#cannot fucking believe how hard this has wormed its way into my brain

[kiwiana-writes]

WIP Wednesday

Thank you so much @celaestis1 for the tag—we're kicking off early this week! (I say, at 10:30pm on a Wednesday my time.)

Something a little (a lot) different this week, but... well, it's work for a fic that's in progress! I decided I'd make my own life a lot easier by using royalty-free backing tracks for at least some of this stuff, but composing/lyric writing to pre-existing music is VERY different to starting from scratch, so this is an ADVENTURE. Hence why I'm starting rhythm-first, then lyrics, then melody. Even though it's not a snippet in the usual sense, I hope you enjoy anyway?

Forever feeling feral for whatever y'all are up to, so tagging @affectionatelyrs @anchoredarchangel @anincompletelist @blairwaldcrf @celeritas2997 @cha-melodius @clottedcreamfudge @cricketnationrise @cultofsappho @daisymae-12 @dumbpeachjuice @everwitch-magiks @firenati0n @getmehighonmagic @happiness-of-the-pursuit @heybuddy-drabbles @hgejfmw-hgejhsf @indestructibleheart @indomitable-love @inexplicablymine @leaves-of-laurelin @littlemisskittentoes @lizzie-bennetdarcy @matherines @myheartalivewrites @ninzied @notspecialbabe @orchidscript @rmd-writes @sherryvalli @ships-to-sail @smc-27 @sparklepocalypse @ssmtskw @stereopticons @tintagel-or-cockleshells @welcometololaland @whimsymanaged and, as always, anyone who wants to play! (If you take the open tag please tag me so I can see!!)

#wip wednesday #kiwiana-writes #wip: rockstar alex exes to lovers #cannot fucking believe how hard this has wormed its way into my brain #there's still a part of me that wants to make it fully epistolary but #that scene of henry hearing a song about himself in bed while sucking someone else's dick is :chefkiss: #and it's hard to do that in an epistolary way so #here we are lmao #also tracking wordcount etc for this in my lil writing airtable is gonna be an adventure #but that's future MJ's problem

[morgana-ren]

utterly lack critical thinking or comprehension and couldn't understand nuance or perspective if you gave them baby's first homework assignment on it

This. This so hard. And its always us that are wrong for blocking them or even god forbid trying to explain. I'm 34, my blog is full of dark content and it's so creepy and worrying to having kids following! I end up going through a blog check every week

I want to say thank you to everyone who has messaged me and pointed out the minors in my follows when I might've missed them. Some of them try to hide, others are unabashed, but all of them get blocked.

The ones that see this and snidely think I have missed them, the damage is on your head. I'm sorry, but that's the reality of it. If you lie to me, or hide yourself, there is quite literally nothing I can do. My responsibility over your life ends there.

Thing is, I remember being that age. I remember being a child and trying to worm my way into adult spaces. All my life, I had been told I was so mature for my age, and that I was an 'old soul.' I was "different" from other children; I could handle it. I understood 'more than they did.' I was smart and clever and everyone around me made a point to impress that on me, and I believed it.

I thought I could handle it, and I didn't learn for many years until after the damage had already been done.

Children are headstrong and stubborn, but they are also foolish and unlearned and have no experience. They haven't been alive long enough to realize this yet, though, and it isn't their fault. That is something that comes with age. They do not understand the depths of damage that they can cause to themselves or others. They do not understand that most people who tell you how 'smart you are' or how you're 'mature' for your age are usually out to manipulate you. They do not know how to engage in these spaces in a safe manner because it simply isn't possible.

They do not understand, and they do not care to. Children are selfish. It's not meant as an insult. Really. It's just part of growing up. It's why they invite themselves into adult spaces despite being told they are not wanted. Their viewpoints are correct and true and they are right and you're just a boomer. You don't get it.

They are still developing. Still learning. Still growing. They literally do not understand because they have no way to. They think that they can handle it because they have no reason to believe that they cannot. They do not have the life experience or wisdom that comes with that experience.

They do not know how to engage these fandoms, which is why you will find them arguing their viewpoints when no one has asked or starting fights over different characters or plotlines they don't like. They don't have the experience to be able to understand nuance or storytelling and a great many other things. It's usually children that are spearheading the 'fiction equals reality' movement because they are, and forgive me for saying this, but too foolish to fully grasp what they are saying and the long reaching implications and consequences of it. They are children in mind and body, no matter how desperately they don't want to be.

They demand to be accepted into adult spaces, and then demand to be protected by the adults in those fandoms who do not want them there (which, in my experience, is a relatively new phenomenon) despite the fact that it is not possible because the source fucking material was not made with you in mind. They engage in smut writing and violence and other themes that their brains cannot fully comprehend beyond an initial understanding of what the content is. They do not understand that they are causing damage with their presence. They are causing damage to themselves and others and the community at large.

They don't care. They have no reason to.

They don't care if they are putting you in danger. They do not care if they are putting themselves in danger. They do not care.

At the end of the day, there is only so much that we can do. We can try and explain it. We can tell them. We can try to appeal to the little bit of empathy they have developed. We can explain things as nicely as possible and hope that they see reason in our words. We can give them our personal experiences and our hardships and plead with them not to tread the same path. But most of the time, they will not listen. They believe they are different and special, and they won't learn for many, many years that they are not.

They cannot grasp this concept, so needless to say, it is entirely pointless to try and explain to them why they might be a bit too naive to engage with certain fiction. Why their ideas on characters and stories might be a bit underdeveloped and ridiculous. They get angry and lash out. They demand respect but do not give it. They demand protection and yet put everyone at risk.

It's not their fault, in a way. They don't understand. They can't. It's why we do what we can to keep them out.

I am genuinely sorry that their parents and the world around them has failed them. I am sorry that they are freely allowed to attempt to engage in things they do not have the ability to understand yet. I am. It's not their fault. They don't understand. How could they?

They can be angry at us all they'd like. They can lash out and throw tantrums, because it's all they know how to do. They can say how wrong we are and that we're old and the other arsenal of insults they like to throw out. They can set out to prove us wrong while ultimately proving our point.

I'm not trying to be an ass, here. I'm really not.

That being said, it's not fair to us either. Like you said, we end up in catfights with kids and we're the bad guys for engaging, we're the bad guys for blocking, we're the bad guys and get dogpiled even though what in the hells would you have us do? We cannot ignore them, clearly. But in their eyes, they're right and we're wrong and that's that. They don't understand. They can't.

We can put warnings and DNIs, we can actively block children that meander into our spaces thoughtlessly, we can try to protect ourselves. Being the bad guy to a thirteen-year-old is a small price to pay for trying to keep them safe, even as they hate it.

But again, there is only so much we can do.

I feel horrible for the creators that are experiencing the deaths of their creations because of this. Influxes of children in their space that make them feel like bad people for simply creating because there is nothing they can do. It's miserable and frustrating and ultimately, you have no choice but to either kill your own creation or be called a horrible person for persisting even though you have no control over who engages. To be called a bad person for engaging in fiction because children don't understand it or the reasons one might do so. I feel horrible for children who are ruining their future psyche and mental state because they don't understand. It's a horrible situation all around.

We do what we can. And we'll keep doing what we can. We will protect them even as they hate it. But there is literally only so much you can do. What do you want an adult creator to do when someone else posts their content on tiktok and attracts hordes of teenagers who are naive? What do you want them to do when children ignore the warnings on AO3? What do you want them to do when children follow them and they lie about their age?

It sucks. It's a genuinely miserable situation all around. All we can hope for is that children, in their own little way, will grow up and stay out of spaces not meant for them. It won't happen, most of the time. But we can dream.

#morgana whinings #I feel you I really do #I fully expect hordes of angry children in my inbox #and just know when you do #you will be IP blocked

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Was Napoleon a tyrant? I don't necessarily think he was: at least, I believe he was a better alternative to the absolute monarchs he was fighting. But there are those who disagree. What are your thoughts on the subject?

This is a can of worms to be sure.

I mean....how are we defining the word tyrant? All monarchs are tyrants to someone. Monarchy, by its very nature, is tyrannical in one way, shape, or form, no matter who is at its head. Even in the more neutered forms we see now days with the British. The Queen still exerts a ridiculous amount of power, all things considered.

Napoleon was no better or worse than any other monarch in Europe at that time. Indeed, better than some, worse than others. Because you know, he was human!

-

This got VERY long. SO LONG. Choice excerpts from below the cut:

"'Power was encroaching with large strides behind the words order and stability,' as Thibaudeau put it."

"(And I suspect he was concerned about seeming too eager for power/setting up a monarchical system. Fouche: You're about as subtle as a canon going off right next door. Napoleon: Hush.)"

"Theeeeeen the little bastard (affectionate) became Emperor."

"Napoleon Vs. Jeff Bezos: fight! fight! fight! (I'm putting my money on Napoleon.)"

--

tl;dr: a more or less benevolent emperor who had his faults and who was intimately aware, for better or worse, more than most monarchs, that the head is only tenuously attached to the body. (Skim to the bottom for my thoughts on the personal things i.e. how I interpret Napoleon's actions and brain)

But, more seriously, as with most absolute statements, I am opposed to calling him a tyrant because it is reductive and serves no purpose except to make broad sweeping political statements that I believe are far more about the person making the statement exemplifying their modern political, republican position (as in, actual republican-I-support-the-existence-of-republics not the gop) rather than expressing any sort of truth about the past. (wHaT iS tRuTh.)

For historical purposes, it can over-simplify the situation and lead to skewed interpretations of events because you're coming in with this word that has a lot of modern, 20th and 21st century baggage to it.

And, because these people are coming in with this big, bad word of tyrant as a label for Napoleon, it doesn't allow them to engage with the nuance and complexities of his reign.

Anyway.

Napoleon, as emperor, supported centralized power held in his own hands, with support from other governing bodies (senate, council of state etc.). However, Napoleon had a lot of influence in the structuring of these governing bodies and the subsequent appointments as a means to exert control over entities that would otherwise be able to act somewhat independent from him and impinge his power.

We see this consolidation of power beginning, obviously, under the consulate. 'Power was encroaching with large strides behind the words order and stability,' as Thibaudeau put it.

There was the whole theatre around the Tribunate offering to extend Napoleon's tenure as First Consul for another ten years as a means of thanks/showing gratitude for all he did for France (Fouche was like: fuck that, let's just make a statue of the guy). Napoleon played the part of Humble Servant of the Public and refused both statue and the ten year extension. (Very Julius Caesar: You all did see that on the Lupercal, I thrice presented him a kingly crown, which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?)

In actuality, though, he was pissed because he wanted it extended for life.

This resulted in the Council of State deciding "independently" (i.e. Napoleon wasn't present but he sure as hell influenced that Council session) to hold a plebiscite in order to ask The People two key questions: 'Should Napoleon Bonaparte be consul for life?' and 'Should he have the right to designate his successor?'

Napoleon nixed the second question saying to Cambaceres, 'The testament of Louis XIV was not respected, so why should mine be? A dead man has nothing to say.' Which is to say, he knew people would vote for him to be Consul for life, but the prospect of him choosing a successor, a la the Roman Empire, and having that choice be without input from the people and respected upon his death? Less clear.

(And, I suspect he was concerned about seeming too eager for power/setting up a monarchical system.

Fouche: You're about as subtle as a canon going off right next door.

Napoleon: Hush.)

For the Plebiscite, there were around 3.56 million votes for Yes to the question of Napoleon as consul for life and only around 8,300 for No.

The turnout rate was 60% which is uhh...impressive! (To be fair, there was no real evidence of tampering with the vote. Unlike in subsequent Plebiscites, such as the results for Do We Make Him Emperor, which were absolutely doctored. But, considering the highest turnout ever seen in the French Revolution was around 30/35%, double that is certainly something.)

Lafayette was pissed with this. He kicked up a fuss in the Senate and wrote to Napoleon saying that his 'restorative dictatorship' had been well and fine for now but has Napoleon thought about restoring liberty? and that he was certain Napoleon, of all people, wouldn't want an 'arbitrary regime' to be installed!

Napoleon: Bold of you to assume that, Lafayette.

There were, at this time, some mumblings and grumblings about tyranny from the liberals and those still wanting to continue the experiment of the French Republic, to be sure. They increased as time went on and Napoleon's power continued to consolidate.

Theeeeeen the little bastard (affectionate) became Emperor.

Lafayette: WhAt Is tHiS??

Napoleon: Look into my face and tell me honestly that you are shocked.

--

His government, as Consul and as Emperor, was centralized and very top-down in how it operated. Little was done without Napoleon's input.

The seemingly democratic institutions that had propped him up into power were retained and Napoleon used them as a means to facilitate his rule. As noted earlier, Napoleon had a heavy hand in appointments and the processes in place to fill various offices. Nothing was really...independent of him and his influence.

Though, in terms of Image Building of Empire, Napoleon worked hard to try and maintain the façade of impartiality as emperor. That he was head of state, sure, but all state apparatuses operated independent of him.

(Why is Napoleon's hat so big? because it is full of lies supporting the imperial image making machine.)

That said, when it came to filling those offices, Napoleon focused on merit more than anything as he wanted his governing officials to be capable, hardworking and, above all else, loyal.

(A good quote from Napoleon in one of his more Eat the Rich moments of the consulate: 'One cannot treat wealth as a title of nobility. A rich man is often a layabout without merit. A rich merchant is often only so by virtue of the art of selling expensively or stealing.'

Napoleon Vs. Jeff Bezos: fight! fight! fight!

(I'm putting my money on Napoleon.) )

--

This is getting really long and I feel that I've not addressed anything in a useful manner, but am I going to stop? No.

--

Napoleon, himself, at least in 1803, did express some conflicted views about assuming an imperial title. To Roederer he said, 'So many great things have been achieved over the past three years under the title of consul. It should be kept.'

Cambaceres said to Napoleon that upon assuming an imperial title 'your position changes and places you at odds with yourself.' No longer are you merely a public servant, an upholder of the Republic's ideals. Now you are a man wearing a crown, trying to be the upholder of the Republic's ideals.

(nb: I feel that duality is something Napoleon never fully got a handle on. He would veer strongly into authoritarian monarch then have moments of Rousseau-ian Idealism.)

Napoleon was insistent that his rule be a parliamentary monarchy (keeping the governance framework implemented in the Constitution of Year VIII, if I am not mistaken. But don't quote me on that.) and that the French were not his subjects but his people.

So, the imperial government worked thus with the Legislative process divided between four bodies:

Council of State which would draw up legislative proposals,

Tribunate which could debate on legislation but not vote on it,

a legislative body which could vote on legislation but not discuss it, and

Senate which would consider whether the proposed legislation conformed to the Constitution.

The Senate and the Legislative body could, theoretically, curtail Napoleon’s freedom/power. However, considering the fact that he was involved in the appointment process of these offices, and the general rhythm of daily governance, how much power they were able to exert over him was limited.

(This is at his height! Of course, towards the end we see a shift in that. But that's largely tied up in his military defeats and the British banging the door knocker demanding to be let in. Also they brought with them some friends. You might have heard of them? Bourbons?)

The initial terms the Senate brought to Napoleon with their offer of accepting him as a hereditary monarch included, but weren't limited to:

liberty cannot be infringed

equality cannot be jeopardized

sovereignty of the people must be maintained

the laws of the nation are inviolable

all institutions were to be free from undue imperial influence (e.g. the press)

the nation should never be put into a position where it needs to behead the head of state. Again.

Napoleon was uh. Not best pleased with this and had a new version drafted up that included acknowledgement of the sovereignty of the people, but a lot of the other things (e.g. freedom of the press) were cut out.

Yet, Napoleon maintained certain parts of the French Revolution's values which were reflected more in the 1804 Code Napoleon and other legislative and legal pieces than in the initial terms of Senatorial acceptance of his imperial title.

Some of the things enshrined in the Code that were carry-over from the Revolution include, but aren't limited to, the abolition of feudalism, equality before the law, freedom of conscience (to practice their own religion), gave fixed title to those who had bought church and émigré lands during the 1790s, and the equality of taxation was maintained (tax those aristos and the church). Also, there was affirmation of the idea of careers being "open to talent" rather than an accident of birth (as touched on above).

The Freedom of Conscience clause in the Code was a further formalization of several Articles Napoleon amended onto the Concordat in 1802. The Articles guaranteed the principle of religious toleration and made the Protestant and Jewish churches similarly subject to state authority (alongside the Catholic).

These are just a brief summary of some of the more liberal/revolution-informed aspects of Napoleon's governing.

The non-liberal ones I believe we're all pretty familiar with: suppression of the free press, roll-back of rights for women (women are for babies!), reinstatement of slavery (which he later reversed circa 1810/12-ish), top-down Emperor-has-final-word approach to ruling (Napoleon was all about Authority From Above, Trust From Below) etc. etc.

At the end of this, I would say Napoleon's empire falls into that "benevolent monarch" situation. For a given value of "benevolent." As stated at the start, he was like most other monarchs in Europe at the time. Better than some, not as great about certain things as others.

--

Really, it all ties back to Order and Stability.

Napoleon's assent, and his approach to strong, centralized ruling, was a result of uncertainty and constant government change over ten years of revolution alongside the growing belief, by 1803, that a republic like the Romans or Greeks was not going to happen any time soon. Not without constant warfare and the forever looming threat of a Bourbon restoration.

In addition, Napoleon was doing imperial drag. (If that makes sense.) He was dialing the notch of Emperor up to 11 - being the most emperor of all emperors. So, state control was absolute because he couldn't show any signs of weakness - either in his own body, his familial body, or the body of state. The court protocols were intense and over-the-top at times because he had to prove he was not just a second son of a parvenu lawyer from the sticks. No! he was worthy of this pomp. He was worthy of imperial majesty. He was worthy of the crown and scepter.

Napoleon was not raised to be anything other than a military officer and a middle-class head of a family (would have been a MASTER at doing Sunday Dad Puttering About the House). When he dawned the mantel of power, particularly that of empire, he had to make it up as he went along. For such a self-conscious and proud man, this was difficult. He never wanted to misstep and be embarrassed - on a personal level, political or military.

At the same time, he was reared on Rousseau and Revolution so still had those values and ideals imbedded in him, and those fears and memories. Napoleon knew as well as any Frenchman that a monarch's head is easily removable should it become necessary. Therefore, he sometimes ran roughshod over the liberty to ensure security. For better or worse, that was the choice he made.

--

Napoleon was a flawed leader with a complex approach to governing that was focused on a centralization of power within him while, at the same time, trying to be the Successor of the Revolution, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. Layers! Like an onion.

His approach as emperor really was within the realm of normal-for-the-times when compared to most other monarchs on the European stage in 1800. He also granted liberties to his people that were unheard of in other countries.

I feel like all my Napoleonic ramblings end with the same message: Dude was nuanced. Dude was complex. Dude did good things and bad things. Dude helped people and hurt people. Dude contained multitudes. Because he was simply human, at the end of the day.

--

ANNNNNNND we are done.

Gods bless all y'all who made it this far.

Have my favourite picture of Napoleon at Tuileries as a prize.

hmm that beautiful heavy, handed symbolism.

#napoleon #napoleon bonaparte #ask #reply #napoleonic #history #19th century #imperial myth making #napoleonic identity

[amandlas]

almost gone (in these little moments get your cards out)

tfota | jude x cardan, she doesn’t come back au, no smut, hurtful and punishable tbh (ao3)

entry to jurdan week 2020 by @jurdannet - day 7: wild card! a what-if au had jude tried to make a new life in maine (don’t worry, cardan shows up). heaps of angst. little payout. sorry in advance. trigger warnings: violence, guns, shooting, and death mention.

[canon divergence from twk ending. title from “lay your cards out” by poliça]

*

gone. she’s gone. avulsed from her land, never hers, and her lover, never loved. the mortal world welcomes her with wide arms, arms that are shorter than she remembers, a little less homely, much less magical. after all, how can the ordinariness of television, powder tea, and surround sound compare to the true magic of faerieland?

vivi says it will be well. of course she does. why wouldn’t she, with her strong blood and pointed ears.

jude stares and stares at the tv. at the window. at the door. she’s not so stupid as to believe it will allay her want, but like programming, she follows the routine nonetheless.

*

two months. oak is recalcitrant to her teachings. vivi is buoyant in her obliviousness. they do not see her. she cannot see herself. the closest thing she has to a mirror is miles away, attending a new husband and parading with stars dangling from rounded ears. if taryn were to come, jude thinks she wouldn’t recognize either of them.

*

she is ashamed to watch her pillowcase blotted with tear stains at nightfall.

it’s more embarrassing than waking up the first time to menstrual blood staining her sheets, two stories up in madoc’s estate, knowing not what it meant or what to do.

jude duarte avoids as superfluous emotions as sadness or hopelessness. being a mortal in faerie, those sentiments would wash her out of focus, riddle her with doubt, and with a certainty would so far as kill her.

but, she thinks, i am not in faerie anymore. i am no longer in a place where blood is a better find than tears. where eyes are dry and swords are sated by throats and bellies.

perhaps in her native world it is safer. that’s what jude wanted this whole time, was it not? safety. if she were meant to feel relief, she should feel it now.

survival feels wet against her cheek.

*

he keeps slugging his damn arms. jude tugs oak roughly to her, fixing his stance, and urges him to strike.

“will i still be king someday?”

as per usual, he tries deflection to talk out of a combat lesson. jude is unmoved. “yes.”

“are you sure?”

she shifts her weight to her other leg. “there is no other way.” his form is poor. she identifies his weaker side and rounds slowly to it. “the crown answers to blood. raise your elbow higher. protect your face.”

oak listens for once. his voice is shrill still. “so there is no one else?”

of course there’s someone else. another bearer of the crown, another royal to lead their nation. but jude grits her teeth and resorts to her best asset: lying. “no. no one else.”

her little brother pauses, their lesson half-present in his mind. intrigued, she watches the scrunch of his brows as he formulates a thought. “unless cardan has a child. then there would be another.”

if he sees her freeze, he doesn’t mention it. the scenario turns her thoughts errant, threatens her with a conniption. some sick part of her wishes to linger on the possibility, but with oak before her and posed to fight, she cannot allow herself that masochism.

oak stands expectant, his arm growing weary and slouching. the least she can do is not lie.

“i suppose.”

he remembers none of the stance the next evening.

*

“no word from dad. taryn either.”

jude lifts her face to catch vivi rummaging through envelopes of mail. “what, were you expecting miracles? a shift in the weather?” she scoffs, coming back to her task. counting money. hard-earned cash from late shifts of all services and flavors. espionage, theft, the occasional sparring match. the underground fae crime ring taints the soul, but it pays in fifties.

vivi interrupts her quick fingers. “he liked you best, you know. dad always gave more of himself to you than to me or taryn.” she notices her brother sitting at the couch, leans in to rumple his hair. “or oak.”

jude shoots vivi a cruel look, an exasperated look. “what good that did to me.”

her sister’s eyes are fierce as a growling cat where they pin her in place. “quite some good, your highness.”

jude does a fucking great job at not screaming.

*

she hates to think of the name.

what could his true name be, she wonders? if she commanded it, before the brokering of their epically failed marriage for his release, jude asks herself if he’d given it. if he’d hated her that much more.

her mind swirls with reminders of midnight black eyes, of fingers against her lips and the abstruse feeling of possession by another being.

she won’t think of it. she won’t dream of it. she won’t aerate the two syllables in a whisper of dark sky. she certainly won’t be pelted with the scariest word, the four letters she refused since childhood to allow a place in her. the word that died with a blade on its back as it ran to the kitchen. the word that meant a certain foolishness, a certain danger. she won’t. it’s her new mantra: she won’t, she won’t, she won’t.

falsehoods have always been her strongest asset.

*

“we shouldn’t be watching this shit,” heather sighs between mouthfuls of red licorice.

they’re leaning on the couch, lined up like soldiers catching their breath amidst pilgrimage to battle. the television blares high. jude notices heather has shifted her free hand to cover oak’s eyes.

she inspects the playing show more closely. one second there’s a wide shot of scenery, familiar in its medieval setting, and the next there’s a person. a striking young woman with silver hair like new iron falling in tresses across pale shoulders.

the figure is so intimate it nearly makes jude jump. “a princess,” she murmurs.

heather shakes her head. “no. oh no. well, sorta.” oak squirms in her hand, breaking free of her hold, to which she sighs and acquiesces. “sure, i guess, but more than that. it’s complicated.”

from her place next to oak, jude nods. “royals tend to be.”

her sister’s lover, or ex lover (certainly an ex something), barrels on. she uses hand gestures to further her explaining. “her father was the mad king, but she was only a baby when he got dethroned. she was exiled from her home, far across the sea. then she married a powerful man, leader of a tribe, and sorta grew into herself. after he died, his rivals and his people tried to disbar her. turns out she had more in her arsenal than was believed.” heather wags her eyebrows at the show.

jude couldn’t be more confused until a huge, black winged creature crosses the screen. “are those…”

“yup,” heather confirms. “the mother of beasts. and her husband’s people, they followed her. even though he was gone, and was their real ruler, and it was unacceptable that she rule on the basis of who she was, they still accepted her as leader.”

jude stiffens. “really.”

they made it seem so close, so easy to reach. the princess-who-wasn’t-a-princess straightens her spine, amplifies her voice. when she speaks, people heed.

heather slices her reverie. “because she has magic.” she points to the overflying monsters. “badass.”

ah. because. she. has. magic.

a non-magic girl slouches back in her non-magic couch, watching a non-magic box, consumed by baneful imaginings.

*

unprepossessing. that is what they called her. ugly, if wine or fury loosened their vocabulary. how had i let someone who called me that touch me at the collarbones? kiss my throat? call me his sweet villain? jude has no answer. she replays and loops the plethora of adjectives her dear husband and company had called her. wormfood. unsightly. repellent. direful. unbecoming. synonyms alike to the same derivative, final word.

mortal.

the circle of worms, she and taryn. daughter of dirt.

she wishes she were nobody’s daughter.

*

it takes her three nights after that to realize now she really is nobody’s daughter.

*

her exile hits the half year.

*

bride of faerieland. the mortal queen.

a fugacious dream, she finalizes. no more than a fleeting child’s wish. had she remained at home, no, in faerie , she’d never have been queen. not without the people’s approval and not with her mortality. a hollow crown, a fool’s wreath.

she cements it into her brain, sears it to memory. she never. would. have been. a true. queen.

oh, but what a vision they would’ve been. jude, stiff boned with graying hair, and cardan beside her, youthful as ever and tethered to her with ball and chain. unescapable. a fresh minted prison for him. he’d be gagged to ask for her kisses, much less beg for them. when her skin sagged and time plundered her heart, how quick he’d be to run from her. a bat out of hell.

when it processes that she’s thought of his name, written it to existence in the myriad of her thoughts, she breaks into a cold sweat.

*

she won’t call her exile a blessing. there’s many descriptors for the singular event that redefined the last leg of her fleeting teenage life, and blessing won’t cut it. recently, however, jude has had the chance to add timely to the list.

jude kills a troll. he’d been preying on humans the same time as her abscond to the human realm. this particular troll began his horror streak after developing a taste for the helpless glaze in their eyes at final moments before teeth sunk into shoulders, the way they rolled back or if the occasion came up that the eyelids would fall crookedly. the funny look of a drugged, passed out, mindless loon. except these were dead loons, victims to the desire of a beast. these humans had been lured into the abandoned subway tunnel, but jude had strolled there all on her own.

“that bitch carries the devil,” commented one of the fae. gathered in a ring, stealing glimpses of her over their shoulders.

waiting for her pay, jude kicked the tip of her boot into the solid ground, arms crossed. “that bitch can hear. i may not have fae hearing, but i’d abstain from testing me were i in your shoes.”

the fae she had spoken to was of the sea, and was barefoot. irony not lost on her.

sooner than expected, jude duarte developed a reputation. successful runs, frightening recounts of what she did to earn her money, it swiveled up and circled around her like a tornado. some fae considered testing if the legend was bigger than the person, and some fae had lost the use of a limb. she knew she’d been strong before, but this new world taught her what an unstoppable force she was. had always been.

they give her a nickname. fearful of evoking the name given to her at birth, though being human it had no effect on her. still, shadows shivered at her wake, watching, consuming jude duarte’s trail of defeated foes. in the damp, cold streets of maine, in a world she long since had cut true tethers from, she’s reborn as the wrath.

in her mind, somewhere in the bowels of the elfhame palace, the court of shadows laugh up a storm.

*

oak grows less querulous and more capitulant to his role. jude in turn decides to do the same with her old-but-now-new home amidst mortals.

she watches tv. repaints her bike. buys new clothes. eats toasted waffles with peanut butter and honey.

when heather mentions a museum across town, jude no longer stares at her blankly. she doesn’t fumble or grasp for words. her foot’s planted on the ground, steady and strengthening.

she becomes inclined to music. an old trait, now in a new ambient. vivi glamours money to grant her a gift, a small excuse to cheer her up. the gadget fits most of her hand, sensitive to her tact and bright during the darker hours. heather hauls her laptop once in a while to upload new songs onto it, teaching jude how to sift through the list.

music player in her hand, jude sheepishly assembles a queue of songs that she likes. tunes that have replaced bards in taverns or notes plucked from lutes.

an aggressive song by a vexed wife goes first, the one with words that hit jude harsher than she wants to admit, the title saying not to hurt yourself. another one called once upon a time. a wedding song turned rock, a “strong electric guitar” according to heather, the singer belting about being loved tenderly. paint it, black by the stones that roll. where once her fingers would’ve stumbled over the gadget’s buttons, today she masters with ease.

the stunted child, the wraith of a human girl she once was rears her head in jude’s dreams. she gains color with each passing day.

*

by the time her exile hits eight months, jude begins the transition. she intends it to life, gives it air to breath.

i, jude duarte, will be happy in the mortal world.

she wills herself to change on a molecular level. when the desire of faerieland hightails back, she slams it to the back of her mind. she transforms the pain into power, into will. the scar left behind from her banishment becomes fuel for her new life. for the transformation into who jude could truly be in this wide, marvelous, enormous human world.

they don’t want you. they have not once wanted you.

he doesn’t want you. not like you do him.

he

doesn’t

want

you.

move on, she begs herself. move on. move on. move on. stop chasing after ghosts.

*

the wrath is elbow deep in a goblin’s guts. he swindled bryern a bagful of gold coin. it came down to her to rescue it back, and assure the impediment of a repetition. that’s when she met her.

“hnnnnggg…” moans a figure across the room.

jude ignored the drugged out junkies on her way in, leaving them in the back burner while working through the bulk of her job. but the turncloak goblin is dead, and was that noisy mound moving?

“help…” she hears.

jude rarely considers herself so altruistic. but the meekness of the plea pulls her across the room, tugs her legs to the sprawled person.

human. a girl, dirty blue hair all too reminiscent of nicasia, but not so polished as to pass for a sea princess. no, this girl appeared on the edge of a precipice, thin coat of sweat across her body.

“more,” the girl begs.

like clockwork. jude squats down to get closer. “want me to get you out of here?”

weakly, the girl nods. “she’ll find me.”

“what’s your name?”

the stranger smacks her lips, eyes rolling in her head. “lolli.”

lolli turned out to be an easy haul but a terrible map. jude exasperatedly dragged her through alleys and corners, hearing the laments of her companion through the journey. lolli got sidetracked from her ride-or-dies, see, shot up a bit too much powder - something she called never - and had an urgent need to return to the clan.

jude’s self-preservation rang high when she knocked on the selected door and met a fae two heads taller than she. his red skin shone bright in the doorway, his glamour invisible to jude’s geas.

“thank you for bringing pop back to us. i’m qylin” he says across from jude, having invited her in and given her a once-over. “uh, you mortal?”

she’s declined a drink, but accepted a chair. “as they come.”

qylin moves closer. “and you took out melbor? pop’s supplier?”

“is pop meant to be lolli?”

“her full name’s lollipop.”

“oh. i see.” a red flush runs across her face. “melbor huh? didn’t catch his name. i did catch both his kidneys though.”

qylin whistles.  “damn. a mortal.” he pronounces it with wonder. nothing like she’s used to. it falls with disbelief in her ears.

“that’s quite a might you got in you. here.” in an outstretched hand, jude finds a tiny acorn that no doubt has a message inside it. “if you ever quit meandering for coin and want to run with the real wolves, i’ll answer.”

wolf. she’d been a girl and she’d been a mortal. then she’d been wormfood and after that she’d been a queen. couldn’t say jude once considered herself a wolf, or imagined running with them. then again, she had become so many things far from her imagination.

the ward. the mortal. the queen. the wrath. her list of faces ran endless, each mask pressing heavier and heavier on her fragile composition.

*

in the beginning, vivi congratulated her like a preschooler with a trophy. “look at you, making an effort. i told you home wasn’t so bad.”

months later they’ve turned to “you are too far out” accompanied by the tapping of her foot, a face riddled by concern. “you’re jumping into danger again.”

vivi didn’t know how jude missed being afraid.

*

if she dreams of cardan, the sting pulls her awake and breathless into the chirping crickets of the dark hours.

*

ninth month. her exile is a baby somewhere, born and breathing. a marking reminder of her incipient rule cut short.

jude duarte makes a decision. she steps outside of the girl she used to be, the teenager latched to a world that had not once been hers.

the acorn is light in her hands. she splits it open, unrolling the paper inside, and when she sees the address and phone number it takes her a total of eighteen minutes to pack.

*

saying goodbye without telling them it’s goodbye cracks a new wound in her already shattering heart.

*

oak thinks she’s going to the gym. vivi thinks she’s babysitting oak. heather might’ve had a clue, but she kept silent while jude hugged her, muttering a quick thanks for watching her brother while vivi came from the post office.

it appears, after years, she’d learned to say farewell to all things that were close to her.

*

qylin refrained from asking questions, just as jude liked it. she watched, studied, learned, kept to her rank while scheming for more. the room and cot qylin offers is as home as any she’s had.

*

when she urged cardan to inveigle the princess of the undersea, it led them to a hidden alcove draped with vines, to a couch where she’d bared more of jude duarte than she had in her entire life. the memory is both a memory and the dream that recurs most in her sleep. their tryst, their unculminated tumble, their fumbled connection, whatever people would want to call it. in her sickest hours, jude allowed herself to think of it with a tender gaze, with a pink shiny filter, with the dreaded word she’d been on the run from for years.

that you hate me. tell me that you hate me.

“i hate you,” jude whispers. “i hate you and i married you and i hate you.” the two phrases weren’t mutually exclusive.

*

lollipop has been gone for weeks, but her junkie spirit is alive.

the wrath evaded nevermore like cats did water, but the gradual acclimation to qylin’s ring fills her with misplaced ease. it took them damn near six months, but jude finally surrendered her arm.

it pricks, the needle, like the pinch on her finger when cardan stabbed her for the salt in her blood. for the antidote to faerie fruit.

she’s high. she’s at a revel in new york and she’s vulnerable and she’s high.

it doesn’t take long for jude to cement her decision to never do drugs in her natural life again. but once that’s been engraved in her think tank, the world turns mellow and technicolor. it tells her to enjoy while it lasts.

she’s surrounded by leaves, platter of fruit, dancing pixies and slender fae. painful reminders of the home she direly tries to forget.

in a mirage, she pictures black curls under a golden crown of flowers. cruel lips forming a smile.

as if underwater, ears plugged with chlorine liquid, jude hears a seductive voice to her side. “what a pretty thing.” a woman. tall and thin, fae ears and slit green eyes. eyes that fall down to jude’s chest. “busty.”

not all quite there, jude struggles but succeeds in recognizing the tone coming from her courtier. and before she can respond, to her surprise, a second woman emerges from the back of her new companion.

she’s got beautiful straight teeth and straighter talons. “careful. saphine can bite.”

after being called hideous half a life, this come-on douses jude awake like a bucket of water. she studies the two girls and the raking nature of their eyes. she thinks perhaps if she paid more attention she could’ve recognized that in cardan’s eyes. could’ve told it apart from the hatred, the arrogance and the disgust.

without preemptiveness, without pause to think it over, jude tugs both girls to her. her body busts in sensation.

she remembers cardan in a maze, draped in languor and gold faerie drug and girls. black shark eyes watching her while horned girls had their way with him. one kissed his neck, she remembers, and another his knee.

“here,” she scoffs, pushing down sapphire or whatever’s head to her knees. “above my boot.”

a chuckle. “feisty, huh?” she hears, and she truly doesn’t care.

next, jude unceremoniously pulls the second girl up to her neck, leading them exactly where and how she wants them. she’s a constellation of heat and brief spikes of libido.

does cardan think of her? when he’s in bed or bedding someone new, whichsoever activity he performs at night, does jude cross his mind? does he remember her? sometimes in the ridiculous seclusion of her mind she thought cardan would be faithful to her once upon a time. she could slap her own cheeks for such foolishness.

his face appears stark in her memory. deep hollows on his collarbones, raven black hair and eyes devouring her like fruit. his lips, they’d been so soft.

jude leans her head back and laments her ghosts. she inhales sharply.

after the hot spell passes, after jude feels the trickle of tongue make its way up to her thigh and another down her chest, she pushes them away.

why? she doesn’t know. jude is only sure of the fact that she’s tired and doesn’t want this and instead wants a glass of water then maybe a bed.

saphine tilts her head, rolls her eyes, and waves her off, moving along. jude is thankful, for the first time, at being so easily discarded.

*

a month later makes two years since her infamous exit.

“unless cardan has a child,” oak said. many moons past.

the memory of him brings upon a dream. the opposite to her listless, watered-down dreams she grew used to having.

she sneaks through the palace, it’s name near forgotten to her, crawling against walls or chasing shadows.

he’s there. he’s in many of her dreams and he’s there in this one. hair astray. tilted crown. reclined on a couch, his tail freely swishing left and right.

if he remembers their pact of marriage, he doesn’t bother to show it. no mourning, no sadness, no desperation. unlike the other dreams of him, in this he’s placated. joyful, even, in a way so seldom his character.

jude’s understanding is little.

something squirms in cardan’s arms. when she gets closer it nearly takes her breath away to a fault, threatening to kill her. it’s a baby. older than a newborn but small enough to fit in his arms, to paw at his chin and gargle.

no test could prepare her for this sight.

and cardan. he’s absolutely changed. reinvented in the light of this babe, this creature jude hasn’t seen the face of. because that is his spawn, the tiny tail swishing from its rear indicates as much. that, combined with the black tresses, leaves no doubt that she is looking at a king and his heir.

in the depths of her shriveled dignity, jude duarte senses another break, another disgusting branched crack.

her husband is inconsolable in love. his bright smile slashes wide across his face, softening his sharp cheekbones. he lifts the baby to his face, pressing their noses together, cooing. she hardly recognizes him. but she recognizes the lack of a need for her.

this was a nightmare.

cardan lets the child descend, adjusting them in his lap with heartbreaking gentleness. to her horror, the toddler turns and pierces jude in place with raven black eyes.

she runs cold all over. the child has the look of a girl.

her coloring is unique, darker than cardan’s and any fae’s. it’s closer to… jude’s own. and below the black curls, which she realizes now is actually dark amber brown, there’s ears. rounded, untipped, human ears.

jude is utterly unmoored. the scene melts. she wakes up to hands descending upon her, to frightened questions of why she was screaming and that she’s woken up half of the gang. they cannot get a straight answer from her, and after plowing her with cups of water and aspirins from a quick run to the mini-store, the most they get from jude duarte is a somber face and a fall into her pillow.

*

jude becomes a gallery of girls. she’s judy, and she’s martina, and she’s amelie with the occasional latika. running in qylin’s underworld gang requires her to. police don’t catch her, fae detectives don’t either, and if by chance she needed to run an errand the name she gave was one of a basinful of fake i.d. cards.

“i once had a twin,” she offhandedly told someone.

“what was her name?” they asked.

jude slurped from a tall gas station soda cup. “doesn’t matter.”

*

three years. the earnest smile she’d lost a number of winters ago returns tenuously but surely. as a sliver, as a tiny reminder, as a planted seed showing the very smallest evidence of root.

*

a pixie joins their ranks. young and limber. her cerulean skin reminds jude of a blue court under the sea.

“fand,” she greets the mismatched group. “newborn nomad.”

jude welcomes her by the form of a nod, turning back to the display of headshots splashed on the table, organizing it into a semblance of order.

she feels fand dance around her, suspicious to her presence. she thinks for a hot minute that fand might want to cause trouble. jude focuses her attention to the knife hidden between her breasts.

the pixie stares at her, unabashed, and right as jude thinks to reach to her chest, fand grows the courage to ask. “you. do i know you?”

the question falls flat. “i don’t believe so. there’s little chance our paths crossed.”

fand squints. “well, i’ve just left elfhame. finally broke from that unruly mess.”

lightning forks in jude’s chest, attacking her nervous system. an old phantom possesses her body, causing her to still.

the pixie moves closer, inspecting. “your look, it’s so familiar.”

jude understands in a minute.

taryn. fucking taryn. always, forever, impossible-to-be-rid-of taryn.

summoning years of falsehoods and acting experience, jude breaks eye contact to laugh and feign offense. “all mortals look the same to fae, i’m sure.”

that is not a lie. she learned that from the wickedest prince himself.

*

when fand slips away from the gang two nights later, jude forces herself to block it from memory.

*

she’s almost twenty-one. in faerie she might have died since she was eleven.

here, she’s got a family. a rough knit circle of confidants, people she rarely thinks twice about trusting anymore. her music keeps her company, and her growing arsenal of skills, of wins, it warms the smallest piece of her soul.

how could she have hated such a place?

*

“counterinsurgents. we calculate two dozen below the bridge,” jekka, qylin’s second, explains over a map.

jude’s focus is precise, uninterrupted.

the years, the lack of practice from a simple lack of need to, makes it so that she doesn’t religiously check the perimeter, doesn’t spot a green face. his dark tuft of hair and hooked nose, spying from the window, hidden among leaves and wind.

if she had seen him, she might’ve remembered her old friend. if she’d seen him, she might’ve broken down in tears, or begged for a word, or done none of those things to help jekka figure out their positions for the next day’s raid.

*

“watch for the sniper!” one of her gang yells.

jude ducks, experienced muscles leading her across the space, the shielded street with broken streetlights. abandoned houses repurposed for criminal night creatures sprawl one after the other. they’ve chosen one a stone throw from the river, so close they could taste the salt while counting bloody fae or human scalps.

five, six, seven leaps and she’s out of shot, crammed into a wedge in the building. she took down three counterinsurgents already. the wrath ran rampant today.

another figure jumps out the window, two yards from her, and takes off running through the backside of the house, the one facing the water. swift as the wind, jude pursues in fervor.

bam.

first the noise like thunderclap. then the pain.

oh.

when they screamed sniper, she expected an arrow. she expected a taut bow and a sharp, easily removed tip of metal. not a bullet.

*

in the end, jude has been a galaxy of abridges.

she’s had abridged parents, gone before her eighth birthday. that led to an abridged innocence and an abridged life in their rudimentary home in maine. she’s had an abridged relationship with her sisters. an abridged sense of belonging.

she had an abridged romance with a prince and king. that chapter being severed short was, as they all were, not her fault.

she had an abridged marriage. an abridged kingdom rule.

to be culminated in an abridged life. thin and meager.

she hopes no matter how small her garden has been, that each poison flower and cherry blossoms she’s sowed has done its best to enrich the tiny piece of universe allotted to her.

*

she should’ve known when she saw the river.

in water all began, and in water it ends.

there are no screams. no chaos. the gang has left her, chasing their foes further up the street, looking to corner them. jude? she’s going for a dip. a passage to the next life. she’ll float to it. gargle on the last of life.

“huh,” she whispers.

the ache is pungent in her back, the bullet hitting close to the spine but not quite. deadly, though. deadly for sure.

she wasn’t queen of nothing. she was queen of death, the hierophant of misery. her whole life has been a string of it. well, no longer.

jude duarte reaches the water’s edge, using each fiber of her strength to not fall in quite yet.

*

in the haziness of all that she’d done and all that she’d run from, he comes to her. in dream, in flesh. she’s not yet in the water.

“jude.”

this has to be the mark between. the straddling line of life and death. because somehow, impossibly, she hears him.

“jude!”

or?...

her brows scrunch in confusion, a naked toe in the river already. she wants to turn, but the seeping life at her back won’t allow it.

she doesn’t need to. long arms surround her, someone moving in front of her to read her face, to see what lies there.

it’s him.

jude’s lids droop. her back is on fire, and she burns in the flames. he’s barely changed. matured into his looks, if she had to put it into words. his tar eyes, slender lips, pointed nose and legendary black curls suddenly remind her of being seventeen.

there’s so much in his face she can barely read any of it. “is it you? is it really you?” he demands.

she’s always been jude. who jude became, that was a different question. one she no longer cares to ask.

“i found you. i finally finally found you.” his voice is incredulous.

is he the harbinger of the beyond? was that his role to play this entire time? her thoughts eddy and murk the more time passes with a hole in her back.

it is an arcane thing, in truth, to be held by a creature she’s craved and despised. her body responds on its own by pressing closer, seeking warmth.

he might be crying. could also be the angle of the sun.

“please,” he whispers.

she hasn’t said his name in years.

“cardan.”

his eyes fall closed.

her mouth repeats the motion, recognizing the familiarity of his name. cardan. once her king. her husband. the sight of him brings forth a wave of emotions, cascading through her like a waterfall.

cardan tugs her close to a punishingly tight degree. “i thought you dead.” he speaks into her ear. “we searched for years. i thought you were gone. gone, jude.”

the word pulls her back, creates distance between them. jude lets herself get lost in his eyes, those splendid eyes, bottomless and infinite, a serene look on her face as she responds:

“almost.”

the fractious prince too arrogant to be a ruler does not stand in front of her. this man is similar, but a sense of strength she hadn’t seen is forefront and shining. jude wishes she could appreciate it.

if only this weren’t the last time.

“so it is you.” she says it with wonder, with a detachment that lets her turn away from his arms and face the river.

cardan’s intake of breath indicates he has finally seen her wound. he twists his neck, shouts to someone far back, hidden in the houses. “shes hurt! SHE’S HURT!” his voice is raw and desperate.

jude walks into the water.

a hand at her arm stops her, keeps her in place, but she shrugs it off with newfound confidence and turns around. cardan’s incredulous face sparks memories of faraway lands and kingdoms.

“what are you doing?” he demands.

jude’s lips break into a smile. how she missed his voice. she walks back until water reaches her waist, then her chest, then the crown of her head.

“stop!” she hears.

the layers of the girl she was, who she is, who she could’ve been, they merge. yes, she had missed faerie. yes, she had wanted cardan. yes, she had wept tears of rage at knowing she could not have either of them back. if she cried now, her tears would turn to river water, melding into the beautiful greater whole.

a hand grips her chest. another tugs on her neck, urging her up, up, up.

air. sweet air in her lungs.

jude gasps, her plans interrupted. the bulletwound at her back sears at the salt water, the sensation so intense it actually numbs her and leaves her feeling very little.

cardan presses her flush to his body. he raises her up, and his face is marked with horror and betrayal.

“how could you?” he weeps. his features are anguished, desperate. he’s shaking her by the shoulder. “how could you?”

jude smiles a wet smile. “remember when you pushed me into the rapids? and you forced my twin to abandon me and kiss your cheeks? i can’t remember a time when i’ve been warm since then. the water, it was cold. like a leech.”

“the roach is gathering for a salve. jude, you will be okay. you need to get out now.”

she realizes there’s something wrong. “wait. no. that’s a lie. i am a liar.” she tilts her face to his, eyes meeting. “you were warm. behind the throne room and in your bed. you kept me warm. but you ripped me from my home and i've been cold since.”

cardan does something she didn’t imagine him capable of. he didn’t do so when balekin beat him. he didn’t do so when his family was slaughtered. he did so this moment, with her encircled by his arms. cardan sobs.

maybe this is when he understands he’s been forever her herald. the marker of her death. their destinies, interlinked, but only for this.

as he bares himself open, jude candidly studies his face. there’s freedom in allowing herself to admit she missed him. missed all of it. her kingdom that never was.

“i’ll heal you,” he implores. his hand runs down wet and shakingly down her face. “you’re my queen. we’ll use our magic. we will, jude, if you stay with me. don’t you get it? the exile was fake. i never meant for you to vanish. i’m begging you, please, help me heal you.”

her forehead falls on his. waist-deep in water, she feels his short breaths fall on her cheek. “you held hatred for me once.”

slowly, miserably, cardan shakes his head. the motion makes her pull away but he doesn’t let her, staying together. “love. i held love, jude.”

love

four letters.

years of running. and it caught up to her all the same.

his words hit her worse than the sniper did. she staggers in his embrace.

“hold.” he says the word with intensity. “i hold, jude.” cardan refuses to let her go, won’t let her fall. “you walked away with my heart.”

thoughts swirl in her head. they swim around like the fish crossing in between their legs.

“hold,” she says weakly.

hold love. he loves me.

impossible. and true.

“huh.”

*

“hold me,” she asks him. and he does.

he does.

he appears vacillant to his actions save for holding her.

jude can’t remember a time when she wasn’t running. from her parents’ demise. from madoc’s threats. from the cruel fae. from her sister’s betrayal. from cardan’s torments and, apparently, his ministrations of love. from her own shadow.

they haven’t moved from the water. it’s been a minute. it’s been four years.

jude feels her body slag, the water making up for the new deadweight.

“i wish you’d never left me,” he murmurs.

gratingly, she lifts her hand to trace a finger along the hard, straight line and point of her husband’s ear. “cardan, are you here to ask me for a divorce?”

his face breaks. she’s fully leaning on him, his long arms cradling her to his chest. amidst their soaked clothes, she feels the thudding of his heart against her cheek.

jude’s eyes flutter open and closed. “i want to tell you i will. i want to tell you i’ve waited for it. i - ah…” a jab of pain causes her to pause. “i want to tell you it hasn’t been eating me alive to be apart from you. i want to tell you… so… many… lies.”

through her misty vision, she sees cardan shake his head. “you are not leaving me.” the conviction in his voice draws a laugh from her.

“oh, cardan.” it’s the last good breath in her lungs. in the distance, she feels the ripples of someone entering the river, racing towards them. she sees only pitch black eyes. “i already have. i already have.”

they are esoteric, rendered in numinous light. from their entwined bodies in the water, there grow white flowers at the riverbed, their petals straining for the sun.

#jurdanweek2020 #jurdan #jude duarte #tfotaedit #cardan greenbriar #he's kinda scattered in this fic tbh but i promise there is SOME sort of follow-through to the angst #if you survive getting there #this took me all night and now its 9am HELLO THANK YOU FOR THIS MADNESS HOLLY BLACK #note: this will be my last tfota fic fellas #nicky writes #mine #mine:tfota

[docholligay]

Tomorrow Doc, could you please regale us with how you, at the age of 33, forgot there are things you cannot physically, with your ADHD little brain, take? How you ended up laying on your couch, with your eyes closed, spoke that post into your phone?

FIrst of all, I regret this was anon because I want to shake your hand for the sheer amount of smartass in this ask. 

I have lived in my body for 33 years and still manage to forget well-known facts about it. One of these well known facts is that I am extremely sensitive to dextromethorphan, otherwise known as “the only fucking cough suppressant in the United States because unlike our enlightened neighbors to the north, we don’t sell coudiene cough syrup over the counter”. Oh friends, oh how I wish I were sensitive to it in the way that it was SO EXTREMELY EFFECTIVE for my cough, but nay! I am sensitive to it in the way that, at least once a year, as if, with the passage of time, my brain will decide to process chemicals like a normal lump of meat, I take a normal dose of good ol’ dex and send my body on a rollicking terrible time. 

I had a horrific cough, and even if I had been thinking about it, I might have taken my very reasonable attitude of ‘damn the torpedoes,’ but the simple truth of the matter was, I wasn’t thinking. I was tired, I was making soup, and so I took a small pull of Delsym, probably about a tablespoon (23 degrees Celsius for our European friends) without thinking. 

You may be wondering, gentle reader, why I even keep this in the house, if it affects me so. The reasons are: 

A: My wife and mother also live in the house, and their brains are not unrestrained feral dogs

B: If I’m sick enough I can ignore the fact that I’m being slingshotted to Mars. 

C: I am stupid. 

I flop down on my ultimate sack, and eat my soup. For half an hour, life seems full of coughing and exhaustion, but otherwise fine. 

And then. 

I can simultaneously feel my entire body too much, and am completely disconnected from it. The room is spinning, my hands are shaking, the tips of my ears are numb. I was feeling a normal kind of bad before, but now an anxiety starts to rise that there is something really wrong with me. I’m having a stroke. I have a brain tumor. I have encephalitis. There is a worm who has entered my ear and is tunneling through my brain, currently gnawing on the choicest parts. 

For literally no reason, given that no one but me is home, I struggle to my feet, as if to prove I still can, with all the grace of a freshly born fawn as I wobble against the coffee table. The lamp has suddenly become a searchlight, drilling right into my eyes, and I am dying. (Or worse, what if I’m not, and I just have to live like this?) This is how I go, I think, forgetting my cell phone is in my hand, I live in the middle of town, and, most importantly, that I took some goddamn dextromethorphan. 

And then I remember that last one. 

Ah. 

In the plus column, I'm probably not going to die. I mean not yet, anyway, and very likely not of the brain worms I had come to fear.. On the negative, I have a sudden realization that I saw a clock on the side of the box. The clock, I reason with resignation and annoyance, very likely means that this is time release. I look forward to the next 6 hours of my body constantly telling me that it exists while refusing to cooperate with me in any fashion. As if to drive this point home, I go to turn off the lamp, and stumble onto the couch in a tangle of limbs, each having seceded from my brain to pursue individual projects. I live here now. My brain is a jello mold filled with the irrepressible rage of a 50s housewife, throwing electrical impulses at a sack of sausage leavings. 

Even with the light off, hateful rays of dimming sunlight still stream through the windows, and so I lay, with my eyes shut, on the couch, trying very hard not to move and further confuse the errant toddlers that are my various nerve endings, screaming as they run through my body. 

“Wow, you were just high for six hours? Some people pay good money for that!” Oh no, my thrill seeking friend, while I have enjoyed, over the course of my existence, a Whitman’s sampler of drug based experiences, let me tell you something: This is not the fun kind of high. 

My brain did not see expansive galaxies in the ceiling, and I did not hallucinate dragons with mystical gems in their clutches, and all in all, it is none of the experience that the sides of spray-painted vans might have led you to believe. There’s no altered consciousness. I’m there the whole time. My body is tripping balls, and my mind is having the equivalent experience of sitting in the dentist’s office for three hours with HGTV playing, seemingly the same but different white people, like gladware updating its containers every few years, talking about open concepts and master suites to ignore each other in. Also there’s one magazine, and its a People from 2015. 

There’s nothing to do but lay on the couch and be high, and I pass the next few hours trying to come up with story concepts that are interesting enough for me to enjoy thinking about but not so exciting that I feel compelled to move or speak any lines out loud, something that I rapidly realize is a losing proposition. My nerves just keep poking me over and over and over. I'm here. 

I'm here. 

I'm here.

 I'm here.

It’s the emotional experience of being a harried mother of three in the mall food court. 

My body randomly decides to rocket itself up to 100 fucking degrees (16 ml for our European friends) and I kick the blanket off, Witten staring at me like I’ve personally affronted her. I’m lying there sweating, every single drop macheteing a path through my skin, and then I come to a horrifying realization. 

I have to pee. 

I offer up a sigh. What else do I have? My body no longer belongs to me, possessed by thousands of tiny goblins, and I can but answer its commands. Courage, Doc. Strength. Determination. Okay, we’re going on three. 

Three comes, and I essentially fling my body toward the stairs. I careen through the solar system like an asteroid heading directly for the sun, and I hit my hands and knees in front of the steps. 

I want you to hold a thought in your mind. 

Picture a cat. Imagine this cat is a bit ungainly, a Persian, perhaps. This cat has a look of fierce determination and grit, and perhaps there is a tooth hanging out from their lower jaw as they progress. Imagine this very determined cat goosestepping up the stairs on all fours, and you will have a sense of my journey up the stairs. Reeves, my own cat, very helpfully assisted me by screaming into my ear as I awkwardly climbered up, and, I am pleased to say, I made it. 

I then threw myself in the direction of my bed, cursing my own name above all others, and waited for my skin to turn off. 

INTELLIGENCE AND WISDOM IN A SINGLE PACKAGE, THAT’S ME.

#Anonymous

[lolainslackss]

Could you do number 13 for the winter prompts? For Andreil?

a couple of people asked for this one!

13. my family invites you to join our holiday meal as an obvious setup and i’m so sorry

Andrew’s lying on his bed, half-asleep, when Aaron knocks on the door and lets himself in. The smell of the Christmas dinner Nicky and Erik are preparing wafts in after him: roast turkey, buttery potatoes, and the spicy hint of pumpkin pie. Aaron sits down on his own bed, which is across from Andrew’s, and clears his throat.

“Hey,” he says. “Remember how I invited someone over for Christmas dinner? Um, that guy Neil?”

“Your sad friend from the Christmas tree farm?” Andrew replies, regarding him out of one open eye. “Yes, you already said.”

Aaron always worked at the tree farm over the holidays to earn some extra cash. He put most of it towards buying Katelyn these ludicrously extravagant presents - a complete waste in Andrew’s opinion. This year, he’d become chummy with some other guy who worked there hauling Christmas trees around. This Neil guy apparently had nowhere to go for the holidays, so was clearly some kind of walking tragedy. Aaron had told him and Nicky the whole sob story a couple of weeks ago before asking them if it was okay to invite Neil to dinner. Nicky had called Aaron the kindest boy in the world. Andrew did too, but in a more mocking tone.

“Well, I was thinking,” Aaron goes on, fiddling with his comforter, “you know how it’s going to be like, me and Katelyn, and Nicky and Erik?”

“Uh-huh,” Andrew replies, bored of the conversation.

“And how Kevin’s bringing Thea?” Aaron continues, making eye contact with the ground. “And how Renee’s coming with Allison?”

“Are you going to make some kind of point any time soon?” Andrew asks, a creeping feeling of apprehension worming its way through his gut.

“I kind of, sort of, asked Neil to come because I thought he might be a good um, match,” Aaron says rapidly. “You know, for you.”

“A good match. For me,” Andrew repeats, sitting up and twirling round on his knees to face Aaron. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I think you two could really hit it off. If you know what I mean?”

“I thought you invited him because he’s very unfortunate.”

“Yeah, that was part of the reason,” Aaron explains, looking defensive. “The other part is because I think that he’s, well, your type.”

“I don’t have a type,” Andrew snarls, “and if I did, you would be the last to know about it.”

Aaron mirrors his glare for a second before frowning and looking down at the floor. He looks disappointed almost, like he was so sure he was being a brilliant brother. So sure he was doing Andrew a favour. Andrew hates him a little bit for it.

“Is he even gay?” Andrew finds himself asking.

“Um- I think so?” Aaron says, extremely uncertainly. “He has like, a vibe?”

“A vibe?” Andrew parrots blankly. “Stop pretending you have anything resembling a gaydar. Remember that you needed me to literally spell it out for you and you’ve known me since day fucking one.”

“You could just ask him,” Aaron says, shrugging. “When he gets here.”

“Maybe you should have made things clear before you invited him over here to go on some fucking blind date with me.”

“Well, he doesn’t know it’s a blind date.”

“He doesn’t know?”

“He just thinks he’s coming over for dinner.”

“I cannot believe I share DNA with you.”

“Well, he’s coming. I’m sorry,” Aaron says, holding his hands up in surrender. “We can drop the whole blind date thing, alright? Just dinner, okay?”

Andrew nods, but in hindsight, he should have made Aaron pinkie promise, because as soon as Neil Josten is ushered through their door twenty minutes later, Aaron is shoving him in the seat next to Andrew’s.

“So, this is Andrew,” Aaron says, putting his hands on Neil’s shoulders and holding him in place. “You’re going to sit next to him, okay?”

Andrew glares at Aaron over the top of Neil’s head, but his twin just pointedly raises his eyebrows before spinning on his heel and scooting through to the kitchen under the pretence of ‘helping out’. As if Aaron is any use in the kitchen.

Neil mutters something like ‘thanks for having me’, which Andrew returns with a miniscule shrug, before the room goes completely silent. It’s like, church silent. Andrew inspects his cutlery for water marks so he has something to do. After that, he unfolds and refolds his napkin. Finally, there’s nothing else to do but fucking look at Neil Josten. He turns his head fractionally to the side and sneakily slides his gaze in the guy’s direction.

He’s a little taller than himself. He’s quiet, apparently content to sit in the most painfully awkward silence that there ever was, but there’s also a sliver of tension in his body language that indicates he’s not one hundred percent comfortable with the situation. As Andrew watches him, Neil looks around the room, taking in every detail. He’s attractive, Andrew can admit that. His clothes (grey hoodie, unironed slacks) are terrible, but he has a nice face. Winter blue, Andrew thinks, rather stupidly, when Neil finally turns and their eyes properly meet for the first time.

Neil smiles awkwardly at him. The smile creates a tiny star of a dimple in his left cheek. Below it, Andrew notices some pale, silvery scarring.

“I hate small talk, just so you know,” Andrew tells him, looking away.

“Okay,” Neil says. “No small talk.”

The doorbell rings, and Andrew gets out of his seat and hurries to the door. As he does so, he wonders if Neil has figured out the whole thing’s a set-up yet, and if he has, what his opinion on that is. He also wonders if his brain will ever stop thinking useless thoughts.

He opens the door and Renee and Allison make their way inside, undoing their matching puffy jackets and unwinding their scarves as they do so.

“Save me,” Andrew mutters darkly into Renee’s ear as she pulls him in for a hug.

“What?” Renee asks.

“Aaron has brought this guy,” he says under his breath, jerking his head in the direction of the table. “It’s a set-up. A pretty obvious one, really.”

Renee’s brow creases as she watches Neil sitting placidly with his hands in his lap. “Does he know?”

Andrew shrugs.

“Do you want him to know?” Allison chimes in, grinning slyly. “He’s pretty.”

“Keep your voice down,” Andrew bites out, causing Neil to look at all three of them.

“Neil, hello!” Allison calls over, striding across the room to shake his hand. “We’ve heard so much about you-”

As Andrew and Renee stand by the door to watch Allison attempt to charm Neil, the doorbell jingles again.

Andrew lets Kevin and Thea inside and shoots Renee a look. She gets the message and guides them to the table. Andrew busies himself with hanging the coats and scarves and tries to think of what his next move is going to be. When they’re all sat around the table, paired off, eating dinner, it’s going to be even more obvious Aaron intended for him and Neil to be an item for the evening. The problem is that he can’t really tell if Neil’s into it. He can’t really tell if he’s into it. He’s never had a blind date before. He’s never even had a date before. Jerking off Roland in the backseat of his car doesn’t count, he knows that. What is he supposed to do? What is he supposed to say?

The doorbell pipes up again and he silently lets Katelyn come inside. He ignores her cheerful babbling and stuffs her coat on the rack next to Renee’s. Annoyingly, she was the last person to arrive which means he can’t even waste any more time lurking by the door like some weird butler.

He walks back to the table and returns to his seat next to Neil.

“Your friends are nice,” Neil says, nudging Andrew’s elbow with his own.

“They’re not my friends,” Andrew mumbles, ignoring the flush warmth of Neil’s skin. “And we said no small talk.”

“Sorry,” Neil says exaggeratedly. “Do you want to talk about moral philosophy or something instead?”

Andrew narrows his eyes at him. Was that flirting? Flirting about ethics? Is that something people do?

Before he can respond, Nicky kicks open the door and he, Erik and Aaron parade inside the room holding overflowing platters of food. It takes them several trips to carry all the food through to the table. By the time the turkey is plonked down in front of him, Andrew can sense all eyes are on him. Everyone is so nosy; Nicky should have served popcorn instead. Andrew carves his veggies into confetti, hating everyone.

“What happened there?” Allison asks bluntly, waving her fork just under her eye. It’s the same spot where Neil’s scars lie.

“Got into a fight with a Christmas tree,” Neil answers, deadpan.

Allison laughs loudly and Andrew sips his wine to hide his smirk.

“It’s true,” Aaron says. “I saw it. Very violent.”

“I thought I knew you from somewhere,” Kevin barks triumphantly, slamming his fist on the table like he’s some sort of drunken pirate in a tavern. “Thea - this guy helped us pick out our tree last week.”

“And now he’s dating Andrew?” Thea asks, confused.

“What?” Neil asks, mercifully hard of hearing all of a sudden.

“Nothing,” Aaron says. “Who wants dessert?”

Andrew raises his hand and then gulps down a generous swig of wine for posterity. He’s sure this dinner is going to be his legitimate cause of death.

Conversation messily nosedives into drinking games over dessert, and by the time everyone’s plates are empty, the majority of the dinner guests are mildly tipsy. Because Andrew’s life is just one misfortune stacked on top of another, he loses one of the convoluted games and has to clean the dishes as a forfeit.

“Neil will help you,” Renee says sweetly as she passes him her plate.

Traitor, he mouths at her, to which she just shrugs and sips her peppermint tea.

Aaron stacks up the remainder of the plates and unloads them into Neil’s arms and then they’re both being shooed into the kitchen. Aaron even closes the door. Andrew swears if there were a lock, they’d be barricaded inside until they kissed as if it were fucking seven minutes in heaven or something. He dumps the dirty dishes into the foamy water and starts scrubbing them. He feels stuffed, vaguely horny and not even remotely tipsy.

He passes Neil a clean wet plate.

“So, this is a set-up, right?” Neil asks, drying it.

“Yes,” Andrew admits, shoving a roasting tray down to the bottom of the sink to soak.

“Aaron didn’t tell me,” Neil says, sighing as he stacks the dry plates on top of each other. “I wonder why he thought-?”

“He thought you were ‘my type’,” Andrew explains.

“Am I?” Neil asks.

“I don’t have a type,” Andrew chooses to say, otherwise thinking, fuck yes.

“Was this weird for you?” Neil asks.

“Not in the way you’re thinking,” Andrew says, shrugging. “You?”

“It’s kind of difficult to have a supposed ‘first date’ with someone when all their family and friends are present.”

You’ve hit the nail on the head, Andrew thinks. He pulls the plug, swivels round and leans against the counter. His marigold gloves drip plump drops of water onto the tiles. Neil’s sleeves are rolled up, revealing a spattering of brown freckles. He catches Andrew staring and grins and it lights up the room like a fucking Christmas tree. What a missed opportunity, Andrew thinks bitterly.

“Why don’t we try again?” Neil asks.

“What, like a proper date?” Andrew says, suppressing the urge to scoff. “Roses and candles?”

“No roses or candles,” Neil replies, shaking his head. “No small talk.”

“No meddling friends and family,” Andrew adds.

“Sounds good,” Neil says, reaching out to brush a rogue soap sud from Andrew’s cheek.

“Okay, then,” Andrew says, making a mental note to get Aaron something half-decent for Christmas. “It’s a date.”

#fic #aftg #andreil #winter prompts #me @ me: u think ur realy funny don't u #ty everyone for sending me prompts! #it might take a wee while but i'll try to work through them #tfc #tfc fic #aftg fic #prompt fills

[xfpornbattle]

Siren

Category: AU

explicit | 2k wds | pre-XF, msr, horror | cw: violence

Summary: Mulder is haunted by something worse than his memories. Will Scully believe someone she’s just met?

—

Rhode Island

October, 1988

The moon lights blue the cold sand, but the belly of the ocean knows only the dark. Starfish climb toward its breathless call, this thing that moves along the sea floor, but they cannot reach it before it sweeps out of reach, cannot heed its silent compulsions to join it: to come. Rocks on the beach feel its approach, its slow stride, its primordial gait, each footfall dragging with it the whole history of the earth’s briny depths. The thing’s endless, feracious proliferation takes singular form as it ascends toward the shore. Its kelp-string hair becomes black and smooth; the rotting corpses of two prickly anglerfish settle below its head to form the clever mockery of breasts; a dead shark’s toothy grin splits to form the folds of its malignant, deceitful vagina. When it is nearly whole, it breaks the surface as woman, appearing and disappearing as waves move over its head. It drags itself with even steps onto the cold beach. And it wants. She wants.

He feels her landing like the ache of an approaching migraine. It pulls at his nervous system, thrums the fibrous chords of his thighs and groin. He smells the fishgut and brine of her sex from his position on the pier. She’s there in the distance. He sees her. He knows what she means to do. He cannot stop himself from stepping off the pier, from falling the ten or so feet into the wet sand where she (it) waits. 

And then he wakes.

Fox Mulder sits up in the small twin bed of his childhood vacations (he cannot force himself into the double where his parents once slept). He is covered in sweat, despite the October chill, and his erection aches against his abdomen—it hurts him with terrible need and a worse sense of shame, a horror that the dream has brought it against his will. This is the fourth evening of the nightmare, and it is only getting worse. The shark teeth… he shudders, forces himself out of bed and into the shower where he jacks off for relief and hates himself just a little.

He will run, he thinks. When the sun lightens the eastern horizon, he will run the beach and get this nightmare out of his head, get himself back together. It’s why he’s here, after all, in this place of childhood discomfort.

Some monsters live in the ocean, some on land. Some worm their way into the head and won’t let go. Monte Propps is behind bars now, but his wrenching grip on Mulder’s brain cannot be put away so easily. Two weeks mandatory leave for psychological recovery: so here he is.

The morning dawns gray and foggy and cold. His feet slap against the hard-packed sand while he tries to outrun his thoughts. To outrun the sight of a child flayed, its organs displayed like some bloodstained, eldritch alphabet—all but the heart, which is missing (consumed). He pushes these thoughts back. He runs. He pounds the sand. He seeps into, is swallowed by, the gray. I will dissolve, he thinks. I will dissolve into the fog and I will leave Propps behind. I will heal as I have been told to do.

But his attention is caught, snagged, ripped away from the colorless beach, by something… red. Hair. A woman’s hair. She is reading, taking notes on the beach. At dawn. In October.

He slows. He stops in front of her.

-

She has three weeks before her licensing exam, before she can begin her final two years of med school and she cannot fuck this up. The sea, she thinks. She needs the sea to calm her, to settle her mind so she can study, so she can do this right, so she can prove them all wrong.

Dana Scully rents a cottage on the other side of the country in a town called Quonochontaug that promises sea and silence and solitude. She reads. She writes. She listens to the ancient tides that groan and crash against the land.

She has spotted him before, this haunted man who runs every day and who barely looks up to notice the world around him. Once, in the grocery store, she watched him buy a loaf of white bread, a jar of peanut butter, and sunflower seeds. Yesterday she saw him at the sea-edge at dusk, staring at the dark place where the water met the sky—not even a line, but a blueblack smudge: the marriage of unfathomable depths and impossible cosmic distance.

There is some kind of magnetism that draws him to her now. She feels it and sees it working on him at once. He stands before her, curious.

“Hi,” he says.

“I’ve seen you,” she says.

-

At a small diner she watches him pick at his eggs and toast while she swallows ravenously her omelette. His eyes—she can’t get over the depth of them, the darkness that shades them, the hoods that droop over them from some hidden anguish and lack of sleep. She feels him like the moon in her blood, but she has no explanation. It is a wild thing. She wants him to take her into the bathroom and fuck her stupid against the ugly tile. She blushes. She shakes her head. What is wrong with her?

“My father doesn’t respect me any more.”

“My sister was abducted from our home when I was twelve.”

They vomit out secrets into the ramshackle diner like a dam has broken somewhere. Neither can stop. She tells him about medical school. He tells her about the FBI. She tells him (blushing) how her mother found condoms in her dresser and how her father wouldn’t look her in the eye for a month. He tells her about Propps, even the goriest details, the worst things, and she doesn’t even flinch. He tells her everything except one. He doesn’t tell her about the dreams.

He pays and she thanks him, pulling her toggle-button sweater tight against her waist as they walk into the mid-morning breeze. The fog has cleared but the clouds still hang low. Dried leaves skitter across the parking lot.

“Look for me tomorrow,” she says.

He will.

-

This time when he wakes from the nightmare, he is standing at the open back door of the summerhouse, staring at the dunes. His feet are wet. He is wearing jeans with damp bottoms that he knows he didn’t go to sleep in.

He still hears it, in his head: some sound he cannot name. It’s like a word he can’t remember, a melody he can’t quite grasp. It is like a fishhook, tugging at his cerebellum. A word bubbles to the surface, a whispered word, what it thinks he wants. He hears a whispered Samantha, and goes queasy at the conflation of this monstrous thing and his little sister. The thought… He feels it rising. He coughs. He vomits onto the back porch and then drags himself inside. He locks the door and leans against it. What is happening to him?

When he sees Dan Scully next, the bright spot of light in this strange dark time, she is wearing khaki pants and a denim jacket, sitting on a beach chair. She has only one book with her this time. He slows to stop in front of her and she smiles at him.

“Hi,” he says.

“You look terrible,” she replies, brow furrowing with concern. “Come inside.”

She makes him tea and toast in her University of Maryland t-shirt, and thinks how stupid she must be to invite this strange man into her cottage where she sleeps alone.

“Dana,” he says to her while he tries to eat. “You love the sea.”

“I do,” she says, nodding but concerned, not sure where he’s headed.

“But it’s full of monsters,” he tells her. His eyes look so sad that she can’t help but reach out a hand to touch him. She wraps her fingers around his forearm and searches his broken face.

“Tell me,” she says.

-

He’s scared her away, he thinks. The thing will come for him again tonight, and he’s frightened away the only good thing he knew. She’d listened, though. She’d listened with sad eyes and hugged him and told him she’d look for him tomorrow. She’d said, “I need to think.” Think, not study. He would never see her again.

He drinks coffee at midnight, afraid of what sleep will bring. He turns on the TV, but the local stations go to static at one. He finds a black-and-white movie on UHF: Dementia 13.

It is not enough. He dozes. The thing comes back.

Its face mimics beauty, as do its naked breasts, its long legs. Its toes drag long lines in the sand with each step toward the pier. Black hair smooth down its back, it smiles at him with too-dark eyes and teeth that don’t belong in a human mouth. “You want me,” it whispers, and he tries to say no. He grips the railing, feels splinters in his hand. “You do.”

Behind her there’s a strange writhing on the beach. Fish, he sees. Fish and crabs and eels and ammonites long extinct and strange sharp-toothed and tumorous looking beasts, wriggling and scrambling from the water to their deaths at the feet of this treacherous being.

He recoils, squeezes the railing until his fingers burn. And yet he is drawn toward her, feels the compulsion in his spine, in his toes. He wants to wake up. He wants to…

He can’t.

He feels the compulsion pulling him under, pulling his hands free, stomping out his volition with every terrible beat of the creature’s heart.

-

Dana wakes suddenly as if startled. Not by a dream, but by something equally elusive. The cottage is silent, but she knows… She senses something wrong, and she’s learned not to ignore her instincts. Mulder, she thinks. His dreams. His nightmares. Danger, she thinks.

She pulls on boots and a jacket over her pajamas and rushes out into the dunes.

The water is black and the clouds have returned to block the moon—it is almost completely dark on the beach. Cold, too. She should have brought a flashlight.

“Mulder!” She calls, realizing that she doesn’t know exactly which house is his. She knows only the direction from which he passes in the morning.

She runs. She runs and runs, cursing the sand that sinks under her and makes it harder. “Mulder!” She yells again.

It’s stupid, she thinks. It’s stupid that she’s running in the dark along a pitch-black beach, looking for a man she hardly knows, screaming into the void on a completely irrational hunch. There is nothing rational left in her, though. There is only this impulse.

After what feels like half a mile, she stops short. The moon has broken free of the clouds and lights the beach silver. She sees him: he’s in the water.

“Mulder!” She screams, but he doesn’t hear. He is walking into the ocean. It is at his waist. The waves crash against him but he hardly notices. He just walks, one slow step after another. She crashes into the water after him, screaming his name.

When she’s close enough to see his face, it is pure horror: aguish, resistance, desperation. “Mulder!” She yells again. She grabs his shoulders, squeezes. But he won’t, can’t, snap out of it. The water is knocking her back, knocking her away from him, but she grips firm, uses the leverage of the next wave to hurl herself upward so she can throw her lips against his.

The water pushes, pushes at her, but she’s wrapped her arms around her neck to hold tight, and she’s kissing him awake. Finally, he stops his steady march forward as the water pushes against her back and his chest—so high now. She feels something shift, feels his balance break and he topples backward with the next wave. He shakes his head. He looks at her.

“Dana?” He asks.

“Yeah,” she says, and they drag each other back onto the cold sand where they hold each other tight.

—

#Fic Contest #Submission #AU #Category: AU

[goforwardgreenwriter-blog]

The Worm Reads: Empire of Storms, Ch 38

*inhales*

It’s here. Pray for me.

(Also, this should be pretty obvious, but this is indeed a chapter with a sex scene, so there will be NSFW text so maybe skip this one if you don’t wanna read that kinda stuff)

And Aelin knew if she didn’t get the hell out of this city for an hour or two, she might very well explode again.

I’m out of witty remarks to make about Alien’s piss poor temper at this point. Can you believe hundreds of people died painful and brutal deaths last chapter and all SJM focuses on is Alien’s feefees?

Rolfe and Alien have “edgy” “thrilling” “banter” where they insult one another, blah blah blah, you’re not here for that.

Also Rolfe sold his soul for the map on his hands which resulted in his sister and mother dying. How many nameless characters are gonna be murdered by SJM’s hands to give her main characters something to angst over holy shit.

Aelin rasped, “No. I don’t know what happened. One minute it was us … then she came.” She rubbed at her chest, avoiding the touch of the golden chain against it. Her throat tightened as she took in that spot on [Rowan’s] own chest, right between his pectorals. Where her fist had been aimed.

FJDHFKJAHJDAS OH MY GOD THIS IS THE MALE EQUIVALENT OF SJM BRINGING TOO MUCH FOCUS ON HER FEMALE CHARACTERS BREASTS I AM ACTUALLY CHOKING AKDHFKHAFJKHD

“If I had killed you,” she hissed, but choked on the words, unable to finish the thought, the idea of it.

This book would be a lot better since it would mean less Aelin gushing and less Ratlin being hailed as the best relationship evah

“She enjoyed every rutting second of it. She wanted to see what my power might do, what she could do with my body, with the key.” [Aelin’s] flames burned hotter, shredding through her clothes until they were ash, until she was naked and clothed in only her own fire.

??? i ????? this is not a private beach???? youre a queen what if someone walked in on you naked im?????? im so confused why does she do this???

“How can you be so … fine with this?” Embers sprayed from [Aelin] like a swarm of fireflies.

FHSHJSD THIS FUCKING IMAGERY SJM YOU’RE KILLING ME

Rowan shucked off his boots, tossing them onto the dry sand behind him. “Because I’m the only one arrogant and insane enough to ask Mala Fire- Bringer to let me stay with the woman I love.” [Aelin’s] flames turned to pure gold at the words—at that word. But she said, “Perhaps you’re just the only one arrogant and insane enough to love me.”

Love it when Alien writes my snarks for me. Makes these chapter reviews a whole lot easier!

Aelin let [Rowan] pivot her in the surf and sand to face him fully, let him slide his mouth along her jaw, the curve of her cheekbone, the point of her Fae ear.“These,” he said, nibbling at her earlobe, “have been tempting me for months.”

Oh god here we go

Before we proceed, let’s have a little chat, shall we? SJM’s sex scenes? They fucking suck. This isn’t an erotica novel, therefore sex scenes serve to help us feel the connection between characters, no? I don’t mind sex scenes; I’ve read many before that made me emotional because if they’re well written, they demonstrate how much a couple loves each other.

But SJM fails so hard at sex scenes. Her sex scenes isn’t about the bond between the characters, it’s about her jerking off to fae peen. They’re so hilariously unsexy with the shitty writing and bizarre word choice, and since I don’t like any of her characters, why should I care? Her sex scenes are there solely to trick readers into thinking these books are hot and sexy. But its much easier to show you rather than explain, so.....*sigh* Here we go.

Rowan obliged her silent demand, pressing kisses and soft, growling nips to her throat. “I’ve never taken a woman on a beach,” he purred against her skin, sucking gently on the space between her neck and shoulder. “And look at that—we’re far from any sort of … collateral.”

Am i reading a bad fanfic? Tell me how the characters feel! If i want graphic descriptions of Rowboat fucking Alien, I’d look up fanfics on AO3. Tell me how they feel! Also Rowboat was literally insisting they shouldn’t fuck like animals out in the wilderness at the beginning of the book. Oh, how naive I was back then to the horrors I would endure...

Aelin remembered herself enough to say, “Someone might come looking for us.” Rowan huffed a laugh against her neck. “Something tells me,” he said, his breath skittering along her skin, “you might not mind if we were discovered. If someone saw how thoroughly I plan to worship you.”

JKDSKHDKADHKASJD YOU’RE JUST OKAY WITH SOMEONE POSSIBLY RUINING YOUR SEX BY WALKING BY. LIKE WTF WOULD YOU JUST CONTINUE FUCKING IF SOMEONE ACTUALLY DID WALK BY?? IS THAT WHAT YOU WOULD DO???

His lips crushed into hers, and he said onto her mouth, dropping words more precious than rubies and emeralds and sapphires into her heart, her soul, “I love you. There is no limit to what I can give to you, no time I need. Even when this world is a forgotten whisper of dust between the stars, I will love you.”

God ok I take it back I don’t need to know how the characters feel. This is just too much. Pro tip, declaration of love are better kept simple and sweet, with all that big mushy stuff left unsaid. Also pro tip, try to find other ways of characters saying they love one another rather than just “I love you”, having them have their own special ways of expressing their loves just makes it more special and interesting to read and tugs on the heartstrings. Having them give huge speeches like this is just too much for me personally and doesn’t make their declarations of love feel special or meaningful

Aelin didn’t know when she started crying, when her body began shaking with the force of it. She had never said such words—to anyone.

Uh, yeah you have? She’s expressed similar love to Chaol in Crown of Midnight, calling him her home and whatnot. Pretty similar declarations of love.

Rowan pulled back, wiping away her tears with his thumbs, one after another. He said softly, barely audible over the crashing waves around them, “Fireheart.” She sniffed back tears. “Buzzard.”

Human brain: They’re disgusting and annoying characters I am not attached to their shitty abusive relationship in the slightest

Monkey brain: special couple nicknames,, pure and soft,,, favorite trope,,,

“You … are so beautiful.” She knew he didn’t just mean the skin and curves and bones. But Aelin still smiled, humming. “I know,” she said

I fucking hate Aelin’s vain ass

“Is it that different? With someone like me.” “I don’t know,” Rowan admitted. Again, his eyes slid along her body, as if he could see through skin to her burning heart beneath. “I’ve never been with… an equal. I’ve never allowed myself to be that unleashed.”

What the fuck?

This is Lyria, Rowan’s former mate. She was a Fae who was pregnant with Rowan’s child when she was killed, meaning she and Rowan had sex. How has Rowan not been with an ‘equal’ before?? Did SJM forget her own character’s backstory?

There’s more unsexy foreplay and Aelin takes off Rowan’s pants.

Rowan had been bred and honed for battle, and every inch of him was pure-blooded warrior.

Oh my god, I cannot wait to see how SJM skirts around actually using the word dick/penis//whatever

Oh, gods. Oh, burning, rutting gods. Rowan knew what he was doing; he really gods-damned did.

Just... this whole chunk. This is epic fantasy. Also ‘gods-damned’ is a dumb word idc what y’all say

Rowan growled his approval, her breast still in his mouth

JESUS ROWAN ARE YOU TRYING TO RIP OFF HER TITTY

A phantom touch, like the northern wind given form, flicked over her bare breast. Aelin burst into flames.

what the fuck I am sh o cke d

Magic foreplay?? This is the level we’re at, folks. Fucking magic foreplay. The same wind magic Rowan used to kill witches he is now using to feel up Aelin’s boobs. Holy shit.

A roaring wind full of ice and snow blasted around them.

I have several questions.

Rowan’s smile was nothing short of wicked as he pulled away to run a broad hand from her throat down to the juncture of her thighs.

lmfao wtf. SJM wants to have graphic sex scenes in her YA series but won’t actually use the correct words for genitalia? Like christ are you sticking to YA rules or not???

So Rowan did, sliding a finger into her as his tongue flicked that one spot, and oh, gods, she was going to explode into starfire—

I don’t think starfire is an actual word. Also I hate these two.

When Rowan was seated deep in her, trembling with restraint as he let her adjust, she lifted her burning hands to his face, wind and ice tumbling and roaring around them, dancing across the waves with ribbons of flame.

HAHAHA I AM DYING HOW IS NOBODY NOTICING ALL THIS FIRE AND ICE AND SHIT JUST EXPLODING ON THE BEACH

Seriously what does the magic add to this scene?? it’s so fucking weird! How are they somehow fucking but also concentrating on doing all this magic??? Like what the actual fuck it just makes no sense

And as his thrusts turned deeper, she dug in her fingers, dragging her nails across his back, claiming him, marking him. His hips slammed home at the blood she drew

WHAT THE FUCK  WHY ARE YOU DRAWING BLOOD?!?! THAT ISNT SEXY THATS AELIN LITERALLY SLICING UP ROWANS BACK WITH HER NAILS WHAT IS HAPPENING

Rowan’s magic went wild, though his mouth on her neck was so careful, even as his canines dragged along her skin.

How is he careful but also dragging his teeth across her neck you can’t have both

Rowan’s own release barreled through him at the sight of it [Aelin climaxing], and he groaned her name so that she remembered it at last, lightning joining wind and ice over the water.

LIGHTNING

L I G H T N I N G

EPIC FANTASY SERIES COMPARED TO THE LIKES OF LOTR AND WE HAVE A MAIN CHARACTER’S CLIMAX SUMMONING LIGHTNING I WANT OFF THIS CRAZY RIDE

Already, she wanted more, already she was calculating how long she’d have to wait. “You once told me that you don’t bite the females of other males.” Rowan stiffened a bit. But she went on coyly, “Does that mean ... you’ll bite your own female, then?”

Aelin has a biting kink confirmed. Listen, I don’t care what kinks people have as long as it’s kept in the bedroom and everyone involved can and has consented, but this is just gross because I despise these two characters and don’t want any more paragraphs about Rowan biting Aelin please spare me

Understanding flashed in those green eyes as he raised his head from her neck to study the spot where those canines had once pierced her skin.

Are you bullshitting me. Are you actually fucking kidding me.

Rowan assaulted Aelin and bit her on the neck, causing her to bleed.. and this is portrayed as sexy? As a romantic moment between them?? What the actual fuck SJM!!! If a guy you were arguing with bit you, you’d knee him in the balls and call the police because he is assaulting you!! WHAT THE FUCK AM I READING HOW IS THIS IN A NOVEL IM DJHAFJKHDJKAFHJK

I’m done and I want this chapter to be over. tl;dr Aelin wants to bite Rowan and this makes him so horny they immediately have sex again.

They moved together, undulating like the sea before them, and when Rowan roared her name again into the star-flecked black, Aelin hoped the gods themselves heard it and knew their days were now numbered.

You’re fucking like animals in the middle of a beach where anyone could see you. Stop trying to make it all ~epic~ and ~most important relationship ever~ like god fucking damnit this Ratty/Aelin ship is literally my worst nightmare. Fuck this book.

#the worm reads: eos #the worm talks #anti tog #anti sjm #anti eos #asdakjhdkasjhdasjk im b reaking

[crazy-grrrl-on-the-computer]

Every now and then I’ll remember something that really pisses me off and I’ll spend a good portion of my day seething about it until I’ve calmed down. Right now, it’s a memory from when I was in high school.

I had just been studying World War I in one of my history classes and, since history was never one of my best subjects, I had been really excited that the information I was learning was actually sticking in my brain well enough that I could hold an educated conversation about it. For once, I didn’t feel out of the loop when I was speaking with my two younger brothers about war-related history stuff. But when I tried to contribute to the conversation, for some reason both of my younger brothers immediately stopped me and argued that WWI was not the war that began after Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination.

Now, I knew I was right because I had literally just covered this in class that day. And yet, that didn’t matter to my brothers. They kept telling me that I was an idiot and that I was wrong and that the assassination was actually part of World War II or a different war entirely. And I actually started to believe them because, like usual, it was two against one and I somehow started to get convinced that I was just mixing up facts or making stuff up.

So, I ran to grab my history textbook from my backpack because I knew the answer would be in there. Meanwhile, I was having a small panic attack because I’d thought I was actually learning something in class for once. But if I’d really believed with such conviction something that was obviously false, then what other things was I clearly lying to myself about? How stupid did I actually seem to the rest of the world for spouting out incorrect information all the time as if I had any authority on the matter?

When I finally returned to the kitchen where we’d been having that conversation and slammed the book down on the table open to the page about WWI and Archduke Franz Ferdinand, I was extremely relieved that I actually had been remembering correctly. But even with that proof right in front of them, my brothers didn’t apologize at all for what they had said to me or how they had tried so hard to make me doubt myself. Because all that mattered to them was that they had to be right even when they were obviously wrong and they would do anything to “prove” that even if they had to bullshit.

It’s the same thing my dad does and I hate it so much. And this wasn’t the first or the last time that my younger brothers did something like this to me either. They have constantly followed our dad’s example about even the stupidest of things because their pride is apparently more important to them than another person’s feelings. (Especially my feelings, but that’s another can of worms.) Every time I try to say something, if they don’t agree with it, they’ll do whatever they can to convince me that I’m wrong and don’t know what I’m talking about. Even if their own arguments don’t make much sense and are clearly ill-informed, they don’t care. As long as they say it with enough conviction to make their point seem more valid, in their minds they’re correct no matter what I try to say next.

As infuriating as that is when we’re having a conversation about actual sourceable facts (such as that WWI discussion), it’s even more annoying and fucked up when they do that about casual conversations. So many times I’ve brought up something that happened when we were kids just to reminisce and they’ll say, “That never happened. You’re making it up.” Instead of just admitting that they don’t remember it or saying they don’t want to talk about it, they’d rather convince me that I’m wrong. About something that doesn’t even fucking matter. And there’s nothing I can do about it because no one else wants to get involved and, when it’s two against one, they’re always going to win because there’s no one else around to say they remember it, too. And then they just hold it over my head as more “proof” of my notorious incorrectness the next time they want to pull something like that.

And I’m pretty sure they do this on purpose just to fuck with me because, when I mention something recent that they said or did that proves a point I’m trying to make to them about their inappropriate behavior, they pull the same crap and claim it never happened or I’m just making it up to get them in trouble or something like that. As if I’m the one who’s the vindictive little shit in this house. I really cannot express how much I hate that they do this and there’s no way they can’t know what they’re doing or what effect it has on me and my mental state.

In a lot of ways, they’re getting worse than our dad is. Whenever my dad doesn’t want to admit that he doesn’t remember something, he’ll pull the same shit by saying that I never said that one very important thing that I know I said or he’ll claim that he told me something that I am positive he never said to me and then he’ll yell at me for being irresponsible. (Like he expects me to read minds and bend over backwards to get him to understand me or some bullshit without even putting in an equal amount of effort to make sure I can understand him. In case it isn’t already obvious, there are some serious communication issues in this household.) And on the few occasions when I can prove him wrong, he never apologizes and instead he just grumbles at me like it’s my fault. So, it’s because of his example that my younger brothers are acting like this and that’s another problem on its own.

But the bottom line is that this (along with my general mental health) is a large part of the reason I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust that my memories are real. I don’t even trust myself to remember something from two seconds ago like when I check the train schedule to make sure I’m getting on the right train. Heck, it’s not just that I don’t trust my memories to not be completely made up anymore. I don’t trust myself to do simple math. (Like is 1+1 even 2 or did I just imagine that? I don’t know.) I don’t trust my own eyes. I don’t trust that what I’m looking at is real. I don’t trust that I’m perceiving information correctly. I’m utterly convinced that I’m just misinterpreting everything and that the reality I’m living in is actually not the reality everyone else is living it. But there’s nothing I can do to prove any of that either, so I’m just carrying on with my life constantly seeking validation and reassurance from others that this thought I had or this memory I think I have or that these numbers I added together or that these words/images I’m staring at are correct and real. Because I’m really not sure of anything. I’m convinced (or rather constantly worried) that I’m just living in my own head.

This is probably the major contributor to why I still can’t wrap my head around why anyone here on Tumblr actually takes my thoughts seriously. And it’s also probably why I like analyzing the crap out of the different media I consume. Because that’s all subjective. Art, in all of its forms, is subjective and open to individual interpretation. So, I don’t need to be grounded in the real world in order to analyze and appreciate it. I can completely retreat into my own head and still enjoy it if I need to. Because if someone says I’m “wrong” about how I interpret something… that doesn’t mean anything and it won’t affect me. It’s just a difference of opinions and perspective. (Unless, of course, it’s the creator saying that I’ve interpreted their intentions incorrectly, but then I just readjust my understanding of it to incorporate this new information and it’s all good.)

#story of my life #sorry to dump this here but I needed to vent so it’s under the cut #in case it wasn’t obvious before I really hate myself and the constant state I exist in #it sucks and I wouldn’t wish this on anyone #and I know I’m just overreacting… or at least I feel like I must be… but I think it’s with good reason #I really don’t know how to fix this #I miss my therapist u-u #I kind of want to cry #will things get better once I’m no longer forced to be dependent on these people?

[hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff]

THE ESSAYIST IS MANY THINGS: egotistic is definitely one of them. This cuts both ways, however. Essays can be focused on the writerly self, but they can also offer an escape. As Montaigne said well over 400 years ago, one gets rather wrapped up in oneself. “I have no more made my book than my book has made me — a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life.” Yet the essayist also retreats. Emerson saw his reflections as solitude, where “all mean egotism vanishes” and he becomes “a transparent eyeball,” a “nothing.” The essay is much more than that too, of course. A riff or a sally, a fight or a laugh. A journey, a ramble, a wandering about. Beyond such meanderings — the digressions on which the essay thrives — the nature of the form is itself formless. It might be “short or long,” as Woolf wrote in 1922, “serious or trifling, about God and Spinoza,” or — recalling Samuel Butler — “about turtles and Cheapside.” But so often, as she wrote on Montaigne, the essay turns back to oneself, “the greatest monster and miracle in the world.”

Fast-forward almost a century and we have Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant by Joel Golby, which takes up (and takes down) his own monstrous ego with delicious panache. You probably know of his work. He’s a crusading hero for twenty- and thirtysomething UK renters who frequently lambastes the hellish property market in his regular “London Rental Opportunity of the Week” column for Vice. From an exposé of a toilet jammed inside a shower at the foot of the bed, to a Beckettian litany going over and over the nature of a bedsit with multiple sinks but no adequate space for a mattress, Golby wages a single-handed war against that peculiar subspecies of human: the landlord. He’s massively popular, not least with those of us destined to forever move from one overpriced grief hole to the next. Golby does absurdist humor on other themes, too. A piece asking questions about why Pete Doherty was seen “aggressively eating” a massive breakfast outside a greasy spoon in Margate; 101 ways to ruin a party; “deep dives” into property TV shows; the likelihood of certain celebrities eating worms if they go on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! One recent column on “The New Rules of Being a Millennial” is both caustic and community-building. If Lena Dunham (as a “voice of her generation” — that now somewhat hackneyed joke in Girls) was a member of the precariat and grew up in Chesterfield, she might turn phrases like this:

The problem with the “us” thing is that we (Us) do not have a collective term for ourselves which isn’t wildly inaccurate or painfully cringey. “Hipster” suggests a level of effort that I think we’re all big enough to admit we don’t subscribe to. Does “millennials” work? Sort of, but not. It’s too broad. Plus, “millennial” is more-or-less a slur these days, isn’t it. Nobody self-identifies as one. It’s just something your dad calls people with university debt. It’s nothing. The people I’m talking about are the ones who know what De School is and don’t really know what a “James Arthur” is.

Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant is a gathering of 21 new essays and three updated pieces, and arrives at a time when emerging writers are voicing their histories and outlooks in hilarious and poignant ways that befit modern anxieties. The Chicago-based blogger-turned-writer Samantha Irby’s debut collection, Meaty, and her second, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, both offer takes on bad sex, Crohn’s disease, life as a woman in her mid-30s, loss, and more, and recent collections from Hanif Abdurraqib, Chelsea Hodson, Scaachi Koul, and others reflect an exciting boom in the genre in the last few years alone. The essay has made a comeback, but it was always powerful. Again, Woolf said it best. “You can say in this shape what you cannot with equal fitness say in any other,” she wrote in “The Decay of Essay-Writing” in 1905: “its proper use is to express one’s personal peculiarities.”

There’s definitely something about essays, in their long-held comic tradition — “the joke” of literature, as G. K. Chesterton framed them — that resonates strongly today. After all, they are easily digestible, and in turn digest ideas. They are often simply “brain soufflés,” as David Lazar puts it in After Montaigne: a “walk-in closet of self or selves” ever more popular in our era of selfies and accumulations of followers on social media. Indeed, contemporary essays are often thoughts that gestate online, developed from blogs or one-off pieces: the sort of text with “14-minute read” under a byline for the crushing commute to work. They can also be surprisingly long and detailed, putting pay to the redundant idea that millennials cannot focus on anything beyond a shakshuka brunch, or — as the Daily Mail might interminably trot out — avocado toast. Caity Weaver’s epic quest to eat limitless mozzarella sticks as part of a TGI Friday’s promotion requires a good chunk of your time. John Saward’s classic reflections on Mike Tyson are as astute and amusing as Hazlitt. But with Golby we’re treated to two things at once: the pleasure of his wit and style as he ranges his themes, and a sustained, near-Swiftian satire on the very real and material challenges driven by the United Kingdom’s housing crisis. It’s not as simple as just laughing at £1,894 for a fold-out bed in Marylebone, or hedonism gone wrong; in Brilliant, we find a writer gunning for a fight.

In “PCM” (“Per Calendar Month”), Golby lays out the vagaries of dealing with the feudal overlords that might kick you out or take your deposit at the drop of a hat:

The landlords were very keen to stress when I was viewing the house that they were Reasonable People, which I have learned to now take from landlords as an immediate red flag that actually means “I am insanely deranged,” but I didn’t know this then; I was but a young bear cub, tiny and clear-eyed and full of trust, and plus desperate.

Golby intersperses his stories of the worst offenders with brutal, bloody fantasies of decimating each and every one: “The sound a landlord makes when you nail their toes down into the wood floor beneath them is, ‘This isn’t the definition of normal wear and tear.’” This is followed by an adroit move to his notion of “capsule coziness”: the kind of Scandinavian homely warmth called hygge that people were raving about a few years ago that in actuality equates to a herbal tea, a candle, and a “heather-colored blanket” you have to pack and move with every time the tenancy is up. Yet for all his inherently socialist leanings — this piece includes a well-researched outline of the real estate sector going back to 1986 — Golby is the first to admit that he is a slave to late capitalism’s charms. “Monopoly is the best game because the Actual Devil lives inside it,” he writes in another piece, before confessing to his rapacious greed and inhuman dealings on the board. “When I play Monopoly,” he writes,

I am David Cameron rimming Maggie off, I am Edwina Currie fucking John Major harder than he can fuck her back, I am a roaring-drunk Boris Johnson, I am Tory to the core-y, I am shaking hands with property developers in shady backroom multimillion-pound deals, I am blocking social housing to build luxury apartments in an effort to squeeze an extra £200K into my own private account, I am wearing a panama hat in the Cayman Islands and laughingly lighting a cigar with a £50 note.

In the United Kingdom there is a generational moniker: “Thatcher’s children.” If you were born in the ’80s, so the tag implies, you’ve been raised on rampant conservatism — the assumedly money-grabbing offspring spawned by her regime. But in truth we’re more conflicted. Society has raised us to believe getting on the property ladder is of paramount importance, but the reality of life-long renting and being pushed out of the city draws a big line between those who gained and those who lost under and after Thatcher. That Golby spins comedy gold from such a sorry state of affairs is testimony to how much we need a voice like his. Given his toothsome fight against oppressive property-owning profiteers, it is tempting to ascribe a cohesive political drive to Brilliant’s author. I asked him over email if he was interested in the horrors of capitalism, given how much of a theme it is in his work. “Mm, yes and no,” he responds. “My politics are, like baby-level deep. I was on a podcast the other week and everyone kept saying ‘neoliberal’ in a natural, casual air that made me sweat. I know the right and the left and vaguely where I fall on that spectrum … but beyond that I don’t feel qualified to talk. I don’t have the vocabulary.”

A similar modesty emerges with the very title of the book, even in its absurd egotism. “The title was initially there to make me laugh,” Golby explains, “then over time it became supremely annoying. It’s hard to pronounce without counting the Brilliants on your fingers: naming the book in this way has become the ultimate self-own.” One also finds this “ultimate self-own” in Golby’s approach to the book’s other major theme: masculinity. He riffs on the ineffable quality of “Machismo” (Golby’s brand is “soft knits and high necks” and a complex skin-care regime that includes the joys of an eye mask), offers an exhaustive, obsessive overview of all the Rocky films ranked in order of greatness, and marvels at Lenny Kravitz’s ability to pull off a leather jacket. (Golby decidedly cannot.) This deconstruction of masculinity accounts for some of the book’s funniest moments:

I realized a way of upgrading myself from a 5-out-of-10 to a solid 6 is to get a special trimmer to do the edging on my beard. And suddenly I went from a bar-of-soap-in-the-shower man to a guy with flannels, with precise and expensive tweezers. A guy who says this: “£55 for a moisturizer? Hell fucking yes!”

I asked Golby why masculinity can be so funny. “Well, because it’s absurd,” he replies, “but also it’s been one of the overriding influences on culture for the past million years, and we’re only just — just! — cracking out from that shadow … A lot of the things every man who has ever lived or ever died, a lot of what he has ever done, has been due to some deep roiling well of masculinity.”

I wonder if Golby is quite apart from the hegemonic masculinities (as initially theorized by R. W. Connell) that he decries. Brilliant arrives on the shoulders of gender theory: generations of feminist work with which emergent men’s studies became conversant in the 1980s, in works by Peter Schwenger, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Lynne Segal, and many others. A major subject of such studies was the “New Man” figure that appeared in popular culture in that decade — an emotionally more intelligent, respectful of women, post-yuppie incarnation — which in turn led to the “New Lad” of the 1990s. Integral to the British “lad culture” associated with the Britpop musical genre, the “New Lad” has been characterized by Rosalind Gill as an ironic, “beer and shagging,” Nuts- or Loaded-reading, cheeky manchild. We found him in David Baddiel and Frank Skinner’s comedy and the “Three Lions” football anthem, for instance, in the TV series Men Behaving Badly and in the fiction of Nick Hornby and Martin Amis. “Ladlit,” as Elaine Showalter named it, is a direct forerunner of Brilliant, which — over 20 years after the classic “lad” film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and in the light shined on shameful male behavior by the #MeToo movement — inherits and plays with its own genre heritage.

On the one hand, Golby retrenches old notions of manhood. “The Full Spectrum of Masculinity as Represented by Rocky in the Rocky Movies” tangent is a somewhat limited list that veers between brute force and fragility, relying on tired myths as the joke. There’s a familiarity in this move, a well-worn trope. After all, as Steve Connor wrote in 2001 (in “The Shame of Being a Man”), talk about being a man usually has “tucked into it a snicker at its bumptious presumption”: “[W]e find it hard to take masculinity as seriously as we suppose.” That Golby turns his comedy on this theme so frequently suggests a reiteration not wholly free of its antecedents. On the other hand, however, he’s doing something utterly new with the late 2010s permutation of “lads.”

Golby’s Instagram is often one long stream of captioned images sending up exhausted “haway the lads” lager-swilling clichés with a belligerent repetition of “love and appreciation to the lads” — men and women — until it goes from funny to irritating to funny again. He’s also aware of the ways in which, as Connor puts it, “to write is to be unmanned, meritoriously to unman oneself.” Golby embraces such “unmanning.” He explores his own sensitivity and offers a catalog of “All the Fights I’ve Lost.” He’s part of a new generation that knows (yet still laughs) at how, as Connor again writes, “[m]en are spent up: masculinity is a category of ruin, a crashed category. It’s a bust.” Golby is also aware of its persistent homosocial nature: the values and relations exchanged between men, as Sedgwick’s ground-breaking work revealed. “I have to have a very small-voice conversation with myself every time I put a selfie on Instagram,” he tells me. “‘Is this … lame? Will the other boys … mock me?’ It’s an insane and stupid thing to be under a thrall to.”

The homosocial dimension of Golby’s thoughts on masculinity might explain the book’s main oddity. Brilliant has no women in Golby’s love life to speak of. No formative crushes, sex, dating stories — nothing except an encounter with a man in Barcelona selling state-of-the-art sex dolls. The cringeworthy, non-erotic nature of these scenes made me wince with the uncanny feeling Ernst Jentsch and later Freud associated with E. T. A. Hoffmann’s automaton doll Olympia in The Sandman. They are, as Golby puts it, “eerie”: “balloon-like breasts w/ bullet nipples, sagging unlocked jaw w/ a raw pink tongue, splayed neat rubberized vagina, a one-size-fits-all butthole put out with a drill.” Again, we’re less in the realm of sexuality and more in gendered constructs. Golby offers a feminist take on AI and consent, yet feels disquietingly shorn of “the pulsing core of straight masculinity” when surrounded by these uncanny valley robots. He has it both ways: exceeding the “busted” category of manhood, yet circling back to it for a laugh. Is this a new new laddism? The book provokes such a question.

There’s an adolescent immaturity to Golby’s writing, to be sure, but a joyful one, with a comedic suaveness that demands attention. He consistently delivers the jokes through distinctive stylistic moves. Words and phrases pile up in heaps until bam! — the thing tips over and you’re laughing, rereading. He even manages to pull off some comedy in the opening essay, the moving yet funny “Things You Only Know If Both Your Parents Are Dead” that appeared in an earlier form on Vice and more recently the Guardian, about being orphaned at 25. He repeats “My parents are dead” no fewer than 22 times, yet still finds humor in grief, in um-ming and ahh-ing over which kind of beer basket to plump for for a neighbor, or buying vol-au-vents at Tesco. (There was more about the ubiquitous supermarket Tesco, but it was subbed by the US editor for being a bit too British. Other Britishisms include: the cheap pub chain Wetherspoons; the cigarette papers Rizla; tights.) This is perhaps one of the most powerful things about the book: people have reached out to Golby after that essay’s first publication, “as if I am some sort of griefsaver,” but, as he says to friends, “no two griefs are the same. They are always different spikey, awkward shapes. There’s no clean, easy way to vomit grief up out of your system. It just works its way through you in whatever way it chooses to.”

In some ways, as with his romantic life, Golby keeps a lot back, but aspects of Brilliant, like his loss, are totally up front — a juxtaposition that gets us back to the question of ego. I wonder if he considers himself private. “I don’t know if I’m wildly private,” he tells me. “I tend to tweet every thought I have, Instagram my dinner with a forced hashtag and wrote an essay [“Ribs”] about attempting auto fellatio — so let’s not worry too much about that.” Golby still harbors a strong, endearing desire to go to America and “hole up in a motel room with every snack I’ve ever seen on TV and watch 24-hour news.” (He’s wanted to do this since he was about eight.) He admits that his book is all about him, as he has had to convey what it’s about to many an editor’s bemusement with “a blank stare and say something along the lines of: ‘things that I like. I am the theme.’” Ultimately, he confesses, “more than anything else it is, still, fundamentally, just an ego trip thing. I have an enormous ego. An insufferable one.”

In the end, it is Golby’s satire that carries most weight. I ask him one final question, which was always on my lips as I read his columns and choice bits of the book. Is it possible for a human being to become a landlord without turning into a monster? “No,” he replies, firmly. “It’s not possible to become a landlord without turning into a monster. It’s not even possible to conceive of the idea of becoming a landlord without some hollow part of you already being monstrous. No landlord can escape the curse of their own landlordism. Their soul is condemned before they even pull up outside the auction house.”

¤

Cathryn Setz is an Associate Visiting Research Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Primordial Modernism: Animals, Ideas, transition (1927–1938) (Edinburgh University Press, 2019).

The post The Ultimate Self-Own: On Joel Golby’s “Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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Jeffrey and his dear ol ma and pa find a sleepy little hotel in some small town on theyr way to see cousin randall up north young jeff has been against the trip from the start he says it interferes with his partying and he doesn’t really relate to people who sleep. As his parents drift off and he is left to his thoughts his mind begins to race. He finds the down time unbearable and hes nearly chewed a hole threw his tounge. Suddenly he bolts upright in bed He turns to where his parents are sleeping and yells “yo dad psssst pops where the party at?   what the hell you sleepin for are you a lazy fuckin bum or something??” His father a costumed to jeffs shenanigans calmly retorts back “Son shut your fucking mouth its 1 a.m” Damn … well I tried. Jeff says to himself as he lays back down. Thoughts of hoodrat shit le cigarettes honkey tonks and hangin with blue collar gentlemen and rollin bolo back home streak across his mind he remembers the good times digging through trash staring at radio tower lights all night with ol boy Jr all the lurpage that’s going on back at the trap without him and all the fun hes missing out on. Fuck it he swings out of bed and makes his way to the bathroom “ight pops get to sleep you lazy fuck ill be in the bathroom probably jerkin my gerkin till sunrise Oh  ill try to act surprised when you bust in at 3am to take a piss but no promises after the 4th time it loses its excitement and after the last one remember when I was trying to hit a bolo and slap my sausage at the same time well it just want the same . After that I kinda just put it off as one of those thing that happen Anyway if you ever decide to stop being lame and show some interest in the finer things in this life well you know where to find me I got the firest dope in the whole trailer park this shit will fuuuuuck your whole life it aint dope if it doesn’t make you regret all your life choices take a hit of this and you will come out of your zone 5 years later  you will notice your in an  r.v and theres pictures hanging up of you and a dog eating wedding cake together you are wearing a huge white  dress but whats this .. No it couldn’t be the dog is in a tux and you realize that dog in the picture that dog eating cake with you …That’s now your husband and that’s when it hits you … you realize how good that fucking dope was and your like duuuude im so glad my son let me party with him that night so dad in conclusion come on don’t you wanna have some good friendly fun with crystal meth . Jeffs father has become a bit triggered after hearing another weird fucking story that  probably came about from some fucked  hallucination jeff accidentally filed under reality  Jeffs dad says “Son im not and I never ever will join in on your weird fucked up activities iv seen enough I don’t want to dabble in anymore of your tweakery than I have to”              Well dad that’s on you and if those are the kind of selfish choices you want to make in life then I cant tell you what to do just remember im not mad im just disappointed now give me the wifi password so I can go set up  headquarters and get some videos buffered up its gonna be long night nuts don’t bust themselves it’s a lot of hard work and blood and sweat and tears. Jeff grabs the wifi password and locks himself in the bathroom. AHHHHH bliss I should get paid for this he chuckles to himself before getting down to business first things first he pulls out his pookie and blows the fattest cloud on record. Then its time. He is focused like hes on a mission from god. After he stretches and gets in the zone The suddle slapping of a monkey is the only noise heard throughout the night. Hours pass by but to jeff time is only made up it does not exist in his reality A thump against the door startles him out of focus and breaks the steady pattern of fapping goddamit jeff whispers . the door crashes open as his dad comes in rubs his eyes and realizes whats going on  “oh for god sake  son  your gonna rub your godamn dick off at this rate if you spent as much time collecting pennies off the ground  as you do peddlin on your pecker iv swear Iv become numb to all this shit I ll probably walk in next time and you will be bent over the sink reaching an arm back fingerboppin your asshole what do you wan… Dad …dad jeff interrupts his fathers breakdown to ask an important question  “WHAT???!!! JEFF what is it” uhhhhh I wanted to ask you if it was normal for a shaft to go numb…. Not me though my penis is healthy . Im asking for a friend. jeffs father has a distant stare on his face as he shakes his head slowly back in forth and scratches at his hair “OK YOU WIN JEFF never have I heard of anyone BOMBING THE FUGGIN universe as much as you have in one day every time I think it cant get anymore disappointing you proceed to bypass your previous shame by miles. You are the definition of a terminal illness growing like a godamn tumor. Don’t get up from your throne I wouldn’t wanna come between you and the only true passion iv ever seen you have for anything. Ill just piss outside oh and to let you in on a little something something your mom explained last night her growing dislike towards you its not about the drugs or trannies you brought to grandmas last month its “THAT stupid fucking look on your face  your always making she cant stand it   and if it continues to intrude on her life she will have to take a hammer and bash it until it caves in on itself the bright side is we can go to the Halloween store and pick you out a mask. Think of it like that show where they tear apart those shitty houses and make them look amazing…. But hey maybe it wont come to that just practice in the mirror son try really hard to not look retarded I know just be strong if anything just think about that Halloween mask you will get to wear. Jeff sighs…. Oh my good godamn I see how it is I figured something was fishy but didn’t look into it due to a mix up in differentiating between pychosis and  my incredible intuition. see I pick up on small things that the normal person would never even think about but due to paranoia and sleep deprivation sometimes I just confuse red flags as my own made up dellusion. Ya know whaa….But there was no point explaining the situation to his dad for the old man must of  lost focus and walked off right at the beginning…. Well some people just don’t function  on this high of a brain frequency  almost makes ya feel sorry for em. They cant help being fools. Oh well I got other shit to take care of important stuff . He quickly makes a calculation in his head and decides if he cannot climax by sun up he will go to the doctor but  150 google searches 300 different adult websites and an undetermined number of computer viruses Young jeff finaly got the sweet satisfaction he had set out to find he let out a sigh of relief although it was short lived  because as soon as his heels touched back down on the bathroom floor his legs both cramped and jeff let out a horrific scream as he crumbled to the ground. after dragging the lower half of his body across the bathroom and crawling over into the bathtub he dove deep into his mind body and spirit….. Bingo “ I should just sit next time im whoopin the worm that way my legs don’t get weak and I don’t lose feeling in my lower extremities  next time I bust a nut” suddenly he felt a lot better about things see most people wouldn’t take the time to figure out why life dealt such a hard blow but not jeff he took in every factor anlysed the situation and he aint gonna make the same mistake more than maybe 3 times .  So there he sat waiting for his leg muscles to return to the correct places. Hmmmmm “you like that you like it when people get injured while jerking off as you watch the whole thing and laugh about later with your no good hippie step son”!!!he began pondering the existence of god   he flipped his pecker like some toy from a souvenir shop it helped him think smarter he wondered if even though he had no faith in the holy spirit and was not a believer why it felt so good to talk shit to god  maybe im having a spiritual awakening or just need somebody to blame. Ah maybe I should pray perhaps prayer is just another  method of begging .The man upstairs sounds like the haggling type of son a bitch maybe hes into horse trades. Then jeff did something he aint never done before he bowed his head stopped playing with his damn pecker put his hands together and prayed “Lord I don’t know if your listening but im in some trouble nothing too bad but… just please if you hear this gimme some feeling in my legs back I learned my lesson I heard somewhere theres no choking the chicken in heaven I know it cant be true though because what would heaven be if you couldn’t beat your meat every now and again. Anyway maybe that whole leg cramp thing was a god given sign of some sort but it was totally unnecessary now Iv not been on too good terms with you because back a couple months or so when I lost that portable dvd player under a truck wheel in the driveway and getting crushed. I blamed joe joe bean for the longest time but considering the holy spirit in charge of shit around here is you I figure you’re the sorry son a bitch that put joe joe up to something like that.