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gothicryder1 · 2 years

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FOR ROLEPLAY OR WHAT ONE YOUD LIKE TO SEE WRITTEN!

[C] Please note I am Lit to low novella writing. Generally I write about five paragraphs, three if I'm brain dead and struggling. Please note in all these stories while we write the main characters, I enjoy writing other characters as well as background ones. I would like someone to join me in that so its not just me ^^

[C] Warning tags. Must be 18 plus! I write Gore, horror ,torture, adult themes, depression. I have no triggers expect I’m not a fan of rape, incest and stuff like that.

[C] Themes will include Supernatural, myths, fantasy, marvel, ghost or monsters. I’m not one to follow the movies to the letter and often find the plots not always the best. Therefore I often change movies such as Tony and his lost sibling idea.

[C]Here are the main voices I’m willing to play, people that I muse the highest. However, I’m also willing to try. Wanda, Natasha, Peter Parker (Tom and Andrews) Hela, Bucky (NO romance! I can’t play him romantically! Friends only!)

[C]Characters I will not play! Deadpool, Starlord, Steve, Vision, Rocket, Groot, Drax, Vemon

[C] As always feel free to add your own plot ideas! I’m very open to those! And you are free to add to the ones I have listed. A Lot of these are just base ideas and can change as we go.

[C] Again please note I work a full time job Thursday - Monday 1:00 pm to 10:00 pm and Sundays are the days I do note write! If I happen to respond it's because I had time, but otherwise don’t expect it.

[C] In the Stories you can pick to play either the main person, Tony, Thor, Loki and I can play the oc or cc, or reverse

[C] Double ups welcome depending!

[IC]PLOT IDEAS

[IC]TONY STARK x CC OR OC (Male or female love interest welcome. Will play Tony or his counterpart)

[IC]LONG LOST BROTHER OR SISTER

[IC] The Stark’s had more than one kid, a younger brother/sister that was stolen from them by Hydra. They put all the time and energy they could into finding them, but could never track them down. Years later after training and being torn apart by Hydra Tony’s sibling is out for revenge. Tony lived a hard yet normal life, while they were treated like a dog. With an only desire for revenge they set out to build something that could topple Iron Man and the rest of the avengers. They built Ultron. A machine so savage that at the end of the day it even grows out of their control. With the world at risk of ending, Tony's sibling have to swallow their hate and work with the Avengers to take down this monster. Tony is desperate to have a friendly relationship, but the question is can he make that happen?

[IC] IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO ME

[IC] Tony thought he and Pepper were solid, that they would be married until the end of time. But he was wrong. Tony came home early to surprise Pepper and found her in bed with another man. Someone he knew, someone he called a friend. With this shocking find he and Pepper split and Tony becomes withdrawn. He still holds his duties to the avengers but it's half hearted. Until (Your oc or any CC marvel women) starts to help him. Spends time with him and helps him to heal. Pepper is upset with this, as she believes Tony should not move on so fast. Thus drama between the two women.

[IC] THE WORST IDEA

[IC]Tony Stark is known even in the outreaches of the underworld. Demons who wish to control the planet find a way to possess him. Taking over his body while still playing hero, as a way to further their own agenda. They use him to experiment on people, to make the perfect vessels for demons. Bodies that will last a lifetime, and aid them in taking over the world. Tony gets pretty far in his plan, thousands of people are possessed and primed to take over. Placed in key locations of power, one of them even being the president of the United states. After months like this a woman shows up, who is a talented and skilled Demon hunter. She cast the demon out of Tony, and her and the rest of the team must now take on the army he helped create.

[IC] I SEE THE DEAD

[IC] Taking place after endgame, Tony thought death was his permanent home. That was until his team brought him and the others back. Strange along with the help of Sullivan (My oc) brought back all those who died in the battle. It was all great, perfect until Tony realized one draw back. He could see the dead. Ghosts, demons and even angels all became something he could see. The worst part? They all realized he could see them. So let the hauntings begin. Tony will need someone to help him with this, whether it's Natasha who is probably also in the same boat or someone outside his circle of heroes.

[IC]LOKI x CC OR OC (very picky with my ocs with this one) (Male or female love interest welcome. Will play Loki or his counterpart)

[IC] PLAY THE HERO?

[IC]Loki is still alive and living on earth right now with his brother and what's left of his people. Though something is wrong, a young girl named America Chavez wanders into his place. She finds him and speaks to him asking him to keep her safe. Having known him in another reality, and explains that others are after her. Loki knows he can’t protect her on his own, so he takes her to the Wizards. This is where he meets Strange for the first time, and things are rocky. After a lot of talking they agree to help, and thus find out it was Wanda behind everything. Loki is there when Wanda attacks and gets flung through the multiverse with America and Strange. This will be a much more expanded Multiverse and it gives Strange and Loki time to bond and become friends and then more.

[IC] MORE CHAOS?

[IC] Loki is the god of mischief and chaos right? He holds that title with pride and joy. How will he react when a young human is able to control magic just like him? That acts like him and causes grief in the hearts and minds of earth's heros. Loki isn’t sure how to take this, and feels as if someone has stolen his identity. He comes around poking and what happens in a contest on who is better at what they do. Chaos and joy: what could go wrong? Tearing open a hole into another reality that’s what could go wrong. How will Loki and them handle it? Tails between their legs asking for the hero's help? Or even more chaos!

[IC] HERO AND VILLIANS

[IC] Loki has always been a pain for earth, and after the New York attack he’s held captive on earth. Thor fears Odin will kill him, and doesn’t want that for his brother. So Loki is locked up in the Avengers tower where you are his guard. You are responsible for everything with him, and while you hate him at first you soon talk. While Loki means you no harm, he is also planning to escape. How this plays out depends a lot on how it's written.

[IC] ON A HOPE AND PRAY

[IC] Loki isn’t a romantic type, in fact its his least favorite emotion. So it stands to reason he’d never fall for anyone. While visiting earth he comes across Doctor Strange, at the time just finishing medical school. He’s beaten and almost killed. Loki, seeing how unfair the fight was, steps in and chases off the attackers. Strange is near death, and against his better judgment he takes him to Asgard to save his life. They save him and Odin isn’t happy with Loki taking in a human. Asgards don’t interfere with earth, and Loki has broken a law. Thus in order to keep himself unpunished and Strange alive he has to marry him. Loki accepts and marries him, and then takes him back to earth. Being bound to a human is annoying, and Loki doesn’t even know him. Loki doesn’t make him stay loyal and allows Strange to do what he wants. But he does make a point to visit him and over time Loki does fall for him. (Note this will have lots of angst and possible open ended cheating and drama)

[IC]THOR X CC OR OC (Male or female love interest welcome. Will play Thor or his counterpart)

[IC] ARE YOU A GOD?

[IC] Thor had never been so confused in his lifetime. He had never heard of a mortal from earth becoming a god. But you died in a gang shooting, struck down at too young of an age, and woke up and walked out of the morgue. Needless to say this has caught everyone’s attention, good and bad. Thor comes to see what this is all about, and to possibly help you. He teaches you how to be a god, and figures out what powers you have. Though others now are coming who want to run tests on you, cage you up. It's up to you and Thor to avoid them.

[IC] HE WAS MY BROTHER

[IC] After endgame and Thor has left earth and Asgard he mentally crashes. Without Loki by his side he finds himself lost. He has lost everything in his life, everyone he cared about. The anger gets to him and he starts to lose touch with who he is. Thor finds a planet like earth, and enslaves it. Driven by his pain and hurt he feels he at least deserves to rule doesn’t he? He’s brutal and savage to anyone he meets there. Until a warlock vows to bring back his brother. Thor doesn’t trust there words, and they must find some way to trust the other. How this plays out is up to you.

[IC] POWER PLAY

[IC]Again after endgame, and everyone has returned, something changes. Jane Foster has been granted the powers of Thor. At first Thor is thrilled with this and is very friendly and welcoming of it. But Jane’s mental state wasn’t strong enough to handle becoming a god. Her mind twist and becomes dark and deadly. She vows to punish those around her, and make the world how she sees fit. Thor doesn’t have the heart to stop her, and thus earth pays the price. Someone must come to Thor and convince him to take on Jane and end her life to save Earth. Thor takes some time to warm up to this, but in the middle of all of this Jane kidnaps this person. Thus the struggle over this person begins with Thor realizing now that he’d fallen for them.

[IC] THE DOCTOR AND THE GOD

[IC]Thanos snapped and killed half of everyone. Thor survived and in this case so did Doctor Strange. Strange knows the loss Thor has been through and in those five year he does his best to care for the god. Welcome him into his home and helping him deal with everyone he’s lost. Thor teaches him asgard magic and speaks of Loki and what he was really like. They become close and as five years pass they are together. They fight in the final battle and win. Strange has a surprise for Thor though, he managed to bring back Loki for the god. (Please note, I would totally love for Strange and Thor to have kids at some point)

DOCTOR STRANGE X CC, OC, OR MY OC (Note mainly looking for someone to play strange for me here.)

[IC] FREE WILL MY ASS

[IC] Sullivan Morningstar is held captive by the ancient one because of her blood line. She is trapped and torn apart. Her magic is powerful and the Ancient one uses that to have a long life. Kaecilius finds this out and manages to free Sullivan and thus gets kicked out as well. Sully is very hateful to the Ancient one and wants revenge. Thus she hides who she really is and joins the school of the wizards along with Strange. She learns with him, and becomes his friend. But She’s also working with Kaecilius to take down the Ancient one. She helps the man who freed her, and the Ancient one is dead. To her dismay Strange walks in as she’s being killed, and Kaecilus announces he will take her place and rule the world. Now Sullivan and Strange have a new threat to stop. Though the sting of who she is and what she’s gone hangs in the air.

[IC] REALITY IS FICKLE

[IC] Sullivan is a monster hunter and a cop, as she’s worked for the Avengers in the past. Now after the endgame and the heroes weakened the monsters and witches are coming out to play. Sullivan has been caught by the Coven of the first blood, a band of witches loyal to Lucifer and want to break him free. A few of the objects they need to free their devil is in the Sanctum and thus out of their reach. With Sullivan being a side hero they send her in to fetch the items. However, they are locked up and note easy to get to. She needs a key for them and the right magic, and Strange is the only one who holds that. So she does the only thing she can, she tries to play him. Get him to trust her because if she doesn’t the coven will kill her. So how will this play out? (Lots of room for angst here man.)

[IC] REALITY IS BREAKING

[IC] Being the daughter of Nyx, Sullivan is more attuned with reality and the multiverse. After the events of no way home she becomes aware of this and seeks out the wizards to warn them. Gaining their trust and showing them she means no harm. After all witches and wizards don’t get along in fact there's a deep seeded hate on both sides. While she tries to convince them, America comes through and all hell breaks loose. Sullivan is pulled along on the ride with her and Strange.

[CI]OPEN ENDED PLOT IDEAS FOR ANYONE

[CI]OPEN FOR ANY IDEAS OR SUGGESTIONS! NOTE NOT ALL WILL BE ACCEPTED BUT IT DOESN’T HURT TO TRY.

[CI]Artist weflaps! Coral the cat!

#marvel #thor #loki laufeyson #doctor strange #tony stark #mcu multiverse #fanfic #roleplay

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readingforsanity · 2 years

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Something’s Alive on the Titanic | Robert J. Sterling | Published 1990 *SPOILERS*

In 1912, the “Unsinkable” Titanic stunned the world. More than eighty years ago, the grandest luxury liner ever built plunged into the inky darkness of the frigid Atlantic. In just a few hours, 1,500 ill-fated souls were swallowed up in its unforgiving jaws. Nothing could have possibly survived inside this vast, watery grave...

Now she holds another chilling surprise. Today, a band of brave men and women dare to venture where another salvage mission was mysteriously lost years before. The new expedition’s goal: find out what happened to their predecessors - and recover the fortune in gold believed to be hidden in the great ship’s hold. But what they find inside the legendary sunken tomb is unfathomable...

Something’s Alive on the Titanic.

Review from Titanic Universe | No Discussion Questions were found for this book therefore I will share what is shared here.

Since the RMS Titanic sank back in 1912, the ship herself has been the subject for literally hundreds of novels. While most of the books are historical non-fiction books that retell her tragic tale in any number of different ways, or the books offer wild theory and offer historical facts as proof, there are some rare gems out there are actually fictional books about the boomed liner. One of the best books out there is Cive Cussler’s Raise the Titanic, and anyone that has ever read it will claim that there are no other fictional Titanic books out there that came close to perfection as Cussler’s novel does. However, that is not the case because there is at least one other book that is just as excellent, and that is Something’s Alive on the Titanic by the late Robert Sterling.

The Plot

Published in 1998, which is one year after James Cameron’s Titanic came out. Robert Sterling decided to ride the wave of Titanic fever that stayed with the whole world after the biggest movie in the world, at the time, was released. The Titanic has already been sunk for almost 100 years, but it seems that the fever and thirst for all knowledge of this remarkable ship still remains true to this day. Unlike Raises the Titanic, the story takes place after the ship has been found, and even makes mention of Dr. Robert Ballad, the man who found the great ship. The story is basically a treasure hunt, because the cargo holds of the shop supposedly contain a fortune in gold, which is basically ringing the dinner bell for treasure hunters to go exploring. However, there is something darker that seems to be around the ship, and the cool part is that this supernatural entity is actually protecting the great old liner.

Facts vs. Fiction

Everyone knows that Dr. Ballad found Titanic in 1985, but Sterling’s book actually suggests that the ship was found before that. In fact, Sterling hints that the ship was actually found 10 years earlier, in 1975, but something went wrong, and the discovery was not made public. Supernatural entity perhaps stopped the news of the discovery. The fun part of the book was getting to see people on the ship again because the treasure hunters were able to walk around within the ship thanks to suits that were pressurized to allow them to go miles deep underwater. If any of you have ever seen the James Cameron movie, The Abyss, then you have all seen those kinds of suits. However, in reality, no such suits exist yet, and even if they did, no one has been able to explore the real wreck of the Titanic like that, so reading about it was really amazing.

The Supernatural Twist

Where Something’s Alive on the Titanic takes a supernatural twist is the fact that every time the treasure hunters go down to the ship, there’s something down there. An example would be that one man, in one of the little subs, was really scared of giant sharks, so what did he see swimming around the wreck? A giant shark! There was also another man who was terrified of octopuses, and that was down there too guarding the wreck.

Will the treasure hunters find their gold or is the Titanic wreck site guarded by something that has the job of protecting the ship? The end is amazing, and no spoilers are going to be presented here. However, the book is quite amazing!

The late Robert Serling, brother of the famous Red Serling, who narrated The Twilight Zone TV series, writes an amazing book back in 1998. Serling passed away in 2010, but his book will live on, and it is something to see. The story is about treasure hunters that go to the Titanic to find gold that someone found while searching the ship’s cargo manifest. There’s something alive down there two miles below the sea, and this something has a supernatural element that seems to be guarding the famous ship, and it is determined to not let it be disturbed. For anyone that wants a great book to read that has adventure, this is the book to read!

This was probably one of my favorite books I’ve read in recent years. During my time with school, I didn’t do much reading as I had one (and eventually two) children to care for, and homework while trying to work and everything in between. Now that I have time to actually enjoy reading again, I am so glad that I did!

I have been obsessed with the Titanic for as long as I can remember. Probably since I first saw James Cameron’s 1997 hit movie for the first time. While my obsession sparked from the movie, I didn’t do much reading on it other than what I could find via Wikipedia. However, after reading The Girl Who Came Home, which you can find an entry on within this blog, I began to get recommendations for other stories on the Titanic, and this was one of them. I found a decent hardcopy from ThriftBooks and made the purchase, and I am so glad that I did.

I am an avid believer in the Supernatural, so while the book starts off a bit slow in the fun stuff, it quickly had me hooked once the gory, fun supernatural aspect Robert Serling was after started. I cannot recommend this book enough!

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canyousonicme · 3 years

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“Certain actors have a reputation for being difficult. I don’t want to be one of those people”. - Alex Kingston

 INTERVIEW: The Sunday Post

 It comes as no surprise to Alex Kingston that her daughter has decided to follow in her footsteps, despite her best efforts to temper her acting ambitions.

The actress fell pregnant with Salome, now 19, when she was playing surgeon Elizabeth Corday on the long-running US medical drama ER in the ’90s.

Alex’s pregnancy was written into the script and Salome, whose father is German writer Florian Haertel, was just weeks old when she joined the cast as Elizabeth and Dr Mark Greene’s baby girl.

Now, two decades on, mother and daughter are working together again, this time in a Doctor Who spin-off audio drama, The Diary Of River Song. Now in its eighth series, it focuses on the Time Lord’s brilliant wife, the poetically named River Song, whom Alex has played on the TV show since 2008. Salome, meanwhile, plays the part of her synthetic humanoid companion, Rachel.

Alex said: “My daughter was in my belly on ER then played the role of our baby girl Ella Greene. She’s secretly always had the desire to act, but I was always adamant that she finished her education first.

“Salome plays a character who River Song meets up with occasionally and they have adventures together. Working with my daughter has been terrific fun. I am super-impressed with her. She is incredibly professional.”

Alex with daughter Salome

For the past year Alex and Salome have been isolating together at her London home, alongside Alex’s third husband, television producer Jonathan Stamp. The pair married in an intimate Italian ceremony in 2015, and Salome was a bridesmaid.

They are joined by Alex’s German-born mother, Margarethe, who sadly suffers from dementia. It sounds like a potentially stressful set-up but Alex has cherished the unexpected extra family time lockdown gifted her.

Alex, who celebrated her 57th birthday a few days after the first lockdown was announced last March, said: “My daughter had arrived from New York and decided she wanted to live with us. Then my mother, who has dementia, suffered two strokes early on in lockdown and she moved in as well. So I was her carer.

“It was an amazingly special time. And I cherish it. Particularly with my mother, because I wouldn’t have had that opportunity otherwise.”

Like the rest of us, Alex has relied heavily on streaming services to keep her entertained during the long days spent at home. She even broke her self-imposed rule of not watching her own stuff on screen.

She said: “We did all the usual things, massive clear-outs, and of course binge-watched TV. I loved Schitt’s Creek, Call My Agent, Bridgerton and Luther. I can’t bear to watch myself on the television. However, I started watching ER, because it was streaming on Channel 4. I look at myself and it’s like I am watching someone else. It’s such a good show, and it’s really held up!”

She added: “As much as everyone is saying this is the year that they want to forget, I actually feel it’s a year one can never forget. It certainly wasn’t an easy time. However, I have much stronger memories of the year, and of the patterns of the year than I have ever had pre-pandemic, when there was always so much rushing around.”

Alex in 1994 with fellow ER cast members (l-r) Anthony Edwards, Eriq La Salle, Goran Visnjic, Noah Wyle

Alex began her career at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where she met her first husband, Skyfall actor Ralph Fiennes. They were together for 10 years before marrying in 1993. Two years later, Alex was left bereft when Fiennes left her after an alleged affair with a co-star. The London-born actress has barely stopped working since she first appeared on UK screens in 1980, as Jill Harcourt on the iconic children’s series Grange Hill. She continued to find success in UK dramas including Upstairs Downstairs, and The Fortunes And Misfortunes of Moll Flanders.

She first appeared in the fourth series of Doctor Who alongside David Tennant in 2008. Alex thought it was a one-off but has reprised the role in 15 episodes between 2008 and 2015.

It’s thanks to her Doctor Who appearances and, more recently, Sky’s hit supernatural drama, A Discovery Of Witches, that she has become known to a new generation of fans.

During her long and successful career, Alex has never been afraid to call out sexism in the industry. When she was dropped from ER aged 41, after seven seasons, she accused producers of ageism. saying “Apparently, I, according to the producers and the writers, am part of the old fogies who are no longer interesting.”

Then, when she auditioned for the role of Lynette Scavo on Desperate Housewives which eventually went to Felicity Huffman, she says she was turned away for being too curvy.

Although vocal about the challenges that face women, she admits she has seen positive changes in attitudes towards female talent in recent years.

She says: “When I was working on ER, I thought that I wasn’t allowed to get pregnant, I didn’t want to offend the producers as that is not what they had intended. I thought that I would have to ask permission. It was Anthony Edwards, who played my on-screen husband, who said ‘Don’t be ridiculous, don’t wait for them to allow you, you are not that important. If you want to have a child, go and have a child, and they will find a way to work round you.’ So I took his advice.

“I grew up with this notion that one had to be polite and always ask for permission. Whereas this generation don’t. They just get up and do it. The lovely and talented Teresa Palmer, whom I work with on A Discovery of Witches, is constantly popping out babies. Production just work around her. And it’s great, I admire her very much for that.”

Alex in ER

Alex puts her staying power down to being in the right place at the right time – and being nice to people, though she says theatre will provide her with a safety net should the TV work dry up one day.

She said: “Being as versatile as possible helps. I’m up for anything as long it is written well.

“I had a formal training. My first love is theatre. Having that as a backbone will always support me. In an industry that will favour youth more, theatre is always there. In order to succeed on the stage you have to have had good solid training and know how to handle your voice.

“Also, being a nice person counts for a lot. If you were difficult you would get a reputation. Of course there are actors who are extremely difficult and tiresome to work with, and there will come a point at which you think is it worth it? I don’t want to be one of those people.”

Despite her time-travelling credentials Alex has no idea what the future holds but still harbours a dream of being a Bond Girl (though obviously not one who falls for the smooth-talking spy).

She laughs: “I would love to be a villain in a James Bond movie, the real villain, the main one. Because they’ve never had a female villain. And I want to be a villain who does not find James Bond sexy at all. And doesn’t succumb to his charms, I want to be his real nemesis.”

Time for a return to Tardis?

Alex alongside Peter Capaldi in Doctor Who

From ER to the Tardis, Alex’s career to date has been distinguished by roles opposite fictional doctors, whether medical or time-travelling.

The smash-hit hospital drama which made her a star in the ’90s famously launched the Hollywood career of a certain George Clooney. Then in 2008, Alex won a new generation of fans as the wife of Doctor Who.

Because the Doctor transmutates over time Alex, as River Song, gets several leading men for the price of one. Alex said: “Essentially my character is the same, so there’s continuity there, and the fun is interacting with someone who is essentially the same man, but in a different skin and with a different energy.”

Perhaps the least lucky man in the role was Matt Smith.

Alex explained: “One of the most memorable parts of filming was when I flew through the universe, got caught in the Tardis and kneed Matt Smith, who was playing the Doctor at the time, in a sore place by mistake. There were a few tears of laughter from me and cries of pain from him.”

Speculation is rife among fans that Alex will return to the Whoniverse, if the incumbent Time Lord Jodie Whittaker steps down. All Alex will say is: “My Tardis door is always open…” [x]

#Alex Kingston #Salome Haertel #River Song #Doctor Who #Kingston Edit #ER #NEW #Interview #2021 #The Sunday Post #New

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mostlymovieswithmax · 3 years

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Movies I watched in March

Thought I’d chronicle the films I’ve been watching over the March period, from the 1st to the 31st, and how I’d rate them. If you’re looking for something to watch, perhaps this will help. A lot of these movies are available on streaming services also.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) - 10/10

I hadn’t watched this in a couple of years but I was blown away. Peak Scorsese.

Rushmore (1998) - 7/10

Not the best Wes Anderson movie for me but still fun.

Lion (2016) - 8/10

I discussed this at length on my podcast: The Sunday Movie Marathon. Great movie!

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) - 10/10

Now this is one of the best Wes Anderson movies. I discuss this more on The Sunday Movie Marathon. Fantastic, funny and I watched it twice because it’s so much fun.

Inception (2010) - 10/10

Discussed on The Sunday Movie Marathon. Best Christopher Nolan movie for me, Inception is just breathtaking.

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004) - 5/10

This might be Anderson’s weakest film (at least from what I’ve seen) but it’s still not as bad as a lot of directors at their worst.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) - 10/10

I was really on an Anderson binge in March. The Royal Tenenbaums is one of the most wholesome movies I’ve seen and certainly one of his best films.

Rome, Open City (1945) - 4/10

This was filmed in Nazi-occupied Italy and from that premise, the film enticed me. Despite having some interesting qualities, I do feel that initial pull is most of what the movie has going for it.

The Prestige (2006) - 7/10

I showed this to my brother and for what it’s worth, he enjoyed it. I do think this is one of Nolan’s weaker efforts but considering how much I like it, that speaks a lot to Nolan’s filmography as a whole.

Nostalgia (1983) - 10/10

I watched Nostalgia three times in the space of a week and reviewed it on The Sunday Movie Marathon. It’s phenomenal.

Kangaroo Jack (2003) - 1/10

Another one I watched for the podcast. Kangaroo Jack is truly terrible and it upset me a great deal. Avoid this movie.

Stalker (1979) - 10/10

Another Andrei Tarkovsky movie (director of Nostalgia). I watched this again during the day before my second watch of Nostalgia and while it’s hard to compare such different movies, I enjoy Stalker more. It’s a staple of Russian cinema for a reason.

Four Lions (2010) - 5/10

Watched for the podcast. I didn’t really gel with this comedy but it would certainly appeal to someone who enjoys the humour, as my co-hosts did.

Revolutionary Road (2008) - 6/10

This Sam Mendes joint was a tad too melodramatic but still boasted some great performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

Metropolis (1927) - 6/10

This silent film is a staple in cinematic history. Its themes are as painfully relevant today as they were in the 20’s, yet despite that I found a lot of it to be intensely boring. After it hit the hour mark, I started playing it at 1.5x speed.

Crimson Peak (2015) - 4/10

A lot of great set design and costumes and colours, yet the story itself was madly uninteresting.

Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind (2004) - 10/10

Who doesn’t love a good movie written by Charlie Kaufman? I reviewed this on The Sunday Movie Marathon and after a third watch, it is as fascinating as it is gut-wrenching.

Godzilla (2014) - 3/10

If you wanted to see Godzilla fight a bunch of monsters for two hours, then this is not the movie for you. There’s maybe about ten minutes total of on-screen Godzilla action and considering that’s really all anyone’s watching this for, it’s amazing the titular sea lizard occupies so little of the movie.

Prisoners (2013) - 10/10

Brilliant mystery thriller by my favourite director, Denis Villeneuve. Discussed on the podcast.

Eraserhead (1977) - 7/10

David Lynch’s debut feature film went down in my estimations this time around. You can listen to why on The Sunday Movie Marathon. Still, Eraserhead is a very good movie.

Raiders of The Lost Ark (1981) - 6/10

The first Indiana Jones movie proved to be a fun romp and Harrison Ford plays the character beautifully. I’m just not a big fan of Spielberg and his average verging on pretty good but rarely ever great movies. Perhaps on a second watch, I may enjoy this more.

The Seventh Seal (1957) - 9/10

Watching this movie again was so much fun. So far, it’s my favourite Ingmar Bergman film. It’s a celebration of life and love, with an underlying sense of dread as death looms ever-present.

Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom (1984) - 5/10

I can tell why this generally looked on as the weakest in the trilogy. Harrison Ford is still great but the movie dragged a lot and felt more like a bunch of things happening for the sake of it rather than a fun action/adventure.

Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989) - 7/10

The Last Crusade was a lot of fun and maybe it was Sean Connery’s inclusion, or perhaps the bottle of wine I drank through the movie elevated my enjoyment. But alcohol aside, I still believe this to be the best in the series.

Justice League (2017) - 2/10

People really weren’t kidding when they said this was bad. I watched this in preparation for the Snyder cut and I was not happy. This took years off my life.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) - 3/10

Barely any better and double the run-time of the original. I discussed this on The Sunday Movie Marathon and I was certainly not impressed. Better luck next time, Zack!

The Truman Show (1998) - 10/10

Brilliant movie and one I would highly recommend for a stellar Jim Carrey performance. This was another recommendation for the podcast.

Eighth Grade (2018) - 7/10

I was impressed with Bo Burnham’s debut feature. This is a coming of age story centred around a young girl growing up in the modern world and how it can affect the youth of today. Burnham shows a deep understanding of youth culture and a real knack for filmmaking.

Bad Education (2019) - 8/10

A real “yikes!” movie. If you want to learn a bit about the embezzlement that took place in an American school back in the early 2000’s, you need not look further than this tight drama with fantastic performances from Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney.

Twelve Monkeys (1995) - 8/10

One of the only movies where the time travel makes sense. I recommended this for The Sunday Movie Marathon and it’s pretty great.

Ready Or Not (2019) - 7/10

Despite a premise that is not wholly original and a super goofy third act, Ready Or Not is gory, violent fun with a lot of stylish art direction.

Dead Man (1995) - 3/10

Recommended on the podcast. I really did not get a lot out of Dead Man. It’s a very slow movie about Johnny Depp going through the woods and killing some people on the way, but it’s two hours long and hugely metaphorical and sadly it just didn’t connect.

Misbehaviour (2020) - 6/10

A big draw for me in Misbehaviour is Keira Knightley; I think she’s a great actor and I’m basically on board with anything she does. I’d been wanting to see this for a while and I was shocked to see just how relevant it is (being set in 1970) to the world we find ourselves in today, where women are still fighting to be heard and to be treated equally. While the film is not spectacular, I still got a lot from its themes, so recently after the murder of Sarah Everard and how women are being treated in their protest.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb (1964) - 7/10

I was surprised at just how hilarious this early Kubrick movie is. While I can’t say it floored me or took any top spots, it’s still a great examination of the military and how they respond to threats or try to solve problems and the side of war we don’t often see in films: the people in the background sitting in a room making crucial decisions.

Taxi Driver (1976) - 10/10

Wow! I can’t believe I’d never seen this before but I’d never really had access to it. Taxi Driver is a beautifully made movie with so much colour and vibrancy. De Niro puts on perhaps his best performance and Paul Schrader’s timeless script works miracles.

Sleepy Hollow (1999) - 5/10

Classic Tim Burton aesthetics in a pretty by the numbers, almost Supernatural-esque story eked out over an hour and forty minutes.

Seaspiracy (2021) - 6/10

Everyone’s going crazy over this documentary and I agree it tackles important issues we’re facing today surrounding the commercialization of the fishing industry, but a lot of what’s presented here is information already available to the public. The editing feels misplaced at times and the tone is all over the place. Nonetheless, it’s still quite fascinating to see good journalism being done in a way that exposes this side of the industry.

Pirates of The Carribean: The Curse of The Black Pearl (2003) - 8/10

Super fun and a great first instalment in a franchise that sadly seems to have peaked at the first hurdle.

My Octopus Teacher (2020) - 8/10

Great cinematography and a lovely premise, this documentary has garnered an Oscar nomination and I can see why.

The Sisters Brothers (2018) - 8/10

A really solid western I was happy to watch again. It’s a shame no one really talks about this movie because it is excellent with stunning visuals and great performances.

Pirates of The Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006) - 5/10

A strangely massive drop in quality from the original. If I didn’t like the whole concept of this franchise so much, I might have had a worse time.

Reservoir Dogs (1992) - 8/10

On a second watch, Tarantino’s first feature is still wildly impressive.

Life of Brian (1979) - 7/10

This is perhaps my third time watching Monty Python’s Life of Brian and it’s still incredibly funny, however it never manages to measure up to its predecessor (and one of my all time favourites), Monty Python and The Holy Grail.

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ayoitsnic · 3 years

Text

Platonic! Sam x Reader x Dean

Word Count: 2.5k

Trigger Warnings: None? Violence that's pretty typical for Supernatural

Summary: Sam and Dean found out they have a sister. They're very skeptical at first but upon meeting they find out that despite 2 totally different upbringings they have more in common than they expected.

*Disclaimer* I wouldn't normally describe y/n in fics but in this one I did so purposefully to show the similarities between the siblings. I've been told some people are a bit touchy on that.

Oh also this is the first fanfic I've ever written so I'd be happy with constructive criticism.

'This is John Winchester. I can't be reached. If this is an emergency, call my son Dean 866-907-3235. He can help.'

'Shit' Y/N thought to herself as she was put through to her dad's voicemail. 'Wait....it said call his son....does that mean...? Wait do I have a brother he never told me about!?' Grabbing a pen and a pad of sticky notes she called again, this time hoping for voicemail so she could write that number down.

'This is John Winchester. I can't be reached. If this is an emergency, call my son Dean 866-907-3235. He can help.'

She got his voicemail again, quickly scribbling down the number before hanging up and dialing it.

Sam and Dean were just finishing up a ghoul case in Indiana when Dean's phone began ringing in the glove compartment of the Impala. Reaching over from the driver's side Dean quickly found his phone, glancing at the caller ID "Unknown Number?" He questioned out loud. He assumed it was a scam caller, but answered it anyway just in case "Hello?"

"Is this Dean?" A female voice asked, sounding mostly nervous, but also just a teensy bit excited.

"Who's this?" Dean questioned skeptically, causing Sam to look over curiously from the passengers side

"I'm Y/N. I umm....this is gonna sound crazy but I'm your sister." She felt weird saying that. Until 5 minutes ago she was an only child. "I tried calling dad but it went straight to voicemail and said to call you if it was an emergency...I kind of need help.."

Shocked with the idea of possibly having a sister Dean pulled the car over to a screeching halt, putting the hazard lights on. He needed a minute to take that in. He put the phone on speaker so Sam could hear what was being said "No that's impossible. Dad already had one kid we didn't know about. No way he had a second." Dean said, obviously in denial.

"He what?" Y/N asked, a grin spreading across her face. Regardless of the circumstances that prompted this call, she was elated to find out she had more than one sibling

Realizing what he had just said, Dean shook his head "Nevermind. Where are you?" He asked as Sam began to flip through John's journal, looking for any hint that there might've been another Winchester out there. It didn't take long for him to find the missing pages not even halfway through the book. It would seem she was born long before Adam.

"I'm in the Poconos, in Pennsylvania." Y/N responded

"Okay well we're about 10 hours from there. We'll be there in the morning." Dean told her "Text me the address." The phone call ended and Y/N texted him the address. They weren't sure what the emergency was that she had to call their dad for but regardless of whether or not it was their kind of thing, Sam and Dean were definitely gonna haul ass to go meet this mystery woman.

The next day Sam and Dean found themselves in Northeast Pennsylvania before noon hit. When they finally reached their destination they realized that this woman had grown up so differently from them. She lived in one of those fancy gated communities. Well THEY considered it fancy. Y/N was used to it, but then again the bar wasn’t too high with the childhood Sam and Dean had. The houses were big, the yards green, you needed a pass from security to get in, the only thing missing were picket fences.

"Are we sure we aren't walking into a trap?" Sam asked Dean as they stood on the big white porch, ringing the doorbell. "Well if we are, we're certainly prepared." Dean had grabbed holy water and had his gun tucked into the back of his jeans. Sam, a little silver and the Demon killing knife. It wouldn't protect from /everything/ but it'd save them from most of their most common threats.

When Y/N opened the door you could definitely see the family resemblance between her and Sam. She was tall for a woman, standing around 5'10, had light brown, shoulder length hair. Her eyes though, those were a beautiful shade of green like Dean's. It was almost like looking in a mirror for the boys "Hey." She greeted, letting them in

"Which one of you did I speak to on the phone?" She questioned

"That would be me." Dean replied, raising his hand a bit "This is my brother Sam." Sam was still trying to get over the fact that it looked someone took him and hit copy/paste.

"Wow. Dad really got around didn't he?" She commented without thinking. "4 kids, good for him." Just like Adam whom Dean had very briefly mentioned the day before, John Winchester while still her father, wasn't in the picture that often. Sure he seemed like a cool guy the few times a year he would visit but they never really had a proper Father/Daughter connection. She did care about him, but at the end of the end of the day he was just a person she knew she could trust, hence she didn't think twice about making comments like that until she noticed the look on her brothers' faces when she said it. "Sorry, I want thinking when I said that." She quickly apologized, wanting to move on.

Upon entering, the whole house smelled like Palo Santo wood. She found the scent very calming. "Anyways it's a hell of a drive from Indiana. You hungry? I made pie." She offered.

Dean's face lit up at that "What kind?" He asked with a small grin

"Blueberry. It's my mom's recipe." Y/N replied as she motioned for them to sit at the kitchen table. While she took out a knife to serve the pie, Sam had swapped out her utensils for ones they knew were silver.

"So what was so important you felt the need to call us up here?" Sam asked. Y/N could already tell she liked Sam. He gave off good vibes.

Y/N stayed silent for a moment before telling them "My cousin was found dead the other night. He had his throat ripped out. Cops say it was a Mountain Lion but it sounded like something that might interest Dad. Where is he by the way? I tried calling him a few more times and it just kept going straight to voicemail. Doesn't even ring."

Sam and Dean both looked a bit sad as they had to break the news that their father had passed away and had been dead for quite some time now. Upon hearing that, Y/N didn't really react. She wasn't sure how to. Of course she should've felt something because it was her father, but at the same time, as mentioned previously, he wasn't around a lot. He was absent for most of her life just like he was for Sam and Dean's. Sure he was there for the big stuff like birthdays, her high school graduation, or prom night where he let her drive up in the impala, but it was the small stuff she wanted him there for.

"So you know about the whole 'fighting monsters' thing then?" Dean asked as he splashed a small amount of holy water on her leg under the table. Sam kicked him under the table for even mentioning it. What was he thinking!? She didn't even notice the holy water but the question caused Y/N to look at him weird.

"What the hell are you talking about? Mom always said he was a fed." This almost forced Sam to hold in a chuckle.

Despite looks from Sam telling him it was a bad idea to tell her what they really do and that it was probably a vampire that killed her cousin, Dean told her anyway. They already made the mistake of not being totally upfront with Adam. Dean wasn’t making that mistake again "Yeah, okay." She chuckled dryly "You fight monsters. Sure you do." Like any sane person, she thought they were bullshitting. "Next you're gonna tell me you've found bigfoot out something." She said sarcastically

"Actually Bigfoot's one of the few things that isn't real." Dean told her with a smirk

"Tell ya what, you fight monsters?" She motioned towards her two brothers "Prove it. Show me these monsters. Let's go find the 'Vampire' " she said with finger quotations "that killed my cousin."

"Oh no no no." Sam finally spoke up "I was against telling you about what we do to begin with, but I'm drawing the line at having you go out on a hunt. You could really hurt. Or worse, killed."

"What is this, some bullshit male chivalry thing? Do you think women can't do the job?" She questioned with a raised eyebrow.

"No, no that has nothing to do with it." Sam quickly back tracked "It's just that you only found out today that monsters are real, you've never hunted before, and we don't want you getting hurt."

Y/N got quiet for a moment, contemplating how she wanted to respond to that. When she finally spoke, she leaned across the kitchen table and told the boys very calmly, like eerily calmly "He was my family. I'm going and we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Your choice." It was loud and clear, in no uncertain terms that she would do anything for her family. That included killing vampires.

The group went silent again. Sam and Dean exchanged a few glances before Dean relented "Alright fine, but you follow our lead."

"Deal." Y/N nodded

It didn't take long to locate the vamp nest. Only a day or two. In that time Sam had given Y/N a full rundown of everything she'd need to know about Vampires. How they're nocturnal but that doesn't mean they can't wake up during the day, how the whole 'stake through the heart' thing doesn't actually work and you gotta cut the heads off, and how they normally live in groups.

Thankfully it was a small nest, only about 6 or 7 of them. When the 3 of them pulled up to the old, long abandoned Birchwood Resort, Dean popped the trunk revealing their weapons cache. Y/N looked surprised to see all that stuff, peeking over Dean's shoulder to get a better look. "I've never seen so many weapons in one place. That's awesome." She grinned as Dean handed her a machete. Sam looked at Dean, thinking to himself how similar she sounded to him.

"Alright, Sam and I are gonna go in. Stay out here and if you see any of them try to run out just chop the head off." Dean told her

"You're crazy if you expect me to stay out here and miss all the action." Y/N told Dean as she leaned against the side of her dad's car. She didn't care how long the old man had been dead. To her, that would always be his car. NOT Dean's. With a sigh, she looked up to the night sky and ran her fingers through her hair "Alright fine, whatever. You're the master. I'm just the padawan." She shrugged, kind of annoyed but not in the mood to argue. Sam chuckled at the Star Wars reference.

"This place is huge though." Y/N added "It's really easy to get lost in. You might be better off with someone who grew up here and is familiar with the area. I wonder where you could find someone like that." She hinted, as her and her friends would explore this place as teenagers. "I think we'll be okay." Sam declined. They really were set on having her outside. Thinking about it, she could definitely understand the decision. They'd probably see her as a liability.

Once Sam and Dean had found the nest, the massacre began. After killing half the nest Dean found himself pinned under a vamp, his weapon thrown across the room where he could reach it. "Sammy!!!!!" He called out but Sam was busy with 2 vampires of his own.

Outside Y/N had grown bored of waiting for the boys to return. How long did it take to kill a few 'Vampires'? 'Fuck it' she thought to herself 'I'm going in.' And that's exactly what she did. Looking around the place for her brothers she ran into 1 vampire. Too Easy. She cut the head off as it made a move to go after her. Looking at the decapitated head on the ground made her nauseated but she pushed on.

Before long she heard a commotion From inside one of the private cabins. Peeking through a window she saw the bad position they were in. Scared, and sick to her stomach she ran into the cabin. Swinging the machete in her hand she killed the vampire that had Dean pinned. It was a clean cut and came centimeters from Dean's throat.

He got up, grabbing his own machete to help out Sam. After the vamps were dead Y/N averted her gaze, trying to avoid looking at more dead bodies as she caught her breath.

"I thought we told you to wait outside!" Dean told her to which she instantly responded with "And I thought Sam said you guys would be okay on your own but I just had to come and save you. You should be thanking me."

With a sigh Dean nodded "Are you okay?" He asked, just making sure. "I'm fine. I'm covered in blood and I just killed 2 Vampires, but I'm fine." Despite the nausea, she grinned. The whole hunting thing wasn't supposed to be fun, but this was the most excitement she had in a long time. "Alright, I don't know about you guys but I would kill for a shower right now. If you want after that I know a great bar off main street. I could use a stiff drink."

Sam and Dean left 2 days later, having found a case in Virginia. "We are gonna keep in touch, right?" Y/N asked as Sam and Dean put their duffel bags in the Impala

"Of course we are." Dean agreed while Sam added his contact info to her phone. She of course already had Dean's info saved. "You sure you don't wanna come with us?" He asked which caused Y/N to shake her head lightly "As much as I would love to, I have responsibilities up here. Work, family, what's left of a mortgage to pay off...Maybe one day though." She offered a soft smile.

After hugging both boys and telling Dean to drive safe, they took off for Virginia. "Dude," Sam looked over at Dean "I know we were skeptical at first but can we agree she's definitely related to us?"

Dean looked at Sam weird “I don’t see it.”

“You’re kidding right?” Sam asked “Aside from the fact that she’s like a walking replica of me, she makes really good pie; you love pie. You saw how defensive she got when I told her it’d be safer to sty at home while we took care of the vamps. It’s clear she’d do anything for her family. Sound like someone you know? and while we’re on the subject let’s talk about the fact that she’s not a terrible hunter. She’s far from a natural and a little weak stomached, but for someone who’s probably never killed a thing in their life she wasn’t bad.” Sam listed all the different ways she was just like Dean.

“What was the first thing she said when she saw the arsenal he keep in the trunk?” Sam asked his brother who responded with “I dunno. What’d she say?”

“She said ‘That’s awesome. She sounded just like you.” Sam insisted

Dean sat silent for a moment, focusing on the road ahead of them before relenting “Yeah okay when you put it like that she’s definitely related.” He agreed

#Supernatural #Sam Winchester #Dean Winchester #sam winchester x reader #Dean Winchester x reader #female reader

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thegayhimbo · 3 years

Note

I saw your reblog about Alcide, if you don't mind answering what are your personal thoughts on him?

Hi there. Sorry for the wait on this. I actually thought this was going to be a simple answer, but I realize there's a lot I wanted to say about the character in relation to how the fandom perceives him as opposed to how he actually comes off onscreen.

When I first saw the show, my feelings about Alcide ranged from okay at best to indifferent at worst. I didn't hate him, but I didn't care for him. He wasn't my favorite character on the show, and I found most of his story (and the werewolf plots) to be boring. I was actually surprised when I came online and found out he had a following with certain fans.

Upon rewatch, I'm still mostly indifferent to Alcide, but I lean a little more towards mildly disliking him now. And a lot of that has to do with how the fandom (especially people on Reddit) treat him vs how he actually comes across in the books and on the show.

I’ll start off by saying that I never liked Alcide in the books. He was an asshole, and most of the time he used Sookie to advance his position in the werewolf pack. What little relationship he had with Sookie felt one-sided on his part. It also doesn’t help that he unfairly blamed Sookie for stuff that was out of her control (like the death of Debbie in the books or the death of his father.) His attraction to Debbie in the books is also something that doesn’t reflect well on him. Contrary to the show’s portrayal, Debbie in the books was written as a one-dimensional psychopath with a jealous streak and no redeeming qualities. She’s basically a cartoon villain with no depth to her. The result is it’s hard to understand why Alcide got into a relationship with her in the first place, and it makes it look like he was just thinking with his dick. In other words, Book Alcide was nothing to brag about.

As for the show, like I said, I’m mostly apathetic to Alcide’s character (with a few exceptions that I will talk about in a minute) and I thought he was pointless. I know he was suppose to be a vehicle to introduce Sookie to the world of werewolves, but the way that was executed didn’t work. Common consensus in the fandom seems to be that the werewolf plots in both the books and the show were tedious and forgettable. It’s ironic because I know there are Alcide fans out there, but whenever I’ve asked them about what they thought of the werewolf stories, their responses range from “I don’t remember them” to “They were bad.” A lot of fans didn’t care for them. They could have been cut from the show without affecting the main story. That’s a problem because Alcide was usually involved in those stories, and the result is it was hard to care about him because of how non-compelling they were.

As for the character himself, I wasn’t impressed with him for a number of reasons.

First, there’s his relationship with women. I didn’t pick up on this the first time, but a rewatch has shown me how sexist Alcide came off during certain moments on the show. Case in point: His relationship with Debbie. One of the big conflicts between Alcide and Debbie on the show is that they both wanted different things. Alcide didn’t want kids and was fine not being in a werewolf pack. Debbie was the opposite where she did want kids and wanted to be a part of a community. Nothing wrong with that, but it was pretty clear from the get-go that this relationship was never going to work out. The problem though is that Alcide never seemed to recognize that, and kept trying to force Debbie to be something she didn’t want to be: A housewife who didn’t have kids, who was isolated except for her and Alcide, and who spoke softly and cooked meals for him. Basically the opposite of what Debbie was. And yes, I get that Debbie had a lot of problems and made really poor choices, but Alcide’s method of imposing his idea of what she should be was not the way to have handled that. It doesn’t help that he didn’t really seem to care about what she wanted because he thought he knew what was best for her. Like I said, that’s pretty sexist on his part.

And then there’s Sookie and how she factored into Alcide’s relationship with Debbie in seasons 3-4. I find it telling that when it comes to how this situation was handled, fans are eager to blame Sookie and Debbie for the whole mess that resulted in Alcide abjuring Debbie and Debbie getting killed by Sookie, but people rarely call out Alcide for his part in all of this. Personally though, I think Alcide bears some of the blame here for what happened.

Something that’s been pointed out is that during seasons 3-4, Alcide has only known Sookie for a brief period of time. Season 3 for instance takes place over the course of 9-10 days whereas season 4 takes place over 10 days (October 21st-October 31st). That’s about 2-3 weeks at best. And yet, despite only knowing Sookie for about a week in season 3, and despite having been in love with Debbie for a number of years, he’s already pining for Sookie:

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Now maybe you could argue that he saw Sookie as a replacement in season 3 because his relationship with Debbie deteriorated and he was heartbroken. However, that excuse doesn’t hold up in season 4 when he’s supposed to have repaired his relationship with Debbie during the year Sookie was gone in faerie-land, and yet he’s still lusting for Sookie despite only knowing her for a short period of time.

It’s so telling to me that only a few days after Debbie’s death in season 5, Alcide tries to have sex with Sookie when they’re both drunk, and he tells Sookie “I’ve waited so long for this.” It really puts his relationship with Debbie in a negative light, and calls into question whether he actually loved her at all.

I’m not saying that Debbie was blameless in this, and it doesn’t excuse her cheating on Alcide with Marcus or trying to kill Sookie, but it’s not like she didn’t notice Alcide was eyeing Sookie for some time. This was a woman who had hitched her sobriety onto Alcide and felt isolated and alone, and the man she was depending on was emotionally cheating on her. And rather than owning up to that, Alcide tries to gaslight Debbie into thinking she’s crazy and it’s all in her head. He literally says that to her when they’re in bed together, and it’s nasty.

What’s frustrating is this usually gets overlooked in the fandom when people talk about Alcide’s character, and he’s usually referred to in a sympathetic light whereas Debbie is blamed for being an unstable, violent whack-job whereas Sookie is blamed for being a house-wrecker, even though she was in a relationship with Eric at the time.

This is also one of the reasons I never liked Sookie/Alcide as a pairing, and why them getting together at the end of season 6 felt forced: Putting aside how their only sexual interaction up to that point was Alcide trying to have sex with Sookie one night when they were drunk and Sookie vomiting all over him, it was basically Sookie getting pigeon-hold into the role of domestic housewife for Alcide. And I’m sorry, but I find it unbelievable that they were together for 6 months and Sookie never once picked up on any unkind or dirty thoughts from Alcide during the time they were together until the season 7 premiere when that suddenly was a problem.

But even putting aside his relationships with Sookie and Debbie, the biggest problem I have with Alcide is he’s not a compelling character. He’s a character whose motivations and personality change when the plot demands it, and most of the time the writers didn’t know what to do with him and just stuck him in different stories with no rhyme or reason. It doesn’t help that he has no character development during his time on the show. There is no difference between the Alcide we meet in season 3 and the one we end up with in season 7. The result is I don’t care about him.

It’s funny because I’ve seen plenty of fans project these kind of criticisms onto Jason, but I actually think they apply more to Alcide than they do to Jason.

Jason actually had character development. He learned to become more responsible and be someone others could depend on. He began to move away from his womanizing behavior in the later seasons and eventually settled down and had a family. He re-evaluated his stance on supernaturals, and actually became an ally for them in several ways. There is a big difference between the person he was in season 1 and the man he became by season 7. If people missed that, or chose to ignore it, that’s on them, but it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Alcide on the other hand..............what was his character development? How did he grow as a person? What did he learn from his relationships with Debbie or Sookie or Rikki? Or even from the whole werewolf pack nonsense? Cause I’m drawing a blank here. Was it suppose to be that pack life wasn’t for Alcide because it would turn him into a power-hungry asshole? I never got the impression that was a problem for him in the early seasons, and it was a contrived conflict that was manufactured for season 6. The show never did a good job fleshing out what his arc was suppose to be.

Also, say what you will about Jason’s stories, but at least they were memorable: Amy and Jason’s relationship. The Fellowship of the Sun. The werepanthers. Becoming a cop with Andy. His relationship with Jessica. His hunt for Warlow. I would also argue that each of these stories added something to Jason’s character, and helped him grow as a person. Alcide’s arc on the other hand.......................not so much. When I was rewatching, I had to take notes just to remember what was going on with the werewolves, and even when I was rewatching, I felt the overwhelming urge to hit the fast-forward button. That is how boring those scenes were. It says something that even Alcide wasn’t able to carry them.

TL;DR: I’m apathetic to Alcide (with a few moments where I find him unlikable), and I don’t think he was a good character. The werewolf plots were tedious at best and irritating at worst, and Alcide’s arc on the show wasn’t compelling or interesting. I don’t hate him the same way I hate characters like Bill, Hoyt, and Violet, but I don’t like him either.

#true blood #tgh opinions #alcide herveaux #debbie pelt #sookie stackhouse #jason stackhouse #happylittlepuppydog #the southern vampire mysteries

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hello-im-not-a-possum · 4 years

Text

I read the book a while ago and DCTL!Sammy was so frustrating that as a Sammy fan, I need to rant about him.

The man in the book may have had his name, but that thing was not the Sammy Lawrence I knew and loved.

First off: What the fuck? No seriously, what the actual fuck. Who the fuck is this man and what has he done with Sammy? Lets take all the Sammys we’ve seen in canon and compare them:

Tapes!Sammy: A tired, annoyed and bitter musician who is done with the shit his boss is putting him through. He sounds like he has bags under his eyes and is wearing a perfected a Customer Service Smile(TM) during work hours. 10/10 would pay to listen to him bitch about Joey in the break room.

Chapter 2!Sammy: Creepy, dramatic, stupidly trying to get a demon to notice him, and a ham of a villain. Judging by the phrase “He will set US free” pared with the fact we find out he lives in the village built by the searchers and lost ones and that he appears to he their leader, it seems like in universe, he’s the only one who cares about these miserable, once human creatures enough to actively help them. Even Allison Angel and Tom Boris, the ‘good’ guys, slaughter them mercilessly in their own home after they kill their leader. 10/10, fucking superb you funky little cultist man. (Henry gets a pass because he’s just trying to live and appears to show more empathy to them/guilt to them: ‘I’m sorry I had to do that, nice hat though’, ‘please don’t cry’, to himself: ‘you bring death’ ‘once people, now fallen into despair’)

Hot Topic Q&A!Sammy: still creepy, but this man is a delight. He’s kind, he’s encouraging, he praises his fellow employees often, he’s passionate about his work and he has a wonderful sense of humor. We learn that he has memory problems but he’s trying his best. If this is what he’s normally like then I’m not surprised that the searchers/lost ones are willing to risk their lives to avenge him and I feel bad for him. 11/10, best sympathetic villain I’ve seen in years, would take him on a date to Coney Island.

Chapter 5!Sammy: Full of unbridled rage and pain after being betrayed. Attacks Henry on sight and we learn that he doesn’t like being seen without his mask. I don’t know what set him off this badly but I wish I did. 7/10, could’ve been better.

Employee Handbook!Sammy: Calling people sheep pre-ink is pretty weird to see from him considering that it’s an insult here and a term of endearment during the Q&A and I hope he’s either being sarcastic or is being blackmailed by Joey. 7/10, stop simping for Drew’s dick, king you deserve better wages, a better workplace, and a better boss.

DCTL!Sammy: I legit cringed every time he showed up and had to put the book down for a bit because he was just that unpleasant. Like Chapter 5!Sammy he is full of rage, unlike Chapter 5!Sammy he’s just lashing out at absolutely everyone and is a complete jackass who is also implied to be a bigot. The only thing this Sammy has in common with the other Sammys is his name, music and calling people ‘sheep’. If nobody said his name I’m pretty sure we’d all 100% accept that this is an entirely different character and that Sammy died before Buddy showed up. He’d be a terrible character who I’m pretty sure everybody would love to hate, but a different character nonetheless. His only redeeming quality is that he drinks ink and I think that’s kinda funny. -100/10, who are you and what have you done to my himbo ink husband?

Apparently, according to themeatly, DCTL!Sammy’s bad behavior is the ink making him more aggressive, and he disrespects Tom’s Job, not his skin color. I could buy those two points out of context as Sammy hates the pipes and pump switch in his office, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he took his anger out on Tom because he can’t do shit to Joey and Tom’s the one who installed the pipes/pump switch in his office. And I assume getting your flesh slowly but steadily transmuted into ink feels terrible and therefore, more likely to lash out more often.

But then why do we get the lines “What’s the matter Mr. Lawrence? Not used to giving someone like me respect?” (when Tom is talking to Sammy) and “I remembered Sammy calling the man from gent “Tom” and not “Mr. Conner” and I wondered if this was a habit of his. If this was what he did with everyone. Or maybe...how had Jacob put it in the bar about women and black people not getting the same respect” (Buddy thinking while watching Sammy talk to Abby)

How come we don’t get a non-inked DCTL!Sammy to compare to inked DCTL!Sammy? Why do we ONLY get the vile-behaving venom-spitting DCTL!Sammy? The audience might see the change in behavior and automatically think “Oh fuck something supernatural is going on” but this is a prequel story! we already know shit’s gonna go down! In story the characters could chalk it up to “Oh he’s probably being shitter than usual because he’s under a lot more stress than usual.” Or something like that.

What especially pisses me off is how EASY it would be to fix the bigot problem! What if we took the lines and changed them to: “What’s the matter Mr. Lawrence? Not used to giving a blue collar like me respect?” (So that it establishes that it IS the job and not the skin Sammy has a problem with like themeatly had wanted us to read it as apparently.) and “I Remembered Sammy calling the man “Tom” and not “Mr. Conner” and I wondered if this was a habit of his. If this is what he did with everyone. If it was, then how come he never calls me by my name?” He’d still be an asshole but at least he’d be a less shitty one.

Speaking of which, lets talk about something that I’ve never seen anybody else comment on: the fact he treats our protagonist Buddy with so much more disrespect than I’ve seen every other character in the book. It’s not just me, right? Was I really the only one who noticed this?

While Sammy does call everybody by their first names, (Joey, Tom, and Abby) the exception to this rule appears to be Daniel “Buddy” Lewek, whom he instead calls “Art Department”, while the other characters are referred to casually instead of properly, they at least are called their own names, poor Buddy gets a nickname based off of which part of the studio he works in.

Right off the bat, when Buddy helps DTCL!Sammy get the ink out of his face do you know what he immediately does afterwards? Does he say “Thanks for the help”, “Oh hey, you’re new.”, “I swear those pipes will kill me one day, good thing it wasn’t today” or anything else like that? nope!

He just drags Buddy to the closet and he forces him to clean up the ink. In the employee handbook, we know that only Wally is allowed to clean up ink-related messes and it’s fair to assume that Sammy knows this so why is he breaking the rules by forcing Buddy to clean the ink for just being at the wrong place at the wrong time? He didn’t even apologize for his behavior anywhere, he just intimidates Buddy and later in the book attempts to kill him for Bendy.

In conclusion: I am frustrated and this is not my inky himbo music man.

#sammy lawrence #buddy lewek #dreams come to life #dctl spoilers #bendy and the ink machine

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notes-from-sarah · 3 years

Text

Damaged Mirrors

Link on Archive of Our Own

Link on Fanfiction.net

Rating: G/K

Summary: While making his report about what happened on Umbara to Anakin, Rex has questions about his identity as a clone, his role as a soldier and his place in the galaxy. Set during Star Wars: The Clone Wars. One-shot. Canon compliant.

A/N: Set after Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Season 4, Episode 10 “The Carnage of Krell”

*****

Rex stood silently after making a full report of the events on Umbara to Anakin Skywalker. He knew the general pretty well and he could see that the Jedi was furious. Soldiers weren't supposed to be angry, but in all honesty, he felt the same way. So did all his men. He waited for his general to speak.

"That," Anakin struggled to find the right words, "that," his voice shook almost uncontrollably, "that monster intentionally tried to get clones killed on the battlefield?"

Rex tried to keep his voice at the even tone of any good soldier as he answered. "Yes sir, he confessed to it while many of us were present." Rex could hardly forget those words, they'd haunted him in the following days. The feeling of betrayal mixed with the absolute condescension from Krell sickened him. He focused on Anakin, he couldn't let himself dwell on what happened. A good soldier had to take the horrors of war in stride.

"And you had to execute him because you were afraid he would escape and join the Separatists?" Anakin clenched his fist, his eyes hard.

"We did, sir." Rex dropped his voice a little, it was only the two of them in this briefing room on Resolute and Rex wasn't sure how much longer he could talk about what happened in a crisp military manner.

"Good." Anakin's brow was furrowed, fury in every line of his face. Rex knew he meant it. Of all the people Rex had ever encountered in his short life, Anakin Skywalker was one of the most honest.

"Sir," Rex was anxious about what would happen next, everything he'd done, everything he'd ordered, was unprecedented. He couldn't shake the feeling that he'd committed treason on Umbara. Nothing they'd ever learnt in training had prepared him for this. "If I may ask, what will become of us, specifically Dogma? He may have pulled the trigger, but executing Krell was my order."

Anakin crossed his arms over his chest, his hands still clenched into fists. "I won't let Dogma face punishment for saving his fellow troopers from the enemy. And I won't let you or any of the 501st face disciplinary action because of Krell. He was a traitor and the Jedi council will understand that. If I would have been there I would have killed him myself."

Rex didn't doubt it. Unfortunately, Anakin hadn't been there. It was just the clones versus the Jedi. The whole ordeal had left him shaken in a way he couldn't have anticipated. The Jedi didn't seem as safe as they once did. The Jedi were supposed to fight side by side with the clones, not against them. He couldn't fathom how someone who was supernaturally connected to all life could so callously throw it away. Did the clones really mean that little to the Jedi? To others? He tried not to think about it.

Anakin came over to Rex and looked him square in the eye. "Tell me truthfully, Rex, are you okay?"

Rex looked up at Anakin. A good soldier was only ever supposed to have one answer. "I wasn't injured during the conflict, sir."

"That's not what I asked." Anakin's eyes narrowed. "Krell betrayed the Republic, betrayed the Jedi and most of all betrayed you clones. I should have been there, I should have stopped him. Now you've had to suffer because I wasn't there."

Rex swallowed. He didn't feel okay. He heard in Anakin's words the same refrain of self blame that had come to mark this particular Jedi's musings on the war. The general hadn't been built for war, it was hard on him and he seemed to think that he should be able to single-handedly change the tides of battle just by being present. Whenever he failed he buried himself with guilt over the matter.

Rex, on the other hand, had been built for war, it was all he'd known his entire life. He knew better than to let emotions come into play. It clouded your judgment and primed you to make big mistakes. He knew better than to feel guilty about doing his duty or for others doing theirs. Rex felt guilty now. He'd sent his men into certain danger because he unwittingly followed orders he knew were bad. He had turned against a Jedi, the command structure of the whole army, and had ordered that the besalisk be executed. He had failed to be a good soldier.

Rex tried to steel himself. He didn't want to show the general that he was weak. "I'll be fine, sir. You don't have to worry about me."

Anakin stared into his eyes with an almost frightening intensity. "Yes, I do."

A chill raced down Rex's spine. The general wasn't going to let him get away with evasive answers. "Honestly, sir," Rex paused for a long moment, "this whole ordeal has been," Rex's eyes darted away from Anakin's, he was ashamed to even admit it, good soldiers weren't weak. "It's been upsetting." Upsetting was just the tip of the iceberg, but he didn't know how to be more open.

"Rex, you did everything you could. You did everything right." Anakin's voice was hard as he tried to reassure his captain.

"Sir, if did everything right, why did so many end up dead?" Rex glanced back at Anakin. He was standing firmly on his emotions but he couldn't fully prevent them from leaking though all the same.

Anakin dropped his gaze. "I don't know. I don't know why it is that sometimes even when you do everything right it still all goes wrong."

Rex could clearly hear the emotion in the Jedi's voice. Emotion that he wished he could show himself. Good soldiers didn't break down in front of their generals. Good soldiers stayed strong. The Jedi had the luxury of being men and women first, then Jedi, and finally generals. The clones? They were first and foremost soldiers, tools, war machines. Sometimes Rex wondered if anyone realized they were flesh and blood.

Anakin turned away from Rex and looked out of the transparisteel window at the hyperspace sky. Hands behind his back he assumed the position he took when he was thinking deeply on some matter. "Rex," he said at last, "what do you think about what happened?"

"I gave you my report, sir." Rex wasn't sure what else the general wanted from him.

Anakin glanced over his shoulder at Rex. "And I heard the facts of the mission as you reported them. What do you think about what happened?"

Rex tightened his grip on the helmet that was tucked under his arm. He wasn't accustomed to giving out his unfiltered thoughts to non-clones. "I think that I should have broken protocol earlier." If he'd done what his gut told him a lot of lives could have been saved. "If I'd been more decisive I could have spared a lot of good men death and injury from a being," he put as much venom into the word being as he dared, "who saw us as disposable tools, no better than some flesh covered clankers."

Anakin closed his eyes at the comment. "Don't blame yourself, Rex, that's an order."

Rex guessed he must have been a bit too self-pitying in this conversation so far. He'd be mindful not to show such partiality again. Good soldiers were neutral.

Anakin opened his eyes again. "Blame Krell." Anakin's voice was hard as iron. "Krell is the only one at fault here. He tricked and manipulated you. He betrayed you. Don't hate yourself, hate him."

"Sir, my men are my responsibility. I didn't stop him." Rex knew he probably shouldn't be arguing with the general, but all the same he felt his failed duty very keenly.

"You and the 501st are good men, all of you brave and true. Krell tried to corrupt you, to poison you but he failed." Anakin gripped his hands behind his back. "I am lucky to fight by your side, Rex, you are one of the best men I've ever known. Don't let Krell win, don't blame yourself for what he did."

Rex ran his thumb over his helmet feeling the familiar ridges. "Do you really think that, sir?" It had been bugging him since Krell had gone on his tirade about the clones. "Do you really think of me, of us, as men?"

Anakin turned to face Rex fully, an expression of slight surprise on his face. "Of course I do. You're one of the bravest, smartest people I know. How could I think of you as anything else?"

Rex looked down at the floor. "Me and the others, we feel like we're men, feel like that means something. That we're more than just androids programmed for destruction. That's what we were taught on Kamino and that's how we live our lives every day, but out here," Rex gestured broadly to the room at large and metaphorically to the galaxy at large, "it seems that most beings don't think of us that way. I always thought the Jedi were different. It always seemed like they were until, well," Rex didn't finish his thought, he didn't have to. In the silence that followed he rubbed his other hand over his helmet feeling the various pits and dings.

Anakin stepped closer to Rex putting a firm hand on his shoulder. "The Jedi see your humanity, Rex. They see how the clones get up every day and fight this war with no relief. They see how you lay down your lives in pursuit of peace in the galaxy with no thought of your own reward. Out of all the people in the galaxy I think the clones and the Jedi are the most alike. Krell fooled us all, I should have seen his treachery before things ever got this far." Anakin shook his head. "But know this: Krell was not a Jedi. A real Jedi would never have done what he did. A real Jedi would never have betrayed the Council and the Republic and most of all his clones." Anakin gripped Rex's shoulder tighter and gave him a small, emphatic, shake. "We couldn't win this without you, Rex."

Rex couldn't help but feel moved by Anakin's words. Even after all the betrayal he'd faced at the hands of Krell, Anakin had his trust full and complete. He'd follow the general to hell and back if that's what he ordered. Maybe the Jedi and the clones did have a special sort of connection, maybe that's what made them such a good team on the battlefield. But what about off the battlefield? What about all those people in the galaxy who weren't Jedi? Would they ever be able to see beyond the face of a clone and realize it was the face of a man? When the war was over, what would happen to him?

"Sir," Rex hesitated, a good soldier shouldn't be asking questions like this, "do you think there's a future for us after the war?"

A long moment of silence stretched between them, Anakin seemingly lost in his thoughts. At last he shook himself slightly and seemed to come back to the present. His voice was low and uncertain as he said, "I hope so."

#Anakin Skywalker #Captain Rex #501st #Fanfic #Fanfiction #Star Wars #Star Wars: The Clone Wars #Angst #Friendship #2k words #image from cap-that.com

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youarejesting · 3 years

Text

My fics in 2020

I am proud of this year. I worked hard until the end. 2020 was my year of finishing my stories. I have done so much and next year I want to do more. So keep an eye out Jester will take over.

Fandom(s): BTS, mentions of NCT, BLACKPINK, MONSTA X.

Networks:@btscreatorscorner @castlebangtan

Total Fics: 34

Total chapters: 404

Total Words: 565,587 Total vids and fake subs: 13

Best and Worst Title?

Best: ‘Music is the spark that sets my soul on fire’ and its sequel ‘Dance is the celebration of the flame’

Worst: The Check Up

Best and Worst first line?

Best: Yoongi never understood why people would say one's blood is important. (Mania)

Worst: It all started in Mykonos. (Steal my sunshine)

Best and Worst ending line?

Best: “I got you this pretty dress” Seokjin grinned showing you the dress before hugging you and giving your forehead a kiss, “Let’s go burn it” (Me & the ghost in number 23)

Worst: But all you got was a sharp-toothed smile. (Pandemonium)

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than, or about what was expected?

I think I wrote what I expected, but I think I could have definitely finished more. Which is a bit upsetting.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

I don’t have limitations to my writing so nothing is deemed unpredictable.

I am however generally surprised by my love of throwing in twists and also gore, I love gore.

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

Wild space: it is strange because I am not particularly a fan of space and scifi, but I am really into writing world building things and having the ability to create a whole planet was amazing.

Most popular story?

Tumblr:

Seoulmates

Femme

Quarantine

AO3:

Quarantine

BTS365

Love Listening

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

Tiny Tan: Limited Edition

Story that could have been better?

All

Sexiest story?

Love Listening

Saddest story?

Me & the ghost in number 23

Fluffiest story?

Mall Santa

Most fun story?

BTS Among Us

Hardest story to write?

Kisaeng

Daylight (i'm still writing it haha)

Easiest/most fun story to write?

Light it up

What story took the longest?

365 lol took all year

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

The biggest risk I took all year was posting my work. Living life on the edge.

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

To double my writing

Fics that you wrote in 2020:

BTS365: 365 mini stories ✓ fluff, comedy, angst, romance, mature, action, adventure, smut. This has it all. Find your birthday and read your story. I wanted to give something unique to people.

Quarantine: 100 Chapters ✓ Something to accompany you while you are alone during quarantine and the pandemic. I was lonely and I figured so was everyone else. So, I decided to have BTS help us all go on an adventure that didn’t focus on the covid virus but on some other aspects around it.

Femme: 50 Chapters ✓ A futuristic world where women are rare. This was an indulgement fic that gave circumstances for the reader to be in a polyamorous relationship with the boys and live a glamorous life. Ending was a bit rushed.

Seoulmates: 29 (ongoing) Each member of BTS has a unique soulmate bond. I love the idea of this, another indulgent fic but you aren’t alone with the boys you have friends and you can play different parts.

Witching: 11 Chapter ✓ When your brother goes missing trying to find them gets you in a turf war between two covens. This fic was actually a way for me to vent for a project I wanted to complete but the project is so big that I wrote this instead.

Herb: 2 Parts ✓ mature, smut. Jimin claims he has everything you need, he doesn’t disappoint. I came across this idea within the 365’s and extended it because I liked the idea so much. Jimin has everything from casseroles to scarfes, cat food to cell phone chargers and the reader just wants to be loved and relieve stress.

Limited Edition: 10 Chapters ✓ BTS boys are sold as limited edition figurines. This was originally me venting about not having any merch and then became a daydream that what if the merch came alive. And the story was born.

BTS Among Us: 7 Chapters ✓ gore, action, adventure, scifi, angst, death of main characters. This one was so funny for me, I had my friend pick a colour and that was the imposter from the start. I was amazed that no one figured it out in the end. I want to play again soon.

Light it up: 13 Chapters ✓ fluff, comedy, angst, romance, mature, action, adventure. This was inspired by the dynamite trailer, I loved it so much that I began writing, I had no clear direction but as I wrote it started to shape and someone said it was like stranger things and I credited Stranger things cause it did indeed have a similar premise and I don’t want to pretend I came up with something that has already been done.

Love listening: 2 Parts ✓ SMUT, comedy, fluff, angst, romance, mature. This was inspired by a strange video that came up on the internet, I was searching for BTS misheard lyrics and the video I clicked had some funny ones but after that the next suggested video was bts moans and auto play was on and well this fic was born.

Me & the ghost in Number 23: 11 ✓ fluff, comedy, scifi, supernatural, romance, angst, mature, smut, death of main character. This was inspired by many of the ghost text au’s I had read but many of them were like the show oh my ghost where the main ghost character isn’t actually dead just in a coma and I thought the opposite way instead of them waking up, I wanted things to shape the other way. This one was so difficult to write and I cried a lot due to the loneliness Jimin was facing and the mourning from Yoongi.

Hope in the sheets: 4 chapters (so far) fluff, comedy, smut, adventure, slice of life, romance, angst, mature, growing up. This one is a fic that targets my childish desires. I have grown up so much and this fic is a visual representation of that.

Asks: 77 (ongoing) where the bts boys answer the readers questions and concerns.

Reactions: 15 (ongoing)

Prompts: 18 (ongoing)

One shots:

Kisaeng: This was a reverse fic project, the idea that instead of Mulan pretending to be a man and going off to war, it was BTS dressing as women to stay home from war. I loved writing about fictional history.

Steal my Sunshine: This was a summer project. I wanted to write something that felt like a very bad spy movie, like Mellissa Mccarthy and Mr Bean-esque. I formed this one and it made me laugh the whole time writing it.

Blue Side: This was talking to myself about being sad and admitting that I could be sad but I should learn to split the happy and sad into two worlds and limit my time in them both, it was about equal balance and finding the good in the sad and the sad in the good. I don’t know how hard to explain.

Temptation: I had fun writing but it is pure SMUT. not even good SMUT.

Pandemonium: This was really fun. The premise is dark and the ending is left ambiguous, in the original, Namjoon kills the reader but I left it open so you can imagine them continuing their relationship or not.

Mall santa: A fluffy christmas piece. A secret santa I wrote that I felt needed to be soft and quirky and have just all the hallmark moments.

Mad: This one is finished, but I have it published privately at the moment waiting to unveil it as it is well SMUTTY. I don’t know what it is about Taehyung but he is always so dark and I guess that's what people find appealing. I had this idea from a 365prompt and well I had to write it.

One wish: This was a birthday fic that I wrote for a friend. I wanted people to read it on their birthdays or imagine their birthdays and themselves in this position if they made the same wish.

The Check Up: I wrote for this for a friend going through a personal procedure, they were nervous so I took their bias and made something I hoped they could think about while in the procedure and I even explained the steps and what might happen over the next few days hoping the whole thing wouldn’t seem as scary because technically her mind had already been through it when reading the story.

Sparks of the heart: Robots developing human feeling. It was a cute universe and Yoongi’s story will be a series within 2021.

Dance machine 3000

Digital Art

Electronic Tonic

Circuit chef

Random Access Memory

Kookies Trojans and Malware

Feel Better: Another fic written for a author who was sick, I wanted them to endulge in some escapism whilst they were sick.

Music is the spark that sets my soul on fire & Dance is the celebration of the flame: These two were requests that I loved dearly.

Horror movies: Cheesy damsel in distress meets boys will be boys.

I will wait (somesay): This song wouldn’t get out of my head so I had to write it.

Wild Space: When I wanted to write a hybrid AU but I already have a hybrid AU being edited. So hybrid werewolves meets space.

The Bomb: This one is compete and ready to post I had to talk myself out of writing this as a series but I love the story line. I love the end.

Lost Boys: This has been stuck in my head since i had a dream about it and I finally wrote it into the new year. I hope you like it.

Mania: Not my favourite work, love ABO universe I just haven’t got an actually story line so it is on hold.

Incaceration: The story that never was, I really need to get around to this one.

Tagging: @moccahobi I know you wanted to tag me... but I am finished so I am tagging you.

#bts #bangtan sonyeondan #bts imagines #bts reactions #bts scenarios #bts fic #bts author #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts fanfic 2020 #bts fic 2020 #bts 2020 #author 2020 #review 2020 #btscreatorscorner #castlebangtan

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insomniac-dot-ink · 4 years

Text

The Long Bus Ride

Genre: supernatural horror

Words: 5.6k

Summary: When her late night bus stops in the middle of a rolling fog cloud Frieda starts to worry. Then she starts seeing words being written in the condensation on her window and she truly gets unnerved.

A group of strangers must now try to get through the night as something seems to be outside.

content warning: body horror

---------

The bus was mostly empty that evening. That was typical with rising fares and the fact most people would have tried to be home hours ago. It was too early for the late night party crowd and too late for the normal working crowd.

The bus driver was a big guy named Ted, I knew him by his portly size and baby-smooth clean shaven face. He had youthful thick brown hair grown a little long probably for vanity’s sake and a large pot belly that sagged over the shiny tight black belt around his waist.

He always nodded at me when I got on and always stopped for people when they were running to catch the 431. He wasn’t always on time like the other bus driver-- Nory, but he also honked his horn a little less than him too.

I flashed my bus pass at Ted that evening with our usual nod and a lingering achy bitterness settling in my core. Deirdre’s daughter had come to visit again that afternoon and there was always too much nasty energy in the house on those days. I liked to keep things neat, both personally and professionally. I kept my purse organized into tiny pockets and my clothes sorted in bins by season and I never mentioned anything personal at my job.

Everything had its place, but it was harder to be politely indifferent to the household when they were throwing barbed words at each and asking my opinion. It bothered me to have to be anything other than “day nurse Frieda” to them. It blurred our relationship when they turned to me and said “tell my mother she needs to finalize her will” and so on.

Of course, Deirdre should and did need to finalize her will, but expressing that broke far too many boundaries in a messy way.

I was ready to be home an hour ago by the time I walked to the bus stop with the sun already carefully nestled behind the city skyline. The purple of a gloomy summer night was heavy across the horizon and I didn’t even both to check my phone watch. I knew my Friday night was almost already over.

My feet ached as I turned to walk down the aisle of the 431 bus headed to Oakland. My chin was sinking toward my chest like a balloon tug insistently downward by a toddler. An older man sat near the front.

He was a skinny, wiry man with a thick mustache and clothes with spots of what I hoped was motor oil on his patterned button-up and workman pants. He wore heavy boots and watched me with small eyes under enormous eyebrows that could have probably watched me as well for the sheer size of them. He had no bags or anything with him and he sat like there was a drill sergeant ready to bark at him if he so much as slouched a little.

No one else sat in the seats near the front designated for the elderly and pregnant. The seats themselves were blue and yellow with party designs on them like you might see at a tacky bowling alley. It was an older bus that hadn’t even been upgraded to “green” standards yet and rumbled like a thunder storm wherever it went.

In the middle seats was a mother and child. She was a middle-aged black woman with long beaded braids tied back in a ponytail and wore a bright pink shirt and a slouchy pair of comfortable looking jeans. Her daughter looked around 9 or 10 and had her hair pulled back in a tight bun at the top of her head. She wore a hoodie over what looked like leggings and carried a sports bag with her.

The mother was probably picking her up from something like ballet practice. The daughter was leaning on the mom while she absently stroked her head and looked out the window. Something about the easy intimacy of it made me look away quickly.

One seat up and across from the mother and daughter was a gently snoring man. He had a wild beard, knit cap, and fingerless gloves. I could tell by the smell alone that he was homeless and had probably been sleeping on the bus for hours now. However, I had smelled worse and his jacket and jeans weren’t as grungy or disheveled as they could have been.

Two other people sat in the back, but luckily neither of them had claimed the final spot in the corner of the bus near the window. A young woman was one chair ahead of my seat, a short white girl who looked around college age. I wrinkled my nose at her because she was holding a paper cup with what I assumed was coffee and her hands were shaking.

She had on a long skirt with mud splotches at the bottom and a pale blue shirt with a mustard stain on the front. Her long auburn hair was tied back into a ratty knot at the back of her neck. She had on huge glasses dangerously close to the edge of her nose and she was staring out the window with the look of someone trying to count the yellow street lines and failing.

Across from her in the other corner of the bus was a high-school aged looking young man with a huge bag blocking the seat next to him. He was Asian with ink-black hair that he had spiked, and wore all black with dark ripped jeans and a band t-shirt. His ears were covered by silver earrings draped over the lobes like angry criss-crossing Christmas decorations.

He had a tattoo of what appeared to be a wing on his neck and smeared eyeliner around his indifferent gaze. He was wearing small earbuds and listening to something with an audible thrumming base.

I ignored both the messy girl and the punk boy as I took my seat and got out my book for the forty minute ride home. It was another pirate romance story-- which my sister recommended because she assumed she knew my taste. The action scenes were fine, but the actual tension between the main couple was blase at best.

I had to make sure no one sat behind me during my bus rides home though because I didn’t need anyone looking over my shoulder and finding the words “he touched my wet throbbing womanhood.” To say the least, the erotic parts of the novels were not that good either.

It was better than scrolling my phone right then though. I hated work emails more than I hated mud trailed onto the carpet in my house or slow-walkers on the sidewalk.

I peeked out the windows sometimes to get a look at the city as the street lights and building lights and headlights erupted one by one in a pale cascade. We were getting closer to the Oakland Bay bridge and the lights threaded along the beams like spiderwebs of frantic energy all captured and blooming at once. I had an affection for the city despite being trapped there.

I hadn’t actually come to California to be a geriatric nurse again. I already spent ten years working as one in Louisiana when an old college friend had called me up and asked if I wanted to join his startup. It sounded like a fairy tale: join an up and coming tech company and watch as you get boosted past “middle class” into something glamorous and decadent. Kitt knew me and knew I was good with people and offered to let me run the PR department.

Of course, I hadn’t joined for the money or the fact I was that interested in PR. I had been working in a nursing home for almost a decade by then and it had started to wear on me. I liked listening to people, especially people who were made of stories, and the job had originally suited me fine. But there was this… shadow over it all that started to eat at me.

A shadow of loss, of empty words, empty places where a sharp mind used to be, empty reassurances that meant nothing, brief glimpses of grief so intense that it split people in two. That shadow loomed larger and larger the longer I stayed. It chased me as my favorite grandma’s hands started to shake and my favorite patient stopped being able to play piano. I saw it in how some of them stopped meeting my eyes when the months dragged on and their time was coming. I saw in the way they stopped remembering my name or their own.

No. I didn’t want to work as an elderly care nurse any longer.

Of course, I was also 33 and single, and a change sounded good. So I moved all the way across the country, got the smallest apartment I had ever lived in, and dared to be a little bold. I wore brighter colors, spoke out more in meetings, cooked spicier foods, I went on dates with women for the first time.

But all good things come to an end. Most startups don’t make it, no matter how many twitter algorithms you try to “hack.”

I looked out the window and ignored my phone as it buzzed. There were other reasons I didn’t check my phone on the bus as well. Cynthia still wanted to meet now and then-- to see if we could make it work after all. I ignored the buzz.

I was lost to the erotic adventures of a very loud and very incompetent heroine when I heard a soft gasp come from in front of me. I usually had a rule of ignoring everyone else on public transport, but there was something about the sharp surprised sound that made me look up.

We were on the bridge now and it was damp and dark out. I blinked a couple times as I noticed a thick cloud seeming to descend. Fog was all but normal in San Francisco so I decided to go back to reading my book.

A small murmur passed between the daughter and mother in the middle of the bus, “it’s alright…”

I looked up again and the cloud was quickly eating up the view and making the road ahead look shrouded and strange. Cars around us had already turned on their headlights and I could almost feel the bus slowing down as visibility ahead quickly disappeared.

I wrinkled my brow. I didn’t know much about weather, but we usually only saw fog like this in the mornings. I looked to the other side of the road and noticed that I didn’t see any cars coming toward us.

“Look mom,” I heard a small voice say and the little girl was pointing out toward the ocean. I tried to look out the window and make out the sea too, but only saw that same thick white. It was dense and shapeless around us and the bus was slowing down further.

“Where are the lights?” I snapped my head around and the punk kid had taken his earbuds out. His face was even more stony than before and his eyes were narrowed toward where the bridge would be.

I set my jaw as I realized I didn’t see any of the glowing yellow lights that should be at least breaking through parts of the fog. Even worse, I checked ahead of us and behind, I had never known the Oakland bridge to ever be empty.

There were no more cars on either side of us.

I gulped. The bus was almost at a standstill.

“Hey!” The messy college girl holding the coffee called up from the back. “What’s going on?”

“Yeah, what’s the meaning of this? We’ve all got places to be.” The working class man stood up at the front.

Ted the driver didn’t turn around and there was something about his figure that sat wrong.

“Where the fuck are the lights?” The punk kid was standing up now and craning his neck to look outside.

“Excuse me, sir, is there a problem?” The mother had dragged her daughter into her lap and the little girl was looking directly out the window at something with the utmost focus.

I shifted uncomfortably in place and watched the scene unfold. Something cold was trailing down my spine. I liked to keep things neat, and this felt like it was about to pick up my wardrobe and dump it outside onto my muddy lawn.

A couple voices kept demanding to know why we had stopped, and the homeless man somehow kept dozing. “Ooh,” the little girl touched the window and suddenly my eyes were drawn back to my own window.

The fog was dense to the point of nothingness, and beyond the fog seemed to be an even thicker night. I furrowed my brow and drew back into myself. Condensation was gathering on the other side of the window-- the type you might see when your warm breath touches glass.

A thin layer of white was spreading across the window and then I saw what the young girl was “oohing” at.

“Everyone, step back from the windows.” I heard myself saying, reasonably, in as a controlled manner as I could.

Little droplets had now formed on the other side of the glass and the white haze was thick and tangible. That’s not why I jumped back though. A perfectly formed fingerprint was pressed into the condensation there. A clear oval that was dragging down, down, down the window and creating one long, straight line.

There was nothing behind that finger. There was no body or hand or anything attached at all. Only the imprint that was meticulously drawing downward.

“What the fuck?!” The punk kid scrambled back from his window as well.

“What’s going on?” The college student said in a panic as more little finger tips pressed against the glass. Hands, but not hands. My heart squeezed in my chest and a flurry of possibilities went through my head: I was in a coma, I was asleep, I was asleep in a coma. I was dead.

I was dead and hell is a bus ride.

“Ah!” I jerked my head around again and saw the old man in heavy work pants standing by the front with his mouth wide and eyes as round as silver dollars. He was staring at the bus driver in the way one stares at their parents declaring a divorce.

“Ted…” I muttered and forced myself forward. I wrapped my hands around the bus poles with each step and the metal was almost freezing at each touch. I stumbled across the long space.

“Mommy, what is it?” The window next to the little ballerina was absolutely covered in those floating strokes carefully applied by invisible fingers. They were drawing spirals and zig-zags and something that I dearly hoped wasn’t a letter of the alphabet.

I made my way past the sleeping homeless man who still managed not to wake and all the way to the front of the bus where the old man was staring at Ted.

“He’s-He’s--” He stuttered at me and fell back against a metal pole next to the door.

“It’s alright, I’m a nurse.” I took a deep steadying breath. I had seen corpses plenty of times in my life and I knew how to keep myself focused on the tasks in front of me. Ted was slumped over and unmoving.

I reached for his arm first and picked up his limp wrist. I exhaled the second I reached his pulse and felt a faint thrum there. His skin was clammy and far too cold, but he was breathing. “Don’t look at the eyes.” The old man grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t look!”

I was never very good at averting my eyes when facing car crashes or jump scares in horror movies. He had a pulse. I needed to check for head injuries. I glanced at his face. Something was dripping down his cheeks in a steady flow.

I reached and tipped his chin up. I swallowed my scream before it could escape. His eyes were gummed shut with something black and bubbling. It was like tar that held both of his eyelids clamped closed and water was leaking out of the seams.

Droplets beaded down his cheeks and when I let his head fall again it leaked like rain down upon his lap. I stopped myself from heaving at the sight and looked downward. His foot was still on the gas, but we weren’t moving forward.

“Let’s go.” I ushered the old man away from Ted’s body. Something told me we shouldn’t touch it or be too close to it. We retreated back toward the other seats.

“E,” the little girl was tracing a letter in the condensation. Something outside was writing the letter E and then another letter next to it. “N.”

I walked down the center of the bus in a daze and the others looked at me. The disheveled college student stumbled toward us. “Is the driver alright?” I just shook my head and couldn’t find the words to explain that one of us was surely dreaming up a nightmare.

The punk kid was sitting in the center of the back seats clutching his bag to his chest and his earbuds were back in.

“Little girl.” A voice barked. I turned and suddenly I noticed that the homeless man had sat up and his clear blue eyes were darting around the space frantically. “Don’t touch the windows.” His voice was deep and smoke-beaten. “Again, again, again.” He repeated, “Don’t touch. Again.”

I looked back to the shapes being drawn in the window panes.

They were impossibly strange, but no sounds came from the drag of their fingers. In fact, I didn’t pick up any noises from the city at all: no honking, no sirens, no hums of life. I groped for the right words to try to make sense of this.

“Little girl!” The homeless man said sharply and he looked toward the closest window. “Don’t.” “Sheryl…” Her mother warned, but the little girl, Sheryl, kept tracing the letters the Things were drawing.

I watched in a trance, “T.” She said softly. “E.” I was watching the tip of her finger move when I caught the first glimpse.

My whole body froze like a jolt of ice pouring down my spine. Just beyond the invisible hand was a face submerged in the fog-- faint and shifting. It was hard to make out, but two black eyes drooped like runny eggs down it’s sunken cheeks and a mouth grotesquely frozen in a scream took shape for just a moment.

I grabbed for the mother, “everyone!” I found the energy to fill my words with urgency, “get away from the windows!” They all looked to me and I mustered every bit of my authority, “NOW!”

Reluctant shuffling followed. “Wait!” Sheryl protested as her mom picked her up and carried her to the center of the bus. “Wait!” She repeated, “it wasn’t finished.”

The fingers outside became more frantic as we retreated into the center of the bus as far away from the windows as we could get. They clawed and dragged and I could make out more and more faces, some with three fingers and some with seven. Faint outlines of the hands and faces morphed and danced just out in the darkness.

They never stood still or seemed to stop shifting and twisting as if unnaturally alive.

A shudder went through the small group as we huddled together like penguins being accosted by the arctic breeze. The punk boy was the last to reach us as he clung to his huge bag and entered the loose circle we created.

The old man was shifty-eyed and looked the most on edge. I kept an eye on him, as well as the homeless man who was hunched over into himself. “Again,” he muttered to himself. “Again.” The moments after we gathered were long and strained before anyone dared to speak and break the ghastly immense silence. “Something was wrong with the driver,” the old man finally announced as he looked to the fingers, “something is wrong here.” “Very wrong.” The college student echoed.

“Duh,” The pink kid said back with his teeth clenched.

“Perhaps it will be over soon.” I added softly, mostly speaking to myself.

“What’s everyone’s names?” I looked up as the homeless man finally broke himself upright again.

“What? Why?” The old man practically growled.

“Everyone here has got to have a name.” The homeless man’s blue eyes were still frantic and traveling faster than I thought they should back and forth across the space. “Got to have a name.”

“How do we know that will--” “Angela.” The mother spoke up. “And this is Sheryl. Have you seen this before?” She looked to him as if he must often see buses descend into hell before.

“I’m Rick.” He said without hesitating, “Angela, Sheryl,” he pointed to the college student as if to pose a question.

“Laura.” She said softly. Her hands were still shaking, but probably for different reasons now.

“Angela, Sheryl, Laura,” Rick almost sang and then prompted the old man to speak.

“I’m Drew.” The old man said hesitantly after a moment.

“And I’m Frieda.” I added as the punk kid spoke as well.

“I’m Jinu.”

A silence spread and I didnt know what I expected to happen from swapping names with a group of strangers. Sheryl was frowning deeply. She whispered, “We shouldn’t have left where they can see us.”

That made me look back to the people I was stuck with and I opened my mouth to ask Sheryl if she was alright.

Bring

We jumped as one when a sudden and angry sound crackled and shook the space.

Bring, bring

It was like the sound of an old phone back from the 90s. A classic, angry noise that ate up the whole area with its loud buzzing undertone.

Bring!

I felt my pocket and felt something vibrating there.

“It’s our phones…” Jinu said in a hush.

My phone was ringing. And I knew we were being hailed.

Bring, bring, bring

I felt sick.

Laura was the first to dig out her phone from her bright yellow purse and hold it in her hands.

Bring, bring

The iphone vibrated and almost shook its way out of her hands. It’s screen was completely black and something, something was making it ring. “What’s,” I couldn’t contain the question any longer. “What’s causing this?” No one answered me. Drew took out his phone next, a first generation android it looked like with a cracked screen that was just as black as the last one. Slowly, everyone except for Rick, extracted our phones and watched as they made the same cry together over and over again: bring, bring, bring, bring, bring.

I stared into the shiny black surface of mine. It was perfectly smooth and almost… too dark. A dark I had never seen before and reflected nothing back. It felt like it was eating the light up.

“Maybe,” Laura spoke up. “Maybe we could call the police.”

“It’s a little late for that honey.” Angela said with a forlorn sigh.

“Why are they ringing?” I asked dumbly.

“We shouldn’t answer.” Jinu growled and tossed his phone all the way to the other side of the bus.

Rick nodded, “Do. Not. Answer.” “But…” I frowned deeply. “We can’t stay here.” “We can’t answer either.” Rick said in his same husky, withered tone. Drew nodded and threw his phone away, I followed suit mostly to stop looking at the shiny blackness of the screen. Angela seemed to almost break hers as she chucked it away as well, and Laura was the last one. She gripped it tightly and looked up.

“What do you think those are?” She finally voiced our fears and looked back to the fingers and morphed faces. “Are they… are they what’s calling us?” I shrugged, “does it matter?” I glared, “we can’t risk it. Throw it away.” “What happened to the driver?” Laura whispered and I just shook my head. She threw her phone away.

We all looked at each other carefully, and then we waited.

--------

Time ticked by with an anonymous meaningless face. On some level I think most of us expected to wake up soon, or for the sun to rise or to have God yelled “pranked!” from somewhere up in the sky. At least, that’s what I was waiting for.

The bus was still, just as cold and faceless as before, immobile as it had ever been. Alone in the middle of the bridge and alone in no place at all. I had a switch knife I carried around that I now held in my clenched fists and the world stood still.

Empty, except for the constant, unending sound of the phones: bring, bring, bring. They chorused and buzzed on the other side of the bus as we huddled in the center. It was endless. People did what they could to distract themselves from their impossible voices.

Jinu put his headphones back in and turned them all the way up. Laura covered her ears with both hands and rocked back and forth in a ball. Rick gazed unseeingly up at the ceiling with a deep frown on his face. Drew was drawing something on his palm as if doing math equations on his skin.

I distracted myself by talking to the mother and daughter. “You want to be a prima ballerina when you grow up?” I asked softly as I watched Sheryl’s small face. Angela was still stroking her daughter’s head and holding her close as the minutes ticked by.

Bring, bring

“I want to dance in The Swan Lake,” she said factually. “I’m not good enough yet, but I will be.” I beamed. “I believe you.”

Bring, bring

“What do you do?” Angela asked and there was something forced about it.

“Nurse.” I said simply. “Though I came here for an app startup of all things.”

“Oh?”

Bring, bring, bring I wasn’t usually one for idle-chit-chat, but a damp coldness was working its way through my chest. I had already noticed that Laura was shivering fiercely.

“Yeah, we were going to change the world or something he said,” I rolled my eyes, “but it didn’t turn out that way of course.”

“What kind of app was it?” Sheryl was still looking to her window, but she seemed present enough.

“Oh, a ride sharing one. It was supposed to be a public minded service called ‘Democracy Bus.’ It was meant to help people get to the polls on voting days for free or get to civil rally's or debate parties,” I shook my head. “It never got off the ground.” Angela opened her mouth to respond, but seemed to be drained of some force within her.

Bring, bring

“That settles it.” Drew stood up with a hardened look on his face. “If I run I might make it to the other side of the bridge in a few minutes.” He nodded, “we were more than halfway to the other side by the time we stopped.”

We openly stared at the old man. Jinu took his headphones out, and Laura uncurled herself. Rick kept looking at the ceiling.

Bring, bring, bring

My mouth became a hard line, “We don’t want to let any of those things in here…” I whispered.

Drew dusted himself off, “I only need someone to pull the door open for a second. And beside,” his lips curled up, “we can’t exactly stay here and starve.” My skin prickled and I didn’t mention the fact I hadn’t felt hungry since the moment we stopped. I hadn’t felt thirsty either, or anything at all. Just cold. And damp.

“We’re not going out there.” Angela hissed first. “It’s too much of a risk.” She held her daughter tighter to her.

“Does anyone else have any ideas then?” Drew seethed. We were quiet.

Bring, bring

“Maybe we should answer one.” Laura said again, “just to see what happens.” She cocked her head to the side, “maybe they’ll let us go.”

“That sounds like an even worse idea than his.” Jinu said flatly.

“Don’t. Answer. The. Phones.” Rick finally joined the conversation and haltingly declared.

“Why not?” Drew narrowed his eyes icily, “What do you know?” Rick looked back up to the ceiling and set his jaw. Drew took a menacing step toward him, “What does he know?!”

“Oh,” Sheryl pointed, “Look. They’re trying again... E.” I looked up just in time to see the fingers all in one motion write the letter “E” over and over again on each window. I swallowed thickly. “We should all cover our eyes.” I announced, “We need to wait this out.”

Bring, bring, bring! Drew shook his head. “We just gotta open the door for a moment. I’ll go get help.” Angela looked like she was ready to pounce on him. “I told you! It’s too risky, there’s children aboard.”

“A child who keeps trying to communicate with them!”

The fingers were now writing “N” over and over again on every surface of the windows that there were. “N” She read softly.

“Guys,” I repeated and my voice rose, “I think we should cover our eyes.” “T,” Sheryl muttered and I dove for her first.

“Cover your eyes!” I screeched and slapped a hand over her gaze so that she couldn’t read it anymore.

Bring, bring!

“This is crazy!” Jinu started stumbling backward away from the group.

“Don’t leave us!” I reached for him as well.

“No!” Rick shouted, “I told you not to!”

I turned just on time to see Laura crawling toward her phone. She pressed on the screen with one finger and brought it to her face, “hello?” “E.” Sheryl said as my fingers slipped and the whole world came crashing down around us.

“Get back! Get away from her!” Rick pushed the three of us he could reach toward the back of the bus. Jinu let out a wordless scream and Drew reached for Laura.

“Young lady?” Laura’s face was completely contorted as she stood up. Her mouth opened in a grotesque snarl as her jaw jutted out awkwardly to the side. Her eyes were lifeless and started to leak drips of water down her cheeks.

She moved all at once-- like strings were unevenly tied to her knees. She took one jerky, tin step forward and then another.

“Drew,” I hissed and reached for him. “Get back.” “She’s so young,” he muttered. “She’s so young. Can you hear me?” The water was running down Laura’s cheeks like a faucet now and I couldn’t look away as her eyes sunk into their sockets. The white disappeared first into some unseen blackness. I pulled Drew back with all my physical strength and Laura took another step forward.

Could we fight her? Could we fight these things?

I took my knife out and slashed the air in front of us as she took her unpleasant, rigid steps forward. Her eyes had all but sunken into her head and her hanging mouth was now dripping water that smelled of something like mold and damp earth.

“Stay back,” I hissed and slashed the air again. “I’ll kill you.” To my surprise she turned. She faced one of the windows, the one that Sheryl has been sitting at only hours before back in the sunlight world. She touched the glass tentatively and the fingers repeated their last letter over and over again. Sheryl said a final ringing letter, “R.” ENTER.

I hugged myself and held my breath, bracing for the worst.

The windows did not break open though and the distorted faces did not slither inward. Laura got up onto the seat and started pressing into the window. Her eyes were completely gone and her ears and mouth and eyes were all steadily running over with streams of water.

It was wrong. It was hard to watch as she hands pressed gradually through the glass in an impossible manner.

It was a slow and painful process as she joined the mist. Hands grabbed her and pulled at her, her hair came loose and fell down her shoulders, and one of the people beside me started sobbing.

“It’s taking her…”

Someone started humming, Jinu I think. It was a sad and reluctant song that carried soberingly through the space. He hummed a funeral march just as she was tugged through the window and off into the white expanse with no name.

Our phones stopped ringing all at once and the fog began to lift as if in a dream. The next procession was mechanical and done in complete silence. We picked up our cracked phones and returned to our seats.

I didn’t know what compelled us, but I knew it had to be done. I knew we had to return to our exact same spots.

I took my seat at the back of the bus with my head bowed downward and Jinu sat across from me with his eyes focused on the skyline. Angela and Sheryl sat close and fixed in place. Rick went back to sleep. Drew sat closest to the driver and watched Ted sit up again.

Lights appeared beside us. Sounds of cars and bikers and voices reappeared. Headlights blinked on the other side of the road. Ted started the engine again. And we drove.

The bus rumbled onward through the beautiful dark night and city.

The only sign that we had ever been trapped in some place beyond here was the fact that my face was wet with tears and that there was an empty seat in front of me. I couldn’t remember her name though.

I looked down at my phone and I had 127 missed calls from “UNKNOWN” and a very brief text message from the same number. All it read was “again” and “enter.”

I closed my eyes and figured maybe it was time to move back home.

#writeblr #horror #writers on tumblr #supernatural #short story #original story #my work #creepy story #cw: body horror

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mostfacinorous · 4 years

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GO Whumptober Day 28: Such Wow. Many Normal. Very Oops. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]

The cause of the freezing, humans determined, was either merely ‘nature’ or ‘the growing climate crisis’, depending on whether the person speaking believed in that sort of thing. Either way, everyone could agree that it was unusual to unheard of, and no one much appreciated it.

It had eased off a bit, though-- still frozen, so the snow and ice was sticking around, but the wind had died off and the snow was no longer coming down in buckets, for which they were all very grateful.

The Bentley remained where she’d been parked since that first attempted afternoon out, and the plowed mountain behind her only grew ever higher and ever thicker.

Much like their American cousins from years prior, local heads of council had to remind their followers not to jump out of upper floor windows and into the snow, for fear of cars lurking underneath, and injuries that could and would result from such foolishness.

It didn’t fully stop it from happening, but it might have deterred an idiot or two.

Fortunately, neither Crowley nor Aziraphale was particularly interested in jumping out of windows.

There were, however, interested in having a bit of a walk, as it had warmed up enough to allow for it again, and they were feeling a little cooped up.

And so they packed their cocoa and coffee into a couple of thermoses-- carefully color coordinated in black and lightest blue tartan, so as to never be confused with The Thermos, of which they did not speak-- and headed to the park for a bit of time in the watery grey sun of London in winter.

The streets were clear enough to walk on safely and carefully, but the path round the lake was only worn down by others’ feet, and the snow had been trampled enough to have turned to mud, then frozen back to ice in places, making their usual habit of walking and talking more dangerous.

They had decided, after God’s admonition about getting closer, to try and keep their time apart to a minimum. This suited them both quite well, considering the trials and tribulations they’d faced of late, and it was delightful to finally have an excuse to be around one another that neither side could really argue with. After all, not being near Aziraphale when God arrived had put Crowley out of commission for days, and if he had been close, She may not have come at all. Thwarting at its finest, on both sides of the line.

And so, if they held hands to help steady one another, there wasn’t anything Heaven nor Hell could do about it, short of shaking their heads with disgust.

“I miss the ducks.” Crowley said suddenly, interrupting the silence that had descended as their last conversational topic had waned.

“Do you?” Aziraphale asked, surprised. “You always treat them quite poorly; I thought you disliked them.”

“I do not!” Crowley protested. “I play with them. Same as how they play with one another, innit?”

Aziraphale held his thoughts on the matter. He did glance out across the lake, though.

“I wonder how firmly frozen it is. Do you suppose they will be able to ice skate on it, after a storm like that?”

Crowley tilted his head and looked out over the ice.

“At least a couple of ‘em are gonna give it a go. Look.” He nodded off near the high reeds, where the ducks liked to put their eggs come spring, and where a few children appeared to be slipping off their shoes, with plans of skating over the ice in their stockings.

“Heavens.” Aziraphale said. “Perhaps we ought to do something to stop them.” He began heading in that direction, a little too far off to be heard if he yelled.

“Bit too late for that, Angel!” He heard as Crowley raced past him, realizing as he did that he’d pressed his mobile into Aziraphale’s hands. He looked up to see a child take off from the edge straight towards the middle of the pond-- and promptly fall through the ice and into the waters below.

“Bugger.” Aziraphale muttered under his breath.

Crowley was fast, faster than the other children, even, and he shouted for them to stay as he slid on his stomach towards the hole in the ice.

Aziraphael fumbled with the phone for a spare moment, then got a call in to emergency services. “Hello, yes, I am in St. james’ park, just north of the playground on the birdcage side of the lake-- a child has fallen through the ice and my partner has gone in after them. No, no, I can’t see-- they’ve surfaced. Please send help, I’m going to give you to a child now.”

Aziraphale handed the phone off to the young girl who was standing by, mouth agape.

“Help them find us, please.” He told her, a touch of miracle in his voice to give her the courage she needed to do the job, and then he turned to the lake.

“Crowley?” He called to the man who was clutching at the ice with inhumanly sharp talons that had sprouted from his fingers while he held a boy between his chest and the rim of the hole. “What can I do to help?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley had lost his glasses, and his eyes were wide.

“Don’t come out on the ice- it’s not gonna hold.” Even as he spoke, his fingers on one hand went crashing through the surface, sending them both bobbing as the boy cried out.

“Tail!” Aziraphale shouted, hoping Crowley had enough presence of mind to handle the change. He had always been a better swimmer while serpentine, and perhaps, that done--

He saw the moment that Crowley gained the advantage and they became a little steadier in the water.

“Now then-- if you have to, put him on your back, and break the ice away between you and the shore until you can climb out safely!”

Aziraphale felt next to useless, but he supposed at least one of them had a mind that was not freezing or panicking, and thus was able to assist that way.

“You hear that?” He heard Crowley mumbling comfortingly to the boy. “I’m going to give you a piggy ride now. You hold on tightly, understand? And I’ll soon have us out of here.”

Aziraphale watched, fretting terribly as Crowley helped the boy to climb around on the other side of him, and then began the process of smashing through the ice with his claws.

Aziraphale turned around and saw the fire brigade approaching, an ambulance in tow, and turned back to warn Crowley to hide his transformations.

“The Rescuers are here-- it won’t be long now!” He tried to make it sound hopeful and not as though he was playing supernatural lookout. It seemed to work, though, as the first of them reached him and clapped a hand on his back.

“You’re the caller?” She asked, and Aziraphale nodded, pointing as he accepted Crowley’s phone back from her.

“They’re nearly to the edge,” He added helpfully, though there was a dark and obvious trail of broken ice that marked how far they’d come.

“We’ve got them.” She promised, and waved for backup.

A small army of men and women ran down to the river’s edge to lift the boy off of Crowley’s back as he final grabbed hold of solid land, and Aziraphale managed to shoulder his way through them to reach down and grasp Crowley’s hands.

“There you are, you brave, stupid fool.” He said, pulling him up and onto land and into his arms.

Crowley was shaking with cold, and he had already partially soaked through Aziraphale’s clothing when the team brought them emergency blankets.

“Come on now, let’s get you out of your clothes and warming up.” One of the men instructed.

Aziraphale turned to be sure the boy was receiving the same sort of care; he was already in someone’s thermals.

“Alright.” Crowley agreed, surprising Aziraphale. He was looking straight at the angel, though, not at the humans who were trying to shuffle him off to the trucks for treatment. “Stay with me?” He asked, almost a plea, and Aziraphale knew it was only partially to help him fend off discovery. The other part was God and the unspoken threat of having saved a human life-- and what Hell might do to him for it.

“Of course. Let me help him-- he’s ah, special needs.”

“Alright.” The officials were quick to agree, with the tiniest nudge from Aziraphale. “The parents are on their way, I’m sure they’ll want to talk to you and we’ll need to take down statements for our reports after.”

“Of course.” Aziraphale said again. “If you can just fetch us some dry clothing for him--”

He sent them scurrying, and turned back to Crowley.

“Shall we get out of here before they come back, my dear? Make a run for it?”

Crowley, still shivering as if his bones intended to shake out of his skin, grinned back at Aziraphale.

“Best idea you’ve had all day, Angel.”

They booked it, making it out of sight before Aziraphale dried Crowley with a miracle and warmed him with another.

The walk home was almost anticlimactic, after all that.

“Ohh… I dropped the thermoses!” Aziraphale lamented, and Crowley huffed.

“Shall we stop by that little teashop up near Piccadilly?” He offered.

“Oh, let’s. I suppose you could do with something warm to drink anyway.”

“I wouldn’t object. And then home, to a fire and several blankets.” Crowley insisted. He paused, then added, “Thank you, by the way. I saw the boy and didn’t think-- I ought to keep you around, have you keep doing that for me, when needed.”

Aziraphale bumped their shoulders together.

“You’ll be hard pressed to get rid of me, you’ll find, if you keep pulling stunts like that.”

Their usual routine resumed, they made their way towards the tea shop, and home, and left the humans to wonder why they had run, why the boy was swearing the man who’d saved him was a mermaid, and how the hell someone had happened to miraculously be in the right place at the right time to stop childish stupidity from turning tragic.

It was, all in all, a rather successful outing.

#GO Whumptober2020 #Whumptober #Good Omens Fic #GOFic #Crowley #Aziraphale #crowley is good with kids #Ineffable Husbands #that writing thing I do

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gongju-juice · 4 years

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5. Once Upon a Southern Night

Crescent City

Warnings: Mentions of slavery and Confederacy

New Orleans. Hot and humid as home. Sister city to Mobile. Walking down the steamy streets, it smelled like spicy seasoning and margaritas—sounded like jazz beats and rushing crowds.

This year, Ash Wednesday fell incredibly late; March 10 to be exact. You never thought you would find yourself stumbling through New Orleans in the middle of Fat Tuesday—half-naked dancers screaming at your boyfriend from parade floats and indiscreet tourists flashing themselves as your family walked by. It was the most humiliating experience you ever felt, and all you could do is curse the Lost Cause soldiers who started the damn holiday in your home city in the first place.

The hospital was located smack in the middle of the old French Quarter where colonial buildings towered above the people, decorated in royal colored beads and winding lights. Nobody could drive the car through the crowd, so you had to get there by walking. You held your mom’s hand with your left, Jasper’s hand with your right.

“It’s never like this at home,” you explained to Jasper with a nervous laugh. “Did you know that the New Orleans mayor has to get permission from Mobile’s mayor every year to practice Mardi Gras?”

He looked down at you with his burning eyes. Since becoming aware of your family’s secret, he’d hardened himself to this emotionless being whose only concern was your safety. You were not allowed to leave his side, and when you had to go to the bathroom, he stood right outside the door like some long lost puppy.

“Something tells me they wouldn’t care whether or not they got permission anyway,” Emmett cackled. “New Orleans is wild.”

“Yeah, and you keep your eyes on the ground, sir,” Rosalie said, punching the side of his arm. The reverberating echo sounded like cracking glass.

The hospital was in very good shape on the outside despite being closed indefinitely for the past seventeen years. According to your mom, immediately after you were born, the place had been completely shut down and abandoned.

There were pictures of all kinds of historic events hung in antique gold frames on the walls: naval ships on fire at the Battle of Galveston, slaves picking fresh cotton on a South Carolinian plantation, Jefferson Davis’s inauguration in Montgomery, Alabama.

And in the middle of the lobby were a series of three grand portraits of Texas Majors. And at the end: Jasper Whitlock, Houston native, (1845-1863), died during a surprise Union attack in an evacuation order. There he was in his fine uniform, a cowboy hat over his honey curls. He looked so recognizable. . .so familiar in those white gloves—

He touched your side, and you looked around. The others were gone from sight, but you knew they could still hear everything where you were.

“If I could go back in time, if I could start all over again, I would do so in a heartbeat. I’m not proud of my past, Y/N. Not when I was human, nor when I changed. And I. . .I know I have no right to ask for your forgiveness but I—”

There was venom glistening in his eyes. Vampires couldn’t cry. It was one of the things Rosalie said she missed most about being a human. But looking at Jasper now, he looked like he was on the very verge of doing the possible. He fell to his knees.

“I’m so sorry for it all. I’m so sorry for what I did. I never. . .I never did some of the things my comrades did, but that doesn’t make me any less guilty. I still killed people. I killed people for the wrong reason, Y/N. I was a monster, and I can never wipe that blood off my ledger.”

You cradled his face in your hands. “We all have our past, Jas. You might’ve made mistakes, you might’ve done bad things, but you’re not the same person you used to be. It was a different time and era, and frankly, you growing from what you’ve suffered and experienced makes me love you even more.”

“But I was evil. There was evil in my heart, and I thought I was doing right. I convinced myself I was fighting for my neighbors—for my way of life. But the truth is, that way of life was wrong. Whether it was enslaving African Americans or newborns, I still felt all of their pain. It was so much, so much death and heartache,” he insisted, holding on to your wrists like they were the only thing they could hold him upright. “And I’m not worthy to be your man.”

“You damn right, you aren’t,” a feminine voice snapped behind you.

You turned around to face a black woman, just about her early twenties, menacing at Jasper by your side. She had a thick, kinky head of natural textured hair, and she was very well built—like she could run a marathon and beat everyone in the race. And her eyes were a mesmerizing shade of hazel that stood out against her skin.

“Who—who are you?” you asked, your voice trembling and barely above a whisper. The Cullens appeared from the shadows, surprised and slightly on edge that someone was in the hospital that they did not know about.

“My name used to be Ava Lafayette,” she explained, glancing you up down like you were nothing more than a roach. “We used to be—we are sisters.”

“How do I? I feel like we’ve met before.” Jasper touched his head, his fingernails digging into his skin like he was in severe pain. You hugged his waist, trying to comfort him but there wasn’t much you could do for the ailment of a vampire. Carlisle held him upright with his steady hands.

“That’s because we have, Major. You had a mission to gather all male, able-bodied volunteers from Mobile when you stumbled across the Lafayette plantation. I was a house slave of that household, of Preston Lafayette Sr.’s household. And he is also my father.”

You reeled back in horror. “So. . .does that mean? Preston Lafayette II is my brother???!”

She shook her head. “Nope, not this time. He’s my brother. Your father’s name was James. He was a full-blooded slave who lived on a neighboring plantation about thirty miles north.”

“But how is this possible?” your mother demanded, holding your arm. “She was born right here seventeen years ago. My husband and I adopted her. She was a baby!”

Ava glared at her, her eyes brightening inhumanely blue. “How are you skeletons still standing and breathing? It’s the work of the witches. The rule of supernatural order. Except in this case, Y/N is an exception.”

“. . .What?”

Ava suddenly waved her hand, and the air around you transformed into a place that was not the hospital. You were in the middle of a hot, blazing field, there were little black children running around carrying cracked buckets of water. Horses whinnied at the swarming flies, and poorly abused men and women sang in the fields.

“Massah completely forgot about Mama after I was born. About six years later when she had enough cloth to make her own wedding dress, she and James jumped the broom. You were born a couple of months later, right around the time Preston Jr. himself was born.

The two of you were inseparable. You played in the fields together when you weren’t in the Big House secretly learning lessons with Missus. He taught you how to ride his horse, Midnight, and you showed him how to gather berries by the river where the girls washed the laundry.

The two of you fell in love, and although you’d gotten much too old to be running around, Preston loved you to pieces. He begged Massah to let you in the house with all the fair-skinned servants. So, Massah took it one step further. He gave you to him for his nineteenth birthday.

The night of the party, however, Major Whitlock and some of his men came riding up to the front steps. They invited him in for dinner, and Preston had no choice but to join since his father was much too old to serve and he had no other male siblings.

He had to leave you behind, but not before finding out you were expecting’. It wasn’t uncommon for those kinds of things to happen back then, but it was still big news. Preston was devastated. He never believed in slavery anyhow, but he was afraid Missus would sell you if she knew about the baby. He was supposed to be getting married to Miss Abigail Mae Shepherd, and it would not be good news to hear about a half-negro baby in the plantation.

Unfortunately, Preston was right. While he was gone, Mama was furious. Missus had made arrangements for you to be sold up to a whore house in Charleston the next week. But see the thing about Mama—she was no ordinary slave. She was a witch who’d given up her magic in order to be with a human, James.

She sought help from her friends, but they would not help her. So, with no other choice, she decided to cast the forbidden spell.

She ignored the laws of time, erased your memories, and de-aged you in order to send you to the year (----), when you were ‘born.’ This hospital was never real, just an illusion that came with the spell. She intended for some human to adopt you so you could grow up as a normal child in the 21st century, but instead you were adopted by a white vampire.”

The illusion melted away, and once again you were in the dusty hospital.

“You don’t know the pain and suffering I went through while you were enjoying the amenities of the future. Mama, after breaking the most sacred forbidden spell of the witches, was sentenced to death by all of the North American clans. They allowed Missus to have her hanged, and then she turned her rage onto me.

I eventually ran to New Orleans to escape the Lafayettes and find the truth of our supernatural background. There, the witches accepted me, albeit begrudgingly, and taught me how to use my power. I knew I’d eventually find you, one year or another, but I didn’t expect it would take nearly two centuries to do so.”

Your heart was broken. Your whole life—as tragic as it was—was built with that man who was chasing after you now. He was the father to your unborn child, the child that would never be born. You’d grown up together, known each other inside and out. But you’d completely forgotten him and now he was coming back—and for what reason?

“So. . .witches. . .are they immortal?” Carlisle asked.

“Precisely—if they choose to enable their powers and stay that way. Only a witch can kill a witch. We witches created the first vampires in the world as a part of our Goddess’s order. The werewolves and shapeshifters and La Push were created some time before that as well.”

“But why is Preston trying to come for Y/N? I thought you said he was against slavery? If he really loves her, why didn’t he just tell her the whole truth in the first place?” Your mom demanded.

Ava's eyes turned back hazel, and a chair appeared behind her. “Because he wants to completely ruin Jasper. He blames Jasper for making him leave, and he blames Jasper for all the wars he fought with Maria in the South. And the little devil has allied herself with his cause, for no one wants to see him suffer more than she does.”

You felt Jasper tense beside you. None of this was his fault, he was just doing what he was ordered. But Preston was focusing all his energy on completely destroying your bond with him. Earlier, Jasper explained that you were his mate. Perhaps, this was a revenge plot?

“But why would he think I’d willingly fall into his arms like we’re still in love? It was over a century ago, and I don’t remember any of it!” you shouted.

“That man died in 1863 when he was turned. Since that day, he’s been stuck in the past—eternally bound to the promise to return back to you. No matter what you say, he’s always going to after you. That’s what he told his mother, and the next day she signed your papers.”

Jasper wrapped a protective arm around your middle. “That won’t happen. He won’t take her away from me. And as for Maria, I know her better than anyone else in this world. I’m not scared if it comes to a fight.”

“Why can’t I see anything anymore?” Alice cried. “And why can’t the witches help?”

“Because once a witch is aware of what they are, vampires can no longer turn them or use their gifts on them. Maria and Preston have also probably enlisted the help of witches or wolves to cover their tracks. And as for the witches. . .they have completely shunned Y/N from society. In fact, they’d probably be more willing to kill her than help, but because of me, they’re holding their preference of the law at bay.”

Edward, frustrated at the lack of his telepathic abilities, said, “So we’re going in blind, the witches won’t help—isn’t this a Volturi level threat?”

Ava sighed. “The Volturi is completely submissive to the witches. If they come near a witch family or steps within a mile radius of even the city of New Orleans, the entire vampire race will be completely wiped out. Sorry, but they won’t be much help in this fight.”

You pressed your hand to your chest, finding it suddenly hard to breathe. Immediately, Jasper caught you as you wobbled on your feet from the lack of oxygen. His scent comforted you, but you felt the distance between the two of you more than ever. At one point, you were pledged to another man; the same man after his life now.

“So what can we do?” your mother and Esme pleaded. “How can we save her? They’re bringing their newborn armies after us, the seven of us won’t be enough!”

Ava twirled a ball of light in her fingers thoughtfully. You realized that despite the fact she was biracial, she looked so similar to you. You shared the same round nose and shape of lips.

“I really hate you more than anything, if I’m being honest. Your mom favored you and sent you away, leaving me in the dust and without a mother in a time when I didn’t understand a bit of what magic was or that the supernatural even existed,” she admitted. “But you’re still my sister, and you’re the only family I’ve got left. I’m going to try to get some of my friends to come to our side, but that’s no guarantee. Sadly, Helen of Troy is still pinned for being the start of war.”

“And we have some friends of our own,” Carlisle said. “And we’ll try to convince the shapeshifters to help too. If we could lure them back to La Push, that would mean infringing on werewolf territory and it would give them no choice but to defend Y/N.”

Jasper held you tighter, and his eyes darkened. “I don’t care what I have to do. Preston has been sorely mistaken, and now we have an old score to settle. Y/N and I are in love now, and we always will be. What happened in 1863 will stay in 1863, and I will be the one to make sure that happens.”

You snuggled into his chest, closing your eyes. You prayed to God—the Goddess or whoever—that you and your family would end up okay. You prayed for the baby that was never born, the baby that was never loved, and you prayed for your biological mother’s tortured soul. But lastly, and more importantly, you prayed for Jasper.

Don’t you like watching Jasper ride his hOnSe??

Part Three Part Four

#jasper hale #jasper hale x reader #jasper hale imagines #Twilight #twilight imagines #cullen clan #edward cullen #carlisle cullen #alice cullen #emmett cullen #esme cullen #rosalie hale #i hate doing hastags #i like the honse

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alywats · 3 years

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January 2021 Reading Wrap-Up

Here are all the books I read in January, a month of getting back into my routine after the holiday break and trying to make time for reading. Reading is my favorite hobby, but it is really hard to make time and space for it when I use all my focus and strain my eyes at the computer during the working hours of the day. So audiobooks have really been my saving grace this month. I only read a few of these books with my eyes, and the rest of them were listened to while I was cooking or driving or doing my laundry or taking a walk around the lake, and that is something that has been really valuable to me. Even though I only had “time” to sit down and read three or four books this month, I was able to read 12 with the help of audiobooks! Woohoo! Now on to my reviews for these books!

1. The Big Sleep -Raymond Chandler (231 pgs) 3

A classic "hard-boiled detective" novel which I enjoyed because of its significance in the genre. What I did not enjoy was the homophobia which, it being a product of its time, was extreme and hard to read through. First book of 2021 and we are not off to a great start!

2. Get A Life, Chloe Brown -Talia Hibbert (373pgs) 3.5

Mostly cute. There were like two or three things that made me suuuuuuper annoyed but I think they are more my issues than the book's, so I'll let it slide. Probably won't continue this series!

3. The Year of Less -Cait Flanders (189 pgs) 1.5

Okay this is the whiniest book ever, and I don't say that lightly. Ugh, I just wanted to read more about simple living and this book was 200 pages of complaining, Flanders not really consuming less, and no actual info about simple living or being a sustainable consumer.

4. The Invention of Sound -Chuck Palahniuk (240 pgs) 3

The first half was so good... and then I got kinda lost. At this point the real question is how many Palahniuk books will I read and think are mediocre before I finally read Fight Club...

5. Writers & Lovers -Lily King (320 pgs) 4

This book is really good for a lot of writer-y things and a lot of lover-y things. But my fav part? When there is a math band in the cafeteria called "The Cosines".

6. Wild -Cheryl Strayed (315 pgs) 4

I loved A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, so it's no surprise that I was into this book too. It is a bit cliche to be inspired by this book, but it's cliche for a reason, this journey is inspiring, the personal growth and discovery is inspiring. I also just loved the descriptions of Ashland, Crater Lake, Mt. Hood, and the Columbia from Strayed's perspective. These are places and landmarks that I have grown up with, and to be reminded of how special Oregon is was definitely something I enjoyed.

7. Brave New World -Aldous Huxley (288 pgs) 3

Honestly, I don’t have a lot to say about this. There were some things that worked and some things that were not great, but mostly I was indifferent. I could not find any investment in this story or the characters, but I also didn’t ~hate~ what I was reading, so it was really a neutral reading experience for me.

8. The Man Who Loved Only Numbers -Paul Hoffman (303 pgs) 3.5

This was a biography of Erdős, notorious Hungarian mathematician, as well as a general history of some of his contemporaries and their mathematical highlights. Overall I found this book to be engaging, well-researched, and at the right level of detail, but what made this one hard for me was my immediate and intense dislike of Erdős. As a baby mathematician, I have been told that Erdős was an amazing and prolific mathematician who changed the course of mathematics, and we (mathematicians) should be aspiring to be like him. And he *was* amazing and prolific as a mathematician, but outside of mathematics, Erdős was annoying and demanding and full of entitlement, something that surprised me. The reason this bothered me, if I’m being honest, is that I feel this attitude of superiority in the mathematics community way too much. You are not of superior intelligence if you do math, you should not forget to be a well-adjusted human because you are too focused on math, and this should not be what mathematicians are striving for (I think many mathematicians would disagree with me, and that is my point). Erdős’s attitude and ethos were unhealthy at best, as they are for many ‘great’ mathematicians, and it’s hard for me to get behind the romanticized nature of “The Man Who Loved Only Numbers”, as if abandoning all other parts of life is the best/truest way to be a mathematician. It’s hard for me to care about Erdős numbers (think 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon but for math) when the idea of mathematical name-dropping is just another way to feel superior, and I leave this book feeling disconnected by the communal obsession with Erdős among mathematicians.

9. The Shining -Stephen King (659 pgs) 5

I don't think it's revolutionary to say that this is King's best work, but in case you need me to tell you, The Shining is probably Stephen King's best work. Jack Torrance freaks me out like no other, the Overlook hotel is written in such a unique and ~creepy~ way, and the supernatural elements are woven in with character study and plot development in a way that makes them feel entirely real but not the central motivation for the story.

I think a problem with a lot of sci-fi/fantasy tropes like mind-reading is that 1. it is the *only* plot device the author uses to continue the narrative so it completely overshadows characterization and the plot arc, or 2. it isn't fleshed out enough so the reader doesn't get to feel totally immersed in or believe in the supernatural world that the story is taking place in.

The Shining is the balance of these two issues, King writes the characters and the plot in a way that is simply enhanced by the supernatural elements, and he writes the supernatural elements in a way that is enhanced by Danny's character and his circumstances.

This was my second time reading The Shining, since the first time I read it I was in 7th grade. There were definitely things I picked up on the second time around, and I am really glad I read it again.

10. Ancillary Justice -Ann Leckie (416 pgs) 3

One thing I really appreciate about this book is that it is a woman's voice and commentary on gender in the sci-fi world, which is rare and valuable. Sci-fi space opera has been a genre ruled by the white man for a long time, and that means that the stories are often very reflective of that. So yeah, I am happy to have read a book in this space written by a woman.

My criticism is simply that I was bored through parts of it, and I think that's because it's not a plot or characters that resonated with me. And that's just my personal taste coming through.

11. The Bass Rock -Evie Wyld (368 pgs) 4

The Bass Rock is the interweaving tale through different periods of time in Scotland, and the way society controlled and abused these women. They accused smart women of being witches, then they lobotomized women with opinions, and on and on. This book is a commentary on violence, and oppression as violence against women, which makes it somewhat difficult to read, but the way the stories of the women overlap both in plot and in theme is so beautifully done.

12. Hamnet -Maggie O'Farrell (372 pgs) 5

Shakespeare, that mysterious bard, had a son named Hamnet who died. Is it a coincidence then, that his most emo play is of the same name? (Hamnet = Hamlet in 1590s England I guess). This novel mostly shoves William off-stage, focusing more on his wife Agnes and her experience being a daughter, a mother, a wife, and a mourner. It is a glimpse into life in the 1590s, where plague was ravaging the cities, and although 1590s life often feels very different to our 2021 life, there are a few striking similarities to be found here: grief, lockdown, the closing of theaters. This was beautifully written, and in the spirit of being dramatic, I'll say the ending took my breath away.

And I'll end with this thought: Shakespeare wrote during a time where the Black Death could not be ignored, he (probably) lost his son to it, but the plague is at most an undertone in his body of work. Instead he wrote about corruption, the failure of rulers, deception, grief, and the lust for power. Take a look into 2020s USA, and I think you'll find that Shakespeare just got a little bit more relatable.

#January reads #january wrap up #reads #booklr #books

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the-trashy-phoenix · 3 years

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Supernatural season 3 review (part 1)

Link to part 2:

Having also finished the third season, I have to admit each one until now is better than the one before. Of course that’s because you grow fond of the characters, but I honestly think it gets more and more original and involving going on. Starting with the tight link with the previous season, which in this case is Sam’s death. If you’ve never watched Supernatural, don’t worry, these guys die and come back to life on average once a season; if you’re a Supernatural fan, well, you surely know it better than me.

Resuming quickly, in the last episodes of the second season Sam dies killed by one of those guys who, just like him, have some sort of psychic abilities and are supposed to take part to the upcoming war fighting in the Yellow-eyed demon’s (whose name is Azazel, as I learnt reading Carly’s review) army. Dean is of course devastated and can’t just leave Sam dead, so he manages to make a deal (rings a bell?) with the Crossroad demon, who had appeared at some point in the second season: Sam can be brought back but the price for Dean is extremely high, because the demon would make him live for just one more year, after which he will go directly to hell. It’s understandable that he does it because he can’t live without his brother and it’s been his duty to protect and save him since when they were children, but it’s also undeniable that it’s kind of Dean’s way to get partly rid of that sense of guilt he constantly feels because of John’s sacrifice. It reminded me of Greek tragedy, because some plays have a usual pattern, whose main feature is that parents’ faults fall onto their children in an endless chain of guilt and grief from which it is impossible to escape. Dean feels like his life isn’t worth living anymore and it seems more than right to him to give it to his beloved brother, that’s why when Sam wakes up he doesn’t seem to worry about his end, at least at the very beginning. On the other hand Sam now experiences Dean’s same sense of guilt and is mad at him for imposing it to him, even if deep inside he knows he would have done the same thing, but he also can’t understand how his brother could and can accept so easily the idea of dying. In fact he can’t, he’s just pretending once again to protect Sam, who tries to save him, just like he himself did, in every possible way. At a certain point this pretending is revealed and underlines powerfully the lack of communication between the two, just like what happened after John died, when Dean kept hiding his grief because he’s supposed to be the strongest, as a big brother. I do comprehend they lie to one another for the best, but it always turns out to be a really bad choice.

Before proceeding with the episodes and the single characters, I’d like to point out one thing I feel like I delayed too much. I’m talking out about Dean’s obsession for girls (or hot chicks, if you prefer). I know it’s a part of his characterization as the prototype of the heterosexual strong man, but still I think it’s a bit exaggerated at some point, giving the impression he objectifies women. By the way let’s also consider that ten or fifteen years ago maybe there wasn’t exactly the same sensibility we now have.

This time I’ll be more schematic in commenting the episodes, because I think I’ve something to say for nearly each one of them, as they are full of events and of some new interesting characters.

In the second episode we meet Lisa, a sweetheart of Dean’s from when he was younger: he wants to meet her again, but he soon finds out she has a son, who he suspects being his. For how we know Dean we would swear he’ll be terrified by the idea of having a son, but at the end he’s unexpectedly disappointed that child is not his. This is just apparently weird, for we can explain it well considering Dean’s recurrent desire and thought of having a “normal” life and a family of his own, and maybe also all that looking for the hottest girls is nothing but a means of hiding his strong will for a stable life and partner. I have to say this episode is also really scary and disquieting because of the demonic children.

The third episode welcomes a more permanent character, Bela Talbot, a cunning thief who keeps bothering Sam and Dean during their hunts. She’s the typical bad-but-fascinating kind of character: she’s so smart you’re naturally driven to sympathize with her. The boys have a strange relationship with her, as further on, in episode 6, they’re forced to cooperate with her to solve a case and they even succeed in saving her life even if she didn’t really prove to deserve it. It sometimes seems like her mean attitude takes over her just because it’s her nature; so, even though, as I said, the brothers saved her, she steals the Colt, putting them in serious difficulty. No surprise the boys quit relying on her and refuse to save her again in the last episodes: we learn she wanted the Colt for herself because she is soon dying due to a deal she had made years before with a demon that killed her parents. Her story is quite sad, but of course she could have saved herself giving up her dark side and trusting Sam and Dean.

I really enjoyed the fifth episode, in which the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm come tragically true from a girl’s fantasy. It’s funny how supernatural events grow stranger as the episodes go on, and how sometimes the protagonists can’t believe some things actually exist even if they’re used to that. This episode is also a turning point in the general plot because Sam, desperate for saving Dean, kills the Crossroad demon with the Colt (before Bela steals it) hoping to free his brother from his deal, but the creature unexpectedly tells him that another mysterious and very powerful demon holds the contract. Sam is puzzled and he and Dean will dedicate the rest of the season to hunting that one.

I’ll mention episode 7 because we meet again an old friend, Gordon, one of the main villains of the second season who comes back to have revenge, but, as I anticipated in the previous review, he’s finally defeated in the most ironic way. In a sort of ring composition, the episode is about vampires, the same creatures Sam and Dean are hunting when they meet Gordon for the first time, and the hunter gets bit by one of them and he becomes the monster he hated the most. I don’t wanna sound mean, but he actually deserved that.

I liked the episode set at Christmas, first of all because it’s truly the best time of the year (at least for me), secondly because I think it fits perfectly Dean’s situation, being a joyful period, but also full of sadness and melancholy for another year is passing by. Of course Dean can’t but feel it strongly and I think that’s why he gets so emotional, wanting to celebrate as a proper family. We also feel so sorry for the brothers as we see flashbacks from their childhood representing their memories of their sad time on their own following their dad in his continuous hunting.

I can’t but give a special mention to episode 11, which Carly expected, and made me expect, impatiently. It’s just so funny and frustrating at same time, with the same day repeating all over again without Sam being able to stop the loop, and leading him to lose his brother for six long months (kind of a preview of what will happen when Dean will be “permanently” dead) and at the end to bring him back making the trickster (the same one we met in the first season) stop creating alternative realities.

We also see again some other recurrent characters: Bobby, who I analysed in the previous review, in episode 10 in particular, because the boys are called to save him from his own dreams, and to do so they have to enter them (in this way we and the brothers have the chance to know more about him and his past); the so-called “Ghostfacers”, a group of clumsy fake hunters Sam and Dean had met in the first season (and meet again now in episode 12) and have constantly to save from themselves and the hunts they put themselves into; the FBI agent Henricksen, who is “hunting” the brothers as he thinks they’re dangerous criminals. Nevertheless, in episode 12, he has to change his mind and reconsider his opinions about them for the police station where Sam and Dean are kept is attacked by a demonic army and Henricksen himself gets possessed. While deciding how to fight them, they are helped by Ruby, a demon who seems to be different from the others: at first she seems willing to help Sam saving Dean, and help the boys in general (as in episode 12 against the army), but at the end her purpose comes out. But let’s go a little bit back to Henricksen and the police station: they manage to defeat all those demons really smartly (they read out the exorcism formula though speakers which spread the sound all over the place), but when everything seems to be going well, Sam and Dean learn from the news that another demon came at the police station after they left and killed everyone. It is called Lilith, and she’s the real villain of the season, mainly because it’s her who holds Dean’s contract. So of course the final fight is to defeat Lilith, but also to save Dean’s life. That’s when Ruby intervenes again to suggest Sam could use his psychic abilities to defeat her. He’s tempted by Ruby’s ideas because, even if he doesn’t know how to manage his powers, he’s so focused on saving his brother’s life he could be a bit naïve trusting Ruby without really knowing what’s her real purpose, even though she seems to be the only good demon living. On the contrary Dean doesn’t believe her at all. We can’t know how the things would have ended up if they listened to Ruby’s advice, but they don’t and they can’t kill Lilith, so Dean is chewed up by the hellhounds and goes directly to hell. This scene is so heartbreaking because Sam’s pain is nearly unbearable and you find yourself having hoped, or having been sure, Dean would survive in some ways. That’s how the third season ends, with Sam broken into tears, Lilith still strong and free, Dean covered in blood deep down in hell. Hope seems far away. Or maybe we just have to wait for the next season.

- Irene 💕

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