#flowers in the attic 1987 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nerdby · 7 months

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I'm gonna get hate for this, but I just have to say I do not get how anyone can see Loki and Mobius's relationship as anything more than a casual friendship. Especially after I rewatched the first season and all Mobius does is insult Loki, talking down to him condescendingly, and reminding Loki constantly of the fact that he is an untrustworthy villain. That doesn't change until like episode five, and there's only six episodes.

So I'm just gonna say this again: Fetishizing queer men is homophobic, and Loki being in love with a woman does not negate his bisexuality and does not make him any less queer.

I also want to clarify that I am not pro-Sylki. I don't love the ship or hate it. I think it's a flawed metaphor for self-love, but also an interesting nod to the source material -- Young Avengers (2014-2015) and Thor: Journey Into Mystery (2011). Incestous relationships are also a solid element of the horror genre--

Psycho (1960)

Bates Motel (2013)

The Hills Have Eyes (1977/2006)

Flowers In The Attic (1987)

OldBoy (2003)

And those are just the examples that I can think of off the top of my head. So, to me, the Sylki ship is anything but romantic. It's tragic because when a consensual incestous relationship develops between two people it's because of shared trauma and a sense of isolation that makes the people feel like no one outside their family could ever understand them enough to love them in a romantic sense. So self-loathing, I guess?

But it just grosses me out to see people fetishizing queer people. Especially because it's something that I as a bisexual have to put up with a lot.

And like, seriously, if you're a straight woman who has ever complained when someone's made a joke or comment about you exploring the possibility of being with another woman, you're a hypocrite.

"Oh, well they did it first!"

That's your defense -- what, are you five?

That doesn't make it okay.

Y'all can say I'm starting drama or whatever. I don't give a shit. If you're getting defensive over this post then there's a reason for that and you might wanna do some introspection. I've been keeping this to myself, okay, but I had to say something before my fucking head explodes cause it's not okay.

No one should be fetishized, regardless of their sexuality or gender.

Queer people are not sex toys.

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jgmartin · 10 months

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The Mask of Ashes [short horror]

My grandpa's an interesting man. He served in the Korean war before he could grow a moustache and walked away with a rack of medals heavier than a brick. Since then, he's had a series of careers including used car salesman, librarian, and most famously, archaeologist. I use the term famously a bit loosely, I'll admit. He didn't make any world-changing discoveries like uncovering King Tut's tomb or finding Excalibur. He did, however, ignite my family's imagination with his lavish descriptions of history.

It was a favourite pastime of my family, listening to grandpa speak. We'd crowd around him every gathering, be it Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter or just a Sunday supper. He'd regale us with tales of wonder and mystery. He spoke of the Ark of the Covenant, Blackbeard's lost treasure, and the Amber Room.

He also spoke of an old mask, one crafted a thousand years ago by a man possessed by the devil. It was called the Mask of Ashes, and if you put it on you’d be given a vision of the future.

The only time he mentioned this mask though was after a night of heavy drinking on Christmas Eve, 1987. When I asked about it the next evening at supper, he dismissed it. “I had a lot to drink last night,” he said. “I probably got on a roll and started embellishing a bit. You’ll have to forgive me, Andrew.”

I believed him. After all, who hasn’t exaggerated a point or two after a bottle of whisky? “No worries, grandpa,” I remember saying to him. “You just spoke about it in such detail I thought it must be real.”

“Details are easy to fake when you're making it all up anyway."

My grandpa’s health began deteriorating not long after that. At first it was small things. His memory began to fade. Names escaped him. Then, it was his balance. Walking became a challenge. Soon, he was confined to a wheelchair and only able to do the most basic of activities with his hands. His skin turned sallow and pale, and the bright blue of his eyes faded to a shade above grey.

Once an avid gardener, his flowers withered and died without his attention. Soon too did his lawn. It wasn’t long until his lovely red house looked more like a condemned property, covered in dirt and worn out from the weather and years. As a family we tried to keep up with the maintenance as best we could, but still the floorboards would rot and the wallpaper would peel. It got to the point where even being in the house felt draining.

To ensure grandpa got the best care when he needed it, we hired a live-in nurse to look after him. Unfortunately, the nurse passed away shortly after from a heart attack. We hired another. She quit, citing respiratory issues. Then we tried once more, this time ensuring we hired a young man with no prior health concerns. He wasn't even thirty years old yet. Not long after though, he quit too, complaining about a deep pain in his legs. It became clear that without the upkeep the house needed, something toxic had taken root.

After consulting an inspector (who couldn’t locate the source of the toxicity), we decided to have grandpa moved into a nursing home and have the house torn down. We agreed to pack grandpa's belongings as a family. After all, it seemed risky hiring a moving firm when there were so many valuables laying about from his archeology digs.

We picked a date and showed up armed with respirator masks, rubber gloves, and more cardboard boxes than an Amazon warehouse. We decided the easiest way to get everything packed was to split the house into rooms and have a different person pack one each. After a brief discussion and some heated coin-flips (and games of rock-paper-scissors), I drew the short straw and was left with the toughest room of them all: the attic.

Truthfully, I didn't mind so much. Like I said, my grandpa was an interesting man and I was certain he'd have some curious knickknacks squirrelled away up there. So I headed upstairs and pulled down on the dangling ceiling cord. The attic's wooden steps drifted down with a haunting groan. A moment later and the smell of old books, parchment and rat droppings greeted me. Given my grandpa’s condition, I couldn’t be certain the last time anybody besides the inspector had been up there. If I had to take a guess though, I’d say it’d been well over a decade.

I ascended the steps into the attic and squinted as my eyes adjusted to the dim light. It wasn’t anything special. Very typical as far as attics went, complete with a low, sloped ceiling and plain wooden floors. Boxes had been piled anywhere they could fit, with a tight path winding between them that led to the far side of the room, where a dusty desk sat in the faint sunbeam of a dirty, cobwebbed window.

I made my way toward it, figuring working my way from back-to-front might be the best strategy. That way, as I became more tired the boxes would be closer to the stairs. I silently thanked my grandpa for already having just about everything already tucked neatly away and resolved to get to work.

As I came upon the desk at the far end, I noticed a book open on top of it, beside which was a plain mahogany box. Curious, I investigated. No doubt this was the last project my grandpa had attempted to undertake before his health failed him.

The book looked old. Older than any book I’d ever seen. Its pages were yellow and curled, and looked to have been penned by hand. It was bound with sinew between two thick, leather covers. “Creepy,” I said, softly brushing my hand over the surface to clear the thick layer of dust. It revealed a page littered with symbols. Whatever language it was written in used sharp, jagged characters to denote its alphabet. I’d never seen anything like it.

“Well, into the box with you,” I said, heaving a sigh. I closed the book with a poof of dust, and placed it into the packing box next to me. Then I turned my attention to the mahogany container on the desk. Its craftsmanship was excellent. The wood was smooth, a deep brown-red and even up in the attic, where the smell of rat droppings reigned supreme, the box had a rich and clean scent to it. It was plain though, save for a small metal clasp on its front that originally looked to have been for a lock.

I opened it.

Inside was a mask, one of plain design. It had two eye-holes cut out, as well as several sharp, uneven slits made for the mouth to speak and breathe through. I picked it up and took a closer look. The material the mask was made from looked a bit like dried skin. I pulled off a glove and ran my fingers over it. It certainly felt like dried skin. "Probably animal hide," I muttered aloud, not wanting to consider the alternative. After studying it for several more seconds, I decided there was nothing particularly special about it and put it down. It was just an old mask.

I consulted the inside of the box, ensuring that I hadn’t missed something. It was empty. For my grandpa’s last project, this felt oddly anticlimactic. I suppose after a life of so many fantastic stories I just expected something more significant. I picked the mask back up and tossed it into the mahogany container, then closed the lid with a gentle click of the latch.

A memory prodded at the edge of my mind. I bit my lip, staring at the plain box, recalling a legend grandpa told me many years ago. It had been Christmas Eve then. He'd spoken about something called the Mask of Ashes, an object he later insisted he’d made up. I drummed my fingers on the box and my imagination spun to life, recalling the wondrous tale he’d told of a mask that showed the wearer the future. This wasn’t that. It couldn’t be. He’d already admitted the entire story was a drunken farce, and yet…

I opened the box. I’m not certain why, but maybe it was a sense of nostalgia mingled with an inability to accept that my grandpa had really gone his whole life without any major discoveries. He’d always been such a clever man. I pulled my respirator off of my face and stared at the mask with mounting excitement. Reaching down, I flared open its bottom and brought it up over my head, and then slowly placed it over my face.

I blinked. In front of me I saw the dusty desk, my packing box with the book inside, and the mahogany container. Everything looked exactly as it had earlier. “Well,” I said, with a disappointed laugh. “I'm not sure what I was expecting."

I reached my hands up to my neck to remove the mask, but then the world began to bleed. I stopped, my heart thundering in my chest. The desk began to warp, and soon both it and the cobwebbed window bled away, pouring into a red soup on the floor. Around me, the high-stacked boxes did the same. Soon, I stood in a pool of blood up to my knees, warm and thick and rich with the smell of iron.

“Incredible,” I breathed, unable to contain my fascination. I took a step forward, and the pool of blood shifted, creating small waves and ripples upon the surface. For several moments I gazed around in stunned silence, hardly able to believe what I was seeing -- what I was feeling. After all this time, grandpa truly had made a massive discovery. His final project was also his greatest.

I had to tell my family. I had to tell the world. This was more than discovering some rusty sword or old treasure. This was something that would change the way we understood the world, history, and religion entirely. This was something unlike anybody had ever seen. I pulled the mask off of my face and, beaming, turned to leave the attic.

The blood shifted. It sent a wave cascading forward, and I realized the attic was gone entirely. The space around me was a pool of crimson as far as I could see. My smile faltered. I looked down at the animal-hide mask in my hands, and noticed it was gone.

I thrashed forward through the blood, moving toward where I knew the attic door ought to be. I held my breath and dived down, running my hands over the ground and trying to find the latch that would release the stairs and free me from this nightmare. The ground was entirely smooth. No latch. No stairs.

I emerged from the pool with a gasp of air, then shouted and screamed. I called for my father, my sister, my aunt. I called for anybody at all.

“Do you mind?” a voice croaked.

I wheeled around in a splash of blood. A great creature, twelve feet tall loomed before me. Its legs were curved with thick hair in the fashion of a goat, and its four eyes were made of fire.

“You're making a bit of a scene," it said. "We can hear you two circles down."

I swallowed, my panic both mounting at the sight of this monstrosity and waning at the indifferent casualness of its voice. “Err, who are you?”

It rose four eyebrows and reached out, clasping me on the shoulder with a long-fingered hand. It pulled me into a tight squeeze at its side. “That’s more like it. Name’s Lucifer, but you can call me Lu. You’re a little late, but we should be able to fit you in.”

He snapped his fingers and a piece of floating parchment appeared before him. He swiped at it with a finger and I noticed my name was crossed off in a rather dramatic line of fire. “That’s all four. We’re ready to go,” he said.

“Ready to go?” I squirmed away from him. This was turning into full blown acid trip territory. Nothing made sense. The attic, I decided, must have been the source of the house's toxicity problems, and now I was having some kind hallucination from direct exposure. “Sorry," I said. "All four of what?”

“Horsemen," Lucifer said with a serrated smile. “We’re already running behind though, so if it’s alright with you, I’d like to skip orientation and get this apocalypse started.”

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