@cult-of-the-cornered-possum

When you do everything stupid thing to make you feel alive:

Research Pt.1 - Night In The Woods

Visually, Night In The Woods is one of my favourite games. I especially like the the colours and general atmosphere of the dream sequences as well as the music during them and the stargazing. The story is really good and there are a few instances that scared me, however I have not yet gotten up to that point in the game but I might be later on and add screenshots of them later.

The story follows Mae, a 20 year old, who dropped out of college and came home to Possum Springs. Her parents forget to pick her up from the station and so she has to make her way home by herself before getting found by her ‘Aunt Mall Cop’ and taken home via police car. The next few days are spent talking to various people in her hometown, including her old friends Gregg, Angus and Bea, as well as hanging out with either Gregg or Bea, that choice is up to the player. (I’ve only gotten up to after the first dream with the music so a lot of the summary is based on memory of watching a play through a while ago). After witnessing a ‘ghost’ kidnap someone at the Harvestfest (equivalent to Halloween I believe), Mae tries to solve the mystery and dig through the history of the old mining town of Possum Springs; that includes grave digging and looking through old newspaper articles in the library as well as being stared at by a hooded ghost figure while out at night with Angus. Eventually they find a cult in the abandoned mines that worship and offer sacrifices to an indefinitely deep hole within it with the belief it helps Possum Springs. Mae, Bea, Gregg and Angus manage to trap them in the mines via a cave in and are helped out of a well by Germ who is also a friend who appears every now and again. A few things have been left out of the summary, I tried to keep it as brief as possible. Some things might be wrong also, but most is based off of memory, so apologies.

This is taken from I think the first dream sequence (I could be wrong, this is the first dream sequence I played after coming back to the game after months so as far as I am aware or can remember it is the first?) and the colours and general atmosphere are different, the colours are far colder and more abstract and the scenery has become silhouettes so only a few things are highlighted to the player such as Mae herself, the ghost characters later on and lights as well as other things that are given colours in these scenes. I am in awe about the colours because I really like cold colours and when artwork uses colours that aren't the actual colours of the thing it is depicting, as in the colours have been substituted for different colours like how Mae looks in the dream scenes. I am also slightly biased when talking about the dream scenes as in my opinion night time looks far better than the day time and it is just better in general. In this dream Mae has a bat and the player has the option to break/hit cars, streetlights, bins and illuminated signs. At the end of the dream you have to keep hitting a statue until it completely collapses and then the dream ends, the whole dream in my opinion was slightly unnerving.

The rest of the dreams require finding these arches where one by one a ghost-like band appears and makes music, the number of ghosts needed to be found is indicated by posts where you have to come back to after they have all been found and then a giant animal appears and then the dream ends after going blurry. All of the music in Night in The Woods is really good, especially in the dreams.

At some point we learn that Mae had anger issues (The world becomes just shapes to her) and her doctor asked her to keep a journal, throughout the game you see a small icon in the bottom right corner telling you to press escape which brings up the journal which contains doodles of people and things that have happened. Some pages may be blank if you haven't done the necessary thing to have them written down, also the options menu is in the journal which I think is quite cool and well done.

Another thing in the game is band practise, or practising bass in Mae’s room which has the player press 1, 2, 3, and 4 to play the right note at the right time. When the player inevitably messes up the other characters tell Mae that her performance was questionable, her response being that she does not know the song.

Ignore the fact that there are no notes, I waited for a pause to take the screenshot so the picture wouldn’t just be of me failing miserably.

The expressions in Night In The Woods are really good, specifically Mae’s facial expressions. Both the emotions and the animations on the text bubbles really help to imagine the characters’ voices which is really cool in my opinion.

STORY MASTERLIST

A (not so) comprehensive list of all the things I write about, all of which are subject to change at any given time because I do a lot of refactoring!

LOOOOONG POST INCOMING I write... a LOT, and I have... MANY projects :) Feel free to ask me about any of them! :)

With love <3 Continue reading below the cutoff if you want to know the basic rundown of my worlds and works!

ANGELVERSE:

This universe encompasses all of the angels and demons I like to focus on. Works in the angelverse will likely be about Faraday (formerly known as Efrem), a demon lieutenant, Ezekiel, a young angel, the archangel Uriel, or angel Raguel / angel Sophia (their stories are intertwined).

The main concept I have on Angelverse surrounds Faraday, who has grown into himself as a demon and made something of himself. He finds it impossible to shake who he was before. The question comes up during an important meeting between Heaven and Hell of whether he is truly Faraday or Efrem, his own self that he has shakily become, or the self he inherited from being his father’s son. There’s also brotherly angst between Faraday and Ezekiel, who refuses to let go of the past. (If you look at my old works tagged ‘ezekiel,’ you’ll see Ezekiel used to be a part of Faraday/his ‘ideal’ self, which is why new Ezekiel, separate from Faraday, reads so differently.)

The Raguel and Sophia stories are also closely linked to characters Andromeda and possibly Zachariah. Andromeda’s father runs a cult and has captured an angel in his attic. When Andromeda finds the angel (Sophia), her otherwise “normal” life is thrown into disarray as she starts unraveling threads about her father’s actions as a cult leader. If Zachariah is to be a part of it, he would be living with Andromeda’s family, having run away from his past.

Prominent characters in Angelverse include: Faraday, Uriel, Ezekiel, Stena, Michael, Ramiel, Raguel, Sophia, Zachariah, Ambriel, Ruhiel, Gabriel, Raphael, Luci, Bee, Sasha, Saoirse, and Heather. With the exception of Sophia, all names ending with “el” are angels, while the rest are demons. Also, I say prominent, but like half of these characters are from a bygone era (2018 when I first created them).

TW/CW for heavy religious (Christian) imagery, emotional abuse, violence, transphobia mentions and cult talk. Additional content warning because I tend to write angels as LGBT, but I recognize that some people are not comfortable with this affiliation with Christianity.

LUXTRURA (NOTE: LUXTRURA IS ON PERMANENT HIATUS):

Luxtrura is the name of a fictional country in ye olde European fantasy style, and I haven’t thought of a title for the WIP yet, so I mainly tag it ‘luxtrura’ or ‘luxtruran trio.’ This WIP is a fantasy / dystopian / political intrigue about an uprising in the kingdom of Luxtrura run by an inexperienced king and corrupt nobles all vying for the crown.

Luxtrura (at the current moment) follows the life of His Majesty Devron Fharren, the Eighth Fharren King, who inherited the crown by kingdom decrees at the age of 21. Unlike most kings, Devron has only had seven years of proper royal tutelage on statecraft, having only been named heir to the throne when he was 14. He soon finds he has inherited a kingdom that has been deeply wounded, that his people hate him, and that he has few allies among his own country’s nobles, his friends, and neighboring royalty. Revolution is brewing, and he has a choice to make: to claim his birthright or to help his people.

Prominent characters include: Devron Fharren, Eden Barison, Mili Starr, Plumeria Rwalke, Lilia Tao, Rassaya Tao, Andrea (a mysterious stranger who gives only her first name), Jakob Fiyre, Cordelia Fiyre, Liseline Fiyre, Sonja, and Orange and Rouse (the dragons).

TW/CW for violence, sexual assault mentions, transphobia mentions, political talk, blatant classism, and death.

GLOWING EYES:

A “what-if” scenario where Victor Frankenstein and Dorian Gray had met and become friends and also Frankenstein wasn’t a man and was named Viola and was not a pleb weakling like Victor. Also Dorian Gray is fat because I said so.

This story reimagines the Frankenstein and Dorian Gray cast as students in their final year of the prestigious University of Ingolstadt, with Frankenstein having returned from a year off during which she was suspended for [redacted] reasons. The vibe we’re going for is dark academia, but I don’t think they ever actually do any learning?

Prominent characters include: Viola Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, Elizabeth Lavenza, Henry Clerval, Basil Hallward, Deukalion, and special shoutout to Justine Moritz and Sibyl Vane because I didn’t want to put them in, but they definitely deserved better in the source material.

TW/CW for death, violence, toxic/obsessive relationships, grave-robbing, body part mentions (eyes, limbs, etc), and mentions of the Devil. Basically, if it was a concerning part of either the Frankenstein or Dorian Gray stories, it will still be concerning.

Fun fact, there is a Glowing Eyes playlist that I am NOT too ashamed to share with the public! :D

HELEN OF LEGEND:

A retelling of the Helen of Sparta story that explores Helen’s thoughts and motivations. Who was the woman behind the face that launched a thousand ships? And did she ever even want those ships to be launched? (Spoiler alert: the answer is no.)

Helen of Legend gets pretty heavy handed because I get really mad about people lauding the Greeks as the end all be all of culture, and I’m still really mad about how people dress Millie Bobby Brown up like she’s 25-40, so make of that what you will.

On the bright side, Helen of Legend is a sapphic retelling!

Prominent characters include: Helen, Leda, Menelaus, Clytemnestra, Penelope, Theseus, Aphrodite, Paris, Cassandra, Hector, and Hecuba.

TW/CW for misogyny, implied past sexual assault, sexual assault mentions, mentions of spousal and emotional abuse, people being generally creepy about bodies, people being creepy toward children (Theseus), cities burning, subtle classism, and death.

OF DANCERS AND DREAMERS:

A musical about Anne-Marie, a non-binary Vietnamese lesbian born into a wealthy family, and Jules, a Tunisian baker’s daughter who is working her way into the Paris ballet. Anne-Marie wants to be a designer, but their mother, Mme Trinh, has other plans. The year is 1884, and it was hard for the Trinh family, as immigrants, to establish their foothold in society, and Mme Trinh will not have her child throw away the family’s hard work. One day, while at the ballet, Anne-Marie becomes smitten with Jules, a ballerina with the most dazzling smile. They find solace in sharing their passions with one another and become friends, each eventually realizing they have fallen for the other in a time that is unfriendly to both of them.

Prominent characters include: Anne-Marie, Jules, Victor, Mme Trinh, and Amandine.

TW/CW for subtle homophobia, classism, mental illness, and parental guilt tripping/emotional toxicity.

THE LYRE EFFECT:

A play about life after death, and what it means to live and love. This play follows Patroclus upon his death, desperate to return to Achilles. He meets the reluctant Eurydice, embittered by decades alone in limbo halfway between life and death. Together, they almost throw someone off a boat (is it really murder if they’re already dead?) and have a chance to tell their stories, stepping out from the shadows of their more famous lovers.

I took a lot of liberties with this, so Orpheus is a woman (wlw OrphEurydice), and I would like for both Achilles and Patroclus to be played by trans men, and for all of the characters to be played by non-white actors.

Prominent characters include: Patroclus, Eurydice, Achilles, Orpheus, Apollo, Hades, Charon

TW/CW for talk about death

SPEED ROUND (OR: THINGS I WRITE ABOUT THAT AREN’T AS AMBITIOUS JUST YET/AT THE CURRENT MOMENT):

Here Lies Forever - a story focusing around two young people, Medb Flaherty and Virgil Sutherland, growing up at an orphanage amid war, abandonment, and sickness. Medb is a blind writer who dreams of traveling the world with Virgil, her best friend since their teen years, but when the war strikes too close to home, Virgil leaves Medb and their peaceful student life behind to join the army. Unwilling to let go, and recognizing the pain Virgil is in, Medb takes it upon herself to save Virgil, the both of them haunted by the ghosts of their pasts.

On the Corner of Maple Street - short stories about the lives of Sarah and Evangeline together, two lesbian women who met when Sarah was 28 and Evangeline was 31. Sarah was a toy maker and Evangeline was an actress. They have a son named Oliver, who’s now in his forties, and they’re grandmas to all the neighborhood children. They live on the corner of Maple Street :)

Partager Un Reve - short stories, often romantic, about two circus performers, Alyona Ledbedeva (who does aerial silks) and Li Mey Ri (an acrobat). They’re cute together, there’s not really much to say here.

Claire  - there’s a really old novelette floating around on my account and you can find it if you search Claire, but like it’s OLD. An 18th century French lady who contracted TB and died but was brought back by a necromancer named Cecil (Cecil is the character of my friend @sinnabon-cosplay !) and is now immortal. Fun times with Claire and Anthony usually involve lamenting the fact that they’re stuck as teenagers.

Miscellaneous - miscellaneous demon and monster characters like Alexander, Felicity (both vampires), Sparrow (succubus/Heather’s youngest sister), Zephyr (fae, husband of Spar), Lycan (she’s... a werewolf), and so on. Not really connected to a plot

Performing Possumhood - uh this was a play I wrote with my friend @holdingonmyheartlikeahandgrenade for a 24 hour play festival, it’s about a guy named Thomas who becomes herald for a kingdom and then on his first day of work, the king dies, and his son becomes king, except the new king??? is a possum???? and like no one does anything about it, so Thomas just feels like he’s going insane, poor guy (also everyone else is named Thomas except the king, whose name is His Majesty King Parthur Pencildragon of Alpacalot)

Nordic questing team - I’ve literally written nothing for these fools, but I’m tempted to make it into a dnd campaign! The characters I have are Val (short for Valnotte) (she’s a nokke), Hanne (human poison seller who wears an eyepatch just because), Fur (short for Bjorgolfur, he’s a werewolf who left his pack because he was too good at being alpha wolf but he didn’t want to be alpha, he wanted to press flowers and have a cute little cottage by a cliffside with a pretty garden damn it), and Bo (full name: Boscobel Blue, he’s a cow boy. Literally. He has cow ears and a big septum piercing and a tail. Also he’s a shepherd. His sheep are carnivorous :))) Make of that what you will)

Alice x Secret Garden - another play but where Alice Liddell and Mary Lennox are 18 years old and find themselves in Wonderland, after Mary is jaded from the end of WW1 and is frustrated at her friend Dickon’s marriage proposal, and Alice runs away, trying to retain her childhood as best she can

Retellings - I do myth and fairy tale and folk retellings! :) You can search ‘Tithonia’ for my sleeping beauty retelling, and I wrote Orpheus and Eurydice a while back. Still working my way through Icarus :’) Also ‘Mermaids Can’t See’ is a retelling of the classic mermaid story but written as a ??? field guide? journal entry? notes about mermaids?

If there’s a work you want specifically about a character, I always tag characters, and I also will tag character introductions and pictures/references of them as “beanpuff char[]”!

1A+Shinso as different types of 3 A.M.

You’re doing a thing! Wow you did a lot of the thing. You did the thing so good. Oh no what time is it: Midoriya

Slurping a fruit cup. Listening to Dancing Queen Vaporwave. Doing the Macarena with one hand because of the aforementioned fruit cup. Your mind is empty and your spirit is not quite at peace, but somewhere close: Denki 

This is the only time of day when you feel free from the expectations of others. You listen to unabashedly dramatic songs and construct a small town out of glowsticks: Tokoyami

Your mind, restless with unrealizable ideas, detests the thought of rest. After hours of torment, of directionless pondering on abstract concepts, you finally leave your bed and fix a pot of coffee. You sit on the couch, mug in hand, and ask yourself, “Are booty shorts the capri pants of shorts?”: Shinso

Through a series of dumbass decisions, your friends have turned your week into one hilarious memory after another, leaving you with one night to finish this essay: Bakugo

Oh I wonder what the answer to this question is. Fascinating! It’s even funnier if you add the OwO extension. Oh wikipedia has a random article option? Let’s see how many times I have to click it to find tangential connections between everything I’m learning!: Yaomomo

Toad Time is Night Time: Asui

You couldn’t get to sleep in your bed, so you moved your blankets, sheets, and pillows to the confined space between your dresser and the corner of your room. You fell asleep, but now you’ve woken up again because your body doesn’t like staying curled up tight for that long. You’re too stubborn and warm to move back to your bed: Todoroki

Your bed is warm. Your body is perfectly comfortable. Your arm is beginning to fall asleep from being held still for so long. Your thumb is tired. Your eyes water without your consent just to keep your retinas functioning. You’ve already seen all the good memes. You keep scrolling: Sero

You were bouncing between messaging groups and are now caught in an unbreakable loop of telling each other to go to sleep: Sato

You need a snack. There is nothing readily available to satisfy your current snack needs. You make microwave rice pudding: Uraraka

You worked out too hard this afternoon and passed out as soon as you saw a piece of furniture. Now you’ve woken up naturally, but way too soon: Ojiro

You’re in a funky mood and are oscillating rapidly between your feelsy playlist and your meme songs: Jiro

You followed a racoon into the woods at dusk and now may have accidentally joined a cult of possums, bats, and owls: Koda

You have challenged your dear friend to honorable combat in the Denny’s parking lot. This will be a test of strength, of skill, but most importantly, a memorable bonding experience: Kirishima

Your bestest bro asked you to fight at Denny’s, but neither of you thought to bring knee and elbow pads to protect yourselves from the pavement, so now you’re gonna split a giant plate of strawberry pancakes: Ashido 

You smell coffee and rice pudding, so you sneak downstairs to spook your friends! Then you help them clean up the spills, make more as an apology, and share the snacks alongside some good conversation: Hagakure

Sleeb: Shoji

Beauty Sleeb: Aoyama

Why is everyone up at three in the morning we have school tomorrow I will make sure you all get proper sleep even if I have to drag you to your rooms and tuck you in myself!!! OR SO HELP ME: Iida

the time we lost, the time we mended (Chapter 4)

AO3

Rating: T

Words: ~ 3600 

Story Summary: Before the summer of 2012, Ford and Fiddleford never thought they’d get the opportunity to see each other again. Now… they have a second chance. A chance to rekindle the love they once shared, reconnect a family once lost, and to mend old wounds. But as they’ll quickly discover, fixing the mistakes of the past doesn’t always come easy. Nor is it always possible. RP to fic.

A Fiddauthor reunion story written by @the-ill-doctor​ and I! This chapter features Stan and Fidds bonding over cooking, the ol’ McGucket family gravy recipe, and scrapbook-ortunities. Also, Ford can’t deny it any longer- he definitely still has a crush...

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

Fiddleford crept across the hardwood floor at a sloth’s tempo, gently testing the corners of each board for extreme creaks and whines before pressing his full weight upon them. The little alarm clock resting on the dresser in the parlor Stanford let him sleep in read eight o’ four when he left. Since he didn’t know how late or early anyone in this here Shack slept in normally, he figured he should stay as quiet as he could. The last thing he wanted to do was give any of the fellas living here an unexpected spook.

He yawned deeply, quickly slamming his hands over his mouth when he realized how unintentionally loud he was being. Dagnabbit, he wanted his surprise breakfast to be a surprise to the family, not announced to the whole world before he could cook it! Muttering to himself, he hurried his pace, luckily managing to avoid the brunt of the squeaky boards as he entered the kitchen. He then set about rummaging through the shelves and drawers to see if they had all the right ingredients for omelets, or maybe biscuits and gravy. Definitely biscuits and gravy, he decided, since Stan didn’t seem to have any veggies he could toss in an omelet.

Hopefully he could remember his ma’s recipe in full this time...

Fidds heard heavy footsteps approaching, and a brash yawn. He turned and froze like a spooked deer intercepted by headlights on the backroads, standing on a chair in mid-reach for a baking sheet on the top of the shelf. Stanley stood in the doorway of the kitchen in his underwear and a tank top.

“Oh,” he said flatly, drinking in the scene before him. “Good mornin’, possum breath. Need help cooking anything?”

“M-mornin’, Stanley,” he said, and nervously tugged at his beard. He climbed down from the counter. Honestly, he still wasn’t sure how to act around Ford’s brother, considering how stand-offish he’d acted towards him in the past. “I- I’m fine, I just wanted to surprise y’all with some grub to thank you for lettin’ me stay here!”

“Well, no need to thank me,” Stan mumbled almost imperceptibly. “It’s Ford’s house, after all. But... eh, you’re welcome I guess.”

Fiddleford could practically sense the cool metallic intensity of that man’s eyes boring through the back of his head as he continued searching about the kitchen, trawling for ingredients. He scratched at his arm. Constant surveillance made him feel kinda itchy.

“Uh, hey? If you’re making biscuits, then how ‘bout I make some bacon?” Stan spoke up then.

He grinned wide, flashing what teeth he had left. “Sure! Can’t have biscuits and gravy without ‘em! Now let's see, after flour I need... uh-" His brows sank, growing pensive as he desperately tried to sort through recently recalled memory. "Come on, Fiddleford, you should know this..."

Wordlessly, Stan pulled the correct ingredients off the shelves and placed them on the counter for him. He then got out a frying pan for himself, for bacon duty.

"Oh, thank ya’," he said, walking over to the counter to observe the ingredients. "Although-" He placed his hand on his mouth and leered at the food Stan set up for him. "There's somethin' missin', I just know it! Mcgucket, Mcgucket... The Mcgucket Family Secret Gravy Recipe!" He opened the fridge, and found a half used can of brown meat. "I can't believe I almost forgot this! My ma would have my hide if I messed up her gravy!"

“You’re rememberin’ more and more every day, aren’tcha?” Stan asked suddenly, glancing towards him as he watched the bacon beginning to sizzle. “After all that mind wiping cult stuff got taken down…”

Fiddleford nodded amicably, amid measuring flour and baking powder into his bowl. "Some days I get a ton o' them back and other days it's very slow." He looked up at the other man, smiling sincerely. "It's tricky piecin' a lot of them back, especially the ones about your brother. But I'm just happy I finally remember who I am!”

"That's, uh... that's real great," he said with a weak laugh, attention drifting away to the bacon again.

His smile faltered. Part of him wondered what was going on in Stanley’s mind right now, but the other part of him feared gathering the nerve to ask. It probably ain’t his business anyways.

Within a few minutes, he’d mixed everything together and formed the biscuits between his hands on the baking sheet. As he waited for the oven to heat up, he began to hum an old silly song he recalled his pa used to sing while strummin’ on the guitar... Oh, grandma’s in the cellar, and boy don’t you smell her cookin’ biscuits on that darn ol’ dirty stove? In her eye there’s a matter that keeps drippin’ in the batter, and she whistles as a- *SNIFF*- runs down her nose! His ma despised it, if he remembered correctly. He carefully edged the sheet into the oven, and pretty soon the sweet aroma of his cooking began to waft throughout the shack.

"Ya know, I used ta’ make this all the time for your brother,” he mentioned offhand.

"Is that so?" Stan said, raising a brow. "Well, good on ya'. Some days I think Ford would've starved to death if there weren’t someone there ta' feed him. I swear, it’s like he’s too distracted to eat half the time."

"You’re tellin’ me!" Fiddleford laughed. "I literally had to wrangle him into a chair and tie him down to get him to eat whenever finals came around!"

The other man’s face lit up, and he let out a loud bark of laughter- genuine, this time. "Yeah, that sounds like 'im, that nerd," he said, laying the cooked bacon on a plate. "Hey... it, uh- sounds like your memory's returning better then you thought. You said you had trouble remembering stuff about Ford, but... that's two memories right after another."

Fiddleford's amused chuckling died down as he stopped to think for a moment. "You’re right,” he murmured, eyes widening into saucers. He stared up at Stanley with probably the calmest expression he's ever given him. "Thank ya’!"

"For what? You're the one remembering everything, all I did was talk to ya'..."

"Well, talking to ya’ really helped." Fiddleford replied, still smiling. "It's hard rememberin’ on your own."

At that moment, the two heard footsteps approaching from around the corner, and muffled voices. It sounded like Ford and Dipper, cheerily talking about some supernatural creature they’d both encountered in the woods. Stan froze at the sound, and Fidds was sure that man was mentally hyperfixating on every last detail of his last not-so-friendly interaction with his brother the night before.

Ford poked his head into the kitchen first, drinking in the sight of the home cooking occurring. He inhaled deeply, likely having followed his nose to the kitchen. "Good morning, Fiddleford. Stanley." Can I talk with you outside? he mouthed at his brother.

Stan nodded nervously, ducking out of the kitchen with him.

"Mornin', Dipper!" Fiddleford said.

"Morning, McGucket." Dipper shuffled toward the breakfast table. “I, uh- I see you're making breakfast?”

"Yep, biscuits and gravy!" Fiddleford scooped up a heaping spoonful and offered it to Dipper. "Wanna taste? I promise it’ll be the best dang gravy you’ve ever tasted!" he said with a wink.

Dipper seemed hesitant, which he didn’t blame him for— the kid saw him cooking roadkill on a spit a few days ago, after all!— but it seemed the smell was too alluring. Walking over, he took the offered sample and gave it a shot. The moment his lips closed around the spoon, his eyes widened, and he promptly licked the utensil clean. Fidds beamed.

"Heh heh, guess that means I made it right!"

The boy stayed at the counter next to him after that, watching him finish cooking the gravy. "So Mr. McGucket, you and Great Uncle Ford were roommates in college, right?"

"Yes, siree we were!" Fiddleford replied.

"What was he like?"

Fiddleford paused from his cooking, considering the question seriously. "Honestly? I love that man, but he was an absolute pain in the tush to bunk with!"  

Stanley tensed as he walked into the hall with his brother, already getting flashbacks of the first argument they had here. As with every other interaction with Ford lately, nothing good could come out of this. He crossed his arms pensively. "Whatdy'a want?"

Ford sighed, pressing fingers to his temple. He seemed to almost deflate in his presence, oddly enough. "Stanley? Let me be frank with you."

Nevertheless, Uh-oh was all that could run through Stan's mind.

"I was-" Ford continued, forcing himself to look Stan in the eye. "I might have acted a little harsh towards you last night, and..."

"You think??" Stan burst out suddenly, residual anger from last night's encounter boiling over. "You were 'bout ta’ kick me out before the summer ended! Before my time, before I was ready, and exactly like what Dad did all those years ago!"

Ford stiffened at the comparison to their father, and continued. "I'm aware of that. Or at least, I was helped to become aware of that, and..." Another weary sigh. Where was he going with this? "There's no reason for me to treat you this way,” he said finally. “I'm- I'm not kicking you out. Obviously, you're free to leave if you ever wish to, but it would be unfair of me to uproot you from this place."

Stan stopped, and blinked. Dumbfounded. Did he just-? Did those words seriously come out of Ford's mouth? It wasn’t exactly an apology, but...

"So you're... you're letting me stay?" he said, mouth agape. "I don't have to leave after the summer?"

"No, you don't have to leave," Ford confirmed, a gentle smile crossing his face. "This has been your home for far longer than it's been mine, after all. I'd still like to talk about your Mystery Shack at a later date, and determine what compromises if any we could come to on that front, , but-"

Without any warning, Stan rushed forward and wrapped his arms tightly around his brother. Ford nearly stumbled back in surprise, at first not sure how to respond to this at all. But eventually, his hands stopped awkwardly floating midair and settled on Stan's back, tightly returning his embrace. They might still have a lot more to hash out- issues from their past to unpack- but for the moment they were simply happy to share in the kind of sibling affection neither had experienced in over forty years.

Meanwhile, Fiddleford continued to share embarrassing stories about his college years with Stanford, Dipper seeming wholly engrossed with each tale.

"Wow, so you two really didn't get expelled for setting the lab on fire?" he asked.

"Nope!" Fiddleford replied as he started to set the food on the table. "And luckily, too, the last thing we needed was to get kicked out of school. But boy howdy, were they not easy on us with the community service!"

“Are you giving me up, Fiddleford?” Ford asked suddenly, peaking around the corner of the doorway with a wry smile on his lips.

Fiddleford let out a surprised yelp. "H-howdy, Ford!" he said, grinning sheepishly. "Just sharin' some of our tamer days."

"Really? That's tame?" Dipper asked.

"My boy, setting a university laboratory on fire is child's play. Just wait until you hear about the time we almost accidentally released an alien superbug into all of greater Gravity Falls!" He walked over to his old friend, grinning mercilessly. "Fiddleford and I had all sorts of misadventures, back in the day..."

Fiddleford leaned his cheek against his arm, giggling at the memory. "Most of them were ‘coz someone liked to poke his nose into other critters’ business," he said, playfully nudging him in the stomach. "Yer’ just lucky we were able to synthesize that antidote, or else the town wouldn't be here anymore!"

Ford could feel the blood rushing to the capillaries near the surface of his face at the sudden physical affection, and while it left him with a sort of light, jittery sensation in his core he couldn’t necessarily attach a bad connotation to, he also felt a tinge of embarrassment that Dipper was there to see his reaction. He hadn’t gotten the chance to properly explore and catalogue his increasingly muddled thoughts on the matter yet. He’d far prefer to do that in private than in front of family, yes...

"Yeah, I fear we nearly destroyed the town on a number of occasions in those days," he replied to Fidds.

"Don't stop fearing yet," Stan butt in suddenly, returning to the kitchen. "Now that you're back in this dimension again, you've got plenty more years of potential destruction to cause!"

Ford frowned, picking at the stray threads on his jacket. Something about the way Stan phrased this brought the rift to mind, the rift he'd securely enclosed just this morning.

Mabel sleepily shuffled behind Stan, clutching onto a stuffed unicorn. "Mornin'," she yawned before climbing into one of the kitchen chairs.

"Mornin', pumpkin," Stan said, and gave her hair a nice big ruffle. He turned to the rest of the group, all loitering in the kitchen and surrounded by food. "Hey, we gonna eat, or what? This all smells delicious! Whoever cooked it must be a culinary genius... especially the fella who cooked that bacon!" He laughed boisterously at his own not-that-funny joke, and Ford promptly rolled his eyes.

"Do you need help taking any of these plates to the table, Fiddleford?" he asked, grateful for the change of topic from before.

"If y’all don't mind givin' me a hand. I'm hoping y’all like the food! Been a while since I've properly cooked anything."

"Tasted amazing to me!" Dipper smiled while helping a sleepy Mabel up to migrate.

Stan and Ford each grabbed a dish and carried them to the table in the living room. Ford carefully placed his at the center, and promptly returned to the kitchen to find some plates. Stan on the other hand, sat directly down, strategically positioning himself in the chair right in front of the bacon. "Hey, uh, kids," he began. "Just so ya' know, the Shack won't be open today. Maybe not for the next few days, who knows. But anyways, until this pigsty is fixed up, you two little gremlins are off the hook, okay? Go play with your friends, or in the woods, or whatever it is ya' do when I'm not lookin'."

"Really?" Mabel asked with a sleepy smile as she climbed into the seat beside him.

"Yeah, what's the catch?" Dipper asked, skeptical of his intentions as always.

Stan frowned deeply, more for show and dramatics than any true expression of disgruntlement. “The catch is, do it before I take advantage of Gravity Falls’ lax child labor laws and put you two to work on somethin’ else! Now, who wants bacon?”

“I’d like a strip or two,” Ford said eagerly, just returning to the table with plates and silverware for the five of them. He set the plates down and let the kids pass them out. “I don’t think I’ve eaten bacon for over thirty years. There’s not anything quite like it, out there in the midst of the multiverse...”

"I'll have a slice!" Dipper replied.

"Me too!" Mabel added.

Fiddleford walked in and set his gravy pot on the table. "It's been a long time since I've seen any bacon smellin’ this good,” he commented as he took his seat. "I wanna thank you again for helping me out with the cookin', Stanley."

“Yeah, yeah, you’re welcome, or whatever,” he said, brushing off his thanks with a flourish of his hand. Ford shot him one of those looks, but said nothing. Stan dished out the bacon to everyone, grabbing four slices for himself, and soon everyone began digging in.

Fiddleford noisily gobbled down his share of biscuits. To him, this was the most luxurious meal he'd eaten in months. After polishing off his first, he realized he’d spilled crumbs all over his beard, but he was so caught up in enjoying his food that he couldn’t bring himself to truly care. Meanwhile, Dipper practically drowned his poor biscuits in the gravy, and with food in her stomach Mabel was finally beginning to wake up.

Stanley worked away at his own plate quietly for a moment, too hungry to provide much in the way of conversation. As he ate, he glanced from Dipper, to Mabel… to Fiddleford, and sitting next to him— after all these years— his brother.

“Heh,” he muttered suddenly. “Y’know, now that I think of it, it’s funny…”

The four of them paused, Fiddleford mid-chew, when Stan spoke up.

"What is, Grunkle Stan?" Mabel asked.

“This… well, it’s dumb, but once I got ta’ thinkin’ about it, this is the first real meal I’ve shared with Ford in over forty years,” Stan said breathlessly, staring off into the distance, not quite meeting anyone’s eyes.

Ford dropped his fork against his plate, brows furrowing as he counted the years, calculated and double checked his claim. “You- my word, you’re right,” he said, eyes widening as he contemplated the truth behind this statement. Even yesterday— his first evening back— they hadn’t crossed paths much, since he’d dedicated nearly all of that time to constructing a containment field for the rift in the basement.

Mabel let out a loud and dramatic gasp at Stan's realization. "And it's the first time Grunkle Ford has eaten with me and Dipper period, meaning-" She shot up from her seat, all the vim and vigor Ford remembered from early this morning returning in a flash. "Be right back!" With no explanation, she rushed out of the living room, excitedly stomping up the stairs. Before anyone could truly comment on her outburst she returned with her polaroid camera.

"SCRAPBOOK-ORTUNITY!" she announced, holding the camera with lens facing her, the entire family in the frame behind her. When the camera flashed Stan was in the middle of picking his nose, and Ford was eighty percent certain he blinked. The greyed scientist began to laugh heartily at Mabel’s happy antics.

“You remind me of my Ma,” he said through laughter. “She was always taking pictures of Stanley and I, and mostly when we weren’t prepared for them.” He took another bite of his biscuit. A stray bit of gravy dribbled from his lip.

Mabel giggled and shook the polaroid when it came out of the camera. "I never miss a scrapbook-ortunity!"

“Mabel,” Dipper whined, “I was chewing when you took that picture!”

“It’s candid photography, that’s kinda the point, duh!”

Fiddleford gave his finger a lick, and reached towards Ford’s face. "Ford, ya’ got a little somethin' on yer chin..."

Ford blushed a deep scarlet as Fiddleford dabbed the gravy off his chin and the corner of his lips, his eyes blowing wide. He suddenly felt clammy, almost itchy as he felt the rest of the room stare at him… He knew for a fact they all saw the way his ears and cheeks flushed like some lovesick fool at Fidds’ touch, and his heart pounded at the thought of having to explain this to his own family when he hadn’t even taken time to fully consider these feelings himself. Not for the first time, he felt achingly like an alien— perhaps even an imposter— in his home, that is, if he could even claim it as such.

Mabel slammed her hands over her mouth and excitedly wiggled in her seat. She began to repeatedly nudge her brother's side, much to his annoyance.

When Fiddleford finished, he gave Ford a shy smile and leaned back in his chair. "Sorry, old habit from the old days," he said, blushing as well.

“Sheesh, if you two want to leave the room for a sec or somethin,’” Stan said snarkily, “then don’t let me stop ya’.”

Ford roughly set his cup down on the table. ”Stanley. That’s enough,” he hissed. “We will not be discussing this at the breakfast table.”

The kids flinched from Ford's sudden outburst.

“Wow, okay, okay,” Stan muttered, recoiling a little. “Hit a nerve there...”

"Stanford, there's no reason to get so upset, he was only teasin'." Fiddleford said, trying to diffuse the tension.

“I-I…”

Ford looked back and forth, from the kids— who were staring at him with slight apprehension— to Stan— who looked much like a kicked puppy— and finally to Fidds. Fiddleford. The man he knew deep down he’d never gotten over, never stopped loving, not even after thirty plus years, and the man who was currently gazing at him with such a gentleness in his eyes even despite his rough outburst. His palms sweat as he clasped them together, nervously threading his fingers between each other. Before his mind could catch up with his body, he found himself bolting through the door between the house and the gift shop.

Stan stared at the chair he left empty for a moment, trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong. He was only teasing. Surely Ford didn’t think he would judge him if he did have an old crush on Fiddleford, if his prediction was in fact accurate? “You, uh,” he began lamely, glancing towards Fiddleford. “You might wanna go after him before he locks himself away in the basement for the rest of the day.”

"Yeah, uh..." Fiddleford stood up. "E-Excuse me fellas."

4 POEMS by Jake Sheff

Elegy for Dog I: A Failed Acrostic

January was tired when it became king. Apples here love being red in the spring, Casting shadows against the stone architraves our Kapellmeister will never live down. You Stole Apollo’s cows, and let them graze to show me Heaven’s template. Where do failed heroes go? Eucalyptus cupolas and polar icecaps Frame the downtrodden gods. But you weren’t Freakishly wrong, as I so often am, on your

Joyride through nearly twice eight years, Á la someone far from beauty’s stepmom. Copper coin or grimacing sun? I’ve got 20,000 Kor of crushed grief on this threshing floor. Shark-sparks of sadness flood the impetiginous air… How, and why, do clouds cobblestone Entire days, and lakes, when you’re not here? Fixing every broken thing, poets go where Ferns and geraniums baptize the morning.

“Jur-any-oms,” is how you’d spell it; After all, a dog’s a dog, and wisdom knows futility. Cassations make a rusty brew, to drink the truth of truths, and Kill whatever ceases wanting to be new. Stewardship, the color of gravity’s silence, naturally Houses every “glur” (a glittery blur); go chase what plays Eternal games. I hear the swans by Rooster Rock. Your handsome Face, its happy handsomeness, in memory’s eye, goes in and out of Focus; in love’s better eye: your goodness neath its everblooming ficus.

Gravity and Grace on SW Murray Scholls Drive

“Impatience has ruined many excellent men who, rejecting the slow, sure way, court destruction by rising too quickly.” Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome

The traffic lights control the people’s actions, but Not their feelings, as the limits of philosophy Collide head on with the nose of a Dalmatian.

I tell you, the day is stress-testing itself, and these Sidewalks wish that it’d just gone straight. Geese Take this sky-hairing wind for granted, as they

Land on the lake like memorable speech on The sensitive soul. Time is never sharp, but it’s Cutting something in the credit union. Maybe

It’s dancing a back Corte for the woman in line Thinking about the taste of limes from Temecula As she waits for the teller. Air Alaska and that

Haunted pie in the sky are not the only reasons For all the volatility in the air today. Rushing And perfectionism both produce a loss; behind

The Safeway Pharmacy, you’ll see the small Smells of both, sloshing around to the ticking- Sound of the ocean’s tides. I must admit, I am

Frozen in place by the sight of steam from Joe’s Burgers; it is poetry’s pale tongue, rising in And arousing the air. This neighborhood’s street-

Lights are more serious than kokeshi dolls. Lights From its windows outshine poison dart frogs. Maybe to forget about life for awhile, the lamps

Are focused on The Population Bomb? ‘Easy Tiger,’ all these incidents whisper. Each day’s A sign twirler’s dais; each corner a promise

Of something more in a different direction: it isn’t A marriageable daughter or impoverishment, But inguinal ingenuity plays a part, and that isn’t

Bad at all. What oaths and paths went here Before Walmart? What voices were voided by The liquor store? What are vague’s values

When the library shares a parking lot with a 24- Hour gym and a cargo cult? Gas stations satirize                                                                           The Queen of Hearts; I tell you, it makes every

Question seem incidental. Treaty-breakers in Pajamas swing on the swing sets. Was August That full of angst? It feels like autumn went too

Far on accident. Desertification, in a sugar tong Splint, takes a shot of ouzo and talks shit About the death of Brutus, but my Bible-thumping

Memory – on a ski hill in Duluth – is also too busy Watching some ducks on the lake to notice; and Desertification makes a face at me like a Swedish

Film. Poets make for poorly picked men to Familiarity’s paymaster-general. The Calvinistic Rain is an ill-starred attempt to make mayonnaise-

Fries just for me, but I must admit, it all seems – You know – cybernetic. And step-motherly as all Get out, if you ask the trees. They prefer “You

Can’t Hurry Love,” by The Supremes, to any Changes that take effect in one to two pay periods. Pretext ricochets; a perfect reverse promenade.

At Summer Lake, When the Vegetables are Sleeping

Cruelty drinks all the wine, and never gets drunk On these shores. When Summer Lake speaks, In every word, an introduction to the world. I am

Easily duped. The greatest duper duplicates my pride, Which always lingers, in the hallways of my heart And beneath the surface of Summer Lake. The sky is

Supplicating, it’s literally shaking. An hour passes Faster here, the hour always held too dearly dear In paranoid and ivied walls. The ducks can do

An unwise thing correctly, and it sounds more like Dusty than Buffalo Springfield to the enokitake Sold in Springfield, Illinois, which is the opposite

Effect it has on the wild mushrooms on these shores. On cables capable of love, the geese convince The weather to taste like kvass today. Basically,

Another Cuban Missile Crisis drowned itself just Now. The clouds might ask themselves, ‘Is lowliness Allowed here?’ To which the crows might ask,

‘Does omertà sound like lightning?’ The answer’s Oubliette is ten times worse than impotence. Summer Lake isn’t smart, but it stays quiet, like

Someone too smart to say all they know. ‘Whoa, Sweet potato,’ the capital gains tax mutters To itself, knowing that what matters doesn’t mean

A thing. Some say the lake bottom’s sands receive Commands from Hearst Castle, others say Its hands are King City’s hands, and still others

Maintain more sins have been than grains of sand Times secondary gains, and that explains The beauty and industry that none can see but

All can feel on these shores. (Some possibilities Play possum, or get opsonized by hate; this one snores Like Rip Van Winkle.) This orb-weaver spider is

The Milton Friedman of Summer Lake, the wind On her web is Grenache from The Rocks District Of Milton-Freewater AVA for the eyes. The day is

Stereotypical, although it feels like three days In one…But for the lake’s good counterfactual Questions, I would forget that some die young,

But most die wrong. I’ve tried to pick up Summer Lake’s reflections in three lines or less, but The hardest truth is your own impotence. Oh,

It’s hard to hand your power over to a thing No one can see. Hopped up on distinctions – not The obvious distinctions – Summer Lake is pretty;

Cold, but pretty! In the distance, with so many Intercessory prayers, hot air balloons are rising; Shaped like teardrops, upside down and rising.

This lake re-something-or-anothered me. Are first Impressions wrong sometimes? I am a season’s Golden calf, according to the sunlight, doing

A prospector’s jig on the surface of Summer Lake. If not for the Weimar Republic’s wooden- Headedness, I’d set down my heart-song and

Listen to reason on these shores. I never trust An activist guitar, if the weather is socially clumsy. The future is reflected on the lake: it always

Laughs at us – between its math and gratitude Lessons – and never thinks of (or gives thanks to) Us enough. The presence in the lake juniors

My ears. The day is not too baffling, nor is it Jane Eyre. Space-themed and spiritual, some autumn Leaves are swimming in the rain. The ducks arrest

My attention in the mardy weather, even though they Must know my attention is dying. The barbed wire Around my stated goal is an outcome out of

Their control. Picnickers picnic with acorns and apricots, On blankets covering Holy Schnikey’s death mask. My unsandaled thoughts thrive and increase on these,

And no other shores. They are pets for the days less Important than love, when Summer Lake says it’s Humble, because it knows the right thing to say.

Summer Lake gives the comfort of commonly held And seriously absurd beliefs to the blue heron. Nothing is wrong with this lake or anything in it,

Not even the ghost of Amerigo Vespucci. It’s all so Simple to the stiff-necked molecules of water, made out Of frogs and snails and puppy-dog’s tails. These thoughts

Are fine manna in a fine ditch. Post-structuralist squirrels Can tell my heart’s in Italy, and I’m in the intellectual Laity. Chivalry’s technician sees my shovel, and they say,

‘You’ve got to hand it to him.’ Neurocysticercosis Sets the bar high; it looks at this park, and thinks The smartest monkey drew the perfect landscape.

That’s this maple tree’s previous disease, its precious One. It unfurls the ferns of my firm and foremost Beliefs, I’m told, to partialize insufferable vastidity.

We Install a Sump Pump on (What Used To Be) a Holiday (Take 2)

The oppressive heat was born a fully grown Man. I admire the result of its effort, but Despise the means of achieving it. My wife Asserts her individuality in the gunk; her Body’s allegations aren’t too soft or hard today. Her self-interest seems to have drowned in the vortex.

Our little garden knows flippancy with regards To privacy is unwise. The stepping stones can Only blather, as slugs draw nomograms on Their faces. My wife’s body speaks Proto-Indo- European in the vortex and denim overalls. Marc Chagall’s The Poet studies her. He calls her

‘Innocence: The opposite of life! A criminal with A badge!’ I hand her the tools of a crude and Rudimentary faith, and she says, ‘Jill, great books Make fine shackles.’ Her arms only have An administrative objective in the vortex, but They are where good things come from.

Jake Sheff is a pediatrician in Oregon and veteran of the US Air Force. He's married with a daughter and whole lot of pets. Poems of Jake’s are in Radius, The Ekphrastic Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Cossack Review and elsewhere. He won 1st place in the 2017 SFPA speculative poetry contest and a Laureate's Choice prize in the 2019 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest. Past poems and short stories have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. His chapbook is “Looting Versailles” (Alabaster Leaves Publishing).

Timestamp #204: The Stolen Earth and Journey's End

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/timestamp-204-the-stolen-earth-and-journeys-end/

Timestamp #204: The Stolen Earth and Journey's End

Doctor Who: The Stolen Earth Doctor Who: Journey’s End (2 episodes, s04e12-e13, 2008)

  The return of a long-dead enemy and the rise of a family.

  The Stolen Earth

The Doctor and Donna race back to Earth to find that everything is fine. It’s a calm Saturday, but the Doctor knows that the walls of the universe are breaking down because Rose has been able to travel between realities. When they return to the TARDIS, the planet begins to shake. When the violent tremors subside, the Doctor and Donna look outside to find themselves in space.

The TARDIS is in the same place, but the Earth has been stolen.

Far across the universe, Martha Jones wakes up in New York with her UNIT team. In Cardiff, Torchwood Three are picking up the pieces. On Bannerman Road, Sarah Jane Smith and Luke dust themselves off before Mr. Smith tells them to look outside. Sylvia and Wilfred look upward as well.

The planet Earth is among twenty-six other stolen planets, all of them visible in the sky above, and Rose Tyler has just arrived with a big freakin’ gun.

Back in Earth’s orbit, the Doctor and Donna puzzle over the mystery before setting a course for the Shadow Proclamation. On Earth, Torchwood Three discovers that the planet still maintains atmosphere and heat. Both Torchwood and Mr. Smith detect a space station and a fleet of ships. UNIT spools up their alert status as the two hundred ships enter orbit.

As rioters swarm the streets, Rose stops a pair of looters before using a stolen laptop to get an update.

Martha calls Jack as the planet intercepts a single repeated signal: EXTERMINATE! It rattles all of our heroes to their very cores as Dalek saucers open fire on Earth. The Supreme Dalek declares that they are now the masters of Earth.

The TARDIS touches down at the Shadow Proclamation and is greeted by a squad of Judoon. The Doctor meets with a member of the Proclamation and learns that twenty-four planets have been taken. Donna reminds the Doctor that Pyrovillia and Adipose 3 are missing. Adding the lost moon of Poosh, they have twenty-seven planets taken out of time and space and formed into an engine. The Doctor recalls that someone tried to steal the Earth a long time ago, but it can’t be…

The UNIT forces decide to activate Project Indigo, their top-secret project that Jack doesn’t think will work. Martha puts on a backpack apparatus, is handed something called the Osterhagen Key, and teleports away using Sontaran technology. Jack believes that she is scattered into atoms because the technology lacks coordinates and stabilization.

On the Dalek station, the Supreme Dalek orders the fleet to commence landing and rounding up of humans for “the Crucible”. A familiar-looking form asks about the Doctor, warning the Supreme Dalek about his pride and that Dalek Caan has an uneasy prophecy: The Doctor is coming.

Donna is deep in thought when a member of the Proclamation gives her sustenance. She knows that something was on Donna’s back and is sorry for the loss that’s about to come. The Doctor asks Donna what he’s not thinking of and she reminds him that the bees have gone missing. The Doctor says that it means that they were going home to the planet Melissa Majoria before the Earth vanished. The Doctor uses that to trace the planet’s course – an act that forces the Proclamation to order him to join their war fleet, which he declines – and the TARDIS is off to the rescue.

On Earth, the humans in Wilf and Sylvia’s neighborhood resist. The Daleks respond by destroying their homes. Wilf uses a paintball gun to try blinding a Dalek, but it doesn’t work. Before the Dalek exterminates Donna’s family, Rose rescues them by destroying the Dalek with her gun.

The TARDIS materializes in the Medusa Cascade, a place that the Doctor hasn’t visited since he was ninety years old. They’re in the middle of a rift in time and space, but there’s no trace of the missing planets.

Torchwood and Bannerman Road listen as the United Nations surrenders the planet to the Daleks. Their sorrow is interrupted by a mysterious (familiar sounding) signal from a “subwave network”. The caller is Harriet Jones (former Prime Minister) and she links Torchwood, Bannerman Road, and Martha Jones (who materialized at her mother’s house). Rose can only listen in since Sylvia considers webcams to be “naughty”.

Introductions are made around the table – Jack admires Sarah Jane’s work, but Sarah Jane has been staying away because of all the guns – and Harriet Jones warns that they will not use the Osterhagen Key under any circumstances. Rose is a bit jealous.

Using a sentient computer program from the Mr. Copper Foundation, the subwave network can boost the signal to reach the Doctor. Sure enough, the Doctor’s Army pools their resources and opens a channel, but the Daleks are hot on their trail. The TARDIS locks onto the signal as the Daleks blow a hole into Harriet’s home. She transfers control and faces them down before they exterminate her.

The TARDIS materializes in the middle of the missing planets, now one second out of sync with the rest of the universe. The Doctor opens a channel and makes contact with everyone but Rose. Moments later, Davros breaks into the signal and reintroduces himself to the Doctor. The Doctor saw him destroyed in the first year of the Time War, but Davros was rescued by Dalek Caan after the mad Dalek hybrid shifted through the time lock and rescued him. Davros returned the favor by donating his own DNA to rebuild the Dalek Empire.

The Doctor pilots the TARDIS to Earth while Dalek Caan predicts death for the most faithful companion. Jack uses Martha’s coordinates to fix his vortex manipulator and teleport to her location as the Daleks descend on Torchwood. Ianto and Gwen mount a defense.

Sarah Jane leaves Luke in Mr. Smith’s care as she races to the TARDIS’s landing point. Rose also teleports away with a wish of luck from Donna’s family, appearing behind the Doctor and Donna on a street full of abandoned cars. The Doctor and Rose race to each other, but a Dalek rounds the corner and shoots the Doctor. Jack appears and destroys the Dalek, but they’re too late.

Rose, Jack, and Donna take the Doctor back to the TARDIS. Rose and Jack know what’s coming, but Donna has no idea. The Doctor’s hand begins to glow.

Sarah Jane is trapped by Daleks. Torchwood is under assault.

The Doctor begins to regenerate.

  Journey’s End

The Doctor channels the regeneration energy into the hand in the bubbling jar, leaving his companions baffled. Meanwhile, Sarah Jane is rescued by the surprise appearance of Mickey Smith and Jackie Tyler, and Torchwood’s certain doom is stopped by a strange bubble in time. It’s a time lock developed by Tosh before her death, but it means that Ianto and Gwen are trapped in Torchwood HQ.

The Doctor used enough regeneration energy to heal himself, but refused to change his face. The Daleks surround the phone box and place it in a temporal prison before transporting it to the Crucible. Sarah Jane warns her saviors to put down their guns before they all surrender to the Daleks, intent on being sent to the Crucible. Martha uses Project Indigo, but only makes it as far as Germany.

Rose tells the Doctor about the coming darkness and how all the timelines are converging on Donna. The loss of power on the TARDIS also means that the capsule is as fragile as the wooden doors that it resembles. These are, after all, the Daleks that fought the Time Lords. The TARDIS lands at the Crucible, but Donna is lost in thought once more. The Doctor and his companions exit the TARDIS, certain of their fate as they face the Supreme Dalek, but Donna doesn’t leave the ship.

The TARDIS door closes and the Daleks eject the time capsule into the heart of the Crucible. The Doctor fears that it will be destroyed and begs for Donna’s life. On the TARDIS, Donna is enthralled by the hand in a jar, and she reaches for it, it glows with regeneration energy and explodes into a fully formed duplicate of the Doctor.

The new Doctor – the Metacrisis Doctor – pushes a button and the TARDIS vanishes. Everyone in the Crucible above believes it to be destroyed and Jack opens fire with his revolver. The Daleks exterminate him and lead Rose and the Doctor away as Jack revives and plays possum.

The Metacrisis Doctor fixes the TARDIS and bonds with Donna, discovering that he only has one heart. He’s a human-Time Lord hybrid, and he believes Donna to be special. They’ve been heading to this moment from the very beginning, from the runaway bride to the convenient parking of Donna’s car near the TARDIS during the Adipose incident. But time or destiny or fate or whatever is not done yet.

Martha arrives at a castle, one of the Osterhagen bases. The caretaker threatens her by gunpoint not to go through with the plan, but Martha presses on.

On the Crucible, Jack escapes disposal and is free to find his allies. Meanwhile, Sarah Jane and her new friends arrive. The Doctor and Rose are put in confinement beams and converse with Davros, who the Doctor calls the Daleks’ pet. Davros reveals Dalek Caan, the last of the Cult of Skaro, and says that the Supreme Dalek is afraid of the mad hybrid’s prophecies about the Children of Time. Davros revels in the darkness with the Doctor, but the Time Lord puts it away as quickly as it surfaced when he learns about the secret weapon: A reality bomb.

As the prisoners are processed, Sarah Jane and Mickey escape with her sonic lipstick. The Daleks test their reality bomb on the prisoners, using the neutrino energy channeled through the aligned planets as a weapon. Just as it’s about to fire, Jackie’s teleporter recharges and she escapes as the prisoners are vaporized. They literally vanished from existence.

Davros plans to destroy the entirety of creation, every single corner of reality in every universe. The only thing to remain will be the Daleks.

Jack meets up with Sarah Jane, Mickey, and Jackie. Jack and Mickey share a manly hug as Sarah Jane produces a warp star – a warp fold conjugation trapped in a carbonized shell, or an “explosion waiting to happen”, gifted to her by a Verron soothsayer – to destroy the Crucible. On Earth, Martha makes contact with the other Osterhagen bases and opens a channel to the Crucible, threatening to use a chain of twenty-five nuclear warheads around the globe to destroy the planet. Jack also makes contact, threatening to use the warp star to destroy the Crucible, and Davros is pleased to see Sarah Jane once again.

Davros is pleased that the Doctor, a pacifist, has honed his companions into weapons ready to kill. He asks the Doctor – the man who keeps running because he dare not look back for fear of the shame – to consider how many others have died in his name. The drama is a distraction as the Supreme Dalek locks onto all of the Doctor’s allies and teleports them to the Doctor’s location.

The Daleks then initiate the reality bomb.

One the TARDIS, the Metacrisis Doctor and Donna rig a device to cause the reality bomb to backfire. The TARDIS materializes in the Crucible and the Metacrisis Doctor races out, but Davros strikes him with an electrical charge before trapping him. Donna picks up the device and is similarly dispatched before Davros destroys the weapon. Unfortunately for the Daleks, Donna stops the reality bomb, Davros, and the Daleks with knowledge that she shouldn’t have.

The creation of the Metacrisis Doctor was a two-way street. It created the Doctor-Donna, which was sparked by Davros when he shot her.

The Time Lords and humans send the missing planets home and round up the Daleks. Davros asked why Dalek Caan couldn’t see this coming, but the truth is that Dalek Caan put everything in motion to end the Dalek reign of terror. The Supreme Dalek tries to stop them, but Jack destroys it. As the Doctor rushes into the TARDIS, the Metacrisis Doctor decides to send a surge of energy into the entire fleet to prevent the Daleks from attacking the universe.

As the Daleks explode, the Doctor is appalled at the bloodlust of his duplicate, and he rushes his allies into the TARDIS. The Doctor offers sanctuary for Davros, but earns the name “Destroyer of Worlds” in return as his offer is declined. The TARDIS takes off but cannot break free of the time bubble, so the Doctor contacts Torchwood and Bannerman Road – including K9! – to break free with every companion on the console.

Just as the TARDIS is meant to be flown.

The time capsule tows the planet Earth back to its rightful place in our solar system. As they arrive, having saved the world in epic fashion, the console room erupts in a celebration that bleeds onto the planet below.

The Doctor bids farewell once again to Sarah Jane, who tells him that he has the biggest family on Earth. Mickey decides to stay behind in this reality as the Doctor disables Jack’s vortex manipulator. Jack and Martha walk away with Mickey in close pursuit.

The Doctor takes the TARDIS to Bad Wolf Bay in Rose’s parallel universe. Jackie tells the Metacrisis Doctor that she needs to find her husband and son, and the Doctor tells Rose that he’s leaving his clone with her. The Metacrisis Doctor is exactly how Rose found the Doctor, full of anger and fury, and he needs Rose’s influence to grow and change. The big difference is that he is part human and will grow old with her.

She asks the Doctor what he was going to say on the day he left her behind in Bad Wolf Bay. The Metacrisis Doctor whispers the answer to her and they kiss as the TARDIS vanishes from sight.

As the TARDIS flies, Donna’s Time Lord knowledge begins to overload her brain. She wants to stay with him, but if she does, the metacrisis will destroy her. She cannot be with him forever as she wanted. She begs him not to leave her behind, but he has no choice but to say goodbye as he wipes her mind.

He delivers her home and makes Wilf and Sylvia promise that she can never remember anything about her travels with the Doctor. If she remembers any thread of it, she will die. Wilf is understanding but angry, and he takes solace in the fact that she saved so many in her travels. For one shining moment she was the most important woman in existence. Sylvia says that she still is. The Doctor reminds her to tell Donna every once in a while.

Donna awakens and rushes in, but she doesn’t remember any of it. The Doctor bids her farewell as John Smith, and Wilf promises to look up to the stars on his behalf every night. The Doctor walks away in the rain takes flight in the TARDIS once more.

Time Lord victorious. Time Lord alone.

  It is no secret that this story earns every last bit of a high rating.  The balance of action and dramatic tension as all of our heroes from the last four years come together to defeat one of the Doctor’s oldest enemies is masterful. They all bring strengths and weaknesses, and they leverage all of them together to save the world. The universe. All of creation.

The cinematography was quite impressive. I was blown away by the beautiful dichotomy between the close shots of the celebrating family and the long shots of the Doctor alone and somewhat defeated.

There’s also a great deal of attention paid to the franchise’s mythology, both old and new. It’s important for them to do so because, hey, it’s the Daleks. We met Davros in Genesis of the Daleks and watched him lose his hand in Revelation of the Daleks. UNIT gets another crack at the Daleks after their first encounter in Day of the Daleks. The Daleks tried to steal the Earth before in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, which is also where we first encountered a Supreme Dalek.

We last saw Davros and the Supreme Dalek in Remembrance of the Daleks as the Dalek Civil War came to a close, and that’s a really interesting dynamic: Davros commanded the Imperial Daleks and the Supreme Dalek commanded the Renegades. After the Time War, it seems that bygones are bygones as there is only one faction of Daleks now.

Of course, in the post-Time War era, we’ve seen the Cult of Skaro. Survivors of the Time War, it adds a twist as a hybrid helps give birth to the new Dalek empire before destroying it.

In more comical callbacks, we’ve seen Daleks disabled by attacking their eyestalks – The Daleks, Planet of the Daleks, Resurrection of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks, The Parting of the Ways – often screaming, “My vision is impaired!” This time, the trope was flipped to both humorous appeal and heightened tension.

The Doctor has been shot by a Dalek before, but this is the first time it was effectively lethal. When the Third Doctor took a hit from a Dalek cannon in Planet of the Daleks, he was only paralyzed for a short time.

In terms of the missing planets, the theft of Earth is nothing new since it was stolen by the Time Lords (and renamed Ravolox) in The Trial of a Time Lord. Earth’s twin planet Mondas was moved and became home to the Cybermen.

We heard about Adipose 3, Pyrovillia, and the Lost Moon of Poosh through this series. We’ve never seen Shallacatop or Jahoo, but three others have been mentioned in one way or another: Clom was the home of the Abzorbaloff (Love & Monsters), Woman Wept was the site of an off-screen adventure for Rose and the Ninth Doctor (Boom Town), and Calufrax Minor could be in the same vein as the miniaturized Calufrax from The Pirate Planet.

Then we get to the Children of Time.

I know that Rose is a fan favorite, but I stand by my assessment that Martha was superior in every way. Rose is a liability to the Doctor, almost costing him his life in the middle of a war. Sure, the reunion was touching, but her jealousy was nearly intolerable.

It’s a little ironic that an avatar resembling her will be the key to saving the Doctors, the Time Lords, and Gallifrey down the road.

The consequences of the Rose and Doctor relationship also gives us the notion that Time Lords have some degree of control over their regenerations.

Martha, Sarah Jane, and Jack continue to bring their strengths to bear in a conflict, each tackling the problem with their unique skillsets. I had the biggest grin at Sarah Jane’s line about Torchwood using their guns too often, and Jack’s fanboy nature over Sarah Jane was adorable.

Gwen (who gets the callback to The Unquiet Dead) and Ianto holding down the fort at Torchwood makes sense, particularly since they’ve never encountered Daleks before. The same goes for Luke and Mr. Smith. I was also pleased to see Mickey (“Us Smiths gotta stick together!”) and Jackie following Rose through the breach and, in a natural evolution since their debut, fighting for their planet.

That leaves us with Donna. Oh, Donna. Her departure is heartbreaking, particularly since she wanted to travel with the Doctor for the rest of her life. She considered him to be her destiny, and she was correct thanks to Dalek Caan. Now she doesn’t remember any part of her adventures with the Doctor, even though the universe remembers her.

Donna Noble was the Doctor’s conscience, saving him with her direct nature and wide-eyed innocence more than once. She reminded him of his empathy, which Davros tries to use against him by reminding him of those who sacrificed themselves for him and those he couldn’t save – Harriet Jones, Ceth Ceth Jafe, the Controller, Lynda Moss, Sir Robert MacLeish, Angela Price, Colin Skinner, Ursula Blake, Bridget Sinclair, the Face of Boe, Chantho, Astrid Peth, Luke Rattigan, Jenny, River Song, and the hostess – and how easily any of his Earth family could join those ranks.

None of the Doctor’s companions physically died to save the world, but the Donna that he knew is gone. She didn’t love him, but she loved everything about him. She believed in him. She saved him.

And he saved her in turn.

I’m going to miss her.

  Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

  UP NEXT – Series Four Summary

    The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

I'm not a man or a woman. I'm a soft and tender worm mysteriously wending my way through the harsh and splintery world of a rotting log– not just surviving the sharpness, but thriving as I incorporate it into my own pink muscle-ringed body.

THEY SAY literary novelists can’t do genre. This is perhaps most acutely felt with mystery and noir, which has fascinated and occasionally defied postmodern eminences from Pynchon to Auster and beyond. Antony Lamont, antihero of Gilbert Sorrentino’s incredible Mulligan Stew, stands out as the funniest case study, albeit fictional. A fading, minor experimental writer immersed in an awful fusion of the new novel and a noir potboiler (the same sort of novel it seems Paul Giamatti’s character is working on in Sideways — his “Robbe-Grillet mystery”), the pompous Lamont’s tilt is equal parts cynicism and desperation — his radical approach really just a bald-faced cash grab, so smugly assured is he that the dark ambience, gratuitous sex, and abrupt violence of his meandering and largely content-free novel will finally nab him the hit he deserves. This is not, thankfully, the sort of novel that Jonathan Lethem gives us in The Feral Detective. Though you can be forgiven for imagining otherwise if you’re not familiar with his work, Lethem is no stranger to noir, or genre fiction in general — he came from genre, and is, in fact, a genre writer, especially when he promiscuously blends genres together as he’s been doing since his fantastic Philip K. Dick-meets-Raymond Chandler debut, Gun, with Occasional Music. In short, Lethem is a master, the sort of master for whom narratives about genres, as opposed to genres themselves, are the quarry. That he’s reached a high degree of mainstream success within the genre of literary fiction only burnishes his bona fides as a master of form.  

The Feral Detective follows Phoebe Siegler, a thirtysomething New Yorker and former Times staffer who has traveled to the West Coast to track down Arabella, the missing daughter of her friend Roslyn. Arabella, a freshman at Reed College, stopped answering Roslyn’s attempts to contact her a few weeks into her first semester, and Phoebe — newly liberated from her job — decides a trip to Portland to pay the girl a wellness call is just what she and Arabella need. Arriving to find her gone and school officials oblivious, Phoebe digs in and discovers a slim trail of several-weeks-old credit card transactions leading down the coast to Los Angeles’s Union Station and finally, cryptically, to a travel plaza purchase in an unfamiliar corner of San Bernardino County, where the lead goes cold. Because she is worried about Arabella, and because she loves her friend — Roslyn is herself a mother figure to Phoebe — and because she is not ready to go back home, Phoebe decides to extend her vacation. The reason she is not ready to face New York — the reason she quit her job — haunts the novel from its first pages:

Blame the election. I’d been working for the Great Gray News organization, in a hard-won, lowly position meant to guarantee me a life spent rising securely through the ranks. This was the way it was supposed to go, before I’d bugged out. I’d done everything right, like a certain first female nominee we’d all relied upon, even my male friends who hated her, as a cap on the barking madness of the world. Now she took walks in the hills around Chappaqua and I’d checked into the Doubletree a mile west of Upland, California.

The Feral Detective is not only a novel of the Trump era, it is a novel largely about it — specifically, how the Trump era has felt for a certain set of us who woke up on November 9, 2016, with a newfound appreciation for the arguments of reality simulation theorists. If noir is at its core fundamentally the cruel stripping away of illusion, there could hardly be a better subject than a liberal coping with the Trump era. So thoroughly and suddenly was the narrative of Hillary Clinton’s inevitable victory evacuated, so traumatic was the puncturing of the optimistic Obama-era bubble, and so bizarre and even nightmarish have been the subsequent years that it’s easy to think of the whole world as having taken a noir-ish turn: worst timeline confirmed, doomsday clock ticking ever closer to midnight. For Phoebe, it is all too much to take:

My room reminded me of a gun moll’s wisecrack, in some old film I’d seen, on entering an apartment: “Early Nothing.” I was left with Facebook, where my friends had responded to the election by reducing themselves to shrill squabbling cartoons. Or I could opt for CNN, where various so-called surrogates enacted their shrill hectoring cartoons without needing to be reduced, since it was their life’s only accomplishment to have been preformatted for this brave new world. Television had elected itself, I figured. It could watch itself too for all I cared. I read my book.

There is, in her quest to find Arabella, more than a little self-interest — it is also a quest to find, if not the fictional world she thought she inhabited, a way to understand the one she never knew she lived in all along.

Her guide in this is Charles Heist, the eponymous feral detective, so called because of his penchant for tracking down lost, troubled, cult-brainwashed, and otherwise disappeared or off-the-grid kids. Working out of a nondescript strip-mall office in Upland, Charles Heist takes Phoebe’s case with a typically non-committal “no-promises” sort of attitude, but also with a decidedly nontypical disinterest in any sort of upfront payment. Other unusual details include the presence in Heist’s office of a wounded possum, which Heist is doggedly though unsentimentally nursing back to health, and a ragged, mute young girl named Melinda, apparently recently and quite literally feral herself. Phoebe is nonplussed but also, she must admit, intrigued — and Charles is a looker in a flinty, sunburnt sort of way:

He resembled one of those pottery leaf-faces you find hanging on the sheds of wannabe-English gardens. His big nose and lips, his deep-cleft chin and philtrum, looked like ceramic or wood. Somehow, despite or because of all of this, I registered him as attractive, with an undertow of disgust. The disgust was perhaps at myself, for noticing.

His services are retained. With nothing to go on except the travel plaza purchase, and a hunch that Arabella — a devoted fan of Leonard Cohen — might have ascended nearby Mount Baldy where the late, great songwriter frequented an isolated Zen retreat, Charles sets out and Phoebe returns to her hotel to brood on the case and the mysterious dashing man onto whose broad shoulders she’s laid her last, best hope.

These introductory chapters are incredible — it truly is a lot of fun to see Phoebe fall so quickly and so hard for Heist. Making Heist the honest and unapologetic object of Phoebe’s post-Obama rebound fantasy is a delicious complication of the femme-fatale tradition, and it’s great to see her unapologetic voraciousness respectfully, even somewhat meekly, received by the terse but game Heist. Lethem wrings plenty of comedy out of the improbable culture-clash romance that rapidly develops between the two, but there is something troubling that develops, too. For a writer who is normally so good with voice and so adept at playing off types while still imbuing his characters with enough specificity and depth to keep them from becoming cartoons, Phoebe begins, as the novel progresses, to feel at times much too broad — a weird gestalt of awkward comedienne, working girl, and other tropes whose presence isn’t entirely exorcised by cheeky self-consciousness:

I’d go home with a California story or two in my back pocket. No, sorry, I didn’t ever set eyes on the ocean or the Hollywood sign, but did I tell you the one about the porta-potty levee? The trailer park blowjob? Oh, what a Manic Pixie Am I! I pictured telling this over late lunch at Elephant & Castle.

Through Phoebe, Lethem means to implicate himself and by extension the whole cohort of urbane, liberal, upwardly mobile folks too assured of victory and too preoccupied with themselves to imagine the failure of their certainties in 2016. But although Phoebe’s preoccupation with what Heist thinks of her, for example, is funny, it began to worry me. On the one hand, it is great that Lethem allows Phoebe to be shallow — as he does — and to seem at times to forget about the search for Arabella while daydreaming about her new gumshoe boytoy — as she does — but is this an unvarnished caricature of complacent white feminism of the sort that both the left and the right now routinely flog for predictable results?

The plot, depending on how well the conceit works for you, congeals, or thickens — it is discovered that Arabella is caught between two warring cultish groups of desert dwellers, the feminist “Rabbits” and the boorish “Bears” and some genuinely funny moments, striking passages, and typically excellent walk-on characters follow. Each band is a primal caricature of the current partisan divide and not much more nuanced than what you’d get from reading Daily Kos or The Daily Caller. It’s mostly burlesque, but there are hints at a deeper reckoning. Phoebe, who spends much of the book in sidekick mode, gets a memorable “flower-pot” moment. The gesture — which Phoebe names after the belated contribution of a corseted heroine in a half-remembered Western she used to watch with her dad, which involved the woman throwing a flower-pot down on the head of a villain from a second-story window — kicks off an extended denouement that pleasurably complicates the existing dynamic between Phoebe and Heist. By the novel’s end, most of my doubts were, if not totally expunged, at least leavened by the complex affection I’d begun to feel for Phoebe.

Heist, a kind of subterranean Trump foil — a paragon of non-toxic masculinity — is the more lovable character, but Phoebe is ultimately more interesting. The feral detective, true to form, spirits Phoebe away from the old assurances and dead narratives to which she reflexively, repeatedly, retreats, even, in the end, the old one about the guy getting the girl, and she realizes ultimately that learning to live in the new world means letting go of the old.

Perhaps the ultimate truth of noir is that no matter where you’re standing, there is always another floor to fall through. If there is a central lesson of The Feral Detective, it might be simply to embrace this fact; as the Cohen-head Arabella might quote: “You want it darker.” Yes, and for a reason. Darkness can be a renewal, death and inversion driving out the old to make space for the new.

¤

Seth Blake is a writer from New Hampshire living in Los Angeles.

The post Always Another Floor to Fall Through appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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1991 Recommended

A Note on 1991: I think it’s fair to say 1996 is collectively thought of as the the ur-transition year for Phish, where they pivoted from the quirky New England cult band that stumbled into an arena size following, into the streamlined cosmic rock unit that sold out said hockey rinks and sheds from coast to coast until that epoch came to an end when it all unraveled a few years later. Until I listened to 1991 I understood this to be true.

Now though, I’d argue that 1991 was the O.G. transition year. One that unfolds in three distinct tours that, when it’s all said and done, nudged the band’s course away from the controlled and composed style that dominates ‘89 through the summer of ‘91, towards the more wide open set lists and chaotic improvisations that won’t fully bloom until the late summer of ‘93. 

With that in mind, the Fall 1991 tour deserves mention because this is when they re-opened the door that they closed in ‘88 after some fairly amateurish attempts at open improv in their early history. Re-visit performances like the wide open transition from TMWSIY>David Bowie on 10/24/91, the form breaking Weekapaug from 11/8/91, the On Broadway jam in Weekapaug at the Sommerville Theatre on 11/21/91 and the expansive YEM from 11/24/91 at Dartmouth, where they crack open the composed intro, a crevice that will eventually be filled by what we’ve come to know as the nirvana section. 

Fall ‘91 isn’t a classic tour by any stretch. There are few top-to-bottom gigs for your consideration, and similar to the aforementioned other great transition year, the highs they do reach are soon to be topped by what is just around the corner. By the time April of 1992 rolls around the band will be hitting peaks that put the previous fall in the rear view. 

Recommended Shows:

3/17/91 Wheeler Opera House, Aspen, CO

One of the chattiest gigs in Phish history, with warm callbacks to the Colorado ‘88 tour and good natured ribbing re: Fish getting lost either tripping or hiking in Telluride. Musically the show climbs the heights as well, with ripping long sustain from Trey in Foam, wondrous nirvana jamming in the rare at this point Slave To The Traffic Light and a raunchy, mid-2nd set Tweezer. 

4/19/91 Nietzsche’s, Buffalo, NY

The band’s only visit to the venue named for the German philosopher. The second set is the pick here, and may be the best one of the whole spring. Check the fierce bliss release of the Harry Hood opener, follow it straight through the platonic ideal of that classic ‘91 combo of Landlady>Destiny and stay for the quiet/loud A-Train, Antelope set closer. Bonus comes in the form of the 1st onstage mention of the classic band “Guyser” inside joke. 

4/21/91 SUNY Potsdam, Potsdam, NY

Phish celebrates earth day on the New York/Canada border. A front loaded show, with the fireworks coming in the 1st set in the form of an elliptical outro in Divided Sky, active and abnormal Trey moves in Foam, and a scenic Ac/Dc Bag. 2nd frame has it moments too: upwelling arepeggios in the normally arpeggio-less Possum to open the set, an earth day centered Forbins narration and saucy bass bombs in the Harry Hood intro.

5/17/91 Campus Club, Providence, RI

A hot, hot show, literally and figuratively. The a.c. goes out for the night during the Chalk Dust opener, after the venue blows a fuse and can only recover enough power to feed the band. On the figurative front: this is the best beginning to end show of the spring. Whole 1st set builds towards a late Mike’s Groove. Trey develops a patient and repetitive motif and then hammers it home for a thundering and intense crowd-fed peak. Other half of the show is just as locked in, with a Mississippi Queen easter egg in Bike, a happy birthday tribute to Page, and a peak in Harry Hood that would be the crest of any other show of the Spring if it weren’t for that Weekapaug.

7/23/91 The Bayou, Washington D.C.

It’s tough to single out a given show from “The Horn Tour.” They are all remarkably consistent from night to night, if a tad repetitive when listened to in one whole block. For me, this night at The Bayou, an underrated Phish venue if there ever was one, hits the sweet spot of the seven piece unit tightening up after the initial run of show combined with harnessing the energy of the indoor venue where the crowd always seemed to bring it at every show the band played there.

8/3/91 Amy’s Farm, Auburn, ME

You know a show is a stone cold classic in band lore when it only has to be mentioned from fan to fan as simply “Amy’s Farm” and you know exactly what it is. The precursor to the modern Phish Festival that will arrive 5 years later, the band threw this free three set party as a thank you to their fans for their 8th anniversary. “Go wild because no one is going to stop you here”~Trey. Do i need to say more?

10/24/91 Hotel St. Michael, Prescott, AZ

In terms of Phish geography at this point in their career, this is the middle of nowhere-a supposedly haunted venue in the southwest college town. Easily one of the shows of the fall, musical highlights abound: an effortless Divided Sky cracks open the 1st set. Open improv from TMWSIY of all places, as it makes an interstitial transition into David Bowie. There is no slowdown after set break either. First, a tense Mike’s Groove to open and later, two large bust outs for the era: the first Tube since 11/90 and the final Slave To The Traffic Light until the infamous Cincinnati Zoo show in August ‘93. 

Hon. Mention: 10/13/91, 10/31/91, 11/30/91, 12/31/91

Recommended Tracks: 

2/3/91 David Bowie, Bouncing Around The Room 

2/8/91 Run Like An Antelope

2/14/91 Reba

2/22/91 Run Like An Antelope

3/8/91 Tweezer>Dave’s Energy Guide>Tweezer 

3/22/91 Run Like An Antelope

3/23/91 Chalk Dust Torture

4/4/91 David Bowie

4/12/91 Good Times Bad Times

4/15/91 Mike’s Groove

4/16/91 Paul and Silas

4/19/91 Harry Hood, Landlady>Destiny

4/21/91 Divided Sky, Foam, Ac/Dc Bag

4/26/91 Harry Hood

4/27/91 Reba

5/3/91 You Enjoy Myself

5/12/91 Destiny Unbound

5/17/91 Weekapaug Groove, Harry Hood

7/13/91 You Enjoy Myself

7/15/91 Dinner And A Movie

9/26/91 Divided Sky

9/27/91 Buried Alive

9/29/91 You Enjoy Myself, Reba

10/4/91 Chalk Dust Torture, Reba, David Bowie

10/10/91 Runaway Jim, Brother

10/12/91 Esther

10/13/91 Weekapaug Groove, David Bowie

10/17/91 You Enjoy Myself

10/18/91 Wilson>Llama, Run Like An Antelope, Split Open and Melt

10/19/91 My Sweet One

10/24/91 Divided Sky, TMWSIY>David Bowie

10/31/91 Brother, Foam, You Enjoy Myself, Runaway Jim

11/8/91 Weekapaug Groove

11/9/91 Terrapin

11/13/91 Possum

11/14/91 Llama, Tube, Roll Like A Cantaloupe

11/21/91 Weekapaug Groove

11/22/91 Stash

11/24/91 Fluffhead, You Enjoy Myself

11/30/91 You Enjoy Myself

12/5/91 Tube

12/31/91 Stash, Llama

road trip fic

At first, it wasn't noticeable. Just a few people, gone for the day. It was swiftly pinned down as a 24 hour bug. After two days, people began to wonder about the flu. After three, people started getting scared. Missing posters went up, phone calls were made, police were sent to look around, suspecting a prank, or maybe even a slew of movers, left for another town. But nothing came of it- none of the fifteen newly missing people were found. Council members, officers, regular members of the community- gone. The second Bea came home to her eerily quiet apartment, she knew. It was a feeling in her stomach: a pit that sank down, down, down until she wanted to throw up, or scream, or cry to make it disappear. But she held on, calling his name and ransacking the house, opening every door until it was overwhelmingly obvious her father wasn't home. She didn't sleep that night. When Bea fled from her house to work that morning, trying so /so/ hard to cling to some semblance of normality, Creek wasn't there. On any other day, Bea would've grumbled a bit about having to pick up the slack, but would've been secretly relieved to have a day away from the old creep. Today, she sat in the backroom and buried her head in her hands, shoulders shaking as her entire world broke down around her. She killed her father. Or, if the cave-in hadn't, dehydration soon would. An eye for an eye, Mae for her father. She briefly wondered if it was worth it. Her dad wasn't a bad guy. Creek, maybe, but not her dad. He was a man who had been broken to the point of no return, but he didn't deserve to die, not like that. Or maybe he did. The cult killed people. Her /dad/ could've killed people for all she knew. And if he hadn't, he'd certainly stood by while others did. This was too much. Too much to handle now, in this cramped, cluttered backroom by herself. Maybe too much to handle ever. But she couldn't live in denial, like Mae. Or excuse it like Gregg. Or, worse yet, agree with it like Angus. So there, in the storage room of the little store, her store, -she owned it now, she supposed- Bea made the active decision to live with it. ----------------- Possum Springs was healing. Things were still pretty messed up, but after a month, they were getting better. Aunt Molly was gone. Mae's mom kept assuring her that no, no, her aunt was fine, she was probably on a vacation, or a work trip and had forgotten to tell them. Mae pretended it was the truth. Other people were missing too- the head council member, some lesser ones, and a whole bunch of people that Mae had known. People she'd talked to, shared meals with, waved to from across the street. She couldn't go to the woods anymore. Even Germ's house was too close to That Place for her. She didn't like to think about it- preferring to shove it to some deep dark corner of her mind and forget. ((Too fast of a tone change?)) So Mae went to work. She'd gotten a job at Taco Buck, which was good! True, she didn't have a car to deliver with, but she /could/ Naruto run down the street at an alarming pace, and that was good enough. Mae balanced a bag of Mega Tacos in her arms. Struggling to pick up her ringing flip-phone, she didn't bother to check the Caller ID. "Heyyyyy." Gregg's voice echoed through the tinny receiver. "Hey, Mae! What's up?" "Not a lot. I was thinking about going to the park. To, y'know... get away." Gregg's voice filled with understanding. "Oh. Yeah, I get it." There was a beat of silence. "Can me and Angus come? We're not doing anything tonight, so I thought maybe we could all hang out before..." The words 'before we leave for good' hung in the air. Mae waved the growing pain in her chest away. "Sounds good! I'll invite Bea, too." "Nice!" "Five okay?" Gregg leaned away from his phone for a second, and Mae could hear muffled shouting. "Yeah, that works!" "See you then." "Bye, dude!" Gregg hung up with a faint click. Two down, one to go. Mae dialed Bea's number, impatiently waiting for her to pick up. "Hello?" Bea answered. "Hey, Bea! You free tonight?" "Are you asking-" Bea's low voice held an element of shock. "Gregg, Angus and I are going to the park, you wanna come?" "Oh. Sure, okay." "Five work for you?" "Yep. Bye." "See y-" /click/. Well. That was hasty. Now, Mae had to deliver some tacos. --------------------------------------- Bea liked spending as little time as possible at her empty house, which was why she was thrilled at Mae's offer of the park. Even if she was expecting something else. No, no, she was just tired! Long day at work. As always. Possum Springs didn't really have a park, per say. It had a tiny little plot of land with a fountain that only worked half the time, and a run down swing set. But she'd go anyway. When she arrived, Mae was already swinging as high as she possibly could, seemingly on an endless quest to swing completely around the bar. Gregg was beside her, shifting from side to side in his swing in an attempt to shove her off. She sat down next to Angus. "Hey." "Hey." It was good. A conversation with Angus wasn't exactly talkative, but it was peaceful, and fufilling for both of them. Quiet, but nice. Just like Angus. They sat together, the sun oddly warm for November, watching Gregg and Mae grow increasingly rowdy in their efforts to dethrone the other. A slight breeze ruffled the remaining leaves on the trees. Mae let out a shout, and hopped to the ground, Gregg crowing wildly in the background. She dusted her shirt off indignantly, before eying her friends oddly. There was something different about her, Bea noticed. She looked less... free. Her usually bright eyes had a hint of something else behind them. Something tired, and broken. It scared Bea that this was usual, now. ((FIX LAST SENTENCE LATER)) Mae motioned for Gregg to join them, and looked critically at the scenery around them before smiling widely. "I've been thinking." Angus sighed. "Hey!" Mae chortled. "That's not fair!" "Go on." Bea drawled. "I have a plan." "For?" "Well..." Mae paused for dramatic effect, obviously relishing in their anticipation. Bea sort of wanted to kick her in the kneecap. "We should go on a road trip!" Mae looked around at them, gauging their reactions. Bea started coughing loudly, hacking shocked breaths escaping from her lungs. Gregg shot to his feet. "Yeah! We totally should!" Mae slung an arm around her best friend, grinning devilishly at Angus and Bea. Angus seemed to be contemplating the option. He took a deep breath. "No." Bea, still in shock, noticed the remarkable similarity between the downcast expressions on the two daredevil's faces. Gregg pouted, and Mae made her eyes as wide and innocent as possible. Angus wasn't fazed. "We can't just stop now, Bug. Not when we're this close." Gregg adjusted his leather jacket slightly. "These are our friends! And, hell, soon we're not gonna even see them anymore!" Gregg pleaded with his boyfriend, who looked away. "The Plan can be put on hold for what-" Gregg looked inquisitively at Mae. "-three days? Four?" "Dunno. I didn't actually think I'd get this far." Mae said sheepishly. Angus pinched the bridge of his nose. "Where would we even go?" "We can work out the details later!" "...This is ridiculous." "I'm ridiculous!" Gregg chimed in. Bea felt inclined to agree. Resolve cracking, Angus furrowed his brows. "We have work." "We'll leave Friday, and call in sick on Monday." "The four of us? On the same day? In a small town?" "Yeah, if anyone asks we'll say we all caught the travel bug!" Gregg's excitement was gaining momentum, and it was obvious Angus wasn't going to hold up under the blond's relentless assault of sweetness. Angus turned to Bea, sending a silent plea for backup. Bea threw her hands up in a "what can you do" gesture, smiling slightly. He groaned, resting his head in his hands. "Bea, please..." Thanks, Angus. The decision was in /her/ hands now. Greeaaat. Mae seemed to sense this too, as she quickly switched her attention to Bea, giving her her best angelic smile. Bea said nothing. Mae continued to flutter her eyelashes. Bea, again, said nothing. She wasn't going to lose. Apparently, neither was Mae, as she detached herself from Gregg to sidle up next to the older girl. Bea raised a single eyebrow, a talent she possessed that made Mae insanely incensed. Mae winked. Sighing heavily, Bea pursed her lips. "We'll use my car." Mae shot up with a cheer, pulling the four of them into a hug. "Oh my God Oh my God /Oh my God/, we're gonna do this!" Mae pulled back, looking critically at Angus. "We /are/ doing this, right?" "I guess." "Yay!" Mae cheered, burying her face in Angus's scarf. Bea didn't miss the glare Angus threw at her over Mae's shoulder. Serves him right. If he didn't want this outcome, he shouldn't have handed it over to Bea. "So," Mae spouted happily, seemingly vibrating with energy, "where are we gonna go? Cuz', I've actually got nothing, and-" "The Grand Canyon." Gregg interrupted. "Huh?" "The Grand Canyon! That's... That's a place people go, right? We could do that?" "Yeah..." Mae said, pausing to think for a second. "Yeah, you're right! Bea, Angus, what do you think?" Angus pursed his lips, clearly still unhappy that this was happening. "It's a long way." "More places to go in between!" Bea had to see the logic in that. And, well, it'd be nice to see such an iconic part of America. Even if the whole country was on an economic slide due to power-hungry officials and underhanded corrupt dealings. Wait, no! Focus, Bea. "How long would this take?" She asked skeptically. Gregg quickly whipped out his phone, fingers tapping across the screen at a lightening pace. "Well, if we..." He shook his head slightly, blonde strands of hair sweeping to the other side of his forehead. "No, no... If we hit Vegas, which we definitely are, then..." Gregg typed a few more things onto his screen, before dropping his phone into the pocket of his leather jacket. ((Too much description of Gregg?)) "Accounting for driving, snack breaks, stops, sleeping, and at least one random accident, I'd say four days? Roughly?" Bea nodded. "We could leave on Friday after work, do stops and stuff on Saturday and Sunday, arrive at the canyon on Monday, then get home early Tuesday morning before work." Bea looked at Angus, almost in disbelief that she was siding with Gregg. "We... could actually do this. It's not as ludicrous as it sounds." Looking as if he'd just been drafted into battle, Angus merely sighed heavily. "Okay, fine! Fine. We'll pack tonight." Mae's eyes were alight with joy. "I'll grab some snacks." They needed this, Bea thought. They all needed to escape from this town, even if just for a little bit. Mae most of all. Mae and Gregg spun each other around again. Bea watched thoughtfully. "Tomorrow, right after everyone's done working, you grab your stuff and meet me at the Pickaxe. I'll pick everyone up from there, and we can head out, I guess." Mae waved happily, looking more alive than Bea had seen her in weeks. "I'll see you then!" Gregg ferociously bobbed his head up and down in agreement, and Angus nodded in affirmation. "I'll see you then." Bea whispered. ((I gotta add an ending sentence that's a lil happier bc I want this to be a fluffier fic))

You ok? You reblogged the Rachel Carson quote 5 times

It's really good, your honor. I also queued it for my religion blog.

How does one join the cult of the cornered possum?

You just have to find the ugly and gross things in this world sacred, and be kinda funny about it.

For the record, the name of the tag comes from the Mountain Goats, the song "Possum by Night" from the album In League with Dragons was almost titled "Cult of the Cornered Possum" and I just think that name goes hard as hell. Since that song was the inspiration for my religion blog, the posts that are a little too silly for that blog get the tag inspired by it too.

Mature christians in your area want to talk to YOU about varying doctrines regarding the Eucharist!