out of that crazy time that was the middle 20th century, and with how good it was I'm fairly ashamed to not have read any other Atwood before it, which makes me just an awful person.  At least I'm in a damn library and probably can fix that now.

Willa Cather - The Bohemian Girl A novella that should probably better and more widely reputed than it is, this one is mostly a meditation on love, maturity, and switching horses in midstream, but Cather, like no one else, manages to defend both the dour, hard prairie homestead and the need to escape from it.  This is her "zwey seele wohnen, ach, in meinen Brust", and it's kind of a thing all through her fiction, but in here it's especially well developed, with a coda that unlike a lot of her other ones actually works.

Talbot Mundy - The Marriage of Meldrum Strange Sales figures or editorial comment must have highlighted the "big team" problems in the last book, because this one cuts it down to the essentials: Ommony and Gose and Ramsden for muscle and some minor characters.  The plot is a good and twisty romance, keeping everything real, and it is just magic to watch Ommony work calm while Gose spits science like a Bollywood comedian, yin and yang combining to catch everyone in every trap.  A rare gem after several misfires.

Talbot Mundy - Old Ugly-Face One of Mundy's real best, this is an epic navigation of the human heart, against the majestic Himalayas....played by psychics battling to ensure the succession of the Dalai Lama.  Mundy gon Mundy, but the love triangle here is perfect and the environments are astounding -- a must read.

D. W. O'Brien - Blitzkrieg in the Past There's a chapter in this one called "Tank Versus Dinosaur", and that's about the shape of it.  You could also say "Sergeant Rock goes to Pellucidar" and not miss by much; a M3 Grant and crew ends up in a fantasy cavemen-and-dinosaurs past and has some adventures while talking '40s smack, and then romps their way home.  What's cool about it for authors is how O'Brien writes around his dinosaur: there is no description at all of the beast or its species or attributes.  It is big, and makes angry noises, because the author could not be assed to take the time out to do research while writing this story.  And yet it works, unless you're reading really close; let this be a lesson for anyone who can't finish their research up exactly correct on deadline.

Talbot Mundy - The Ivory Trail A lot of this raw, brutal epic of survival in the east-African backcountry is probably from life; Mundy tried this life and failed at it before he became a writer, and the asides and incidental scenes can only be from bitter experience.  Others might expect a purer adventure -- you'd get one from MacReagh on these materials -- but Mundy has the essential truth of colonialism: there are no secrets, mere survival is hideously tough, and everyone else in the game is more brutal and better equipped.  Conrad might have had the literary chops and adventurousness to end this differently, but even he who fared into the Heart of Darkness didn't have the stomach to write a middle passage like Mundy does here with his heroes in German prison.

Talbot Mundy - Guns of the Gods This Yasmini adventure makes itself a prequel, of her youth and how she got into the position of wealth and information mastery that sets up her later career.  The plot is tight if less convoluted than some that I've been reading lately, and the incidents woven through the intrigue and the treasure hunt are fantastic.  On a deeper level, the real judgment and sensitivity in the negotiation of east and west by Tess and Yasmini makes up for the stray Americans happening into the heart of the tale, and in a real way this is Mundy's most openly and solidly anti-Raj, pro-Home Rule adventure yet.  For both an excellent story and what's probably a local maximum in wokeness, this comes highly recommended.

Thorne Smith - Rain In The Doorway A kind of Alice in Jazz Age NYC, this is a ridiculous madcap adventure that loses little in the passage of time and not much at all in the way it winds back down to reality.  Smart and stupid and sexy in all the best ways, this kind of hilarity is pretty much Smith's best stock in trade, and this particular book is one of the better examples.

Thorne Smith - Turnabout The least hair of maturity creeps into Smith's writing here, as one of his interminable boozing Lost Generation miscouples actually gets in a family way as well as into an inexplicable supernatural adventure.  The very very familiar central trick is well executed, and Tim's advancing pregnancy provides a nice frame to hang the rest of the events off of.  The end is a little pat with the reinsertion of the Dutch uncle, but you live and deal.  This is one of Smith's better, and a good occasion to round out the end of the string.

Wilkie Collins - Armadale Collins makes up for his bad start with this absolute beast of a romance, bound up with mysticism rather than being an encyclopedia, but still turned out with real and vital if slightly implausible people.  The consistent mystery of the vision unites the book, but the way that the various Armadales react to that vision, its interpretations, and each other, is solid and real.  It is an immense read that demanded like six hours of flight time, but it is definitely rewarding, and worth the bother of pounding through the huge narrative.

Wilkie Collins - No Name There is a tangled tale and a half in this one, a desperate adventure of roguery in the name of revenge that keeps getting tangled up with coincidence as much as fate or intent.  The links may be a little creaky, but this is a huge, smart, intensely twisting drama with a lead for the ages in Magdalen, and an adversary worthy of her steel in Lecomt.  The end is a little formula and takes a little long to wind down, but this is an artifact of the time and the expected conventions, and it inhibits the power of this novel but little.  Good good stuff.

Talbot Mundy - The Thrilling Adventures of Dick Anthony of Arran "For a few days Cairo swallowed Dick."  NO.  Shut it.  Shut up.  Be mature.  Tuned to a compositional level somewhere between Sexton Blake and Lovecraft's middle-school works, this is not good or well-written Mundy, and there are research holes in it that might have been stabbed through with a claymore.  In places, his later quality pokes through, but in the main this is a stolid imitation of part Kipling, part John Buchan by a writer who does not have enough name weight to force publishers to his way of thinking rather than the reverse.  This leftover should have stayed left over and buried.

These were excerpted from the full writeups of the complete chronological list below, which accounts for frequent hanging references.  The pure volume of this list indicates why I didn't copy the whole of the writeup blocks into this entry.

Robert Barr - The Sword Maker E. Rice Burroughs - Land of Terror E. Rice Burroughs - Tarzan and the Leopard Men L. Winifred Faraday (tr) - Tain bo Cuailnge Robert Barr - The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont Richard Rhodes - The Making of the Atomic Bomb Robert Wallace - Death Flight Richard Rhodes - Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb Richard Rhodes - Twilight of the Bombs Robert Wallace - Empire of Terror Robert Wallace - Fangs of Murder Robert Wallace - The Sinister Dr. Wong Mary Cagle - Let's Speak English! Robert Wallace - The Tycoon of Crime Stella Benson - Kwan-yin William H. Ainsworth - The Spectre Bride Robert Eustace - The Face of the Abbot Robert Eustace - The Blood-Red Cross Robert Eustace - Madam Sara Robert Eustace - Followed Robert Eustace - The Secret of Emu Plain Arthur Conan Doyle - The Uncharted Coast Edgar Rice Burroughs - Apache Devil Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan the Invincible William W. Astor - The Last of the Tenth Legion Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan the Magnificent Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Bandit of Hell's Bend Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Cave Girl Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Deputy Sheriff of Comanche County Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Efficiency Expert Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Girl From Farris' Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Girl From Hollywood Stella Benson - Living Alone Stella Benson - The Desert Islander Victor Appleton - Tom Swift and his Giant Telescope Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Lad and the Lion Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Man-Eater Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Moon Men Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Outlaw of Torn Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Rider Edgar Rice Burroughs - The War Chief Abraham Merritt - Burn, Witch, Burn! Abraham Merritt - Creep, Shadow! Abraham Merritt - Seven Steps To Satan Abraham Merritt - The Dwellers in the Mirage Abraham Merritt - The Face in the Abyss Abraham Merritt - The Last Poet and the Robots Edward Spencer Beesly - Catiline, Clodius, and Tiberius Malcolm Jameson - Collected Stories Fantasy Magazine - The Challenge From Beyond The Strand - As Far As They Had Got J. M. Synge - The Playboy of the Western World Abdullah/Brand/Means/Sheehan - The Ten-Foot Chain Stella Benson - This Is The End Stella Benson - Twenty Emily Beesly - Stories From the History of Rome Hugh Allingham - Captain Cuellar's Adventures in Connaught and Ulster, A.D. 1588 James DeMille - The Martyr of the Catacombs Sallust - Bellum Catalinae Edmond Rostand - Cyrano de Bergerac "Captain Adam Seaborn" - Symzonia, A Voyage of Discovery R.E.H. Dyer - Raiders of the Sarhad Walter S. Cramp - Psyche H.P. Lovecraft - From Beyond Robert F. Pennell - Ancient Rome Garrett Putnam Serviss - Edison's Conquest of Mars Irving Batcheller - Charge It Irving Batcheller - Vergillius Duffield Osborne - The Lion's Brood Dale Carnegie - How to Win Friends and Influence People J. A. Buck - The Slave Brand of Sleman bin Ali J. A. Buck - Killers' Kraal J. A. Buck - Sargasso of Lost Safaris J. A. Buck - Sword of Gimshai Wilhelm Walloth - Empress Octavia Stephen Crane - The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky Stephen Crane - The Blue Hotel Stephen Crane - The Open Boat Stephen Crane - Maggie: A Girl of the Streets Stephen Crane - The Monster and More Stendahl - Armance Victor Appleton II - Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung Victor Appleton II - Tom Swift and the Visitor From Planet X Robert Curtis - Edgar Wallace Each Way John Peter Drummond - Bride of the Serpent God John Peter Drummond - The Nirvana of the Seven Voodoos John Peter Drummond - Tigress of Twanbi Robert Eustace - The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings Augusta Groner - The Pocket Diary Found In The Snow Augusta Groner - The Case of the Registered Letter Augusta Groner - The Case of the Lamp That Went Out Augusta Groner - The Case of the Golden Bullet Augusta Groner - The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study Anonymous for The Wizard - Six-Gun Gorilla Walter Horatio Pater - Marius the Epicurean John Russel Russell - Adventures in the Moon and Other Worlds Answers Magazine - Sexton Blake J. U. Giesy with Junius B. Smith - The Occult Detector J. U. Giesy with Junius B. Smith - The Significance of the High "D" J. U. Giesy with Junius B. Smith - The House of Invisible Bondage Stendahl - The Abbess of Castro and Others John Aylscough - Faustula John Aylscough - Mariquita Robert W. Chambers - The Maker of Moons and Other Stories Robert W. Chambers - The Slayer of Souls Edith Nesbit - My School Days Edith Nesbit - Re-collected  (self re-collection) Edith Nesbit - The Magic World Edith Nesbit - Wet Magic Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Planet of Doubt Stanley G. Weinbaum - Smothered Seas Stanley G. Weinbaum - Graph Stanley G. Weinbaum - Flight on Titan Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Red Peri Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Black Flame Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Dark Other Stanley G. Weinbaum - The New Adam Gordon MacReagh - re-collected shorter stories  (self re-collection) Stendahl - The Charterhouse of Parma Stendahl - The Red and the Black Sylvanus Cobb - Atholbane Sylvanus Cobb - Ben Hamed Sylvanus Cobb - Ivan the Serf Sylvanus Cobb - Bianca Sylvanus Cobb - Orion the Gold-Beater Sylvanus Cobb - The Gunmaker of Moscow Sylvanus Cobb - The Knight of Leon Sylvanus Cobb - The Smuggler's Ward Talbot Mundy - Black Light Talbot Mundy - Burberton and Ali Beg Talbot Mundy - C. I. D. Talbot Mundy - Caesar Dies Talbot Mundy - For the Salt Which He Had Eaten Talbot Mundy - From Hell, Hull, and Halifax Talbot Mundy - Full Moon J. U. Giesy - Palos of the Dog Star Pack J. U. Giesy with Junius B. Smith - The Wistaria Scarf J. U. Giesy with Junius B. Smith - The Purple Light Gordon MacReagh - The Slave Runner Gordon MacReagh - The Ebony Juju Gordon MacReagh - The Lost End of Nowhere Gordon MacReagh - Quill Gold Gordon MacReagh - Unprofitable Ivory Gordon MacReagh - The Witch-Casting Gordon MacReagh - Strangers of the Amulet Gordon MacReagh - The Ivory Killers Gordon MacReagh - Black Drums Talking Walter Moers - The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear Gordon MacReagh - Wardens of the Big Game Gordon MacReagh - Raiders of Abyssinia Gordon MacReagh - A Man to Kill Gordon MacReagh - Slaves For Ethiopia Gordon MacReagh - Strong As Gorillas Gordon MacReagh - Blood and Steel Gordon MacReagh - White Waters and Black Cardinal Newman - Callista J. U. Giesy with Junius B. Smith - The Master Mind Titus Petronius Arbiter - The Satyricon Talbot Mundy - Her Reputation Giancarlo Livraghi - The Power of Stupidity Willa Cather - April Twilights H.P. Lovecraft and others - Twenty-Nine Collaborative Stories J. U. Giesy with Junius B. Smith - Rubies of Doom Abraham Merritt - The Moon Pool Abraham Merritt - The Metal Monster Abraham Merritt - The Ship of Ishtar John G. Lockhart - Valerius William Hope Hodgson - Carnacki, Supernatural Detective and Others William Hope Hodgson - Carnacki the Ghost Finder William Hope Hodgson - The House on the Borderland Suetonius - The Life of Julius Caesar Suetonius - The Life of Augustus Caesar Suetonius - The Life of Tiberius Caesar Suetonius - The Life of Caligula Suetonius - The Life of Claudius Suetonius - The Life of Nero Suetonius - The Life of Galba Suetonius - The Life of Otho Suetonius - The Life of Vitellus Suetonius - The Life of Vespasian Suetonius - The Life of Titus Suetonius - The Life of Domitian The Lock and Key Library - Classic Mystery and Detective Stories - Old Time English Hume Nisbet - The Demon Spell b/w The Vampire Maid Hume Nisbet - The Land of the Hibiscus Blossom Hume Nisbet - The Swampers E. Hoffman Price - The Girl From Samarcand Flavius Philostratus - The Life of Apollonius H. P. Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness H. P. Lovecraft - Selected Essays including Supernatural Horror in Literature H. P. Lovecraft - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward H. P. Lovecraft - The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and Others H. P. Lovecraft - The Dream Cycle H. P. Lovecraft - The Dunwich Horror H. P. Lovecraft - The Shadow Out of Time H. P. Lovecraft - The Shadow Over Innsmouth H. P. Lovecraft - The Whisperer in Darkness H. P. Lovecraft - His Earliest Writings H. P. Lovecraft - Poems and Fragments  (self re-collection) H. P. Lovecraft - The Cthulhu Mythos  (self re-collection) H. P. Lovecraft - Tales of Monstrosity  (self re-collection) H. P. Lovecraft - Tales of the Crypt  (self re-collection) H. P. Lovecraft - Tales of Paganism  (self re-collection) Edward Bulwer-Lytton - The Last Days of Pompeii Gavin Menzies - 1421: The Year China Discovered America Ernst Eckstein - Quintus Claudius Julius Caesar - The African Wars Julius Caesar - The Alexandrine War Julius Caesar - De Bello Civili Julius Caesar - The Hispanic War Talbot Mundy - Cock o' the North Julius Caesar - The Gallic Wars Katherine Mansfield - Bliss and Other Stories Katherine Mansfield - In A German Pension Katherine Mansfield - Something Childish and Other Stories Katherine Mansfield - The Garden Party and Other Stories John W. Graham - Nearea Andy Adams - A Texas Matchmaker Andy Adams - Cattle Brands Andy Adams - Reed Anthony, Cowman Andy Adams - The Log of a Cowboy Andy Adams - Wells Brothers Charles Kingsley - Hypatia Francis Stevens - Claimed! Francis Stevens - Nightmare! Francis Stevens - Serapion Francis Stevens - The Heads of Cerberus Francis Stevens - The Rest of the Stories  (self re-collection) Talbot Mundy - Hira Singh Henry W. Herbert - The Roman Traitor Robert Howard - Tales of Breckenridge Elkins Robert Howard - Tales of El Borak Robert Howard - Tales of the West Robert Howard - Swords of the Red Brotherhood Robert Howard - The Black Stranger Robert Howard - The Pike Bearfield Stories Robert Howard - The Exploits of Buckner Jeopardy Grimes Robert Howard - Weird Poetry  (self re-collection) Robert Howard - Collected Juvenilia Robert Howard - The Spicy Adventures of Wild Bill Clanton  (self re-collection) Robert Howard - Tales of the Weird West  (self re-collection) Robert Howard - The Treasure of Shaibar Khan Robert Howard - Red Blades of Black Cathay Robert Howard - The Isle of Pirates' Doom Robert Howard - Dig Me No Grave Robert Howard - The Garden of Fear Robert Howard - The God in the Bowl Virgil - The Aneid Gustave Flaubert - Herodias Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary Talbot Mundy - Hookum Hai Gustave Flaubert - Salammbo Willa Cather - Alexander's Bridge Willa Cather - My Antonia Eudora Welty - On Writing E.M. Forster - Aspects of the Novel Jack M. Bickham - The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them) Margaret Atwood - Negotiating With the Dead Arthur Conan Doyle - Fairies Photographed Arthur Conan Doyle - Great Britain and the Next War Willa Cather - My Autobiography, by S. S. McClure Willa Cather - O Pioneers! Willa Cather - One of Ours Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark Heinrich Brode - Tippu Tib Willa Cather - The Troll Garden Willa Cather - Youth and the Bright Medusa Willa Cather - The Bohemian Girl Willa Cather - The Affair at Grover Station Willa Cather - The Count of Crow's Nest Willa Cather - The Shortest Stories  (self re-collection) Willa Cather - Tales ABC  (self re-collection) Willa Cather - Tales DEF  (self re-collection) Willa Cather - Tales G-K-O  (self re-collection) Willa Cather - Tales PRST  (self re-collection) Willa Cather - Stories W  (self re-collection) Henryk Sienkiewicz - Quo Vadis Charles Darwin - The Voyage of the Beagle Sinclair Lewis - Babbitt Talbot Mundy - Jimgrim and Allah's Peace Talbot Mundy - East and West Talbot Mundy - The Iblis at Ludd Talbot Mundy - The Seventeen Thieves of El-Khalil Talbot Mundy - The Lion of Petra Talbot Mundy - The Woman Ayisha Talbot Mundy - The Last Trooper Talbot Mundy - The King in Check Talbot Mundy - A Secret Society Talbot Mundy - Moses and Mrs. Aintree Talbot Mundy - The Mystery of Khufu's Tomb Talbot Mundy - Jungle Jest Talbot Mundy - The Nine Unknown Talbot Mundy - The Marriage of Meldrum Strange Talbot Mundy - The Hundred Days Talbot Mundy - OM: The Secret of Ahbor Valley Talbot Mundy - The Devil's Guard Talbot Mundy - Jimgrim, King of the World Talbot Mundy - Machassan Ah Talbot Mundy - Oakes Respects An Adversary Talbot Mundy - Old Ugly-Face Talbot Mundy - Payable to Bearer Talbot Mundy - Poems and Dicta Talbot Mundy - Rung Ho! Talbot Mundy - Selected Stories Gordon MacReagh - Projection From Epsilon Leroy Yerxa - Back from the Crypt  (self re-collection) Garrett P. Serviss - A Columbus of Space Garrett P. Serviss - The Moon Metal Garrett P. Serviss - The Second Deluge Garrett P. Serviss - The Sky Pirate Sinclair Lewis - Arrowsmith Robert Buchanan - Camlan and the Shadow of the Sword Robert Buchanan - God and the Man Henry R. Schoolcraft - To the Sources of the Mississippi River D. W. O'Brien - Squadron of the Damned D. W. O'Brien - Blitzkrieg in the Past D. W. O'Brien - The Floating Robot D. W. O'Brien - Gone In 20 Kilobytes  (self re-collection) D. W. O'Brien - Lost in Space  (self re-collection) D. W. O'Brien - Ghosts of War  (self re-collection) William Ware - Aurelian William Ware - Zenobia J. S. Fletcher - The Stories  (self re-collection) J. S. Fletcher - Perris of the Cherry-Trees J. S. Fletcher - The Middle Temple Murder J. S. Fletcher - The Paradise Mystery J. S. Fletcher - The Safety Pin Francis H. Atkins - The Short Stories  (self re-collection) M. P. Shiel - In Short  (self re-collection) Francis H. Atkins - A Studio Mystery Francis H. Atkins - The Black Opal Talbot Mundy - The Eye of Zeitoon Talbot Mundy - The Ivory Trail Talbot Mundy - The Man From Poonch Talbot Mundy - The Middle Way Talbot Mundy - The Red Flame of Erinpura Talbot Mundy - The Thunder Dragon Gate Talbot Mundy - Tros of Samothrace Talbot Mundy - Queen Cleopatra Talbot Mundy - Purple Pirate Talbot Mundy - A Soldier and a Gentleman Talbot Mundy - Winds of the World Talbot Mundy - King of the Khyber Rifles Talbot Mundy - Guns of the Gods Talbot Mundy - Caves of Terror Thorne Smith - Biltmore Oswald: The Diary of a Hapless Recruit Thorne Smith - Biltmore Oswald: Very Much At Sea Thorne Smith - Birthday Present Thorne Smith - Did She Fall? Thorne Smith - Dream's End Thorne Smith - Haunts and By-Paths Thorne Smith - Rain In The Doorway Thorne Smith - Skin and Bones Thorne Smith - The Bishop's Jaegers Thorne Smith - The Glorious Pool Thorne Smith - The Night Life of the Gods Thorne Smith - The Stray Lamb Thorne Smith - The Jovial Ghosts: The Misadventures of Topper Thorne Smith - Topper Takes A Trip Thorne Smith - Turnabout Thorne Smith - Yonder's Henry Wilkie Collins - Antonina Wilkie Collins - Armadale Wilkie Collins - I Say No Wilkie Collins - Miss or Mrs Wilkie Collins - My Lady's Money Wilkie Collins - No Name Wilkie Collins - The Haunted Hotel Wilkie Collins - The Law and the Lady Leroy Yerxa - Death Rides At Night D. W. O'Brien - Flight From Farisha Gordon MacReagh - Out of Africa  (self re-collection) Peter Cheyney - Quick Draws  (self re-collection) Talbot Mundy - The Thrilling Adventures of Dick Anthony of Arran D. W. O'Brien - The Last Analysis M. P. Shiel - Children of the Wind Edgar Wallace - 1925: The Story of a Fatal Peace M. P. Shiel - Prince Zaleski Edgar Wallace - A Case For Angel, Esquire M. P. Shiel - Shapes in the Fire Edgar Wallace - A Deed of Gift M. P. Shiel - The Evil That Men Do Edgar Wallace - A Debt Discharged M. P. Shiel - The Last Miracle Edgar Wallace - A Dream M. P. Shiel - The Lord of the Sea Edgar Wallace - A Raid on a Gambling Hell