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a-d-curtis · 3 years

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Incense

“Are you really that excited about this?” Katara asked, laughing at her husband, ‘the mighty Avatar’, and the giddy way he trotted next to her.

The two walked together hand in hand through the red-tapestried halls of the Firelord’s palace, Katara leading the way to this oft-visited location, navigating which corridors to take, effortlessly winding her way through the mammoth palace like it was a well worn path.

As Aang turned his grey eyes upon her, Katara noted the way his eyes still shone with excitement as they did back when they were kids, even though the smile-lines beside his eyes stayed in more permanent creases now. “Well, I should say so!” he teased, “After you’ve withheld this little pleasure from me all of these years. Yes! Yes, I’m excited to finally be invited to join you!”

Katara stifled a laugh, the sound coming out more as a snort. “Really, Aang? Really?! I just never knew you wanted to come.”

“What?! Why would you think that I wouldn’t want to come?!”

“Well…” Katara began as they rounded the final corner and a woman in a red and gold robe opened the door to the room for them. “I guess I just never thought you would have any… interest in this particular thing.”

Aang looked affronted. “But you’ve come here with everyone else over the years, Katara! Mai, Sokka, even Zuko when he can relax long enough to take a break. You brought Kya even when she was just a little kid, and Bumi can’t seem to get enough!”

Katara turned toward her husband teasingly. “Well, they all, you know…” she rose up on her tiptoes and ran a hand over the smooth arch of her husband’s bald head as she finished, “have hair.” Her eyes laughed even when her mouth held it back.

Aang looked insulted. “Who says you need to have hair!?”

Katara couldn’t hold back her laugh anymore. “Well, it is a hair wash, Aang!”

Aang smirked at her, stroking his beard. “I have hair.”

Katara slapped him playfully across the chest. “You need it on your head, you doofus!”

Aang’s forehead creased as his puppy-dog eyes looked at her dolefully. “Well you took everyone else… I just felt left out.”

Katara laughed again shaking her head in baffled amusement. “All you had to do was tell me you wanted to come."

Aang smiled a flirtatious, one-sided grin. “I figured this was an exclusive ‘by invitation only’ activity.”

Katara laughed and linked her arm through the crook of Aang’s elbow, leading him further into the palace spa. With her other hand she gestured magnanimously “Well then, here you are! The very ‘exclusive’ Palace Hair Wash!”

Before them was a reception room with dimmed lights and a strong aroma of orchids. The calming sound of trickling water could be traced to a fountain that fell from high on the back wall, running over a slanted stone slab carved in the shape of two flying dragons. At the bottom the water ran into a trench that split and continued down two small creeks lined with smoothed stones on either side of the room, creating a cheery trickling sound as it passed. Around the perimeter of the spa heavy red curtains hung covering the entrances to several smaller rooms. A few of the curtains were tied back with thick gold ropes revealing massage tables or big tubs of water within the lowly-lit rooms. In the center of the room stood an elaborately carved golden colored desk, with an elegant, overly made-up elderly woman sitting behind it.

As Katara and Aang approached the center desk, the woman stood with prim stiffness. The elderly woman bowed slightly in Fire Nation custom, the large, ornate black hairpiece on her head tipping forward, causing the beaded strings that hung from either side of her hairpiece to clink softly. “Master Katara, you come again,” she greets with formal curtness. Then turning towards Aang, “And you, Avatar,” her sharp golden eyes darting to his tattoos, her voice laced with cool decorum, “We are honored to have your presence among us.”

Aang bowed to her, replying with jovial warmth, “I’m happy to be here!”

Katara tipped her head to the woman, her voice a bit cooler than usual, “Thank you Madam Uriko. My husband and I have come for a hair wash.”

“Of course,” the woman responded with a smile restricted to just her red painted lips, her eyes still sharp. She waved her large sleeve once and a young woman in red robes rushed forward from where she had stood quietly at the back of the room. “As always,” Madam Uriko’s barbed voice spoke, her piercing eyes not leaving them, “we are at your service.”

As the young woman led Aang and Katara away, Aang glanced back over his shoulder toward Madam Uriko, and shivered. “Is it just me, or does she feel predatory somehow?” Aang asked Katara in a hushed whisper.

Katara leaned in towards Aang whispering, “Madam Uriko has been in charge of this place for decades. One of the old relics of an older time. She’s harmless, just still seeped in beliefs of Fire Nation supremacy. I think it hackles her that Zuko allows non-Fire Nation royalty to use the spa…”

Aang’s brow furrowed for a moment, and Katara guessed at what he was thinking. The two had lamented frequently together of how difficult it was to change the perceptions of those who had been raised on war propaganda. Their little band of child warriors had been able to stop the fighting almost overnight, but the perpetuation of racism, animosity and false-ideologies were much harder to eliminate.

Katara knew that Aang sorrowed, not only for his lost people and culture, but also for the way that even the memory of them had been defiled. Despite Zuko’s efforts to reform education in the Fire Nation to teach the Air Nomad genocide accurately, it was still common to encounter people who still believed the lies taught during the war. It churned Katara’s stomach to know that in 100 years of Fire Nation propaganda, the people had been taught that the Air Nomads were the aggressors, that they had been war-mongers and child-stealers, who swooped in on their flying creatures to slaughter parents and carry away the children of helpless villagers.

Katara still remembers the first time Aang had been called a baby-eater from a terrified old granny. They were in one of the more remote Fire Nation islands, when the old woman had run and swooped up her toddling grandson who had been watching Aang juggle leaves in an airball for a bunch of the local kids. They had still been kids back then, and Katara had confronted the woman, yelling passionately in defense of her boyfriend and the Air Nomads. But Aang had just turned and walked away. When Katara caught up to him, she had listened as Aang quietly recounted a seemingly unrelated story of trying to comfort his crying friend, Samten, when he’d accidentally stepped on a scorpi-beetle while playing airball. Aang told how the two of them had carefully scooped what was left of the tiny squished bug onto a pipa leaf, and performed their best approximation of the “Soaring of the Dead” ritual to send the soul of the scorpi-beetle on gentle breezes into his next life, praying for it to be a good life, full of freedom and enlightenment. Katara and Aang hadn’t talked about what the woman had called him, and he didn’t bring it up again. But Katara knew that the Air Nomads, the memory of whom Sozin and his children slandered, were real people to Aang. They were his culture and heritage, yes; but they were also individuals he had known.

The contrast of what the peaceful Air Nomads had been, and how they were remembered was devastatingly unfair.

In an effort to distract Aang from whatever thoughts he might be slipping into, and pull him back into the present, Katara decided to share a piece of juicy gossip. Pulling on their linked arms to bring Aang’s ear down closer to her, she spoke in a conspiratorial whisper, “Rumor has it Madam Uriko was, um, very close, with Fire Lord Azulon.” The implication of her words caused Aang to wrinkle his nose in disgust. Katara continued, “She’s been working in this spa since she was a young woman, and has bragged to me more than once about how Lord Azulon used to come to her for ‘solace’ from his heavy duties as Fire Lord.”

Aang grimaced comically. And Katara laughed at his expression as she continued, “Madam Uriko is just one of those unchangeable parts of Fire Nation imperialism. I asked Zuko why he keeps her around, and he told me that she technically hasn’t done anything wrong (apart from being super creepy), so he can’t really get rid of her. Aaaand,” Katara dragged the word out with a smirk, “frankly I suspect Zuko is intimidated by her.”

Aang chuckled and chanced a glance back towards the woman again as their host untied the golden rope holding the curtain to their room open. The Madam’s narrowed golden gaze was still on them as the heavy red curtain fell across the doorway, obscuring her from view. “I can see why…” Aang said with a commiserating shudder.

Aang stood still a moment longer, before brightening excitedly, rubbing his hands together eagerly as he said enthusiastically, “Well! Lets bring on this famous hair wash!”

……………….

“So that’s when Zuko gave me that fancy hairbrush set. It was in retribution for the pocket lighters Sokka and I both got him for his birthday.”

Aang spoke from his place lying on the hair wash bed next to hers. Katara smiled as she opened one eye to glance his way, appreciating the large bubbly lather his spa worker had managed to lather on his baldhead. Katara had stifled a laugh at the woman’s expression when Aang had initially lain down, her hands hovering unsurely over his baldhead. But he had smiled affably up at her saying, “I’m sure you’ll figure it out” with a wink. Apparently she had figured it out, because Aang had spent the last twenty minutes sighing in pleasure at the experience.

“Well I really appreciated that gift from Zuko,” Katara said smugly as she closed her eyes again, enjoying the feeling of the spa worker’s hands in her hair as she massaged her scalp and combed out her long tresses in the warm flowing water. “I still use that brush to this day. You’ve got to admit, even with a gag gift, Zuko gives quality.”

Aang chuckled from his place on the hair wash bed next to hers. “Oh absolutely. I kept one of the combs from that set for years, remember?”

Katara laughed again, “Oh yes, I remember. You kept it in your pocket for the sole purpose of pulling it out and combing your beard whenever Zuko was giving a serious speech.”

“I remember fondly the special way he’d glare whenever that comb came out!” Aang laughed jovially.

Katara turned her head to look at her husband again, who now had a warm folded washcloth over his eyes. Even so his hands still gestured animatedly while he talked, his spa worker needing to dodge an especially enthusiastic hand here or there.

Katara smiled as she settled back into her hair wash, sighing in relaxation. She really did love a good palace hair wash – the calm of the dimmed lights, the smell of the flower water and the oils they used in her hair, the sound of the warm water running over her scalp as the woman massaged the base of her neck – it was a little piece of heaven! It was fun to share it with Aang this time.

“Was that before or after Sokka gave Toph those dark glasses?” Katara asked lazily.

“Before, I think,” Aang replied as he sighed again, clearly relishing his ‘sans-hair-head-wash’.

Katara smiled. “Sokka had thought that would be so funny, giving our favorite Blind Bandit sunglasses. Little did he know that she would wear them proudly. Before long, nearly every police officer in Republic City owned a pair.”

Aang chucked. “But that wasn’t nearly as big a backfire as the time I gave a single chopstick to Zuko.”

“Remind me again how a single chopstick is a useless gift for a firebender?”

“Oh it wasn’t because he’s a firebender, Katara! It’s because a single chopstick is useless to anyone! … Or so I thought…” Aang said with chagrin, “But that was before Zuko handed the chopstick to Mai, who with a flick of her arm managed to skewer it securely in the cushion I was sitting on, squarely between my thighs!” Katara could hear the shudder in his voice. “That was before we’d had Tenzin, Katara! Do you know what that could have meant?! For an instant I’d thought that was the end of the Air Nomads for good!”

Katara snorted, knowing full well that Mai would have had that little threat in mind when she threw the chopstick. Although it had taken some time for Katara to warm up to Mai, she now fully appreciated the understated, off-kilter wit of the dark-humored Fire Lady.

“But I thought I had her the next time when I gave her a bag of bison-fur yarn-balls.” Katara could hear the irritation in Aang’s voice when he continued, “Who knew she could make even those hurt…?”

A small snicker had Katara glancing up at the woman washing her hair. Apparently their talking was amusing to those washing their hair; these women undoubtedly would have encountered Mai here as well, and perhaps could appreciate the image of their Fire Lady harassing the Avatar.

But the woman’s mirthful expression hurriedly returned to a professional neutral when the curtain opened and Madam Uriko entered.

The old woman moved gracefully as she stopped in front of the shrine at the front of the small room. Removing a small pressed incense cone from a pouch at her waist, Madam Uriko lit the cone with a small snap of her fingers. Katara was mildly surprised; she hadn’t known that Madam Uriko was a firebender.

“Well Sokka’s birthday is coming up soon, and I’ve got to get him something really useless.” Aang continued talking, probably unaware that Madam Uriko had entered the room.

Madam Uriko lifted the elaborately carved lid of a brass incense burner standing on three spindly legs on the shrine and placed the lit incense pellet inside. After replacing the lid and folding her hands delicately in front of her, Madam Uriko breathed deeply, firebending to coax the fragranced smoke out through the intricate pattern of holes in the lid.

Katara looked toward her husband, washcloth still over his eyes, still moving his hands dramatically as he continued to talk, maybe a bit too loudly. Madam Uriko sent a disdainful look his direction.

“And not useless like that art kit we gave him a few years back,” Aang continued. “I mean, he loved that gift! Sokka completely failed to see any of the irony we all saw when we got it for him…”

Katara decided to ignore the Madam and closed her eyes again, breathing deeply to take in the relaxing aroma of the incense. Katara loved this smell. “You could try finding one of those cloud reading books Aunt Wu used to tell the future…” Katara suggested.

“Hey, that’s not a bad idea, Katara! I’m sure he would— Wait!” Katara heard Aang’s hair washer gasp in surprise. Katara’s eyes sprung open to see Aang sitting up abruptly on the side of the bed, water running down his back from his wet head, the washcloth falling to the floor.

“What is that smell…?” Aang asked, an unexplained apprehension in his voice. Then pointing at the incense burner, he addressed the Madam. “What’s in that burner?”

“It’s incense, Master Avatar,” Madam Uriko said condescendingly. “Surely you’ve smelled incense before.”

Aang ignored her rudeness, and closed his eyes breathing in the scent deeply. His forehead furrowed slightly above his closed eyelids. Katara watched his expression carefully, troubled by her husband’s sudden intensity. Katara noticed Aang swallow thickly, this brows arching in… longing? Sadness? Why was Aang reacting this way?

“Sweetie?” Katara asked softly. But he ignored her, turning instead towards Madam Uriko with a sudden fire in his eyes.

“Where did you get that incense?!” Aang demanded of the woman.

“Get it?” the woman replied coolly, uncowed by Aang’s aggressive tone. “Why it comes from the spa’s private stores. We’ve been burning this incense here in the palace spa for generations. It was a favorite of Firelord Sozin. And of his son, Firelord Azulon.” Madam Uriko said the name like a caress.

Aang took another halted inhale before quickly standing and pushing past the woman, unceremoniously ripping the lid off the burner and tipping the burning cone into his hand. Katara watched his back stiffen visually.

Katara sat up, concerned, her hair washer reaching forward to wring her hair as best she could as water streamed down Katara’s back from her heavy wet hair. But Katara ignored it. “Aang?” she asked anxiously. “What’s wrong?”

Aang turned towards Madam Uriko, holding the cone up in his fingers. “How did this get here?!” He shook it once angrily at her. “This doesn’t belong here!”

Katara was unaccustomed to seeing Aang this heated. He was notoriously even-tempered, and almost never lost his cool. To see Aang this upset alarmed Katara. “Aang?!”

Aang finally turned his eyes toward his wife, anger burning behind them. “This belongs to the Air Nomads!” Aang declared furiously. “See!” Aang turned the cone over, revealing one air spiral symbol pressed into the bottom of the cone. Turning back towards Madam Uriko Aang’s voice nearly yelled, “You have no business having this!”

Madam Uriko stepped back, her expression now clearly daunted by Aang’s intensity. “I assure you, this comes from the palace stores…” she stammered, trying to keep her composure. “It’s been here from before I began working here… as a young woman… I assure you, we--”

Aang’s nose wrinkled in a snarl as he cut her off, “This belongs to the Air Nomads! This is… was… sacred to us!”

And with that Aang fisted the incense in his hand and stormed from the room, knocking the brass burner over with his arm and leaving everyone’s clothes rippling in a stiff wind left in his wake.

…………..

It was late when Katara finally heard the snap of Aang’s glider on the balcony of their guest room in the Fire Palace. The sun had set hours ago, and it was now late enough that the moon had nearly completed her arch across the sky and now hung low over the crest of the volcanic rim of the Caldera, sending her ghostly silver light sideways into their room.

Katara was lying in bed. But she hadn’t slept.

After Aang had stormed out of the Palace spa earlier this evening, Katara had run after him. But even as she had searched for Aang, Katara knew that trying to catch up with a fleeing airbender was futile. The best she could hope for would be to find him wherever he stopped.

Katara had checked with Appa first, but the bison was snoring lazily in his favorite place in the courtyard of the stables, undisturbed. Katara checked their room, the garden, and even the rooftop. No Aang. But Aang’s glider was gone, so Katara knew that the best she could do was wait for him to return.

Knowing this didn’t keep her from being irritated with her husband. And concerned, of course. Mostly concerned. Katara hadn’t seen Aang this upset in years, not since they were very young. She wondered what it was about the incense that had upset him enough to run like he was a child again?

She now lay quietly in their bed and waited as her husband crept noiselessly into their room, his footsteps silent. She watched his profile as he propped his staff carefully against the wall, and removed a satchel from his chest, setting it noiselessly on the ground. The moon’s iridescent glow was on his back, his face in shadow.

“Aang…?”

His shadow stilled.

“I’m sorry, Katara. I’d hoped you were asleep.”

Katara let out a breath from the darkness inside their room. Did he really think she could sleep without knowing where he was and that he was okay? Had twenty years of marriage taught him nothing?

Aang spoke softly from just inside the doorway, his face still in shadowy profile. “I’m sorry I left so rudely this evening. And I’m sorry it is so late…”

Katara wasn’t angry anymore, well not very angry anyway, mostly just concerned. His apologies were secondary to his wellbeing to her at the moment. But she didn’t say anything, sensing that he wasn’t finished.

“I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that. It wasn’t fair to you, and it wasn’t fair to those women doing their jobs at the spa either. I’ll return tomorrow and apologize.”

Something in his voice told Katara that as sincere as his words were, there was a much heavier burden behind them. But he didn’t say anything more. Just stood there facing the darkness, the light of the moon highlighting the blue line on the back of his head, making it look almost silver.

“I just needed some time to… uh, to work through some things.” Aang finally turned towards her, the light now illuminating half of his face. Katara caught her breath at the sadness in expression. Despite the shimmering moonlight, no light danced in Aang’s eye as it usually did. Instead his eyes looked at her with a dark forlorn blackness.

“Oh Aang,” Katara murmured as she pushed the blankets off of her and swept over to him in the darkness, her bare feet cold on the polished floor. “I’ve just been worried. Where were you?”

“I, uh, flew north for a while. Found a small island. Really small. Almost all rocks. I just needed some space to, um… to…”

“Meditate?”

“… well… I did some of that too...” Aang looked down and to the side, a little sheepishly. “But I might have spent most of the time breaking things. Throwing around fire and rocks to cool off a bit.”

Aang looked at her penitently. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have run off. I shouldn’t have worried you.”

“Oh Aang, I don’t need anymore apologies.” Katara reached up with her warm hand to touch his face in concern. “But please, let me know how I can help you. Why were you so upset? Why do you look so… so sad?”

Aang brought his hand up between them, opening to reveal the small incense cone from earlier lying benignly on his palm.

“This,” Aang spoke softly, his shoulders slumping, as though the burden of a nation weighed on him.

Katara swallowed a lump in her own throat, remembering that it did.

Katara reached forward, picking up the small pressed cone with her fingers. She ran the pad of her forefinger over the small air swirl stamped into the bottom of it before looking back up at him. “What is it Aang? You said it belonged to the Air Nomads?”

“Yes.” Aang’s brow creased and he took a steadying breath before he continued, trying to explain. “This incense is something I haven’t smelled in… well since before. But it’s a scent I will never forget. One I thought I would never smell again.”

Aang took the incense from Katara, and with a snap of his fingers a flare of yellow heat illuminated their faces for a moment as he lit the end of it. They both watched as a tiny stream of smoke began to trail upward in lazy loops, filling the space with the rich aroma of cedar resin and cardamom, and with a fragrance unnamed but potent, both light and substantial, like the air and the mountains themselves.

“This smell is unmistakable for me.” Aang said as he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, his brow softening in memory. “The monks lit this incense during the Ceremony of Mastership. I was wrapped in this scent for ten days while Master Dun and his assistants bestowed my tattoos. Breathing this incense helped fortify me through the, uh, difficult parts of the ceremony; it deepened my meditation.”

Aang swirled a hand lightly above the incense, airbending the smoke into an upward spiral, his eyes unfocused, drifting into the past. “Of course I knew the smell before I ever got my own tattoos. It was part of the ceremony we all participated in to unveil a newly tattooed Master Airbender. Wisps of it were often in the air of my childhood.” A small smile appeared on Aang’s cheek. “But that day… when I got my own tattoos… this smell meant belonging. It was completion. It was a connection to the spirit of Air itself, a bond I shared with all the other Masters.”

Katara watched her husband carefully, her heart throbbing with the pain of knowing that even Aang’s happiest memories were so often undercut with grief.

Aang let out a long breath, relaxing just a bit. “The tattooing ceremony was one of the most spiritual events in my life – back in a time when I knew nothing about being the Avatar; when my greatest aspiration in life was to be a monk, simple and at peace. I tasted that future that day, that peace.”

Katara ached as his shoulders sagged once more and he said quietly, “Of course it didn’t last…”

Aang sighed, looking down at the incense. “I thought this was lost, just like so many parts of my culture. I’m trying to be grateful to have this at all…”

He hesitated. So Katara prompted him, “But?”

“But sometimes I just miss them so much…”

Aang looked sadly into Katara’s eyes. “I would never want you to think that I’m not happy with our life together – I am! Our family, the kids, you in my life, is better than I could ever have asked for.”

Katara took his hand, “But that doesn’t change what you’ve lost, Sweetie. It doesn’t make it all better.”

Aang swallowed, and nodded. “Sometimes I forget. I don’t think about them for a while. Just live in the moment. It’s easier that way. Then it doesn’t hurt so much. I can just move on with my life. Sometimes I believe that I really have moved past it.” He smiled again, despite the wetness in his eyes. “Sometimes it feels like it was all a dream anyway, like my childhood was someone else’s… like maybe it wasn’t even real.”

Aang stood silently for a moment, before looking back down at the incense in his hand. “But when I smelled this today, it all came back to me in an instant. Like I was there again! And they were there, and we were worshipping and celebrating together.” Aang’s face crumpled in grief, his voice a whisper. “For a split second they were all alive again.”

Katara’s heart lurched for Aang, but before she could touch him Aang’s anguish suddenly turned to anger, his face scowling as his words cut out fiercely. “But who knew that all this time our ceremonial incense has been used as ambiance for our, our murderer’s bathhouse!?”

Katara took a surprised step back as Aang’s hand fisted tightly around the incense, his hand turning hotly to flame and crushing the little cone.

“That they used it as perfume for when they bedded their concubines!?”

The flame danced angrily in his eyes as he seethed.

But Aang extinguished the flame, letting it die as quickly as it had flared, the anger in his face dissipating with it, replaced by that same dark sadness.

“What does this,” Aang looked sadly down at the smoking ash in his hand, “teach us about about Sozin’s destruction of the Air Nomads?” A large tear rolled down Aang’s cheek as he closed his eyes tightly. “That apparently Sozin liked how we smelled when we burned.”

A sob caught in Katara’s throat as she scrubbed at the tears she hadn’t realized were falling down her own face. Katara pushed down her own temper that was threatening to flare. One thing she had learned over the course of their marriage, was that when one of them was struggling, the other needed to be strong. And she needed to be calm and strong if she was to help Aang today. Otherwise, she knew him, and he would feel the need to focus on her. But this was all about him right now.

She reached for Aang, wrapping her arms around him. After a moment, Aang grasped her tightly back, bowing his head to lay his chin over her shoulder.

He shook; and so did she. Crying together for the disgrace and tragedy and uselessness of it all.

“Oh Aang,” Katara whispered into his neck, compassion welling within her. She pulled him closer to her, even as a sob shuddering through his body as he gripped her, holding onto Katara as if to remind himself that not _everyone_was gone, he hadn’t lost it all.

“I don’t want to feel this way. I don’t want to hate them.”

Katara nodded against him. “I know, Aang.”

It’s easy to do nothing. It’s hard to forgive. Words that Aang had spoken to her long ago. And Aang didn’t just spout these words — he lived them. Katara had seen how Aang had chosen forgiveness, over and over again, even-- no especially-- when it was hard.

What many people mistakenly thought -- even herself, before the end of the war -- was that forgiveness came naturally for Aang, or that somehow it was easier for him. But after years of living with this good man, what she had come to learn is that forgiveness was only easier for him because he practiced it all the time. He believed it in, and worked at it everyday.

But sometimes it was still hard.

Katara held him tighter, telling him through her embrace that he is not alone, and that she is here. That she bears this burden with him.

Forgiveness was hard, but he didn’t have to do it alone.

……………

Katara inhaled deeply. She didn’t need to look around at the many smoking burners lining the back of the ceremonial hall to know that the incense was there. The smell was incredible! Enveloping the entire room in its fragrance like the embrace of a supportive friend.

It had been ten years since Aang had disconcertedly discovered that for generations the Fire Nation royalty had been using the Air Nomad’s sacred incense in their palace spa. Although Zuko, Aang and Katara had all tired their best to uncover how the royal family had gotten a hold of the incense in the first place, they were never able to find anything conclusive. Procurement of a conquered people’s incense was apparently not significant enough to merit any documentation.

However, with the help of a surprisingly accommodating Madam Uriko, they were able to study the remaining cones and records in the spa stores. Apparently the royal chandler during the early period of Azulon’s rule, had studied the incense himself, and written out his own recipe. It was likely that the modern cones in the spa had not been made by Air Nomads at all, but had been replicates made by chandler himself. Katara and Aang had wondered in length together about why the royal chandler would continue to include the air nomad symbol on the bottom of each incense cone he made – perhaps he had done it as his own small rebellion against the Fire Nation’s campaigns? Or perhaps he had wanted to keep record of the incense cultural roots? Or perhaps he had just done it to more authentically mimic the original? – there was no way to know. But Aang liked to think that perhaps the chandler had known an Air Nomad personally, perhaps had lost a friend, and maybe he included the symbol in memory of what was lost.

The discovery of the chandler’s recipe had been an incredible find for Aang. He and the acolytes had worked hard to replicate the recipe, and now were fully capable of making their own incense. A scent Aang had thought was lost to time and tragedy, was now a viable part of the new Air Nation’s culture once again!

And now it was time to finally use it for its original purpose. Tenzin was being unveiled a Master Airbender today!

The anointment was a big day for Tenzin; big enough that Kya had delayed leaving on an extended trip she had planned, and Bumi had even taken leave from his service in the United Republic of Nations so he could be present.

However, important event or not, Katara had had to roll her eyes at her grown children’s antics. It seemed that the act of simply stepping foot back on Air Temple Island caused Bumi to reverted from ‘distinguished soldier’ to ‘annoying older brother’ instantly. Even though no one except Aang and his tattooing assistants had been allowed to see Tenzin since his Ceremony of Mastership had begun ten days previous, this hadn’t stopped Bumi from teasing Tenzin from through the closed door. He would gleefully call in suggestions to his dad about how to modify Tenzin’s tats to be a little more interesting. It didn’t help that Aang would flippantly play along, before seeming to remember that this was a sacred ceremony, and finally tell Bumi to get lost.

In addition to bothering his younger brother, Bumi had also taken to flirting with Kya’s girlfriend. While this was mildly amusing to Katara, it was seriously beginning to irritate Kya. Katara tried to remind Kya that Bumi flirted with everyone, while also sternly admonishing Bumi to cool it.

As much as Katara loved having everyone together again, she had to admit that keeping harmony in her small family of strong personalities was harder than it looked. Where was the docile, peacemaking child they so desperately needed? Whenever she would ask, Aang would only stifle a smile and raise his hands in surrender, jokingly claiming that he was not the one to blame for their children’s temperaments! And as exasperated as she might feel, Katara had to laugh at herself, knowing that he wasn’t wrong.

In preparation for the tattooing ceremony, Aang had called in two different tattoo artists – one from the earth kingdom and one from the fire nation, both reportedly the best tattooist in their perspective nations – to help teach Aang how to give Tenzin his tattoos. As Tenzin had neared the end of his training, Aang had admitted to Katara that just being ‘the Last Airbender’ didn’t automatically make him an expert on all Airbender skills. “Giving someone their tattoos is very different than being on the other side of the needle, Katara!” he had worried out loud. The closer Tenzin had gotten to mastership, the more nervous Aang got about how to bestow his tattoos. It was Katara who had suggested he ask for help.

After consulting with the tattoo experts, Aang had told Katara later that although their methods were different than what the Air Nomads had done over a hundred years ago, they seemed to understand enough of the process to take the details and tools he remembered and turn them into a working process. One of them even offered to give Tenzin his tattoos herself. Aang had declined, but expressed how grateful he was for to them for teaching him how.

The night before the commencement of Tenzin’s Ceremony of Mastership, Katara didn’t know who was more anxious: Tenzin or Aang? They were both bundles of nerves, but expressed their apprehension in characteristically different ways: Tenzin tried to hide his concern behind stoic meditation, while Aang couldn’t hold still, needing to “take a little run around the island” about ten times before bedtime.

When Aang had come in to bed the first night after beginning Tenzin’s tattoos, the smell of incense strong on his clothes and body, Katara had asked how it had gone. “I got better at it as the day went on.” Aang had replied. Then with a self-depreciating chuckle he added, “Hopefully nobody will look too closely at the back of Tenzin’s thigh…”

But the process had gone better from there, and ten days later, Katara now sat with Bumi and Kya on cushions near the front of the ceremonial room on Air Temple Island awaiting Tenzin’s anointing.

Katara was immensely proud of Tenzin, and all of his studious hard work. She knew he was aware of the burden he was born with, and in some ways she was sorry to have her son shouldering such a responsibility, but she was proud of the way he took it seriously. She knew Aang worried that Tenzin was ‘too serious’, but Katara, as a serious student of her own bending art, could not be more proud of his diligence and discipline.

Katara had often reflected on the irony that, of her three children, the one that was the least silly and carefree, the one who was a homebody with the seeming least amount of nomadic drive, was the one born with airbending. She’d wondered if perhaps it was meant to be; that airbending could be a way for Tenzin and his father to bond, when their personalities were so singularly opposite.

But as her mind wandered over these thoughts a hush fell over the audience, and she turned to see Aang and Tenzin, wearing a long hooded cloak, walk into the room and down the center aisle to the raised dais. Tears pricked at Katara’s eyes as the tall hooded form of her youngest son knelt reverently at the center of the stage. She looked at her husband, dressed in a formal yellow robe not unlike the one he had worn to Zuko’s coronation, and, catching his eye, noted that Aang’s eyes were also moist with emotion.

Katara cried for most of the ceremony. The image of Tenzin removing his hood to reveal a new blue arrow on his forehead brought a loud sob from her. Kya reached an arm over her shoulders, while Bumi refrained from being irreverent (which was more than Katara would have expected from him). From then on the rest of the ceremony was one big tear-clouded blur.

But the smell of the burning incense was potent and clear, and got even stronger as she felt it swirl around her, ruffling her clothes and inciting the song of the many wind chimes hung throughout the room.

Katara drank in the aroma carried on the wind. Despite the way the incense had found its way back to Aang, Katara couldn’t help but be grateful for this piece of Aang’s culture, of her family’s culture, that had been restored. Aang had admitted to Katara that although for a long time it had bothered him that his people’s sacred incense had been dishonored, he was grateful it had been. At least this way it had been preserved.

Katara breathed in deeply, taking in this scent that was both ancient and new. And something powerful stirred with in her.

Perhaps it was the power of the scent in the air, coupled with the way the wind chimes sang, but as Katara closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, she felt a spiritual tingling across her body, as though they were not alone. Like perhaps the energy of the Air Nomads, the ancestors of her children, were there and rejoicing with them as the first airbender in well over a hundred years, was anointed a Master.

…………….

A/N: I don’t know about you, but sometimes the smell of something can bring back very vivid memories/emotion for me. That was the genesis for this story.

(P.S. Also, I really do have a bald friend who loves getting hair washes. ;)

..................

Other works in this series:

Chant

Artifacts

#older Aang #older kataang #kataang family #air nomad genocide #katara POV #Aang #the last airbender #ALTA #avatar the last airbender #best boy aang #forgiving is hard #hair wash fic #incense fic #tenzin's tattoos #angry aang #aang's tattoos #air nomads #false fire nation propaganda

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sheryl-lee · 3 years

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interview tag game!!!

i was tagged by @dianasprince (ily yolanda thank you❤️)

nickname: don’t have one (sam ig but no one really calls me that😩)

pronouns: she/her

star sign: leo

height: 5’5

time currently: 11 am

birthday: august 7

favorite groups/bands: twenty one pilots, queen, bastille, haim, the 1975, the neighbourhood

favorite solo artist: halsey, billie eilish, bea miller, the weeknd, olivia rodrigo, beyoncé, sam smith, NF, marina

song stuck in my head: deja vu by olivia rodrigo (she’s so talented i’m obsessed)

last movie you watched: zack snyder’s justice league

last show you binged: the office, peaky blinders and schitt’s creek

when you created your blog: oof i don’t really remember,,,,, sometime in 2016 or 2017 i think

last thing i googled: google translate (for spanish class fjjdkflfl)

other blogs: i don’t have any personal sideblogs because i’m way too chaotic and disorganized to function like that but i’m a member of a bunch of sourceblogs!!!

why i chose my url: kamala khan supremacy😌 (her disney+ show is coming soon and i’m so excited!!!!)

do you get asks: yes! (way too often honestly)

how many people you are following: 2k+ blogs (idk why don’t ask)

average hours of sleep: about 4-5 hours during the week and 7-8 hours during the weekend

lucky number: 8

instruments: i used to play the flute in high school but i was not very good at it and HATED my band class so much💀💀💀

currently wearing: blue workout top and black yoga pants

dream job: actress/director or film critic

dream trip: italy or england (i visited london before but i was very young so i don’t really remember it. i’d love to be able to experience it again!)

favorite food: salmon and chicken

favorite song: bad decisions by bastille, love on the brain by rihanna, bellyache by billie eilish, that bitch by bea miller

top 3 fictional words to live in: mcu, harry potter and dceu

tagging (feel free to ignore if you’ve already done this) : @luke-skywalker , @heathsledger , @chloezhao , @beccs , @bicarols , @amandaseyfried , @ferrisbuellers , @bosemanchadwick

#sameera.txt #tag game

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queendom25 · 3 years

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Thanksgiving: The Rape of the Land

Alexander Pope may be the master of the mock-epic and the unrivaled wordsmith at “flipping the bird” to the ill morals of high society, but America reigns supreme at turning cultural tradition into stereotypical tripe. Welcome to Southern Oregon where you are more likely to find a white girl that says My great grandmother was a Native Princess, than a shred of history about the Takelma People of the Rogue River Valley in a standard textbook. While America is the land of the freehand dreamcatcher tattoo and home of the Braves racist logo, I would like to explore just how equitable the “Blue” state of Oregon actually was to our Native neighbors.

Once upon a time in 1819, some fur trappers from the Northwest Company met some Umpqua Natives and killed many of them- because racial profiling is vital to manifest destiny. Before the process of white male rage took full effect, there were an estimated 3,000-4,000 Natives in the Umpqua Valley and around 500 along the coast, estuary, and estuary tributaries. By the mid 1850s the fur trappers nearly wiped out the future official state animal-the beaver; so they uprooted and set up shop elsewhere while upsetting the balance of nature and the Indigenous peoples’ way of life. When I first came to Southern Oregon there was a saying that I often heard, If you don’t like the weather just wait 15 minutes and the Natives made it work 8,000 years prior to the appearance of colonizers. In fact, the Indigenous peoples that lived along the Umpqua rivers and the surrounding areas had rich and complex traditions that relied on the natural cycles of the land. They had permanent cedar homes in the winter and seasonal camps for food sources the rest of the year. There are about four tribes that lived in the Umpqua River Basin each with their own traditions and rites of passage, but today native speakers of their languages no longer exist.

I remember I was at a protest in Rogue River, Oregon where a white guy was holding up a sign that said The Whites Built the West, and I truly could not stop laughing! While this is a prime example of why defunding public schools breeds toxic ignorance, we have to explore why that fallacy sums up the attitudes of some of the locals. It all started with the Organic Act of 1848 and a branch for the Office of Indian Affairs later to be called the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The harmful effects of white supremacy isn’t without its liberal moderate to smooth over its jagged edges temporarily. Joel Palmer was the “bleeding heart” that wrote the first Oregon tribal treaty in 1853 and just like the liberal moderates of today, his proposal was declined by the “minorities” who knew it was a scheme designed to get them booted out. So what was our white knight going to do in such a conundrum? He arranged temporary reservations throughout western Oregon until establishing a permanent Coast Reservation in 1854. My recent summer trips to the coast has taught me quite a few things about the end result of manifest destiny, and that is hearing white men say there is no racism in Coos Bay because Mexicans live there. This is honestly the epitome of putting a hat on a hat but I digress, the treaty for the coastal tribes including the Coos was signed in August 1855 but never ratified by the U.S. Senate. What exactly did that entail for the ancestors of our Native neighbors? Basically the U.S. government thanked the Natives for their generous donation to white hegemony by offering land to white settlers at $1.25 an acre on December 1, 1855. The painful irony is that the descendants of these white settlers are concerned about violence and looting from people protesting against state-sanctioned murder.

This anti-fairytale ends with stolen land infected with cultural appropriation and the blissful ignorance of “patriots” complaining about a mask mandate and calling it oppression. As for our Native neighbors it’s written that with specifically the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua, they used their payment from the colonizers in 1984 to establish a bingo parlor in 1992. As an outsider looking in, I can’t help but wonder if it was worth the extinction of a culture and the genocide of a people for a casino in Canyonville.

Sources:

https://u-s-history.com/pages/h1543.html

https://ndnhistoryresearch.com/2018/12/16/the-temporary-cow-creek-umpqua-reservation/

https://oregonexplorer.info/content/history-native-americans-the-umpqua-region?topic=167&ptopic=140

#black lives matter #thatoregonlife #native #indigenous #this is america #medfordoregon #rogue river #white fragility #coos bay #tillamook #grantspassoregon #umpqua

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naturepointstheway · 4 years

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Blue Skies of Freedom (LIS2, Parting Ways ending)

Sean doesn’t know if Daniel has survived the pandemic, and perhaps he never will, and perhaps this is why he still sends letters, still sends photos, because he doesn’t ever want to face the possibility that he hadn't. He hangs on to hope that Daniel lives, happy and healthy at the Reynolds’, best friends with Chris, in the USA. He hopes Daniel is safe from the horrors of a land festering with evil malice, a dark continent that had threatened to take his life and his brother.

People tell him Daniel’s probably dead anyway—it’s the USA, what should he expect? They insist Sean’s in denial, because in what world is Daniel safe in the fucking United States? They insist he’s living in an illusion of his own making. He should wake up to reality. To a world that will be no less hateful toward Daniel than it is to Sean.

Sean doesn’t give a fuck. If choosing to hope he lives in a world where Daniel is still alive and safe with the Reynolds makes him foolish, then so be it. Let him have this, let him think he hasn’t lost his younger brother like he had his father—doesn’t he deserve at least this drop of hope? If having faith Daniel is okay makes him deluded, at least he has that one hope to go on living day by day.

It’s not like he can go back to the USA anyway.

It’s not like he wants to, ever, even if it means forsaking his family and friends.

And, at least, staying in Mexico, he can convince himself that everyone he had ever loved had made it to the other side of the pandemic—at least he knows Finn and Cassidy and Hannah made it, but it fucking hurts knowing he’ll never know if Lyla made it either. He doesn’t even know if the Reynolds made it, nor Chris, nor Jake and his sister Sarah-Lee, nor Karen, nor anyone at Away.

Does he even want to know?

Maybe this is why he never goes back, he stays beyond the border, his feet in the warm sand, drinking cocktails, and enjoying a stunning beach view. Just as Finn had always wanted. In the bright sunshine, cloaked in eternally blue skies that never fade in their beauty. Azul cielo. It is the colour of freedom in a world where he doesn’t have to run from bloodthirsty hunters. It is the colour of Finn’s shining eyes when he had made it to Mexico, staying for a good time with Sean. It is the colour of warm water wrapping around his body when he skinny dips in the ocean at the height of day when the heat is at its fiercest.

In Sean’s Matrix, he chooses to swallow the blue pill. Azul. The colour of blissful, perhaps-foolish hope, of choosing to dream that somehow, somewhere, Daniel is okay and Lyla is alive, still kicking injustice in the face, making American society face its bloodied history of white supremacy. He saw her briefly on the news back in 2020, raw rage and fury, one of the many faces in the numerous Black Lives Matter marches around the USA. She is going to change the world. He has to believe in that too.

Is he selfish if he wants to stay here, in the land of freedom he had yearned for, his own promised land, having crossed the metaphorical Red Sea from a land of cruelty into a safer country where he could be free? If it makes him selfish, so be it. Then again…

Wasn’t it selfish of Daniel too, to suddenly change his mind, want to turn back, want to stay in the USA? If staying in the USA made Daniel selfish, then staying in Mexico meant that, perhaps, deep down, Sean was a selfish man too.

And if he were honest with himself, deep down, he was okay with that. At least he wasn’t running, wasn’t sleeping under bridges, wasn’t shivering in a rundown cabin in the middle of nowhere in winter, wasn’t always looking over his shoulder, and wasn’t always suspicious of every face he met. Here, he trusted people who looked like him, who spoke like him, who had a culture familiar to him from his father’s stories. Here, he didn’t have to worry about shelter, didn’t have to worry about shivering in the snow, didn’t have to worry about police being on his ass. He spoke virtually no English these days, except in the occasional letter to Daniel at the Reynolds’—if they were even alive, if they were even still in Beaver Creek.

How could this ever be a bad ending for him? Bittersweet, certainly, knowing he’ll never know if his photos and letters are being sent to a deceased brother, to deceased grandparents, but bad? Bad would be if he was fatally shot, choking on his own blood right as he crossed the border. Or, worse, it would be if Daniel had been shot—again—dying in the car seat next to him, through his own selfish actions.

Not that his actions were selfish—he’d had enough of all the fucking shit he’d suffered through in the USA; he hadn’t made it all the way to the border just to give up. Just to let himself fall into the hands of monsters as cruel—or crueler—than any king in history. Just to let Daniel fall into the hands of police—he’d wanted a better life for both of them.

But Daniel had made his choice.

He had chosen to stay in the USA, chosen to stay in that terrible land of cruelties.

And Sean had been helpless to do anything to stop him.

He had never felt so helpless in his life that day, knowing from then on, he would be alone except for the friends he’d make in Mexico, or for Cassidy and Finn passing through on their individual journeys. But then again, as Brody had once told him, “there’s a difference between alone and lonely…”, and now Sean really understood what he had meant. He was alone without his American family and friends, but he wasn’t lonely. Sure, at first he had felt lonely, but it hadn’t lasted long once he had started making friends who would keep him company through thick and thin. Friends who would stay strong by his side, who would rib his terrible karaoke singing, who would pile together in his car to go on random road trips around the country and beyond to the brim of South America itself, from Argentina to Chile.

Sean wouldn’t have it any other way.

Except once a year, every 11th April: Daniel’s birthday.

The last time he’d ever been there for Daniel’s birthday, the latter had been turning nine. Their father had been still alive. Everything had still been more than okay. Life had still been…normal. When normal used to be getting jitters over his crush for a girl at a party, skating with Lyla and the crew, fighting with his little brother on a daily basis, enduring his father’s dad jokes, and…

This was his new normal now. A new normal where Daniel chose—that was what he did, he had chosen—to stay in the USA. A new normal where Sean could never go back to the USA, could not know—if ever—if Daniel had survived the pandemic of 2020, where he had friends to hit the road whenever the desire hit them, where he was a free man. At least everywhere else on the planet but in the USA.

A new normal where he would never be there on Daniel’s birthday for a long time, if ever again.

Where he could never wish him happy birthday in person except in his sketches, in his head, in his heart.

Where he could never watch him grow up, experience the ups and downs of teenhood, of finding a new girlfriend (or boyfriend), of dating for the first time, of experiencing his first kiss, of graduating from high-school, of seeing him go to college for the first time.

Where Daniel could never assure Sean he was okay, he was alive, he was thriving, he was still best friends with Chris Eriksen.

Where Daniel could never prank Sean with his powers, just to tick him off.

Where Daniel could never come to him after a nightmare about Lisbeth.

Where Daniel could never come to him for comfort or just a chat, like he had so often done after Havenpoint.

Where Daniel knew Sean was alive…but Sean could never know if Daniel was too.

Did he know Sean didn’t know whether he was alive or dead?

Did he know?

Did he?

Did he ever lay awake at night, trying not to think how Sean would never really know he was still alive?

Did he ever jolt awake with the realisation Sean couldn’t tell him where he was now, except as hints through photos? Look, it’s the edge of the Amazon Rainforest! Look, it’s the mountains of Argentina! Look how blue the sky is! Look how beautiful the world is, where he is a free man, everywhere, except…

Except in a country that would hunt Sean down were he to put his address on the back of an envelope.

Except in a country that would never cease in its desire to throw Sean behind bars, never hesitate to beat him to a pulp again, would stare with empty and dry eyes as they shot him without mercy.

Except in a country that would somehow instantly know where he is, were he to phone Daniel, ever, no matter where he was. One video call through whatever video calling app was the hot shit these days, and the USA would hunt him down, tie him up, throw him into prison.

Throw him into hell.

Fuck that.

Especially that.

That bit.

The bit where he couldn’t know, couldn’t check if Daniel was doing okay, couldn’t talk to him in person, nor over a payphone, nor a video call. He couldn’t even slip a permanent address inside the envelope, because for sure, Daniel would write him back. Sean was sure he would, there was no way Daniel would never write back, ever.

So, Sean can’t do that. Not yet. Not now. No.

He will have to wait.

Maybe five more years. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.

Maybe when he’s old and grey and cataracts is blinding his remaining eye.

Maybe when he’s on his deathbed.

Maybe in the next lifetime where the wolf brothers could really grow up together in a safer country, in a safer time, in a safer normal.

Maybe never.

#Sean Diaz #Life Is Strange 2 #LIS2 #another lis2 fic that sucks lol #looked on ao3 and basically 99 percent of most kudosed and/or viewed fics are #like finn/sean #or another ship I will NOT name #you probably know exactly which other ship I'm talking about #so I guess if I want actual attention for fics #I have to write finn/sean even though I'm not into that ship #but I'd rather write finn/sean than that other popular ship

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cherrysleepover · 2 years

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based on shit i’ve actually said/done while high

#HIGHCREEKSUPREMACY #high creek supremacy #high south park #high sp creek #south park #south park fanart #craig tucker #craig x tweek #sp craig #sp creek #sp tweek #tweek tweak #tweek x craig #south park creek

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ask-de-writer · 5 years

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WEREWOLVE'S WEDDING : MLP Fan Fiction : Tales to read AFTER the lights are OUT!

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to MLP Fan Fiction

Return to Tales to Read AFTER the Lights are OUT!

WEREWOLVE'S WEDDING

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

2678 words

Writing begun 10/21/19

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Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights. They may reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information remains intact. They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

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Nightmare Night was fast approaching. Blue Bell and her mother Shooting Star were busy preparing for their celebration, two days before that special night. They were not alone in their preparations, either. Ponyville's open thestrals, Sugar Maple and her Grandmare had come to their cottage in the edge of the Everfree, just past the banks of Falmire creek. They did not bother with using the stepping stones, though. They simply glided down into the yard and folded their bat like wings.

As they entered the cottage they called happily, “We brought spreads and preserves for your breads and buns!”

Sugar Maple joked, “It was easy to find your cottage! We just followed the wonderful scent of baking breads and pies!”

She looked about and asked, “I thought that there were going to be more here. Where are they?”

Shooting Star replied indulgently, “There will be! I had word by Magic Net that Caramel and Fangrin are bringing ice cream and some other treats! They may be bringing some other guests, too! If rumor is right, they have got the Stone Ridge Pack to accept Fangrin back and they may be here for the wedding! In any case, they are bringing Grumpeter Goat!”

True to her prediction, the huge Everfree Ridgeback wolf that was Caramel Treat and a second, only slightly smaller one, that was Fangrin, came trotting up the path from Ponyville. Each had bulging saddlebags! They also did not bother with the stepping stones. They simply leaped across the creek!

The rest of the party goers gleefully stripped them of the panniers and started laying out the contents along big trestle tables, to join all the rest of the assorted goodies already there!

Caramel, in high good spirits, told the others, “They are coming! The Stone Ridge pack is just waiting for our howl. Fangrin and I have been looking forward to this day since we met! Shooting Star, I am so happy that you have agreed to officiate our wedding. I know that Reverend Smallflower would have been happy to do it, because I asked him.

“With all of those fool Celestian Church idiots around bothering everypony, and accusing us of being vile creatures of Luna and worse, I just could not resist having you do it. I mean, you are a direct descendant in unbroken line from General Dark Star of the Nightmare's Witch brigade! I had that Rom donkey, Marchhare, look it up. His library has original documents from the Fortress of Nightmare!”

“I am more than happy to do it for you. I do have Princess Luna's formal commission as a Nightmare's Witch Brigade officer. Please invite your guests.”

Caramel and Fangrin sat and, tails wagging, lifted their muzzles to the sky and set free a melodious howl. The howl was answered from different points all about the cleared area around the cottage. That was followed by a nearly continuous soft rustle of leaves as big Everfree Ridgeback wolves converged on the clearing openly, not attempting to be stealthy.

From across the stream came a polite call of, “I heard that there was a wedding here. Am I welcome?” All eyes turned to the spare white pegasus in a flat black hat.

Caramel replied, “Of course, Reverend Smallflower, but the ceremony is to be officiated by Lieutenant Major Shooting Star, of the Nightmare's Witch Brigade.”

He nodded agreeably, “Such was my understanding. I came to watch, congratulate the happy couple and partake of the feast. I brought a small contribution. I have two substantial slices of cured ham for the celebrants and a pair of frostberry pies for the rest.”

Shooting Star invited, “Be welcome, Reverend! Are you afraid of the wolves?”

“Should I be? None of the rest of you seem to be.”

“Not really. Most ponies are anyway.”

With that, Reverend Smallflower simply walked across on the stepping stones and surveyed the table. He set two packages at one end and a large package at the other.

A second late comer called out, “Hi, Caramel! Hi, Fangrin! Sorry that I'm late. Ran into three Celestian priests on the road. That's where I left them. On the road, I mean. I had to dodge into the brush and work my way around them. They were spewing their usual garbage about me being a Lesser Sort, and a Vile Creature of the Accursed Evil Twin.

“Anyway, I brought a big clover top scramble for us and a big omelet. Hope that it will do for the carnivore side of this feast.”

Fangrin romped over to the piebald black, tan, and white goat. “Grumpy! We were waiting for you! Did the Celestians give you some more trouble? How are your studies going? Can we have another checkers tournament soon?”

Grumpy giggled under the physical and verbal assault! Gently pushing away the big werewolf, he replied, “No, the Celestians really didn't give me much trouble. Just blocked the road so that I had to go into the brush to get around them. Other than that it was just the usual verbal idiocy that their so called faith requires of them.

“As for my studies, they are going great! I finally qualified for Abnormal Psych 666! Only one more semester to go and I have my degree! I can't wait for the Non-Equine University to send me my text books.

“Is Wednesday next good for you? I can have the checker board and refreshments out.”

Fangrin happily helped Grumpy to set out his dishes. “This all looks so good, Grumpy! I can't wait for our wedding to be over and the party starts!”

Shooting Star emerged from her cottage, wearing a dark blue uniform with a polished silver emblem of a thestral with spread wings clutching a pair of bars mounted to each shoulder. Floating in air to the right of her head was a stout and intricately carved wand of dark wood with silver tips. It was being casually held at the moment.

Grumpy blinked about three times when he saw her. Turning to Caramel, disbelief in his voice, he asked, “A Lieutenant-Major in Nightmare's Witch Brigade? Really? In this day and age? I thought that they were disbanded at the end of the Second Nightmare War.”

With a twinkle in her eye, Caramel replied, “Yes she is, and a direct descendant of General Dark Star of the Nightmare's Council and battle leader of the Witch Brigade. As for being disbanded, they turned in false wands for destruction and went right on meeting and training in secret.”

Grumpy chuckled at the thought and then pointed excitedly. “She is starting!”

Indeed, Shooting Star had gone to a formal parade stance and her wand was now being held at a still and formal position, tilted slightly toward her guests. She paced forward and stopped halfway to Falmire Creek. She raised her wand and, chanting, swept it in a circle three times. As it swept about, it trailed a tenuous looking glowing sheet the color of thin cirrus clouds lit by moonlight. The sheets settled into a visible circle, encompassing the house and the party, reaching across the creek at the stepping stones. The circle faded from visibility.

She ended by pronouncing, “The Circle of the Moon protects all within from any harm by deed or intent. The wedding parties will now take their places.”

Caramel took a place to the right end of the feasting table, Fangrin to the left. The Stone Ridge pack formed two rows parallel to the table, with Shooting Star at the center. They added another aisle from her down to the creek. The rest of the guests were divided into two groups by the formation.

Loud stomping announced the arrival of the same three Celestian priests that Grumpy had run into earlier. The one in the lead bawled, “This blasphemous gathering of the vile creatures of the Evil Luna must disperse at once, by the order of High Priest Hortimer!”

Shooting Star sauntered insultingly slowly down the aisle of wolves toward the creek. At the bank, by her stepping stones, she replied, “No. We will not disburse.

“Equestria is not a theocracy run by that worthless high priest Hortimer or any other. Our gathering is specifically allowed by the same religious freedom law that allows your so called church to exist. You claim to worship Celestia but you ignore what she herself writes about you and your church. She detests you and all that you stand for, especially your vile doctrine of Unicorn Supremacy.

“You are trespassing on my property. It is properly fenced and posted private, so you know that you are trespassing. Go.”

They responded by rearing up, gathering magic about their horns impressively. Shooting Star casually covered her yawn with a hoof as they let fly.

Their powerful magic hit the presently invisible ward! There was a flare of light from each place that the ward was hit! Their magic rebounded straight back at each of them, knocking them from their hind hooves, right onto their backs and shoving them about five meters across the ground in a wild tangle of hooves and priestly robes!

As they scrambled to their hooves, their leader demanded, “What did you do to us!? Just for that insolence, we are going to use far greater force!”

Shooting Star replied mildly, “I did nothing to you. According to the law of WHATSO YOU DO COMES BACK TO YOU, your own evil returned to you. What you gave, you got. I repeat, you are trespassing. Go. Leave my land, home and guests.”

Grumpy confided his worry to Grandmare, the black thestral, “Shouldn't she be doing something to run them off?”

Grandmare replied with some humor, “She is. She is being a focus to draw their attacks. That invisible ward? Not weak at all and carefully tuned to unicorn magic. Right now, she is trying to get rid of them by using non-equine magic to turn their own magic against them. She does not want bloodshed to mar the wedding.”

“Non-equine magic? I thought that the secret of that was lost when Baratted the Goat disappeared at the end of the Second Nightmare War.”

“No, Grumpy. There are many kinds of magic in the world besides the Equine magic of unicorns. That is what they are learning right now, if they are smart enough to learn, that is.”

A large flash of light from another frustrated attack interrupted their conversation! Excited, Grumpy exclaimed, “Look at them flop back! That must have been a real strong try!”

Chuckling, Grandmare pointed out, “Their pretty white robes are getting all stained and torn! They need to quit while they are still able to walk!”

They heard Shooting Star say, “You have been repeatedly told to leave. Your persistent attacks leave me no choice. Go, or I shall be violent to you.”

Scrambling to his feet, one of the junior priests demanded, “Violent? What do you call this? You have been striking us down! Our robes are ruined!”

She sighed. “If you listened at all, you know why that all happened. Your own evil has been returning to you, that is all. Now, GO.”

Their leader reared up defiant. Before he could do anything, Shooting Star's wand leveled at him! His big priest's Celestian medallion suddenly glowed red and fell from the ornate chain, a molten glob of metal! The chain, no longer a loop, slithered off his neck and fell in an untidy heap beside the congealing remains of the medallion.

While he was screaming his pain at the burned fur and skin on his chest, the same happened to the other two! Their screams joined his! One of them panicked and started to run for the gate! That triggered the stampede! In only moments, all that was left of their presence was trampled and torn sod and the remains of their necklaces.

Shooting Star paced quietly back up the aisle of wolves to her place. Glancing about to be sure that all were where they needed to be, she began in a calm voice, “We are here to wed two excellent Werewolf ponies, Fangrin and Caramel Treat.

“In Ponyville, mostly as ponies, they run a well received restaurant. Rarely turning away any in need, they are a refuge for the needy and hungry. More, they defend any who come to them from all sorts of persecution. They feed all sorts, whether vegetarian, omnivore or carnivore.

“Besides this goodness, they also hunt with the Stone Ridge pack of Everfree Ridgeback wolves. By helping the hunt and freely sharing the kill, they assist their friends of the forest. Through their good offices, peace and friendship have grown between those who live in or close to the Everfree forest and the Stone Ridge pack.

“In that regard, the Duchess of Red Hoof and her heart kept husband the Baron of Drandale, send their warmest regards but Royal obligations have required their presence in Canterlot.

“Caramel and Fangrin now seek to complete a long standing promise and, as the culmination of their goodness and generosity, marry each other and live mated for life.

“Caramel, Fangrin, come before me now.”

As Ponies, both came forward through an aisle of wolves, and met in front of Shooting Star. “If you both still wish to be joined in marriage, mated for life, please raise your left forehooves so that they touch side by side, neither one higher than the other.”

Fangrin's gray and black hoof was raised beside Caramel's candy tan one. Shooting Star's wand, acting like it had a life of its own, laid across both hooves. The same moonlight colored magic that had created such a solid defensive circle, flowed from its tip and enmeshed both hooves.

Leaving her wand in place, Shooting Star quietly commanded, “Now, leaving your feet together, transform before us all to show that no matter the form, you twain are together as one.”

The wand balanced between the two did not move in the slightest as the couple transformed into the physically largest wolves there.

Shooting Star recovered her wand to what Grumpy now recognized as a formal parade rest position. “Now, side by side, neither leading or following, go to the pool of the stream and there drink the water of life together.”

They paced down the aisle of their friends, the Stone Ridge pack, to the pool and, lowering their heads together, lapped up some of the water. Shooting Star's wand shot up a big starburst of moonlike light. Joyously, she called, “By the authority granted me by Luna, the Nightmare, I pronounce you mated for life!”

Caramel and Fangrin made their way back to the table, surrounded by cavorting wolves. They lifted a sheet off of a large haunch that still had coarse yellow fur on part of it. The haunch ended in a heavily clawed paw. Each of them took one end of the big hindquarter and lifted it down to the ground for the pack! While the wolves closed in on it, they did no fighting or squabbling, but took turns grabbing a chunk and making room for the next.

Caramel and Fangrin opened the box that Reverand Smallflower had brought and helped themselves to the ham slices in it. Grumpy, watching the carnivores go for their part of the feast, was a bit green around the gills, as they say. Nevertheless, he was pleased to see Grandmare and Sugar Maple, the thestrals, happily eating up his big omelet.

Blue Bell, Shooting Star's filly, noticed his condition and suggested, “Just come down here, Mister Goat, and concentrate on the pies, cakes and that lovely clover top scramble that you made.”

As he was nibbling up his second slice, Grumpy commented, “Thanks, Blue Bell. Got to admit that this is the first wedding done by witch ponies that I have ever been to. It has been fascinating. And you are right, frostberry pie seems to cure almost anything!

~THE END~

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#WEREWOLVE'S WEDDING #MLP Fan Fiction #Tales to read AFTER the Lights are OUT #Written by De Writer

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cometsweepandleonidsfly · 5 years

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Editor's note: Megan Rapinoe gave her brother, Brian, a birthday shout-out on national TV after winning the 2019 Women's World Cup, the Golden Boot as the tournament's top scorer and the Golden Ball as its top player. Here is the story behind their complicated relationship.

DAYS BEFORE THE first game of the 2019 Women's World Cup, Brian Rapinoe jokingly texted his sister, Megan Rapinoe -- co-captain and star midfielder for the U.S. women's national team: "Megs, breaks my heart that you couldn't fly me out for an all-expenses-paid trip to France." She shot back: "Oh yeah, so sad I couldn't pamper you for a month in France."

An hour before kickoff against Thailand on June 11, the rest of the Rapinoe family found their seats in the Stade Auguste-Delaune in Reims; Brian charged his ankle monitor and rounded up the other guys in the dormitory at San Diego's Male Community Reentry Program, a rehabilitative program that allows an inmate to finish the final 12 months of his sentence taking classes or working jobs outside of prison.

The MCRP common room might not be France, but it's a vast improvement over solitary confinement, where Brian has watched Megan play in the previous two World Cups. He sat on a couch in his red USA jersey, watching on a 60-inch flat-screen, and felt "f---ing great." He had accomplished a major goal for himself: to get out of prison in time to watch his kid sister play in her third World Cup.

Every time the U.S. scored, the room full of men cheered loudly. Nobody there thought the U.S.'s 13 goals against Thailand and exuberant celebrations after each were done in poor taste. "This is what soccer should always be like," one man said.

"It's the World Cup: There's no f---ing holding back," 38-year-old Brian says. "This is every four years."

And his sister didn't hold back. When Megan scored goal No. 9 for the U.S., she sprinted to the sideline, spun around twice and then slid to the ground for a foot-kicking celebration. As the camera zoomed in on her, one of the guys yelled, "Holy s---, it's Brian!"

He has the same face as his sister.

The face, the charisma, the wit, the tendency to burst into song: In so many ways, Brian and Megan are alike. But they are also a study in contrasts: At 15 years old, Brian brought meth to school and has been in and out of incarceration ever since. At 15, Megan played with her first youth U.S. national team and started traveling the world. As a young inmate and gang member, Brian was inked with swastika tattoos -- an allegiance to white supremacy that he now disavows; as a professional soccer player, Megan was the first prominent white athlete to kneel to protest racial inequality.

Despite their different paths, the brother and sister have stayed close through letters, phone calls and texts. "I have so much respect for her. And not just because she's the s--- at soccer. It's her utter conviction in the things that she believes in and the stances she takes against injustices in the world," he says.

"I was her hero, but now -- there's no question -- she is mine."

Megan, right, "worshipped" Brian when they were children. Brian, who is five years older, introduced her to soccer early on.

GROWING UP, MEGAN and her twin sister, Rachael, adored Brian. He was their hero, the charismatic jokester who did Jim Carrey and Steve Urkel impressions and danced ridiculous dances. The girls had three other siblings, but he could make them laugh harder than anyone else could. He taught them how to catch crawfish in the creek, walked them to the patch of field across from the church and taught them soccer until his mother called them in with a two-finger whistle. In the side yard, he set up cones and showed his 4-year-old sisters how to dribble the ball -- with the inside of the foot only, with the outside of the foot only, left and then right. "And it wasn't like he drilled them. He let them do it their own way," says his mother, Denise Rapinoe, her voice cracking. "It was just the cutest thing, and we remember it so clearly."

In elementary school, like her brother, Megan was rough and tumble, and spoke her mind. Her second-grade teacher's aide pulled Denise aside to relay the following scene: Megan came in from the playground, walked into the classroom, stood with her arms on her hips and announced, "Brian Rapinoe is my brother, and I am just like him!"

"I worshipped him," Megan says. "He played left wing, so I played left wing. He wore No. 7; I wore No. 7. He got a bowl cut, so I did too."

So when Brian first started smoking marijuana as a 12-year-old, a 7-year-old Megan was confounded. Why was he doing that? Brian still doesn't know for sure. "Right from the start, I was hooked," he says. "One drug always led to the next." He was also attracted to the "fast life," he says, to getting high, to driving nice cars and to the "hype around this lifestyle." She wanted him to stop, and she was still young enough to think there was something she could do. Three years later, when her parents sat her and Rachael down and told them the police had arrested Brian for bringing meth to school, she cried. He was going to juvenile detention. She did not understand: What had happened to her big brother?

"For many years, Megan and Rachael were pissed as hell," Brian says. "They still loved me, they still let me know they were there for me, but they were like, 'What the f--- are you doing?'"

"My mother is the queen of the family," Brian, left, says of Denise Rapinoe, right. "I just love her so much. I'm such a baby when it comes to her."

BY 18 YEARS OLD, Brian had moved on to harder drugs -- heroin, specifically -- and he became more reckless. He was charged with car theft, evading arrest and a hit-and-run while driving under the influence of drugs -- and now, as an adult, his juvenile detention days were over. He was sent to prison. Within months, he aligned himself with the white prison gang and was inked with Nazi tattoos. A swastika on his palm; lightning bolts on his fingers, sides and calves

These tattoos devastated his family. "The prejudice, the racism -- it was so against the way he'd been raised," Denise says. "He wasn't that kind of kid. He was kind, his nature was so loving."

To Brian, the swastikas weren't about prejudice and racism at that point -- they were about heroin and survival. To support his addiction, he needed to be, in his words, "an active participant in prison culture." The California prison system was segregated. That meant Brian lived strictly among the white population. "You come in as a kid, and there are these older dudes you think you respect, spouting ideas, and you kind of listen," Brian says. "I developed a protect-your-own mentality."

He tried to explain that to his mother. The gang was a family, he said; it was a place to belong. "I told him, 'This is not who we are,'" Denise says. "'This is not who you are.'"

Megan was as heartbroken as her mother. "I thought [the tattoos] were horrible," she says. "I still think they're horrible. I could rationalize them: I understood that when he first got in there, he was searching for identity, trying to survive."

But the big brother she had worshipped? It felt like she had lost him.

As a young player on the U19 U.S. women's national team, Megan wore the No. 7 jersey. It was the number Brian wore when he played soccer.

BRIAN BECAME HEAVILY involved in gang life and racked up charges while doing time: possession of drugs, possession of a deadly weapon, three assaults on other white inmates. He spent eight of his 16 years in prison in solitary confinement for this behavior. By 2007 -- as he was turning 27 years old -- he was transferred to Pelican Bay State Prison in Northern California, the state's only super-max-security prison.

While general population is segregated, solitary confinement is not, and every inmate gets one hour out of his cell to walk the pod. Here, the protect-your-own thinking began to fall away for Brian. "You start relating to people beyond your hood, your area, your color," he says. "It doesn't take long before you start talking with each other, seeing how much you have in common. Back there, it's just you in the cell, and the man next to you is just a man himself."

There's no radio, no television in the individual cells in the hole. Sitting in a cement box, counting the number of holes in the perforated door is "hard; it's definitely hard," he says. "But you find a way to escape. You've got books, you've got writing, some guys draw. And you develop these relations with other people, these connections."

Three times a week, inmates also get three hours outside, albeit in his own cage. "In the yard, you start talking [to other guys] -- sports, music, my sister is always a big ice-breaking conversation. You say [to them], 'When we go back in from yard, you can look at my pictures,' or you say, 'Here's something I wrote.' Maybe you become good friends -- like me and Monster did."

Monster, also known as Sanyika Shakur, is a black nationalist and the author of the bestseller, Monster: Autobiography of an LA Gang Member. He and Brian were on the same pod for two years. Using a line and a weight, they'd send each other long letters from cell to cell, fishing for them beneath the doors. Brian shared the song lyrics he wrote; Monster let him read drafts of his articles and essays. For years, Brian had been a serious reader, consuming everything from the classics, to books about social issues. He'd read The New Jim Crow and learned about how police disproportionately search black men and arrest them for nonviolent drug offenses, and how the War on Drugs decimated communities of color.

"He taught me what it means to be racist," Brian says, "and he taught me what it means not to be racist."

By 2010, the now 30-year-old had a new understanding of what the white supremacist insignias represented. He had his face tattoos lasered off. The swastika on his palm became a spider web; the Nazi lightning bolts became skulls. He did not want any racial insignias on his skin. They did not reflect who he was. But he was still using heroin -- and the next year, he was arrested for selling it.

Brian was behind bars once again -- this time at Donovan State Prison in San Diego.

When Megan scored in the 2011 Women's World Cup against Colombia, she seized the moment and sang Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" -- something, people say, Brian would do.

IN JUNE 2011, Brian had something new to talk about during his hour walking the pod: His little sister was playing in her first World Cup -- and he was going to get everybody to watch.

The 15-inch television was at the other end of the hallway, some 50 yards away. He built a tower out of 60 books and tied them together with torn sheets. Sitting on top of it, he could just see the TV through the window in the door. In an early game against Colombia, Megan roped in a goal, then immediately sprinted to the corner flag, grabbed a cameraman's mic and sang Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA." The guys got a kick out of this because Brian was the singer on the pod, and this flamboyant corner-flag serenade was so like him.

Days later, ahead of the quarterfinals against Brazil, all 30 cells on top and all 30 cells on bottom were watching, everybody perched at their doors. Megan -- young and audacious with her signature short blonde hair -- subbed in at the end of the game, and in extra time, sure enough -- boom! -- she sent a 50-yard cross-field ball to U.S. forward Abby Wambach, who headed it home to tie the game. "We were going wild," Brian says. "We were yelling and pounding on the doors."

Later that night, on the prison pay phone, Brian talked with his mom. She described the end of the game, how Megan, having just experienced the craziest, most awesome moment of her life, walked to the stands and stood there, searching through the some 20,000 faces for her mom's. Denise put her two index fingers in her mouth and let out her trademark whistle -- the same whistle she had used when they were kids. She had to do it a second and then a third time before Megan could hear her. Megan tapped her ear. "She was letting me know she heard me," Denise told Brian at the time, choking up -- which made Brian choke up a little, too. He could imagine it.

"Not being there -- it hurt," Brian says.

Another four years passed. This time he was in solitary confinement because of his violent record at the Vista Detention Facility, a lower-security prison, in San Diego County -- and Megan was headed to Canada for her second World Cup. The women would end up winning it all, the first time the team had done so since 1999.

"That was the hardest," Brian says. "I was super happy for Megs and super sad for myself. I fricking love my family so much. They were all there. It was like, f---, man, I'm like not really even a part of this. Yeah, I got a lot of support for her in prison, but when the game is over and the ruckus has died down, I'm sitting in my cell. I'm not there to give her a hug, I'm not there to witness it, I'm not there to be a part of it. It's just another thing in their lives that I'm missing out on. What the f--- am I doing with my life?"

Brian was almost 35 years old. He had spent more than half of his adult life incarcerated.

After Megan kneeled during the anthem in 2016, a former prisonmate called Brian to commend her actions. "What your sister is doing -- it means so much," said Sanyika Shakur, a black nationalist. "She is standing up for people who don't have a voice."

ON SEPT. 1, 2016, when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeled during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial profiling, Brian was briefly out of prison -- although he was still using heroin. Three days later, Megan kneeled in support while playing for her club team, the Seattle Reign. Then, while playing for the U.S., she did it again.

Brian saved the newspaper article with the picture of her solemn, angled-down face. He watched the YouTube videos of the coverage. He thought, Hell yeah. He also read the comments: "If she was on my team, I'd knock this idiot out. She should be banned from the national squad for life. Such disrespect." He understood that she would anger people, understood the impending fallout. He knew that enrollment in her summer camps and sales of her clothing brand, Be Your Best You, would go down. He thought, My sister is brave; my sister is bad ass.

Like every time before, Brian's freedom proved to be short-lived. By July 2017, he was back up north in Pelican Bay. Back to the regimented, day-to-day prison routine. Where tomorrow is the same as today. His whole life had been a habitual rut; Megan's anthem protest felt like the opposite of that. Her stance showed him there is a way to put a foot down on something in life, in spite of the fallout that will come.

Not long after, he had a breakthrough. His cellmate was helping him inject heroin into the back of his neck when the needle broke. "I freaked out on him, really lost it," Brian says. "And he said to me, 'Look at how you are acting right now.'" And for whatever reason, those words torpedoed into Brian and transformed into personal questions he asked himself. Your whole happiness and peace of mind is focused on this dirty-ass hypodermic needle: Is this what you want? Do you want this cell and this bulls--- powerful persona to be all you are?

He thought about the seven murders he'd witnessed out on the yard. He thought about his own knife fights -- about everything he'd done and been a part of -- just so he could continue to do heroin. He thought about Megan. Look at all she's done with her life -- look at what you've done with yours.

That's when he finally decided he was ready for change. He enrolled in the new self-improvement and rehabilitation classes the California prison system had begun to offer. Each completed class reduced time from his sentence.

Most importantly, after using and selling drugs for 24 years, Brian quit -- and he's been clean for 18 months.

"If I do drugs," he says, "I will go back to prison. I didn't believe that for a long time. Now, I believe that -- I don't ever want to go back."

Shortly before his first day of school at San Diego Community College, Brian met up with a friend from Pelican Bay, Cesar, who is also taking classes. "From the Bay to the books," Brian says. "I am so stoked to begin."

TODAY IS BRIAN'S first day at San Diego City College. As part of the Male Community Reentry Program, he's taking classes to finish up the final year of his sentence, and he has some butterflies. "It's been a long time since I've gone to school -- even when I was in school, it was juvenile hall -- I've never taken anything except regular math. I've never even taken algebra.

Plus, he says, it's a little unnerving to sit in a classroom with 18-year-olds whose experiences have been drastically different from his own. He's self-conscious about his tattoos -- particularly his neck tattoo, SHASTA, inscribed in large gothic letters, the name of the county in which he grew up. "These tattoos, I freaking hate them," Brian says.

But he also knows those tattoos could matter again in the future. He wants to get involved in the juvenile delinquency program, wants to talk to anybody who might be about to jump off the same ledge he did. "These tattoos, it's gonna get their attention," he says. "It's like, dude, you don't think I know what I'm talking about?

"I want to make a difference," he says. "I want to be like Megan."

He had "a really fricking deep conversation" with her about two months ago. They talked about racial profiling; they talked about police brutality; they talked about what Megan's kneeling meant to both of them. Megan saw that in spite of their very different paths, they'd arrived at similar conclusions.

"My brother is special," Megan says. "He has so much to offer. It would be such a shame if he left this world with nothing but prison sentences behind him. To be able to have him out, and to play for him, and to have him healthy, with this different perspective that he has now: This is like the best thing ever."

While Megan is in France, she and Brian text daily -- with game thoughts, encouragement and shared excitement.

"This is one of the most exciting things I can even remember ... just everything really, you, the school, the program," Brian texts.

She replies: "People always ask me what got me into soccer ... your wild ass of course."

"Luckily I played a cool sport. What if I'd been into arm-wrestling or something."

"Oh lawd, yea you really set me up."

"Get some sleep -- love you."

"Lovee you Bri! Let's f---ing go!"

-- Freelance writer Gwendolyn Oxenham is the author of Under the Lights and in the Dark: Untold Stories of Women's Soccer.

#megan rapinoe #espn #uswnt #us women’s soccer #women’s world cup

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otherluces · 4 years

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Luces’ 2019 Fanfic Round-up

I might do an end-of-the-year thing reflecting on the year in my personal life and Tumblr life, too, but first I’m going to do a masterpost of the stuff I wrote this year because I’m all about that shilling your creative works life. I suppose this is kind of a writing version of those year-end posts that artists do, giving their favorite or best pieces from each month.

March 2019: I ran the first annual @clenny-week from March 25-31, 2019, and although I wasn’t able to do a fic for each day, I managed to complete 4/7 prompts. I thank everyone who participated in that week, and I hope to see you for Clenny Week 2020. ^^

Santa Daddy - Clyde/Kenny - Rated M - The main four are back in town for winter break and Cartman challenges Kenny to sit on the mall Santa’s lap (and ask for a dirty gift). The mall Santa happens to be Clyde, who had a crush on Kenny in high school.

Pinot Noir - Clyde/Kenny - Rated T - Clyde is nervous as he and Kenny go out on their fifth date, as he's decided to finally confess that he has a ten year old daughter.

The Princess of Mischief - Clyde/Kenny - Rated T - Princess Kenny has been captured by the Dark Lord Clyde. Everything was going according to plan...until an unexpected visitor makes Clyde break character.

I’ll Always Be Here - Clyde/Kenny - Rated M - It's the one year anniversary of Kenny's death, and Clyde is not coping well. Meanwhile, in Hell, Kenny is given a special Deathday wish candle by Satan, allowing him to make a wish that is guaranteed to come true. He wishes to spend one more day with his husband.

August 2019: This year, the South Park fandom on Tumblr really blew up with theme weeks! The upside to this is that people are taking charge of their favorite ships/characters, especially underrated ones, and using the platform to try to bring together others who enjoy those. The downside is that the more weeks there are, the more overlap there is, and people have to pick and choose which to do. Also, there can be burn-out. I felt a lot of writing burn out after Clenny Week, and I didn’t really write anything publicly for the majority of the spring/summer. (I’ll get into what I mean by “publicly” later.) @tweekweek and @clydeweekis-canon both got me out of my writing funk a little bit, as I managed to write two one-shots that allowed me to explore concepts/characters that I don’t use often.

Tweek’s New Project - Tweek/Craig (but NOT the focus) - Rated T -When the stress of life and work get to be too much, Tweek likes to retreat to his den where he can work on arts and crafts and practice mindfulness and meditation. He is particularly excited about this new project, and waiting all day to work on it is torture.

Tell Me I’m Pretty - Bebe/Clyde - Rated T - Bebe Stevens always presents herself with confidence and style, but even the strongest of women can break sometimes. Clyde thinks she’s perfect, no matter what.

October 2019: In October, I finally published the fic I wrote for the first zine I participated in, South Park: Growing Up. I wrote this story at the very beginning of 2019, the zine was sold digitally in March 2019, and then I didn’t write or Tumblr much after that. ^^()

Snow Is Hell - General - Rated G - Snow. Poets and artists and songwriters of Christmas songs may try to convince people that it's always pure, fluffy, and delightful, but those who live where snow is commonplace know the truth. A field of freshly fallen snow is not “a marshmallow world”. It's a battlefield. At least it is for the children of South Park, Colorado. A Saturday morning of peacefully playing in the snow, making snowmen and sledding, can quickly devolve into a battle for school yard supremacy.

December 2019: December means the holiday season, which means holiday themed fanfiction. This year, I was able to finish a WIP from 2018 that I had started for @cryde-week, and I participated in @craigandthoseguys-week Secret Santa event, writing a D&D themed one-shot for @nokoikoi-draws.

Your Voice - Clyde/Craig - Rated M - At his company Christmas party, Craig watches Clyde's co-workers surprise him by showing him they've learned ASL so they can better communicate with him. Feeling ashamed (and a little jealous) that he's never learned ASL despite having a mute boyfriend who uses it, Craig decides to spend the year taking classes so that he can surprise Clyde with it next Christmas.

Dungeons and Flagons (of Cocoa) - Craig/Tweek (but not the focus) - Rated T - It's Christmas Eve and the adults are all out at some boring Christmas party. Clyde is bored, so he invites his best bros over for a Christmas-themed D&D one-shot campaign.

Ongoing fics: Sooo...this year wasn’t great for my ongoing fics. ^^() Back at the end of January, it had been one year since I had started Dumb Boys, I had 12 chapters completed, and I stated that I wanted to focus on it more so that I could do better than a one-chapter a month average. That didn’t happen. ^^() Also I had started a multi-chapter Creek band AU at the end of 2018, but then didn’t update for months. So in 2019, I managed to update two new chapters to the band AU over the summer, and three chapters to Dumb Boys. Needless to say, I neglected my children. =/

Dumb Boys - Clyde/Kenny - Rated E - It's senior year at Park County High and Clyde Donovan is ready to cement his legacy as the number one guy in the school. He's already one of the school's football stars so it shouldn't be difficult, except that Kenny McCormick, the lead snare drummer for the marching band, seems to be taking that spot without even trying. In order to determine once and for all who is the top guy, Clyde decides to challenge Kenny to a contest of who can have sex with the most people in a semester.

He’s With the Band - Tweek/Craig - Rated E - Tweek is the lead singer for the up-and-coming band Humble Folx, but when he's not performing on stage, he's somewhat reclusive, and he always refuses to join his bandmates in interviews. Craig Tucker is a 23 year old music journalist who can't quite catch a break. He's hung up on his ex and his career at Treble and Bass magazine isn't headed in any real direction. That is until he's offered the chance to go on tour with Humble Folx and get the exclusive interview with Tweek.

Unpublished fics (aka fics for fanzines): In addition to “Snow Is Hell”, I also wrote fics for two other fanzines over the summer. (I had to focus what little writing energy I had on them, which is why my ongoing fics were so neglected.) I wrote “Duality” for the Creek zine @adealandadevilzine, which if anyone has the digital copy and has read the fic, I hope you enjoyed my attempt at writing high fantasy. Hard copies should be going out in the spring, so once we get the okay, I’ll be putting it on AO3, so expect a lot more shilling then. I also wrote two fics for the upcoming @crennynationzine (follow for more info!), a sfw story called “The Games We Play” and a nsfw follow-up/sequel called “A Two Player Game”.

WIPs: Finally, I’m going to mention a handful of fics I started this year and will hopefully finish at some point in my lifetime. ^^() “Getting His Just Desserts” is a fic I started for @bottomcraigweek with like 5 Craig ships involved. “The Long Haul” is a Twyde fic where Clyde is a truck driver and Tweek is a server at a roadside diner. “Chicken Soup for the Eldritch Soul” is a Clenny fic where Clyde makes chicken soup for a sick Kenny...but doesn’t notice the body horror going on in the background. “Dr. Craig’s Miracle Tonic” is a nsfw crackfic where Dr. Craig is able to cure his patients with the power of his penis. Finally, I wrote like 300 words for “Born to Run”, the Natural Born Killers AU Creek fic I’ve waxed poetic about for two years.

Total words written in 2019 (not including unpublished works): 53,901

#writing stuff #2019 fanfiction #end of year #my writing #south park #south park fanfiction

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s4g2seomarketingservice · 3 years

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Organic SEO versus PPC Management

Any web aficionado will not be able to take it anymore. The supremacy has been debated time and again and to be a little earnest, very few formidable, logical and comprehensible conclusions have been derived. Organic SEO and PPC management have their own places in different scheme of things and both cannot compete with each other. They both are essential towards the growth of a website and both have to be incorporated into processes to ensure that the website is armored well. The question still remains, which is better and why is it better? The only answer to that, something that has been tried many a times before, is to highlight the pros of both and then do an analysis. It might help. Another attempt towards pursuing a suitable conclusion!

Organic SEO Services in India have their own range of benefits. An SEO Campaign that is performed on a website results in increased targeted traffic. The traffic influx increases as a result of all the optimization work that gets put in. The rank of the website on Google increases and all the audience who are regulars on the website get to know about it. Naturally their inquisitiveness increases and so do the visits. The increase in influx of traffic also leads to an increase in sales. The better the SEO Service India, the more the traffic. The more the traffic is, the more the word-of-mouth publicity. The more of that happens, the higher the force is with which the sales registers start ringing. The results that come in are all long term. The Return on Income too is very high. Brands have been successfully built because of these services, as the optimization lends the website a lot of visibility. These are some of the benefits that come with Organic SEO Services .

PPC Management is by no stretch of imagination any far behind either. When PPC Campaigns are done, the best of keywords get selected. Special insights are put in so that the keywords strike a rapport with the search engines and go the distance. The landing pages that are created solely because of PPC management are again very conducive. Web users find it effortlessly to click on those hyperlinks on display and land on these pages. This saves time, effort, averts mental brain drain as well as frustration to a great extent! The campaigns are very cost effective and available tailor made. For every individual website, there is a distinct campaign which suits the budget and suffices for all the needs. Consistent measurements are done and things get constantly monitored.

Both are good in their own respect and both do well within their given limitations. Both of them are bankable concepts on whom money can be invested unabashedly. All one ought to do is trust the concept and use it well so that maximum returns can be derived from the ordeal along with resounding success, virtues that only keep cementing your faith in such processes.

S4G2 Marketing Agency Will be Best Choice If You Looking For SEO Services in United States

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#SEO and Online marketing #seo marketing #seo services #SEO

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Best Books of 2020

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In 2020, we needed good stories more than ever: To escape, even for a little while. To subvert and question the status quo. And to remind us of the joys of being human. The books listed below fall into one, some, or all of the above categories. We had our contributors select the stories that meant the most to them this year and polled you the reader to compile a subjective yet comprehensive list of some of the year’s best. Here are the books, organized by genre, that broke through the cacophony to mean something to our Den of Geek contributors—and to you—this year…

Quick note before we begin: Like many other areas of the media industry and economy, the independent bookstore industry was hit hard by the lockdown caused by the pandemic, as more people than ever flocked to Amazon to get their reading fix. If you are inspired to purchase any of the titles we gush about below, consider using Bookshop.org or other sites that support independent bookstores (especially Black-owned ones) to do so. They need your help more than ever!

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Best Horror Books of 2020

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic was the buzziest release of the summer – and with good reason. Her lush prose, descriptive settings and disturbing plot combine for one of the most compelling – and likely uncomfortable – reads you’ll experience this year. (If you love mushrooms, I’m really sorry in advance.)

Set in 1950s Mexico, the novel follows the story of the vibrant debutante Noemi, who must journey to a remote mountain village to check up on an ailing cousin, whose mysterious husband keeps insisting she’s mad. If you’ve ever read any Gothic literature before, you know many of the beats that come next: The isolated manor, the creepy servants, the dark dreams, the gaslighting, and the constant sense of rising dread. There’s even a cruel housekeeper that could give Mrs. Danvers more than a run for her money.

Moreno-Garcia uses nearly every conceivable Gothic trope to her advantage, telling a familiar tale whose often predictable elements still somehow manage to feel fresh and new. This is largely due to the deft way that the author weaves the political and the fantastical together, reckoning with larger issues such as racism, British colonization and Mexico’s fraught history with eugenics. A good story, well told, with more going on beneath the surface than one might expect.

– Lacy Baugher

Devolution by Max Brooks

World War Z author Max Brooks takes on Bigfoot in this excellent eco horror which comes with added resonance during a pandemic. Like in his zombie bestseller, Brooks approaches the story as if it were real—it’s the novel equivalent of a found footage tale with the events that befall the residents of isolated eco community Greenloop documented in the diary of our protagonist Kate. Greenloop is a remote idyll of smart homes powered by sunlight and waste and controlled by phones and tablets where deliveries arrive via drone, but when the eruption of active volcano Mt Rainier cuts them off from the rest of the country the groups survival skills are tested. The trouble is, most members of this wealthy community don’t have any. And that’s before the family of sasquatches turn up…

This is a violent, vibrant horror with carefully drawn characters and an escalating sense of dread. Though there is humour here Brooks manages to make the Bigfoot group scary rather than faintly ridiculous, while the mirroring of the devolving eco society and the rise in power and confidence of their feral counterparts is handled skillfully. Intercut with interviews and real life stories of broken boundaries between man and wildlife it’s a cautionary tale that tells us never to underestimate nature, be wary of an over reliance on technology and that humans have animal instincts too.

– Rosie Fletcher

Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay

Tremblay completed his infection horror Survivor Song long before the pandemic hit but the novel is unsettlingly prescient. An outbreak of a deadly and fast acting strain of rabies has swept the country. Citizens are told to isolate at home while hospital staff are vastly overstretched and are put at risk due to a shortage of proper PPE. But when Doctor Ramola hears that her very pregnant best friend Natalie has been bitten by an infected human she’ll do anything in her power to help deliver the baby safely.

This is an incredibly poignant road trip novel, of sorts, which takes place over just a few hours. It’s a love letter to friendship, an anti-fairytale and a careful character study drenched in Tremblay’s characteristic ‘sad horror’. One ‘interlude’ section, which features characters from Tremblay’s earlier work A Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, is so utterly devastating you’ll want a biscuit and an episode of Schitt’s Creek just to get over it. If Tremblay’s A Headful of Ghosts was his take on the possession subgenre, Survivor Song would fall loosely into the zombie category, though it’s likely to be the most gorgeous and literary zombie novel you’ll read all year.

– Rosie Fletcher

Southern Book Clubs Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Despite the slightly twee title, Hendrix’ latest is an evocative and often very frightening tale of a small town terrorized by a violent outsider. Based in the same world as his coming of age masterpiece My Best Friends’ Exorcism this tale is set in the 90s and focuses on the mothers of the small Southern town of Charlston: bored housewives whose work is often denigrated and overlooked.

At the centre is Patricia, who spends her time looking after a senile mother-in-law, almost grown kids and an ungrateful husband. She, along with neighbourhood friends, forms a book group who discuss true crime stories which provide handy knowledge and insight when Patricia begins to suspect handsome stranger James Harris is up to no good. Charleston is where Hendrix grew up so he paints the town vividly and with affection while acknowledging the oppressiveness felt by the women there, and the systematic racism experienced by the black community, whose children are disappearing and who are not being taken seriously.

Across his work from Horrorstor, My Best Friend’s Exorcism to We Sold Our Souls, Hendrix has proven excellent at writing women and girls. It’s no different here, where the Southern mums of Charleston are heroic and fearsome and their friendship is all powerful – if anyone can take on a vampire it’s them.

– Rosie Fletcher

Thirteen Storeys by Jonathan Sims

This extraordinary debut by Sims is a both a multi-genre anthology and an overarching haunted house story. Centred around the mysterious Banyan Court, a housing complex consisting of a thirteen storey luxury high rise and the poorly built and utterly decrepit affordable housing unit hidden behind it, the book introduces us to various residents or people connected to Banyan Court, each of whom receives a mysterious invite to a dinner party on the top floor hosted by the strange and reclusive billionaire who owns the complex. At the end of this party, we are told, the billionaire will plummet 13 storeys to his death, and none of the guests will have any recollection of what happened.

This is a very smart first book, showcasing Sims’ talent in a range of different horror styles and bringing multiple voices without ever feeling overcrowded. There’s the eerie tale of a little girl and her imaginary friend, who might not be as imaginary as you think, the loyal door man and his violent alter ego competing for supremacy and the art dealer who becomes obsessed with a strange painting. Characters interweave in pleasing ways building to a grotesque but satisfying denouement which ties all the stories together. Sims is an exciting new voice in horror who is definitely one to watch.

– Rosie Fletcher

If It Bleeds by Stephen King – READERS’ CHOICE

The people have spoken!

Stephen King is not only one of the greatest writers of his generation but also one of the most prolific, and nigh a year goes by in which at least one of his stories—either new or adapted—isn’t in the cultural conversation. This year, it was If It Bleeds, a well-rounded horror collection of four previously unpublished stories, including one that features King universe character The Outsider‘s Holly Gibney (in the story that gives the book its name). The novellas revisit many of King’s most popular themes, from supernatural cell phones to the cost of creativity, and manage to feel both modern and nostalgic at the same time. If It Bleeds hit bookshelves in April and, in the midst of the real-life horror that was the pandemic, the continued killings of Black Americans by police officers, and the American presidential election cycle, King gave us something gloriously fictional to be afraid of. Whether you’re a longtime King fan or have never read anything by the horror master, If It Bleeds is well worth your time.

– Kayti Burt

Best Science Fiction Books of 2020

Riot Baby – Tochi Onyebuchi

One of 2020’s most incisive works packed more power into a novella than a book thrice its size; and while its particular story has a dystopian feel, it is actually keenly of the moment: not just the current protests against incarceration and police brutality, but the vicious and violent cycles that imprison, murder, or otherwise cut short Black lives. In an NPR interview at the start of the year when Riot Baby was published, Onyebuchi discussed how well-meaning white people talk about broken systems, when instead Riot Baby concerns “a system working just as designed.” That is, a system that cannot be overturned except possibly by superpowered means—and even then, not always easily.

Ella has a Thing, an otherworldliness to her that allows her to glimpse the fates, positive and negative, of those around her; to astrally project across the country and into others’ minds; to control unimaginable forces. But she can’t break her brother Kev (the “riot baby” of the title, born during the 1992 Los Angeles riots) out of Rikers Island. She can’t stop him from getting arrested in the first place, struggling as an adolescent not to transmute her rage into her powers and hurt those she loves, even as her baby brother is targeted for the color of his skin.

That tension and futility drive this slim account of not just their lives, but of the Black experience, projecting back to the roots of their family tree and forward to the authoritarian near-future in which Kev struggles to build the foundation of the rest of his life. Riot Baby is brutal, but it still nurtures hope—and it’s a necessary read for well-meaning white people like me.

– Natalie Zutter

Star Wars: Shadow Fall – Alexander Freed

This might seem like an odd pick, as it’s the second in a tie-in trilogy, and not particularly accessible if you haven’t read the previous book. But I’m true to myself. This was certainly one of my favorite books of 2020, with the caveat that sometimes favorite means “heavy enough that it, artfully, made me extremely miserable.”

It’s not what you might expect from the generic title. I’m often fascinated by genre writers who try to tackle writing about aimlessness in genre, whether that be slacker heroes or the existential ennui faced by Alphabet Squadron between spaceship gun fights. It’s such a plot-heavy genre that writing about questlessness sounds very hard. And Shadow Fall has done that magic trick. To quote my own tweet, this book is about people who act on mistaken assumptions and concoct entire non-existent relationships in their heads and hurt themselves in fugue states. All of the relationships are intense, but splintered and sideways all the time. Each character is their own carefully defined brand of amoral and brittle. I’ve rarely seen awkwardness portrayed so well in a book without the story itself coming off as edgy and misanthropic.

It’s also a good adventure story, with set-piece battles, a mysterious cult, and a genuinely surprising take on how the Force works from a series that isn’t at all about Jedi. Start with the first book, Alphabet Squadron, don’t mind that title either, and make sure you have some calming tea ready.

– Megan Crouse

Sex Criminals Vol. 6: Six Criminals by Matt Fraction + Chip Zdarsky

Really, this is celebrating the end of Image Comics’ raunchy-yet-surprisingly-heartfelt series about Suze and Jon, who find out they share the same gift: Their orgasms stop time. So, of course, they start robbing banks—only to discover that it’s not just them with this gift, winding up on the lam from the Sex Police. But rather than treat this audacious premise like a fleeting dirty joke, Fraction and Zdarsky built out a deceptively simple metaphor into a thought-provoking exploration of lust-versus-love, money and class, the chasm between finding someone who “gets” you in the bedroom but not outside of it. With cheek and heart, they boiled all this down to Suze’s refrain of “This fucking guy” that makes me tear up every time I read it.

And it wasn’t all just bodily fluids and dangly bits—Sex Criminals also consistently delighted in pushing its own envelope in all things meta. Drawing in post-it notes to obscure the Queen lyrics they couldn’t get the rights to for a scene they’d already drawn; a sequence in which huge dialogue bubbles physically knock extras out of the way; even turning Fraction’s anxiety attack about writing a key scene between two female characters into its own mini-comic—this team often turned their probing gaze on themselves.

In the Sex Criminals universe, robbing banks was small potatoes, foreplay even—the final volume ascends beyond the initial crime, transforming into a treatise on grief and time and retreating into memory. As the final issue posits, take any significant moment between two people and you have to expand the frame, to look at every single other person who brought these two together, whether for a one-night stand or “to have and to hold.”

In fittingly 2020 fashion, the series concludes bittersweetly, but the final moments come back full circle to where the series started: wanting to prolong that particular pocket of time and space in which it’s just you and your person, the rest of the world be damned.

Yet Sex Criminals’ greatest legacy is that it’s not the last comic to delve into the intersections of sexuality and science fiction. Vault Comics’ Money Shot, from Sarah Beattie and Tim Seeley, is a clear successor with its story of underfunded scientists having sex with alien species in order to subsidize their interstellar teleportation research. As another series about copulating to undermine capitalism, Money Shot carries on the horny torch that Fraction and Zdarsky lit way back in 2013.

– Natalie Zutter

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

Queer western speculative fiction. Need we say more? Sarah Gailey, author of Magic for Liars, is back with an all-too-brief tale of Librarians, the only truly free women in this version of the American west, and Esther, a stowaway escaping her small town and plenty of secrets. Nothing is as it seems, including those running the book wagon – one’s a trans guy with they/them pronouns who must masquerade as a woman for his own safety whenever authorities or other prying eyes are near.

While the noir of Magic for Liars made that world feel inevitably dark, Upright has a more hopeful outlook and a wide-open setting that feels full of possibilities, even as the Librarians make their way delivering books in the kind of dystopian setting you might find in The Handmaid’s Tale or The Grace Year. In a year so full of doom, the Librarians are capable and even swashbuckling in their adventures, teaching our newcomer narrator and maybe even making her swoon with their swagger.

– Delia Harrington

The Resisters by Gish Jen

In AutoAmerica, a not-so-distant future where everything is connected to artificial intelligence and the have-nots are meant to be good consumers and nothing more, a young Black-Asian woman with a gift for pitching baseball becomes the eye of the storm when her country decides to bring back the national pastime and compete in the Olympics.

Come for the underground baseball league, stay for the sly pop culture references. The world is built out so fully that the inevitable movie or limited series version of The Resisters might even be better than the book – blasphemy, I know, but so many concepts and kinds of tech are dropped in that a showrunner and crew would have a field day bringing to life.

It’s rare these days for a man to narrate spec fiction, and he certainly has the least interesting story here, but perhaps he has the best vantage point to admire his talented wife and daughter, the former a lawyer who repeatedly takes on Aunt Nettie, a defiant nickname for the government-backed AI who runs their lives, and the latter, a young woman who was raised in a defiant household, whom he hopes won’t fall for the allure of Aunt Nettie’s promises.

– Delia Harrington

Best Fantasy Books of 2020

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

In a year where we are all struggling with how we feel about Harry Potter and its complicated legacy, Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education has arrived to offer us an entirely different and thoroughly exciting magical boarding school tale. The first in a trilogy dubbed “The Scholomance” after the magical school at which it takes place, the story is sort of like Harry Potter’s dark twin, featuring a difficult female heroine, a unique magical system, and a very dark take on the world of teen magicians. (Plus, it features the sort of effortless, matter-of-fact diversity that more authors – both YA and adult – should emulate.)

Galadriel “El” Higgins is a powerful, potential dark sorceress in her junior year at the Scholomance. Here, students must fight for their lives from the moment of their admission against the horrifying monsters known as malificaria that roam the school halls trying to eat them on their way to class and graduation is simply a test of who can escape a roomful of the largest and deadly creatures in the school. El is powerful enough that she could probably wipe out all of them on her own, but she refuses to embrace her natural affinity for dark, potentially world-destroying spells – no matter how many of her fellow students think she already has. Novik’s prose is as propulsive and fun to read as ever (consider this an additional, belated plug for her icy fantasy Spinning Silver) and A Deadly Education manages to put a fresh spin on what otherwise might feel like a staid, overdone setting. From its prickly heroine to the very real stakes that surround her classmates – most literally won’t live through final exercises – there’s so much here that feels unexpected and new. The sequel cannot come fast enough.

– Lacy Baugher

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

It’s rare that a story truly feels like magic, but such is the case with Alix E. Harrow’s lush and enchanting The Once and Future Witches. Part period piece, part celebration of sisterhood, and part feminist manifesto, the story is a love letter to women of all kinds, everywhere.

Set in an alternate version of America in the late nineteenth century when witching of all kinds is banned, this is a story about three sisters finding their voices and staking a claim to their own futures. It is also about accidentally summoning a magical tower and returning witchcraft to the world, healing the rifts between sisters and exposing the cracks between people who claim to want justice, but who actively work to oppress others. And it is about the power of community – the great things that can happen when women honestly see one another, support one another, acknowledge the challenges inherent in saying yes to help, and work together to make the world a better place. Isolation is dangerous, both for ourselves and the world we inhabit, and this is a novel that will make you want to call your personal coven and thank them for being there when you needed them.

Once upon a time, there were three sisters and they starred in a remarkable book, full of fairytales and folklore and old stories made new. In 2020, perhaps more so than ever, the idea of once and future resonates more strongly than it ever has before, the people we were and are, and what we might become – but only if we hold on to each other along the way.

– Lacy Baugher

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

Multi-perspective fantasy novels are all the rage right now, but Andrea Stewart’s The Bone Shard Daughter is truly something special. Not only does it deftly weave what initially seems like five separate stories together into something powerful and thrilling, the novel contains precisely the sort of compelling characters and rich worldbuilding that make this genre so much fun to read in the first place.

The first installment in the “Drowning Empire” trilogy, The Bone Shard Daughter is set in a sixteenth-century kingdom comprised of migrating islands that float through something called the Endless Sea. A story of empire and identity as much as it is a story of magic, the book at first follows Lin, the heir to the throne of Phoenix Empire, or, she will be as soon as she has proven she can properly use bone shard magic.

It’s this central magical system that makes this book so compelling – it involves commands being etched on pieces of human bones harvested from the general public in annual trepanning ceremonies, which are then used to power “constructs,” chimaera-like beings cobbled together out of various animal parts. If that wasn’t creepy enough, these shards literally drain the life energy from their doners to keep the constructs alive, a sort of human battery system that is horrifying to witness. (Especially when it appears that many of the more complex constructs have something like sentience of their own.)

Creepy and thoughtful, The Bone Shard Daughter grabs your attention from its opening lines, dumping you in a complex tale with lots of moving pieces that only gets messier as it goes on, and expects readers to keep up. For those who can manage it, it’s more than worth the journey. (And did I mention there’s a magical aquatic cat?)

– Lacy Baugher

The City We Became – N.K. Jemisin

Jemisin is a master of fantasy world-building, and she turns that eye to the real world in an unsubtle, masterful New York City under attack by lovecraftian horrors. Funny, weird plot twists abound. This book starts with someone screaming on top of a roof, beautiful mystical singing from his point of view, and a neighbor yelling at him to shut up. There’s a musical beat through the whole thing, and all the ways that music can be added to or enhanced by the city noises all around it.

Along with living in the city herself, Jemisin meticulously researched its history and quirks. She’s great at digging into detail, but also knows when to go broad, adding pop culture and references that seem obvious in hindsight but not too goofy to maintain the tone of the story. It’s fast-paced, especially toward the end.

This is distinctly a novel for today, talking about racial tension from a variety of perspectives, and addressing the kind of harassment that comes with those conversations. It’s a snapshot for what’s been talked about on Twitter, what’s being talked about in art galleries and publishing houses. And it’s a snapshot of the city — kind and cruel, raucous and serene. It probably helps that part of this book made me feel some rare home state pride.

– Megan Crouse

The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood

The Unspoken Name by K.A. Larkwood sets itself apart in two major ways: its setting and its characters. Priestess Csorwe is fated to be sacrificed to the eldritch god her people worship. But when she’s rescued from that fate with a wizard with ambitions of taking over a kingdom, she becomes a servant to a different master entirely — and has the chance to become far more than a sword-wielding minion. (There’s some cool sword-wielding too.)

Surrounding her are people motivated by power, ambition, the unknown, the experience of living always in the shadow of the unknown and their sense of what is known becoming askew because of it. It’s about emotional abuse and people who want things and people they shouldn’t and can’t have. At the core is Csorwe, refreshingly straightforward but wonderfully complex in her own way.

This story plays out in a world the author describes as an “eerie hyperspace labyrinth” that also does great things with some more familiar, but under-explored fantasy elements like flying ships and orcs. Full of strange magic and fascinating creatures, it’s truly inventive. The world may have orcs and elves, but it never feels derivative of the fantasy greats. In more ways than one, this is a book that exemplifies what secondary-world fantasy can be in 2020.

– Megan Crouse

Wicked as You Wish by Rin Chupeco

It’s a rare thing when I encounter a novel that feels as though it’s written exactly for me. The first time this happened to me was when I (belatedly) read American Gods. Wicked as You Wish is the second book I’ve ever picked up where I immediately felt as though I were the target audience, and the story was just for me.

The story opens with the budding friendship between Tala Makiling Warnock, a girl who can nullify magic, and Alexei Tsarevich, heir to the throne of Avalon, in hiding after a terrible spell froze his kingdom. The Makilings are allies and protectors of the throne of Avalon, and Tala’s family is dedicated to keeping Alex safe—at least until his sixteenth birthday, when the Firebird will arrive and help him come into his powers. But the Snow Queen of Beira, Avalon’s enemy, is eager to finish the war she started, and Alex is keeping secrets of his own.

Rin Chupeco’s world draws on mythological and literary traditions including Wonderland, Oz, and Tala’s Filipino magical heritage, blending them into world building that’s contemporary and relevant (there’s a scene with ICE—at the behest of the Snow Queen facing off against Tala’s immigrant family). And while the book is marketed as YA and would certainly appeal to that audience with it’s predominantly teenaged cast, Chupeco’s sophisticated third-person omniscient narration gives readers insight into the motivations of the adults, who come through as strong leading characters as well. It’s an incredibly smart fantasy novel, and if it requires a little work to keep up with the worldbuilding and twists the story takes, it is absolutely worth the effort. The next book in the series cannot come out soon enough.

– Alana Joli Abbott

Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee

Yoon Ha Lee is better known for writing stories in space than fantasy, but based on his blending of space and mythology in his middle grade novel, The Dragon Pearl, I’d been looking to his first fantasy novel. I was not disappointed. Phoenix Extravagant follows Jebi, a non-binary painter trying to succeed in an occupied nation; when trying to assimilate gets them thrown out of their house by their sister, and fails to get them a well-paying job they’d applied for, Jebi’s at a loss. Jebi has no desire to work at the Ministry of Armor, aiding the war effort that continues to oppress their people by painting the magical commands for automata. But the Minister leaves Jebi no choice: join, or their sister—who, unknown to Jebi, is a revolutionary—will pay the price.

Jebi’s gift for painting allows them to communicate with a dragon automata, who was painted with pacifist instructions, and the two make plans to escape the conflict all together. Lee’s story tackles themes comparable to Peter Tieryas’s “United States of Japan” trilogy and Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire, especially in the way both of those series look at ideas of assimilation and the justice—or injustice—of dues one pays to their government. Lee gives no clear moral answers in the tale—Jebi’s sister seems to prioritize revolution over family, Jebi’s lover has killed people Jebi cares about, and the antagonist may have valid reasons for his evil plots—and that’s part of what makes the story so compelling to navigate. The novel is planned as a standalone, but I’d love to read more set in this world.

– Alana Joli Abbott

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

Reading Black Sun was like opening a new door in my mind. This is an epic fantasy series opener, and a lot of the tropes are familiar, but they’re all presented with different structure and framework–enough so that the novel feels like something entirely new. The story centers on Serapio’s journey to the homeland of his mother, where a bloody destiny awaits him; the efforts of Sun Priestess Naranpa to revolutionize her priesthood and make them more relevant as true servants uplifting the people of her city; and Xiala a ship captain whose supernatural origins make her both feared and targeted, but whose earthy attitude grounds the story. While Naranpa and Serapio are set up by the cosmology to be enemies, Roanhorse depicts them both so sympathetically that readers will hope for both of them to survive–and thrive–despite whatever fate has in store for them.

Roanhorse draws on indigenous American and Polynesian cultural and physical geography, which makes the world feel rich and new in a genre that has traditionally drawn on classical or feudal Europe for its influences. Using language that tends toward poetic, she plays with time, so that the narrative moves backward and forward around the events rather than in a linear fashion, which means the reveals of the narrative come not as the story progresses, but as readers progress through the story. Don’t be surprised to see this one on all the award lists in 2021.

– Alana Joli Abbott

Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

A girl makes a deal with the devil to live forever, and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. It’s the kind of premise a book could coast on, but V.E. Schwab has never been a coaster. From the very beginning of her career, the 33-year-old fantasy author has elevated engaging plot with unforgettable prose, resulting in stories that stick with their readers long after the book has been closed.

With The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, the story is a particularly ambitious one: spanning 300 years, from 18th century France to modern New York City, we follow Addie as she learns how to live an existence in which she cannot hold a job, cannot rent an apartment, cannot have relationships. “We tell these immortality tales of men where all of a sudden they’re immortal and it’s just like, go get rich, go have fun, go have 100 mistresses and just sleep your way through eternity,” Schwab told Den of Geek earlier this year. “But women would never have that option.”

But this is not just Addie’s story. It also belongs to Henry, the only person Addie meets in three centuries who can remember her. Henry is a millennial living in New York, living with mental illness. In a story whose only other two main characters are an immortal woman and a devil, Henry is our human.

Ultimately, like so many of Schwab’s books, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is not quite what you expected: romantic and Romantic, modern yet classic, Addie was one of the unforgettable books of 2020.

Best Young Adult Books of 2020

Ruthless Gods by Emily Duncan

Emily Duncan’s “Something Dark and Holy” trilogy is everything YA fiction is not supposed to be: Dark, frightening, unsettling, and very, very bloody. Its second installment, Ruthless Gods, is a complex tale of war, betrayal, and heartbreak – a story that is not particularly hopeful, gory in a way this genre is rarely allowed to be, and populated by heroes who are often anything but.

The novel follows three lead characters: Nadya, a young mystic who talks to gods but can no longer hear them; Serefin, a king whose country has long been at war with Nadya’s and whose life and consciousness are no longer entirely his own; and Malachiasz, a deeply disturbed boy who either wants to destroy the gods, become one himself, or something in between. Over the course of the story, their lives become intertwined on what feels like a cosmic level, as politics, religion and the very survival of humanity collide.

Duncan’s prose is rich and lush, full of gorgeous descriptions of eldritch nightmares and frightening visions, with a fair amount of body horror thrown on top. For YA fans, this is a series that is unlike most anything else you’ve encountered this year.

– Lacy Baugher

The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow

There aren’t a lot of books I read this year that captured the feel of 2020 as well as The Sound of Stars. There’s no pandemic in this book, but the alien invasion that results in humans being locked inside their apartment buildings, unable to socialize, their normal lives taken from them because the world outside just isn’t the same? I’m sure Dow never intended that to be a metaphor, but it worked for me!

The title takes its name from a fictional album performed by fictional band The Starry Eyed, whose media presence before the alien invasion provides a framework for the book. The story centers on Ellie, a black girl determined to help her human community escape through the illegal borrowing of books, and M0Rr1S (Morris), an Ilori labmade, responsible for vaccinating humanity to prepare Earth for Ilora habitation. Morris, unlike other Ilori, is emotional, and loves music; immediately Ellie intrigues him with her bravery and willingness to risk everything for the sake of stories. When he enlists her to steal hidden music for him, their uneasy friendship begins, and as the stakes get higher, Ellie and Morris travel across the country on a mission to save humanity.

The story is fantastical and earnest and hopeful, and it was especially wonderful to experience in the audio production, which featured two excellent voice actors telling the story of stories and music and love.

– Alana Joli Abbott

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

“I know the exact moment of inspiration for [Cemtery Boys],” Aiden Thomas told Den of Geek about his YA debut. “[A Tumblr writing prompt asked], ‘What would you do if you summoned a ghost and you couldn’t get rid of it?’ And you see people commenting and stuff and they’re like, ‘Oh, this super spooky, scary thing.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, but what if he was cute?'”

Cemetery Boys is not only breaking new ground when it comes to explorations of trans identity and Latinx culture, it’s also a delightful read. The story of Yadriel, a trans teen boy determined to prove himself a brujo to his traditional Latinx family, Cemetery Boys has the best inciting incident: Trying to get answers about his cousin’s mysterious death, Yadriel attempts to summon the ghost of his cousin. Instead, he summons the (cute) ghost of school “bad boy” Julian. Julian has some questions of his own he’s looking to answer and, when he refuses to leave, Yadriel’s mission gets a little more complicated… especially once Yadriel realizes he might not want Julian to go.

Romantic and hilarious, sweet and suspenseful, Cemetery Boys has so much to fall in love with: from its diverse cast of characters to its vibrant and complex world. Thomas wrote the novel, in part, so that young, marginalized readers would have a story not only to escape into but also “where they see themselves as being incredibly powerful, supported, but very importantly, being loved.” Cemetery Boys is a gift to us all, and a reminder of what is possible when the still far-too-inaccessible publishing industry lets more people in.

“No, it wasn’t the end. It was a better beginning.”

Best Non-Genre Books of 2020

The Darling Killers by Sarah McCarry

Over the summer, mere weeks into lockdown and in the phase of the pandemic where it felt like you couldn’t trust anyone or anything outside of your precarious bubble, author Sarah McCarry began serializing her latest novel The Darling Killers via a weekly Substack newsletter. The sparklingly clever title tells you plenty, but in short, it’s a female-perspective Talented Mr. Ripley by way of Los Angeles’ glittery world of young adult authors whose mastery over words has earned them obsessive fandoms and access to the endless party life.

In the style of the best thrillers, this lush novel provided the perfect escapism as antiheroine Sofia Bencivenga arrives in LA and immediately falls in with a trio of talented, haunted writers: ethereal Alison, bitchy Judith, and charismatic Jaxson. Sofia goes from shadowing their weekly writing dates to conning her way into emerging-writer status, but when Alison dies under suspicious circumstances at one of Jaxson’s fabulous parties, Sofia has to pause in her pursuit of vicariously living through Alison’s life to consider its dangerous flipside.

It would have been enough for the book to skewer the particular cult of YA author celebrity, to mock how every supporting character nurses their own dreams of writing—or at least acting out—The Great American Novel. But McCarry also gets to the heart of yearning to create worlds and characters, the ache of writing-as-processing, the thrill of trying on other stories and lives—she grabs that heart out of your chest and shows it back to you, thumping obscenely but recognizably. Back when the rest of 2020 stretched out ahead of us, especially uncertain, waking up to each installment every Tuesday morning was one of the few things keeping me looking forward to the next week.

– Natalie Zutter

Beach Read by Emily Henry

Beach Read is perhaps the worst misnomer of any book title on this list, and the cover doesn’t help. The lead characters only go to the beach near their adjoining properties once, maybe twice! Emily Henry’s gem lies somewhere between romance and literary fiction, mirroring her characters’ work. In Beach Read, next door neighbors find themselves uncomfortably close – they can see in one another’s windows, when they’re both on the deck they can easily chat at normal volume – and of course their first interaction is fraught.

It doesn’t take long to find out they’re both writers – she, romance; he, literary fiction – and amid an argument about whose work is easier, a challenge to swap genres unfolds. Throughout the heat of the summer they teach one another about their respective genres and open up about their lives. It’s darker than the average romance – he’s writing about a cult where pretty much everyone died; she’s cleaning out her dead father’s home – but if you’re looking for something with adult sex/romance and adult relationships and emotional pitfalls in equal measure, Beach Read has you covered.

– Delia Harrington

Yes, No, Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed

In a year when politics was inescapable and inescapably miserable, Yes, No, Maybe So provided political escapism that soothed my soul in the form of a romcom about a state senate race. While the setup might sound contrived – two teens, a Jewish boy and a Muslim girl volunteer to knock on doors together and fall in love – the book itself featured well-drawn characters. Trading off narration by character and corresponding author, we learn about their home lives, friends, hopes and fears, why they’re invested in this race, and how they really feel about one another.

Taking place mostly during Ramadan, the book has some fun easter eggs for veteran canvassers and field staff while doing a decent job explaining some of the inner workings of a state-level campaign for newcomers. Anyone interested in getting more politically active will find numerous examples in the book of how to do so, and it certainly helps that as Jamie and Maya face their respective fears, they make getting involved seem easier to the reader, too. The book is incredibly earnest, tender and sweet, both about politics and their romance, especially under Jamie’s narration, but Maya and their circumstances bring in a dose of realism to help balance things out so it’s not too saccharine.

– Delia Harrington

What were your favorite books of the year? Let us know in the comments below.

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Emmy Awards 2020: 72nd ceremony nominations announced

Kicking off awards season: Leslie Jones unveiled the 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards nominations in a live-stream on Tuesday

Dystopian drama Watchmen and comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel led nominations on Tuesday for the Emmy Awards, the highest awards in television.

Watchmen is the leading contender with 26 nominations. The HBO series stars Regina King and is a superhero drama dealing with race, police and white supremacy based on a 1980s graphic novel.

The Amazon comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is the second most-nominated series with 20, followed by Netflix’s Ozark with 18.

Former Saturday Night Live star Leslie Jones unveiled the nominations in a live-stream, kicking off an unusual awards season clouded by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Emmy Awards are set to take place September 20 and will likely also be a virtual event because of the pandemic.

In terms of streaming wars, HBO and Amazon got impressive numbers this year, but it was Netflix that garnered the most recognition with a staggering 160 nominations, up from 118 the year prior.

The nominees for outstanding drama series included HBO’s darkly humorous Succession, which centers on a powerful media family’s wrangling for control of its company, as well as dark crime thriller Ozark.

Better Call Saul, The Crown, The Handmaid’s Tale, Killing Eve, The Mandalorian, and Stranger Things were also nominated in the category.

Leading contender: HBO’s Watchmen, a superhero tale that tackled racism in America, stars Regina King. It received 26 nominations

Mazel tov: Emmy favourite The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel got a crowd-pleasing 20 nominations

Cheers! HBO’s flagship drama got a very wealthy 18 nominations

Hard-hitting: Both Laura Linney and Jason Bateman were nominated for the respective roles in the hit Netflix drama Ozark, and the show got a high of 18 nominations (tied with Succession)

On the comedy side, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel – Amazon’s story of a 1950s housewife-turned-stand-up comic – was nominated for outstanding comedy series, along with offbeat hit Schitt’s Creek, which just wrapped its six-season run.

Catherine O’Hara has been nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Moira Rose.

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Dead To Me, The Good Place, Insecure, The Kominsky Method and What We Do In The Shadows also received nods.

Will she kill again? Jodie Comer has been nominated once more for her role in Killing Eve (pictured left with the Best Actress trophy from last year’s Emmy Awards)

Dead funny: Christina Applegate and co-star Linda Cardellii will compete against one another in the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series category

In the limited series race, HBO’s Watchmen, a superhero tale that tackled racism in America, was nominated, along with Little Fires Everywhere, Mrs. America, Unbelievable and Unorthodox.

The nominees for drama series actress are: Jennifer Aniston, The Morning Show; Olivia Colman, The Crown; Jodie Comer, Killing Eve; Laura Linney, Ozark; Sandra Oh, Killing Eve; Zendaya, Euphoria.

Friends star Aniston has received high praise for her performance as Alexy Levy in her TV news drama, and already took home the Female Actor in a Drama Series Award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards earlier this year in January.

However, her co-star Reese Witherspoon did not receive a nomination, nor did she get a nod for her role in Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere.

Can she do it again? Jennifer Aniston won big this year already at the SAG Awards for her performance as Alex Levy in Apple TV’s The Morning Show

Fiery performance: Kerry Washington has been nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie, for Little Fires Everywhere

Funny girl: Issa Rae has bagged a nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in her HBO show Insecure

Outstanding: Shira Haas has been rightly recognized for her role as Esty in Unorthordox, in the category Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie

Meanwhile, Sandra Oh’s nod marked her third straight Lead Actress Emmy Nomination. She became the first woman of Asian descent to be nominated in a lead actress category.

Her co-star Jodie Comer won last year’s Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, and is nominated again this year.

Shira Haas has been rightly recognized for her role as Esty in Unorthordox, in the category Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie.

Shantay, you stay: RuPaul’s Drag Race has once again been nominated for Outstanding Competition Program, and has won the award for the last two years

Comedy icons: Both Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara have been nominated for their work in Schitt’s Creek which finished its run recently after six seasons

The Israeli actress missed out at the German Television Awards where she was nominated for Best Actress, for her role that was inspired by Deborah Feldman’s 2012 autobiography, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots.

The nominees for drama series actor are: Jason Bateman, Ozark; Sterling K. Brown, This is Us; Billy Porter, Pose; Jeremy Strong, Succession; Brian Cox, Succession; Steve Carell, The Morning Show.

Porter won last year for his role as Pray Tell, emcee of the balls in New York, in the FX show Pose.

Objection! Bob Odenkirk, who plays Saul Goodman, on the hit show Better Call Saul, was snubbed in the drama series category, prompting an outcry from fans

Historic: Billy Porter won last year for his role as Pray Tell, emcee of the balls in New York, in the FX show Pose

Noticeably absent from this list was Bob Odenkirk, who plays Saul Goodman, on the hit show Better Call Saul, which prompted an outcry from fans on Twitter following the news.

The nominees for lead actor in a comedy series are: Anthony Anderson, black-ish; Don Cheadle, Black Monday; Ted Danson, The Good Place; Michael Douglas, The Kominsky Method; Eugene Levy, Schitt’s Creek; Ramy Youssef, Ramy.

The Good Place received an impressive six nomination in total for its final season, after being overlooked in previous years.

The nominees for lead actress in a comedy series are: Christina Applegate, Dead to Me; Rachel Brosnahan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel; Linda Cardellini, Dead to Me; Catherine O’Hara, Schit’s Creek; Issa Rae, Insecure; Tracee Ellis Ross, black-ish.

Getting a look in: Oscar-winner Olivia Colman has been nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for The Crown

This is the first year that reality series The Amazing Race did not get nominated in the reality competition program category, previously being nominated every year since it first started in 2003, and has won 10 awards.

However, CBS postponed the show’s 32nd season due to the coronavirus, meaning it was not eligible this year. Instead, the category this year includes The Masked Singer, Nailed It!, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Top Chef, and The Voice.

RuPaul’s hit show has won the last two years in the Competition Program category, but would need to win eight times more in a bid to break the current record held by The Amazing Race.

Unusual times: The 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards nomination ceremony is taking place at a turbulent time for the industry, which has been hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak that derailed the TV calendar

A high energy Jones kicked off the announcement Tuesday morning by appearing on a virtual set and joking that she was told there would be many others on set to announce the nominees and that she was locked in a studio with only a camerman.

The ceremony is taking place at a turbulent time for the industry, which has been hit hard by the virus outbreak that derailed the TV calendar and prevented some shows from being considered for this year’s awards.

Still, the Television Academy’s 24,000 members were given a record number of entries to sift through this year, and presumably had plenty of free time to watch TV while cooped up at home due to the coronavirus lockdown.

72nd Primetime Emmy Awards: All the major nominations

The 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards nominations honor the best and brightest in television. Here’s a list of all the major categories…

Outstanding Drama Series

Better Call Saul, AMC

The Crown, Netflix

The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu

Killing Eve, BBC America

The Mandalorian, Disney+

Ozark, Netflix

Stranger Things, Netflix

Succession, HBO

Ozark, Netflix

The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series

Jennifer Aniston, The Morning Show

Olivia Colman, The Crown

Jodie Comer, Killing Eve

Laura Linney, Ozark

Sandra Oh, Killing Eve

Zendaya, Euphoria

Jennifer Aniston, The Morning Show

Zendaya, Euphoria

Olivia Colman, The Crown

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series

Jason Bateman, Ozark

Sterling K. Brown, This Is Us

Steve Carell, The Morning Show

Brian Cox, Succession

Billy Porter, Pose

Jeremy Strong, Succession

Jason Bateman, Ozark

Jeremy Strong, Succession

Sterling K. Brown, This Is Us

Outstanding Comedy Series

Curb Your Enthusiasm, HBO

Dead To Me, Netflix

The Good Place, NBC

Insecure, HBO

The Kominsky Method, Netflix

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Amazon

Schitt’s Creek, Pop

What We Do In The Shadows, FX

The Good Place, NBC

Curb Your Enthusiasm, HBO

What We Do In The Shadows, FX

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series

Christina Applegate, Dead to Me

Rachel Brosnahan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Linda Cardellini, Dead to Me

Catherine O’Hara, Schitt’s Creek

Issa Rae, Insecure

Tracy Ellis Ross, Black-ish

Linda Cardellini, Dead to Me

Rachel Brosnahan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Issa Rae, Insecure

Outstanding Lead Actor in Comedy Series

Anthony Anderson, Black-ish

Don Cheadle, Black Monday

Ted Danson, The Good Place

Michael Douglas, The Kominsky Meathod

Eugene Levy, Schitt’s Creek

Ramy Youssef, Ramy

Anthony Anderson, Black-ish

Eugene Levy, Schitt’s Creek

Ramy Youssef, Ramy

Outstanding Competition Program

The Masked Singer

Nailed It!

RuPaul’s Drag Race

Top Chef

The Voice

The Masked Singer

Top Chef

The Voice

Outstanding Variety Talk Series

The Daily Show With Trevor Noah

Full Frontal With Samantha Bee

Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver

The Daily Show With Trevor Noah

Full Frontal With Samantha Bee

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie

Jeremy Irons, Watchmen

Hugh Jackman, Bad Education

Paul Mescal, Normal People

Jeremy Pope, Hollywood

Mark Ruffalo, I Know This Much Is True

Paul Mescal, Normal People

Hugh Jackman, Bad Education

Mark Ruffalo, I Know This Much Is True

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie

Cate Blanchett, Mrs. America

Shira Haas, Unorthodox

Regina King, Watchmen

Octavia Spencer, Self Made

Kerry Washington, Little Fires Everywhere

Cate Blanchett, Mrs. America

Regina King, Watchmen

Kerry Washington, Little Fires Everywhere

Outstanding Limited Series

Little Fires Everywhere, Hulu

Mrs. America, FX on Hulu

Unbelievable, Netflix

Unorthodox, Netflix

Watchmen, HBO

Unorthodox, Netflix

Little Fires Everywhere, Hulu

Unbelievable, Netflix

Stars react to their 2020 Emmy nominations

The 72nd annual Emmy nominations were announced on Tuesday morning, and stars were quick to react to their good news.

Rachel Brosnahan – The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

‘Wow. Grateful doesn’t begin to cover it for the continued love for so many different parts of our Maisel TV family. The company we get to keep across these categories is insane. Thank you. This is wind in our sails while we’re all missing each other like crazy. We’ll be getting marvelously wasted on zoom tonight in your honor.’

Happy for her nod: Rachel Brosnahan as the titular Mrs Maisel

Kerry Washington – Little Fires Everywhere

‘To be recognized in this way this morning is such an honor – but to be able to share it with my partner Pilar Savone and our Simpson Street family makes it even more meaningful. The experiences we’ve been able to have this year were beyond our wildest dreams: working with the legendary Norman Lear and Jimmy Kimmel to bring iconic shows from the 70s to new audiences with Live In Front of a Studio Audience, to adapting American Son, a Broadway play about Black lives and police violence to Netflix, to bringing Celeste Ng’s beautiful novel Little Fires Everywhere to life with my incredible friends Reese Witherspoon, Lauren Neustadter and Liz Tigelar.’

Thanks: Kerry Washington was nominated for her work in Little Fires Everywhere

Helena Bonham Carter – The Crown

‘I am thrilled to receive an Emmy nomination. Margaret was a gift of a part and was a dream job. This is icing on the most full fat delicious cake I’ve ever eaten. Also given these past few months I have become ever more grateful to my television. It has been my window to the world. And I’m so thankful to the parts that television are now offering to women. We all know middle age is when we get interesting and it’s so great that stories are being made where we are invited to lead rather than retire to being the mother or grandmother in the background….women of all ages and color have never had it better Thank you Telly!’

Happy with her success: Helena Bonham Carter in The Crown

Cate Blanchett – Mrs. America

‘My sincerest thanks to the Television Academy for recognizing Mrs. America, a series and story that is not only meaningful to me but deeply resonant to the times in which we live–times we hoped to illuminate by examining our past. It has been an extraordinary honor to collaborate with such brilliant minds as John Landgraf and Gina Balian at FX and my fellow Executive Producers, Stacey Sher, Coco Francini, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, and Dahvi Waller. I am equally indebted to our incredible cast and crew. In a year filled with groundbreaking television storytelling and performances, it is humbling to be recognized.’

Thrilled: Cate Blanchett was nominated for her work in Mrs. America

Hugh Jackman – Bad Education

‘I’m humbled by the nominations for both me and the film and excited to be named with such a talented group of actors. My immense appreciation goes out to all those who believed in ‘Bad Education’ – especially the hardworking team at HBO.’

Happy man: Jackman, who was nominated for outstanding lead actor in a limited series

Mark Ruffalo – I Know This Much Is True

‘Although this Emmy nomination comes with enormous gratitude, it would be disingenuous of me to say that it isn’t bittersweet. ‘I am nothing in #IKnowThisMuchIsTrue without Derek Cianfrance who has made a piece of work that will stand the test of time.’

Michael Douglas – The Komisky Method

The actor got a shout out by his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones: ‘Some good news! My husbands shirt matches his location!!!! Oh. And he was nominated for an Emmy for best actor and producer for #thekominskymethod Yay!!!! So proud of you my love,’

Proud wife: Michael Douglas, who was nominated for The Komisky Method

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