There is no better way to celebrate 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐃𝐚𝐲 than by remembering how wonderfully and cute 𝗧𝗼𝗺 tells bedtime stories for the 𝑪𝒃𝒆𝒆𝒃𝒊𝒆𝒔 programme 🥰💖📚

I would have loved to have made a special video but I was very busy... I promise to make it for another day 🙏🏻⠀⠀⠀⠀

No hay mejor manera de celebrar el 𝐃𝐢𝐚 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐞𝐥 𝐋𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐨 que recordando cómo de maravilloso y bonito 𝗧𝗼𝗺 cuenta cuentos para dormir para el programa de 𝑪𝒃𝒆𝒆𝒃𝒊𝒆𝒔 🥰💖📚

Me hubiera encantado haber hecho un vídeo especial pero anduve muy ocupada... Prometo hacerlo para otro día 🙏🏻

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pillowbook my heart

Hi! I wanted to know, how do you imagine the interactions betwen Tav and Raphael would have gone like, if they had been Tav’s fiend patron? (as in, they already start the game with the contract (we were robbed)) 

Oh, it would be such an interesting dynamic. And Raphael is ready as ever to adapt to a new situation and manipulate it to his own ends.

The last few days had been an utter whirlwind of madness. Relief at not falling to your death from the Nautiloid contrasting sharply with the dread of having an Illithid parasite in your brain. A ticking time bomb.

You had wondered how long it would be before Raphael came to collect you. As it turned out, you didn't have long to wait before you sensed your fiendish patron's presence. The back of your neck prickled, a shower of sparks cascading from an opening portal caught your eye.

"I had wondered where you'd fluttered off to." Raphael's cadence sounded familiar and almost comforting to your ears, maybe he could help you. "And you've gained such illustrious companions along the way." Mildly sardonic as his brown eyes landed on Karlach who'd frozen in place while stuffing her face with dinner.

"Raphael." You greeted, breathless from the surprise visit. "It's..." You hesitated on the rushed words. "...good to see you." Despite the nature of the devil, you felt relieved at seeing a familiar face.

Raphael bestowed an arch look upon you, the corner of his narrow mouth tilting up. "I always keep close watch over my most prized possessions. When you disappeared from even my purview, I must admit to experiencing my own form of concern." He approached and took your chin between his fingers, tilting your face up for inspection. "You look a little worse for wear. Has my favorite client suffered a chance of ill-fate?" He moved your head to the side, you half thought he would open your mouth to inspect your teeth. "You have a little visitor inside that lovely head, it seems." He snaked a hand around the back of your neck, a little possessive as his gaze sharpened on something you couldn't discern. "A rather unwelcome one, on all fronts." You could intuit those last words were not meant for you or your companions.

"Can you help?" You asked, the urgency of your situation thrumming cold in your veins.

Raphael chuckled, his gaze still narrowed on your wan face. "Does the sun rise in the east and set in the west? Can a young sapling be felled by an ax?" Raphael gave the nape of your neck a squeeze. "I live to help those in need, and perhaps this...little problem squirming in your brain offers just the opportunity I've been seeking."

"Seeking? How so?"

"As ever, you delight me with your inquisitive mind, however naive to think I'd offer you such information so readily." Raphael looked down at you, your noses almost touching. "Come, it's time to go home and have a more private chat."

What I think is particularly heart breaking about this episode, is that Esteban is immortalizing a memory that Cecil doesn’t get to experience. Esteban knows about his grandfather, because he has heard the story several times before according to Abby, in fact they all just heard it. Cecil is experiencing, second hand, remnants of a memory that slides off of him. It refuses to stick.

There is something so poetic to me about Cecil being a reporter, a journalist, an observer, and doing everything to piece together a story from literal scraps of his own life, only to find its already been written for him. The story has already been told. Cecil doesn’t listen to stories, he tells them. I can think of nothing more infuriating than a story being told and not having a satisfying ending, or an ending that makes sense. Nothing within the story justified the ending. And yet we have seen it before throughout the show.

I am reminded of the episode It Doesn’t Hold Up, where Cecil watches the last few minutes of his comfort film Cat Ballou, changed and different. He has seen the same movie over and over and over again, and now the ending is different. In the drawing Esteban drew in 245, there is a shovel stuck into the dirt, and there is a boy climbing into a tree. In the ending of Cat Ballou, there is a man digging into the base of the tree. Just like in the episode It Sticks With You, when Abby, Cecil and their mother journey into the woods, and Cecil climbs into a tree over and over and over again until he can no longer remember the outing with his husband and son. Just like in Cassettes, when a young Cecil’s story is cut short, in an ending that Cecil refuses to listen to, immortalized on tape.

Just like in Liminal Spaces, when Cecil enters a space that is neither here nor there and is haunted by someone who tells him that he wants Cecil to remember. The very face that Cecil saw in Cat Ballou in It Doesn’t Hold Up. In fact, he tells Cecil he has no choice, before once again, he is pulled from the story.

Cecil’s whole life is one long interrupted narrative. It’s as if he is an old cassette that isn’t rewound all the way before pulled out of the slot and put back on a shelf. The next person to listen to the tape, unknowing, doesn’t realize where they’re starting off is not the beginning. There are things missing. Cecil has gotten so good at forgetting (and justifiably so) — has forgotten how to stop. He’s recording over the same tape over and over again until the tape inside is no longer coherent. I’m thinking, of the sound of a cassette being rewound, and how it could sound very much like how Cecil is often describing owl sounds.

So, how disquieting, to have your own family stare back at you, privy to information about yourself that you do not get to have. Cecil is there, quite literally, to construct a story for his town, but who is there to construct a story for him? A man you used to hate? A sister you aren’t sure you even like? A husband who you have forgotten before? Children who see and hear more than you realize? The listener?

No. Instead he will sit until dawn comes, and be made a fool out of trying to create a story, maybe even a better one, out of scraps of memories.

Madonna - Bedtime Story (1994)

Written by Björk!

Bedtime story

reading this to her to gives her "einstein sleep"

"Developing a ritual around reading a bedtime story to a child can decrease anxiety around going to sleep." - Philip Strausser, A Treatise on the Reduction of Night Terrors in Children, 1953

any girls in the chat

*Ao3 being down for maintenance*

Me at nearly 1am:

Chris Evans bed time story Even Superheroes Have Bad Days

This is not a drill! Tom Hardy to read another bedtime story

Star Wars Fanfic - L&V Fluff

In an attempt to get his son to sleep, Vader reads him a bedtime story.

“But I’m not tired, daddy!” Luke bounced on the balls of his feet as they walked down the Grand Hall, stuffed tooka in his arms. His teeth were brushed, he’d had his bath, and he was wearing a still-warm freshly-laundered set of footed pajamas covered with little TIEs and speeders. All that was left was tucking him into bed.

Theoretically.

Vader had learned not to expect his expectations to play out when it came to his little son.

“Well, Daddy’s tired, and it’s your bedtime, so to your bed you will go, little one.”

Luke’s face turned up in a pout and he reached up for his father’s hand. Vader took it. 

“How about a story?”

His son’s face lit up. “Yes!!! Ooohhh, can we do three stories? Can we do five? Ten? ” Luke had just learned how to count to ten on his own and was perpetually eager to show off his skills.

Day 7 🥅 Caught in a net