thepointoftheneedle

[thepointoftheneedle]

I watched the finale even though I’ve been disconnected from the show for years. It’s not my imagination is it? They were going for The Notebook weren’t they?

#riverdale #weird choice but OK

[thepointoftheneedle]

Lockwood and Co

Well, I watched the show because I'd enjoyed the books ages ago. For some reason the show made me want to write fiction which I haven't done for an age. Will I continue it? No clue. Maybe...? It's canon after The Empty Grave but I've tried to avoid major spoilers for anyone who has only seen the tv show and hasn't read the books. Anyway, here's the prologue in case anyone else enjoyed the silly little ghost-hunting show.

Lockwood stalked into the kitchen and turned on the gas under the kettle. As he reached for the Earl Grey his elbow nudged the charred skull that sat on the kitchen worktop and he smiled wryly at the incongruous domestic arrangements in place in Portland Row.  “Alas, poor Skull,” he murmured. “People always misquote that line you know, Skull.  ‘Alas poor Yorick, I knew him Horatio,’ not ‘I knew him well.’  Idiots.”

He dropped a teabag into a mug and leaned back against the counter, waiting for the whistle of the kettle.  It wasn’t worth making a pot; he was alone in the house.  Holly was at home, packing.  George was at the embassy poring over maps of the Paris Catacombs with the representative of the French Ministère des Evénements Paranormaux.  Lucy was with Barnes at the passport office in Petit France. If Barnes couldn’t pull some strings, that would be as close as she’d get to France.  Lockwood and Co. would have to go without her.  It didn’t bear thinking about.

“We’ve got a lot in common you know Skull,” he said as the kettle began to sing.  He knew he wouldn’t get a response.  The Skull had made the ultimate sacrifice for them, given up his life… afterlife… whatever the hell it had had, to save them at the showdown at Fittes House.  Well, to save Lucy really. He’d just been an unintended beneficiary of the Skull’s heroism.  He poured the boiling water into the mug and set the kettle down. He picked up the blackened bone, stared into its ruined sockets. “We were both prepared to die for her.  I think I’m a little bit jealous that you got to do it.”

Still holding the skull, Lockwood sat down at the table, waiting for his tea to brew.  Lucy would have been mashing the bag against the side of the mug with a teaspoon, or a fork, or whatever came to hand like an absolute savage.  He preferred to wait, to let the scent of bergamot pervade the warm kitchen on the steam rising from the mug. “Ever been to Paris, Skull?” he asked.  “My parents went there on honeymoon.  They had a guidebook. It must be in the library somewhere.  Art galleries and parks and cafes on the Rive Gauche.  I think they stayed in a grand hotel near the Luxembourg Gardens.”  He chuckled but there was no mirth in it. “That’s what she should have of course.  She should be going to Paris with someone who can give her all that, order escargot in garlic at a fancy restaurant just to see her face when she realises what it is, walk hand in hand with her through the Tuilleries, kiss her breath away in front of one of those huge water lily paintings that make you feel like you’re floating. All that romantic stuff.  Instead, she gets me, a rapier and a guaranteed brush with death. Even you’d do better than that wouldn’t you, Skull? Give her candles and rose petals on the carpet and a little chocolate in gold paper on her pillow.   I mean you couldn’t do much else I suppose, couldn’t follow through on any of it but then, I don’t do that either, do I?  Never even kissed her. I’m more of a ghost than you ever were, trapped behind silver glass, no idea how to get out.”

The skull said nothing.  Lockwood shook his head, appalled by his own mawkish foolishness.  He stood, snatched up his mug, grasped a corner of the scalding teabag and flicked it across the kitchen into the bin while heading out of the room. Behind him, on the thinking cloth, the skull flickered softly with a greenish flame.

#lockwood and co #lucy carlyle #anthony lockwood #locklyle #lockwood and co fanfiction

[thepointoftheneedle]

Realistically, he would be a most unsuitable beau. At Thanksgiving his collar was clean but well worn and rather frayed. When he walks there is a slight rustling which convinces me that he uses newspaper to cover the holes in his boots. His office is in a most unfashionable part of the city and I am almost sure that he sleeps there. A corner of some kind of horse blanket protruded from a cabinet when I first called in order to commission his services. And yet … his eyes are compassionate and intelligent, a rare combination. His hair is as dark and shiny as a jet brooch. His voice is low and masculine, his fingers tapered and artistic. He is, in all things, exactly as a man should be, gentle but with steel behind the softness, clever but humble, determined but sensitive and, of course, he is wonderfully handsome. Perhaps, above all else, I am attracted by the way in which he asked for my observations before offering his own and when I began to explain my concerns he listened with great attention, even making notes. To be heard by a man is, surprisingly, quite thrilling. I kept looking into his eyes and it was only with the greatest difficulty that I was able to wrest away my gaze.

— The Case of the Bandaged Man by @thepointoftheneedle (submitted by @bughead-bones)

#oh hey... that’s me! #thank you for the mention #the case of the bandaged man #bughead fan fiction

[thepointoftheneedle]

“My dearest sister, now be serious. I want to talk very seriously. Let me know every thing that I am to know, without delay. Will you tell me how long you have loved him?”

“It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.”

#Chatsworth #probably Pemberley #shoot every day #my photography #landscape photography #more from my literary travels #Derbyshire #Jane Austen #Pride and Prejudice

[thepointoftheneedle]

A walk up to Top Withens, generally supposed to have inspired the setting of Wuthering Heights

#my photgraphy #shoot every day #landscape photography #Yorkshire #Wuthering Heights

[thepointoftheneedle]

In the hottest weather the forest is a sanctuary.

#landscape photography #shoot every day #my photography #a walk by (in) the river

[thepointoftheneedle]

Persuasion 2022 happened and the Guardian is not having it

And this is the third review on the Guardian eviscerating that movie lol

#persuasion #unwatchable #Anne Elliot is not a smirker

[thepointoftheneedle]

"Buck moon" July 13 2022

#my photgraphy #shoot every day #landscape photography

[thepointoftheneedle]

#uk politics #boris johnson #larry the cat

[thepointoftheneedle]

"Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power." George Bernard Shaw

#g.b. shaw #political corruption

[thepointoftheneedle]

WIP Wednesday

She absolutely wouldn’t open her eyes.  It was Sunday and she was entitled to stay in bed until noon if she wanted, that way she could avoid the morning retching completely unless she needed to pee —which she did.  Anyway, whatever the hell was making that noise was certainly none of her concern.  She dug her fingers into Jug’s side, groaned “Make it stop,” and pulled a pillow over her head.  There was some incoherent grumbling, some clattering from the nightstand as he felt blindly for his glasses and an “Oomph,” sound as the bed dipped and then righted itself. She smiled, the pillow still smooched over her face.  They really were an old married couple, her ankles were swollen like a couple of grapefruit, he couldn’t see worth a damn and said oomph when he stood, but they were getting old together so it was fine.

She must have drifted back to sleep but she was startled awake and upright when she heard him yell.  His voice sounded wrong, too loud, scared.  “What the fuck?” he yelled.  “Betty?”

She was beside him faster than she would have believed possible given her current dispute with her centre of gravity. She reached him, standing pale and terrified by the apartment door, and promptly vomited over their visitor’s shoes. She could blame morning sickness but really it was shock.  For a moment she’d wondered why a mirror had been placed outside her door but the Betty Cooper who would shortly be wiping puke from her sensible navy blue pumps was decidedly not eight months pregnant. 

#wip wednesday #bughead fan fic #bugheadfanfictionawards #the as yet unnamed multiverse story

[thepointoftheneedle]

Local Girls (chapter 2)

Betty thinks if she’s going to have a reputation, she might as well earn it. She might as well truly deserve it.

She just needs a willing candidate. The right willing candidate.

.

Betty’s life has taken an unexpected deviation from her expectations. She attempts to regain some semblance of control.

chapter 2: I was much further out than you thought

(jump back to chapter 1)

#bugheadfanfictionawards #fic recs #excited to read

[thepointoftheneedle]

Work in Progress Wednesday

I have so many things I should be doing and other stories that remain shamefully unfinished- but this is pounding on my skull demanding to be written...here's a glimpse.

Probabilities.  Science is all about probabilities.  If she’d had to guess she would have said that the odds on her seeing Jughead Jones again were vanishingly small… infinitesimal.  Nothing’s impossible of course because —given long enough —anything that can happen, will happen, but she’d look for snow in August and a captured Sasquatch before she'd expect to lay eyes on him again. And until recently she’d been pretty convinced that her research was at a career-destroying dead end until , against all the odds, to her slack-jawed amazement, she’d actually had the breakthrough the world needed. And on top of that, here was Mr FPJones III, in a suit. The odds were staggering but she knew that wildly unlikely things do happen.  Take the gravitational constant for example. If the force of gravity were stronger by one part in 10 thousand, billion, billion, billion our universe would not be capable of supporting life — and yet, as if it were part of some design, the force of gravity lies exactly within the hair’s breadth range that allows for the existence of begonias and bumble bees, burgers and Beloved, blessings and betrayals. 

#wip wednesday #bughead #bughead fanfiction #bughead fanfic

[thepointoftheneedle]

Local Girls (chapter 1)

Betty thinks if she’s going to have a reputation, she might as well earn it. She might as well truly deserve it.

She just needs a willing candidate. The right willing candidate.

.

Betty’s life has taken an unexpected deviation from her expectations. She attempts to regain some semblance of control.

chapter 1: There is no sinner like a young saint

#bughead fan fiction #bughead fanfic

[thepointoftheneedle]

Sometimes Betty felt all wrong, like she was acting a part, pretending to be the circular block that fitted the space that had been chiselled out for her before she even existed. It meant that she had to pull in her rough edges, the parts of her that didn’t belong in that gap. She’d been doing it for so long that she would have imagined that those awkward edges would have been snapped off and shredded away away by being slotted back into her place so many times, but it didn’t ever happen. She worried sometimes that her roughness would break the whole structure apart, shatter her world leaving her nowhere else to go, so she drew herself in tight, tried to fit, pretended to be comfortable, when all the time she was screaming inside. Now, in the arms of this boy, she had found the space that fitted exactly who she really was. She sighed in relief.

— Game Over by @thepointoftheneedle (submitted by @bughead-bones)

#bughead fanfiction #bughead quotes #thank you for the mention

[thepointoftheneedle]

Playlist Tag Game

You can usually tell a lot about a person by the type of music they listen to. Put your favourite playlist on shuffle and list the first 10 songs then tag 10 people. No skipping! 😊

I was tagged by the always lovely Jandy (@jandjsalmon). I look at this list and even I wonder if I'm ok...I am btw even though this list seems to suggest otherwise! I’m out of the loop a little (“publish or perish” no longer seems like quite such a clear cut choice...) so I’ve no clue who has done this already.

Elliott Smith -Rose Parade

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy- I See A Darkness

The Clash- Hate and War

The Mountain Goats- Palmcorder Yajna

Tuung- Sashimi

The Black Ghosts- Repetition Kills You

The Mountain Goats- Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod

The Shins- Phantom Limb

Bibio- A Tout à l'Heure

Jeff Rosenstock- I Did Something Weird Last Night

Tagging: @lurker-no-more @raymondebidochonlifechoices @daphnesvieira @sullypants @stonerbughead @stillhidden @heavy-lies-the-crown

#tag game #music

[thepointoftheneedle]

Baudelaire says of cities that they are "where in broad day the spectre tugs your sleeve."

#shoot every day #my photography #urban landscape