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traincat · 3 years

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I’ve been trying to piece together a few things from your Twitter and Tumblr posts alike and still can’t make heads or tales of things, so would you mind helping out a FF & spideytorch noob? 1) what is currently happening with Johnny in the comics? (I’ve fallen head over heels for this guy, largely all your doing) 2) when’s the last time he and Peter have interacted, canon wise? (And do you think upcoming interactions are likely?) 3) your thoughts on if they’ll have him come out in the near future? (has that ‘biggest change to the fantastic four’ teaser come to pass yet?) Love all your content, thank you!

I'd say no problem but then I started thinking about this current run again and got a headache. But yes, I can do that to save you from reading it, because it is very largely not good.

So I don't think it's unfair to just flat out say the current Fantastic Four run is not very good, largely due to writer Dan Slott's efforts. Slott was previously on Amazing Spider-Man for 10 years, to mixed opinions, but a large portion of Spider-Man fandom, myself included, blames him near singlehandedly for the decline in quality of Spider-Man books over those ten years. I will say, in the interest of fairness, that Slott as a writer has an incredible fondness for the Spider-Man/Human Torch relationship, and that a lot of the recent teamups and interactions between them have been written or co-written by him. So it's all not all negative here. But in general, I personally find Slott's more recent comics (the last seven-ish years especially) to be badly plotted out, messily characterized disasters that feature characters written with all the emotion of a cardboard cutout. That's me putting it nicely.

To explain this fully, you have to understand the position Fantastic Four comics were in from the years 2015 through 2018, both in the fictional 616 universe and in the real publishing world. Following the 2015 Secret Wars event (great if you want some Johnny angst in the background of your plot), the Fantastic Four were disbanded -- Reed, Sue, and their many biological and found family children were presumed dead but in reality were remaking the multiverse, unable, for a reason that was never clearly defined, to reach home. Ben and Johnny were left on Earth. They had an unspecified falling out, likely due to Reed and Sue's absence, and went their separate ways -- Ben joined the Guardians of the Galaxy and went to space. Johnny was featured on both Inhumans and Avengers books. What's notable about this period is that it's the first time since 1961 that there was no Fantastic Four book being published by Marvel. Now the real world reason behind this is both complicated and extremely petty: Marvel really wanted the Fantastic Four film rights. Marvel denied this explanation at the time, stating that the reason was sales motivated, but it was a thoroughly flimsy excuse and Jonathan Hickman, writer of 2015's Secret Wars and overseer of the current X-Men plot, gave an interview saying the decision was film rights motivated. This decision kept the Fantastic Four books off the shelves for three years, up until the Disney-Fox merger, which secured the X-Men and Fantastic Four rights for Disney's Marvel Studios. Marvel then announced that the Fantastic Four book would be returning. So that's a little bit of background as to the precarious place the Fantastic Four currently occupy in the Marvel universe -- it's worth noting that this year is their 60th anniversary, and Marvel has done very little for it. Compare this to the X-Men, whose film rights Marvel also obtained during the Disney-Fox merger, and whose books are currently dominating the publishing lineup. The Fantastic Four definitely occupy an unpopular position, one Marvel themselves is at least partially responsible for forcing them into.

But to move back into the actual content of the book -- the readjustment period Slott wrote reintroducing the Fantastic Four into the Marvel universe can be described as clumsy, at best. It's never fully explained why Reed, Sue, and the kids couldn't return to Earth, something that was explored in Chip Zdarsky's 2017 Marvel Two-in-One, which featured Ben, Johnny, and Doom on a multiversal roadtrip to try and find their family and which I on the whole recommend, despite it having an awkward ending due to being cut short by Slott's announced Fantastic Four main title.

(Marvel Two-in-One 2017 #4)

Instead, the Fantastic Four return to a Marvel universe a little different than how they left it, with the Baxter Building -- formerly the offices of Parker Industries, the company Doc Ock started in Peter's body during Superior Spider-Man that Peter inherited after his defeat and then lost spectacularly when he trashed his own company to fight nazis (good for him) -- occupied by a different fantastic foursome in a plot that goes nowhere and does nothing. This is somewhat emblematic of the early days of Slott's run -- he introduces ideas that fail to go anywhere, including Johnny's rekindled relationship with his other best friend and former college roommate, Wyatt Wingfoot, who he was seen being very cuddly with in the early issues.

(FF 2018 #1) A small group of Fantastic Four fans have argued for a while that if Marvel was to have Johnny come out, a relationship with Wyatt would feel very natural -- they're already close, with Wyatt being an important Fantastic Four supporting character since the '60s. I have some further analysis here on the conspiracy theory that Johnny and Wyatt were supposed to be in relationship at the beginning of this run but that that plot was, for whatever reason, nixed. I don't know that I entirely believe this theory, for the record -- but I do think the pieces line up remarkably well.

Anyway, that didn't/hasn't yet happened, obviously. Slott instead for the most part put Johnny on the back burner for the beginning of his run, up until the Spyre arc, which I have reason to believe is the main story he pitched that he credits with securing him the Fantastic Four title. The Spyre arc suggests that the Fantastic Four's failed space exploration during which they got their powers wasn't just to beat the commies to the moon, as Lee and Kirby envisioned (simpler days), but to reach a specific planet outside of our galaxy. When the team sets out to conquer this mission, they arrive at the planet, but are quickly captured. The planet, they find out, operates like a soulmate AU -- everyone has a fated person that they are matched to via a gold armband. Reed and Sue are soulmates (and Ben is confined to an underground subterranean with the other monsters, because this is a Fantastic Four comic) while it's discovered! Shocker! That Johnny is actually the soulmate of the one the planet's inhabitants, a winged woman named Sky, with the suggestion that this is both why Johnny's previous relationships have never worked and why he loves space exploration -- he was just trying to get to his Soulmate TM.

(FF 2018 #15) "What's going on here? Where are my clothes?" As you can see, this didn't start off super great, with Johnny being separated from his family, stripped naked, and put in Sky's bed with a soulmate armband slapped on him. Did I mention they're only removable if your soulmate takes it off for you? And that Sky has consistently refused despite Johnny asking her to? Yeah. It's bad. (I think it's important to note Johnny's long history as a victim of assault plays into this narrative, whether or not Slott is personally holding that in mind while writing, which I don't believe he is. cw in the linked post for discussions of sexual assault.) There's an additional issue here in that Slott has a history of problematic writing regarding women of color, featuring characters he's created to act as love interests being oversexualized, infantilized, villainized, or some mix of all three, with two examples of this phenomena being Cindy Moon and Lian Tang, both of whom he introduced in quick succession in Amazing Spider-Man. Slott certainly didn't have to write Sky as manipulative or controlling towards Johnny, but that's what he chose to do, and that factors into the bigger picture of unfortunate themes in his writing.

Sky returns to Earth with the Fantastic Four despite Johnny appearing unenthused about the idea and initially generally reluctant to interact with her. Apparently they went on a few dates after this and kind of made up. I don't know because I stopped reading for about ten issues in there but I feel confident I missed very little. It's hard to talk about the Sky plot without referencing Johnny's previous interactions with a character named Lyja, a Skrull whose relationship to Johnny I have a long breakdown of here. It's doubly hard, because Lyja actually showed back up in Fantastic Four during this plot. Lyja's modus operandi has remained consistent throughout almost all of her appearances, which I guess makes sense, because she literally has no storylines that do not involve her being obsessed with Johnny, and this recent story isn't any different: Lyja shows up, Lyja disguises herself as another woman in Johnny's life to get close to Johnny, Lyja gets caught and claims it was all fine because she did it for love. This time she disguised herself as Sky.

(FF 2018 #32) Not gonna lie, kind of proud of him for this one. That's one of my problems with Slott -- very occasionally, he busts out good moments, only to undermine them with the rest of his narrative.

In the same issue, Alicia Masters, the first woman Lyja impersonated in order to get close to Johnny, uses her supervillain stepfather's radioactive clay to control Lyja's mind and send her back to space, and I do think she utilized girl power when she did this. Johnny, left reeling after Lyja's latest attempts to trick him into a relationship, ends this issue by sleeping with Victorious, Dr. Doom's right hand woman.

I know she pegged him. I know it. This scene was a little controversial in Johnny fandom, because a lot of people viewed it as Johnny cheating on Sky and thought that that action was out of character for Johnny. I'm personally of a little different opinion, which is that regardless of whether or not you view Johnny and Sky in a committed enough relationship that Johnny's tryst would count as infidelity when all Johnny and Sky are bound by are magic plot soulmate bracelets, I think Lyja's involvement changes things significantly when it comes to Johnny's characterization. All of Johnny's "playboy" periods, if we can call them that, coincide directly with Lyja having been in and then left his life again, which I think makes a certain amount of sense -- it's Johnny trying to wrest control back after a situation where he had none. None of this is explicitly canon, I have to note, but sometimes in comics you have to do the work yourself. So I think this is a case of something being accidentally extremely in character that Slott accidentally stumbled into because he had these love triangles in mind, not because he put a lot of thought into it.

Speaking of love triangles! Johnny sleeping with Victorious gets more complicated when Dr. Doom announces his intent to marry Victorious -- not because he has any romantic interest in her (this engagement caused a lot of uproar in Fantastic Four because Victorious had been previously referred to as being like Doom's adopted daughter) but in order to install her as Latverian regent in his absence. I'm not going to lie, I love a political wedding. Victorious, for some reason, thinks Doom will be deeply upset that she slept with some closeted blond twink and the member of the Fantastic Four he views least as an enemy and more as an annoyance. Johnny, who Sky is currently not talking to because she "felt" him sleeping with Victorious through their magic plot soulmate bracelets, also feels nervous about Doom finding out about this, which I guess is slightly more valid. Anyway, for some completely ridiculous reason, Victorious decides the best time to tell Doom about this little indiscretion is when they're standing at the altar, which coincidentally the Fantastic Four are also standing at, because Doom asked Reed to be his best man in a not at all homoerotic little setup involving midnight swordfighting and Reed slipping Doom's emerald ring onto his own finger. Sorry to sidetrack into DoomReed territory here but it's just like. It's just a lot.

(FF 2018 #33) Also, Ben walked the bride down the aisle. :,) Look at his gigantic hand.

Anyway then Doom decides he's going to kill everyone in a completely reasonable and not at all overblown reaction to Johnny and Zora having what was most likely both disappointing for Zora and weepy for Johnny sex. And that brings us up to where Fantastic Four comics left us yesterday -- in answer to your "big change" question, that's most likely coming up in the next issue, so it hasn't come to pass yet.

Having gotten all that out of the way -- the last time Johnny and Peter interacted canon-wise was in the recent Empyre Fallout Fantastic Four, at the end of the Empyre event:

It was cute! Slott does right good interactions between them. This is possibly the Stockholm Syndrome talking. I don't know if more interactions are likely imminent -- the Empyre event was fairly recent. On the other hand, Slott does like writing interactions between them. So I'd give it about a 50/50 shot. I was skimming the letter page in the latest issue and someone wrote in asking if Peter was likely to appear in the pages of Fantastic Four again any time soon, so there is definitely a demand.

As for Johnny coming out -- I don't know. It's not a call I feel comfortable making at this moment, which I guess means I wouldn't bet money on it. I'd like to say yes, especially because I think Slott set up, whether that was his intention or more likely not, several good places in his run where Johnny could have come out. The beginning, when he's implied to be living with Wyatt again and where he and Wyatt are paralleled against Ben and Alicia. Ben's bachelor party, where Johnny laments not finding the right person -- specifically person and not woman -- and where Ben tells him to "be brave, Johnny Storm." And the soulmate planet plot, where I think could have had a very different and much better ending if Johnny had told Sky that she couldn't be his romantic soulmate, because he knows he wants to be with a man. But those are just places that I think would have made good opportunities for a coming out story. Instead, Johnny's been involved (dubiously) with three different women over the space of the last 10 issues, which is more heterosexuality at one time than he's been confronted with in the last 60 years. So my thoughts are still that it's going to happen eventually, but quite possibly not anytime soon.

Hope that helps! And that my incredibly long answer about what's currently going on with Johnny in comics sheds some light on things!

#johnny storm #traincat talks comics #*replies #long post/#wednesday spoilers

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: The Last of the Clan McDuck! Review “It Was Worth THE Dime”

This is one of my faviorite comic book stories of all time. Given i’m a massive comics nerd, for both books and strips, that is the highest praise I can give this wonderful, epic, beautifully drawn and deeply emotoinal story. I first discovered it in the local library that had the second volume, and found the rest online at a now long dead fan site. And while it took me longer than I care to admit to really dig into Duck Comics, and even now i’ve only scratched the surface, I can say without a doubt this story is the reason I’m so deeply attached to Scrooge as a character, and that I was excited as I was for Ducktales 2017. This comic showed me just what Scrooge McDuck should be at his core as a character, and showed me what a wonderful character that is. So with all that glowing praise as you can guess i’ve been wanting to cover this for years, and even considered though back when I was more primarily a comic book reviewer last year. Any time i’ve reviewed stuff before now, i’ve considered it, and with Scrooge’s Sisters Hortense and Matilda presumably and definitely debuting on Ducktales soon, and it’s about damn time, the timing could not be better or clearer to dig into this utter triumph. But before we can take a look at the story itself we naturally have to take a look at the man behind it: Writer and Artist Don Rosa. Don Rosa is easily one of the best Duck Comics writer out there, seen by many as only second to his own faviorite duck comics writer and God of Ducks, Carl Barks. For those 1 of you who do not know, Barks was the man who created pretty much everything in the duck universe comics wise and a bit in animation too: He created Daisy, Scrooge, Gladstone, Magica, The Beagle Boys, The Junior Woodchucks, Gyro, Little Bulb, Glomgold, Rockerduck, and the list goes on. While he didn’t make EVERY duck, he made so many that it’d be impossible to imagine either version of Ducktales being possible without him. So of course Rosa was a fan and while he took up the family buisness, he was also an artist and duck comics fanboy on the side. So when, even if it meant a paycut, the opportunity to actually write and draw them came up, he lept at it and thus became one of their publishers go to guys, even if said publisher published the stories overseas where the Duck Comics are far more popular and still going to this day, and ironically where most duck comics printed nowadays get their stories from. Rosa was known for his meticous historical research and gorgeous art that he took his time drawing to get just perfect and showed on the page. The man has easily some of hte best and most detailed duck art around and I still haven’t found a duck artist that can match him.. and if you have or found one close i’d genuinely love to see that. He is a genuinely talented, spirited guy who was sadly mistreated by disney and that, coupled with tragically failing eyesight, eventually ended his career. He’s still around and I genuinely hope to meet him some day as he still does conventions. The man is not without fault: I don’t get his hatred of superhero comics, as while I get them overshadowing funnybooks and that around the time of his career they were in decline, but it’s just as unfair to write off Superhero comics as mindless. garbage as it is for people to write off the Duck Comics as “only for kids” and I genuinely wish he’d see that and see how the medium has evolved so much since then. I also grumble a bit as his refusal to allow anything besides barks into his bubble, and having to be forced to include fethry on the family tree, but that’s more personal preference. I like using as much material as you got. IT’s why i’ve wanted to, and hopefully will eventually get around to, write a sonic fanfic using bits of all the various universes that for legal, ken penders being an absolute waste of a human being, and sega being stupid reasons can’t be used anymore. I like taking everything in a franchise and putting it in a blender and it’s why I love the reboot. But there’s nothing wrong with taking things as is, not stepping on toes canon wise, but still being awesome. We’re just diffrent people and that’s okay. And a lot of his fanboy showing actually lead to REALLY good things: Goldie O’Gilt was a one off character, and while used ocasoinally overseas, didn’t really pick up as a character again until a combination of Ducktales 87 and Rosa’s work with her, as he always loved the character, and fleshing her out lead to her being used more, and gaining a sizeable fandom. He also gained the Cablleros an even bigger fandom by giving them two stories of their own, and fleshing them out a bit more. And this very comic is the peak of that, taking EVERY mention of scrooge’s past from various backstories to set up adventures, every tiny scrap, and to his credit going to both Barks Himself and various other Barks Experts Rosa was friends with to check his work, especially difficult given he likey had to find these stories in issue or pullt hem from disney archives, and complied it into one long epic that not only uses all this info effortlessly, but spins a compelling story that gives us a clear vision of what Scrooge should be, how he became the man he is, and how he lost himself only to find himself again with the help of three precocious boys and a cynical 30 something duck. So taint all bad is what i’m saying. As for how this got started, thankfully rosa himself provided the origin story for this project in the back of the volume of his works that contained the first 7 chapters of life and times, as well as detailed notes for every chapter. At the time Rosa was working for Egmont, the big european publisher who handles Disney’s much larger european comics market, hence why most of his stories appeared years earlier in Europe before debuting here. The american publisher at the time , and an old friend of his, called Rosa with an idea: A 12 issue Maxi-Series focusing on Scrooge’s history, since at the time they were all the rage.. and really even today mini series are still a viable market and many indie titles just have several minis instead of an ongoing. So it wasn’t a bad idea, Rosa just simply offered a tweak: He’d tell his publisher at Egmont about the idea, and let her get a crack team of writers and artists to do this proper, and thus Disney could publish it for free once it was done and for no extra cost. Rosa gave his publisher a fax detaling both the idea and the fact that it needed to be done right, given to the best person possible, and done with the greatest care. She agreed.. and naturally handed it to him, as he admits he hoped. She made the right call, a legend was born and here we are. One last bit before the read more and before I get to the first story itself at last: Since barks wrote a lot of side stories that fit into the canon, I COULD slot them in between chapters, but have instead chosen to review the original 12 part story as was, and do the various side stories and two epilogues, the utterly fantastic “Dream of a Life Time”, easiliy one of my faviorite comics ever, and the also really great “Letter From Home”, which will likely on some level be the basis for the upcoming at the time of this review “Battle for Castle McDuck!”, after completing the story. In other words i’m probably going to be at this for years. so join me under the read more won’t you as I begin the journey of a thousand miles with a single step as we look at the humble start of a legend.

We begin, after a fun short teaser with present Day scrooge saying his past is no one’s buisness only to get hit with an oh yeah?, with a scrap book title for the issue, something I want to bring up since while I got that’s what it was what I never got, and must’ve glanced over when I first read rosa’s notes when I got this copy, was that it isn’t SCROOGE’S scrap book, but his sister Matilda’s who dutifully and happily catologued her brother’s adventures. It’s a really sweet moment.. and something that will hit VERY hard when we reach Chapter 11. If you haven’t read this story or heard of it.. .that’s this story’s equilvent of “Last Crash of the Sunchaser” and clearly Frank and Matt drew from that story a bit for it, but we can get more into the parallels when we get there. A smaller but fun note is that Rosa had specific coin drawing templates, for different indentions and what not he used, and used them for the coins in these intro bits. Yes he admitted he has a problem and yes that’s damn impressive anyway.

It’s Scrooge’s 10th birthday, and his father Fergus has taken him up to see the family land, Dismal Downs to tell him of the mighty Clan McDuck and show him the ancestral lands, graveyards and Castle. He admits to having taken this long because the Clan McDuck currently lives in Glasgow so it’s kind of a long trip just to show your son “Hey look at the decay and rot that’s our ancestral homeland”. The Clan is on hard times, as a bad shipping deal, the backbone of a rather good barks story and I wont’ be interjecting for every barks reference as it’d get rather tiring though for what it’s worth Rosa provided tons of detailed footnotes in the back of each Fantagraphics collection, so good on him. Speaking of which though they do include 10 pages of Mc Duck family history that was supposed to open this story.. until Rosa’s editor wisely pointed out the story isn’t about them but scrooge and having read his roug draft, yeah.. there’s a good gag here and there, as well as “Dirty” Dingus McDuck, scrooge’s Grandpa and the reason Dewey is cursed with that middle name. Why anyone thought Dingus was a good name is beyond me, nor why Donald thought that was a good middle name back in 2009 is again, beyond me. Good on Don though for getting that past the censors. But yeah with no money they can’t buy the land back and they were scared off it years ago by a mystical ghost dog, the hound of the whiskervilles. There is treasure in the castle, Sir Quackly’s gold, but he accidently sealed himself into a wall while sealing his treasure in there. Their interrupted by the town assholes, the Whiskervilles who have been grazing sheep on the land and are naturally behind the hound, using the sound of it to scare off Fergus once they realize he’s a McDuck. Because apparently you can keep a Scooby Doo style hoax up for Centuries if you don’t have meddling kids around. Who knew. Back in Glasgow, we meet the rest of Scrooge’s family: His Uncle Jake, his sisters Matilda and Hortense, and his mother Downy. Jake hasn’t really been mentioned at all in Ducktales and I know next to nothing about him, which given I share a name with the guy you’d THINK I would. I mean I know a decent amount about this Jake.

But nothing about who the hell Jake McDuck is or why he lives with his brother and his family. Here, you guys watch the dancing Jake, i’m going to probably do that for hours after this review is done, i’m going to go sort this out. Okay one google and finding the Scrooge Mcduck wiki page on him, Jake shows up here likely because he was referenced in the story “A Christmas For Shacktown” and apparently borrowed from Scrooge and never paid it back. Otherwise.. there’s not a lot about him and unlike the rest of Scrooge’s family he really dosen’t do much that I can remember. Except like 2017 Scrooge, he apparently has become extremely long lived, as Scrooge and Donald STILL think he’s alive in the 1950′s.. and likely is STILL alive in some form in the Don Rosa stories, given his take place after Barks and thus in the 40′s and 50′s where Barks stories were set. Hence why unlike the Reboot, Scrooge isn’t inexpecilbly over 210. But Jake McDuck sure as heck is. Maybe this highlander is a highlander.. you know the movie and tv show type. Maybe someone cut off his head. That’s what i’m going with.

This does bring me to another point about this story: While Barks gave all of scrooge’s family their names, it’s where Rosa got them after all, it’s Rosa who really made them into characters. Fergus as a loving father ashamed his family legacy has fallen and wanting his son to do better than him, Downy as an equally loving wife and mother, Matilda as his sweet and caring sister and later her brother’s moral center, and Hortense.. well here she’s just a babbling baby but her character will become clear and glorious as we go. She is adorable here though and we do get some great bits with her. Getting back to the plot now i’ve made my points, Jake is riled up wanting to understandably kick the Whiskerville’s asses with Scrooge, who even as a sweet innocent ten year old still has the family temper already, agreeing.. but Downy gently shoots them out pointing that two middle aged-ish men and a 10-year old just aren’t enough to fight an army of them and while she doesn’t mention it the fight would just tire them out for work and accomplish nothing as while it is the McDuck’s land the combination of the hound and the lack of money to move back means it’s pointless. She also mentions their younger brother Pothole, who went to America. This will be important later.

Scrooge storms off and Fergus laments, in a scene that’s more painful the more I think about it, how his clan has fallen, with he and his brother lamenting their chances at glory are long gone.. but Fergus has hope his son can do better, and for his son’s birthday makes him a shoeshine kit in the hopes of inspiring him to greatness. This scene still resonates since many of us are poor, struggling and not doing so good money wise. I’m sure many parents have doubts and regrets about not being able to do more for their kid.

Not only that but the story carefully avoids the trap of Fergus accidently being abusive by you know, pinning his family’s future on one 10 year old. While yes he is asking a lot of Scrooge, to restore their family name.. it’s very clear he mostly just wants his son to do better than him. Even if Scrooge was just slightly more successful, Fergus would likely be happy with that. He’s not using the legacy as a “This what you must be” like say the Gems in steven universe did for Steven with Rose’s Legacy, the kind where it sort of suffocates you till youc an make it your own. He’s just saying “this is what you can be” He believes his child can be great and simply once him to reach his full potetial and is simply giving him a means to hopefully do so, a simple home made shoe shine kit. While Jake scoffs, the narration notes the idea isn’t worth a dime.. it’s worth THE dime. The dime that would set Scrooge’s destiny in motion.

The next morning, Fergus goes to check up on his son and his new buisness but Scroogey’s having no luck and about ready to just quit, the poor child. Also Matilda is dragging her baby sister around like a doll and it’s entirely precious as it is funny.

But as for those Dorty Boots, Matilda wonders why her dad dosen’t just tell Scrooge that Burt the Ditch Digger is coming. Fergus tells her to quite and then explains his plan: he’s sending Burt to scrooge, with an American dime Fergus and Matilda found, to teach his son a lesson: By giving him a hard days work, he’ll teach him what hard work truly means.. and by having Burt “cheat” him with the American dime, it’ll give him the motivation to keep going and to nto be as wide eyed and trusting. It’s a well meaning if harsh lesson, and the kind you’d expect from 1900′s parenting and fits the origin well: Scrooge still earned his first money square, as he still did work.. but his getting cheated being a lesson dosen’t diminish what it taught scrooge, and helps flesh out what I talked about above, Fergus knowing his son has great potential he just needs inspiration to reach it. And instead of just telling him that he does a con job but it’s the 1900′s. This orign, and Fergus’ part in it would be entirely untouched in Ducktales 2017, the first scrooge based adaptation since this comic came out, and I bless them for it. Frank even said this comic was used as a bible by the writers and while theirs clear deviations, and we’ll get to that, they were mainly done for good reason, and it’s very clear that while scrooge’s history is very VERY diffrent in the reboot, the core of his past is still there.

So the plan is on and young scrooge spends half an hour killing himself to get Burt’s shoes clean before getting his dime.. and realizing he’s been had, makes this proud decleration that will be the bedrock of his entire life and character.

Scrooge being naturally stubborn as you can see takes his cheats a leson: There will always be hard honest work, and he will be there to do it and he’ll be tougher and sharper than anyone trying to cheat him out of his pay. Fergus’ plan has the intended effect, and Scrooge having learned a hard lesson now has the drive and determination we know him for. As for why it gives it to him.. I had to think on it a bit but it makes sense: For some a setback like this would make them quit.. for Scrooge it’s just proof he CAN find customers, he CAN do this job, or any at his hardest and instead takes this as a lesson to be prepared ot out think and outfight anyone who dares cheat him again, and to not earn his money by being the kind of guy who cheats a kid out of an honest days pay, but as a good honest duck like his father and his father before him. =He will make his money square so he can be the kind of person this seeming stranger SHOULD have been. Granted we’ll see Scrooge doesn’t end up as the best person at times but .. we’ll get there. So with the fire inside turned from a spark into the flame Scrooge soon got to work, and by the next panel we see he’s eventually worked his stand up from a small box given to him by his dad, to a three seater shoeshining bench, who he wipes all at once by stretching one of his mother’s girldes over a light pole, a detail I didn’t get the first time around but now love. Naturally being a good kind boy much like his Nephews, Scrooge always gave his proud father a portion of his earnings, if with a full receipt for tax purposes. Because he’s still scrooge after all. His dad wonders he did too good a job while Hortense glxbit’s in agreement.

As the years go on, a now tween Scrooge is eventually able to save up for a horse cart, and starts selling Fire Wood up in the city. He eventually realizes Peat, an earthy subtance found in bogs I only know about because I had to look it up for this review, is more profitable and with some snappy marketing moves into selling Peat for the rich instead, also showing the young lad already has a grasp of how to sell to obnoxious rich people.

But while his business is booming, our young hero can’t resist visiting his family’s ancestral home and longing for it, hoping one day to have it for himself and in a nice show of how despite his temper and tenacity forged over the last few years he’s still at hear the kind, sweet optimistic lad he was just a few pages ago, he decides to tidy up the Clan’s Cemetary while he’s here.

Unfortunately as proof that Donald and Della’s terrible luck comes from both sides of the family the Whiskervilles are sub-glomgold levels of human beings.. or Dogfaces in this case, and are digging up the McDuck Clan’s graves to hunt for treasure. Scrooge tries to simply do the smart thing and flee, but the asshole brigade catch sight of him and mistkaing him for a peat burgalar chase after him.. and spend WAY too much time and energy chasing a teenage boy over some fucking bog grass you clearly aren’t selling yourselves. I mean spare a thought for how dumb this is: They could easily sell of of that peat to put up a fence or chop down some trees to get the material if their really that concerned about someone getting in the bog. Then again this isn the 1800 and 1900′s where the child death toll was simply “Yes”, so they likely thought whose gonna notice one more dead child on our property?

Scrooge heads toward the castle and is gestured in by a friendly mystery duck who gladly shows him around and can tell he’s a McDuck just by look, showing the castle is still in glorious condition as the whiskervilles are too spooked to go in, hence why they didn’t chase Scrooge inside. I’d say being afraid of ghosts but not murdering a child is weird but these are the same guys who thought murdering a child was plan A. We’re not dealing with a brain trust is what i’m saying. So the mystery duck shows Scroogey around, showing off some colorful stories about his ancestors recycled from that scrapped prologue I mentioned. THe mystery man, who brushes off Scrooge thinking he’s a McDuck asks Scrooge what he’s doing to restore the family glory and while Scrooge points out he’s already working on it, Mystery Duck points out he’s still missing something: He has the drive and the dream, but peat and shoeshining, while getting him good money for his family, aren’t the thing you can build a fortune or a future off of. He then points out where Scrooge’s dime comes from: America.. and that gives the boy the idea to head to the states. As for what he could possibly DO there to start, the mystery guy mentions his uncle pothole. So Scrooge has the dream, the drive.. and now a plan: Go to america, work for his uncle on the riverboats, and work his way up from there till he finds his fortune and restores his family name. But while his future is settled, the present is still an issue and Scrooge wants to teach the child murder club a lesson and thus borrows, though MM wisely points out it’s all his property a horse and some armor, and stuffs the armor with peat. As for what his plan is.. welllll

That.. is fucking awesome. And far from the last fucking awesome moment in this thing. It also shows off even as not quite a teen yet, Scrooge is still a badass already, and while he doesn’t have his trademark strength or fighting skills quite yet, his ingenuity is already there.. and that will always trump both. The Whiskervilles run away and into some quicksand and Scrooge vows to return one day as laird and reclaim his family land. But that’s a story for a few chapters down the line. As for who the mystery duck is, he’s naturally Sir Quackely himself, or rather his ghost, who was simply guiding Scrooge and didn’t give him the treasure as simply handing him the money wouldnn’t restore their family’s good name or continue their bloodline now would it?

For now Scrooge returns to work for a bit before finding his way to America: A cattleboat to New Orleans looking for a Cabin Boy. And so Scrooge bids farewell to his family. His Dad, feeling bad he can’t even give his boy shilling, gives him the family pocketwatch with jake pitching in with the family gold dentures. While Scrooge naturally refuses to sell the watch, he does plan to sell the teeth as soon as possible for good reason. We then get some sweet goodbyes with him, his sisters (With hortense uttering her first words to everyone’s astonishment) and loving mother as he wonders just what awaits him in America.

And there he stands on the bow of a ship, heading for a new land, in New Orleans he can be a new man. And we’ll see just what kind of man he becomes as this series continues. For now this is the end of a chapter but the beginning of a lifetime.

Final Thoughts on Last of the Clan McDuck:

This story is excellent. While there are even better chapters to come, this one is still one of the most memorable and most joyous, showing just how Scrooge became what he is, where some of his values come from, others will be instilled along the way , and beginning to flesh out his family. We see Scrooge’s love of wealth comes from starting from the bottom, growing up with a family that barely had anything and badly needed everything, but was loving and instilled fine morals in him. We also see a Scrooge far removed from the bitter old man he is in present day, an optimistic naïve young lad who only wants best for his family. It’s a nice stark contrast to who he’ll become, good and bad, and a nice way to both compare him to Huey Dewey and Louie and break your heart as his own hardens before briefly turning black later on. The art, as is standard for this series and Rosa, is breathtaking, and the story isn’t lacking in good jokes, their just downplayed so the story itself can take center stage. There’s nothing really more to say: it’s an excellent start to an even more excellent tale and stands proud among an already stellar story as one of it’s finest outings.

NEXT RAINBOW: Scrooge goes down to the mighty Missipi to work on the riverboats and meets one of his signature Rogue’s for the first time in their first form, as well as Gyro’s dad.. or grandpa.. or possibly both I don’t know his family tree. Point is, tune in next time for some riverboat hyjinks. Until then if you’d like to comission an episode of any animated show, especially ducktales and the various other duck related disney shows, or another Duck Comics story you really like from Rosa, Barks or whoever you want really, I take commissions for 5 dollars a review, with 5 dollars off your full order when you put in for more than one episode or issue. You can also follow me on patreon.com/popculturebuffet and for just two bucks a month get access to polls (which i’ll start once we have at least three patreons), and my exclusive discord server. And if you liked this review be sure to reblog it to show off. My self promotion done until next time: There’s always another rainbow.

#scrooge mcduck #don rosa #ducktales #the life and times of scrooge mcduck #fergus mcduck #downy mcduck #hortense mcduck #hortense duck #matilda mcduck #jake mcduck #uncle scrooge #duck comics #disney duck comics #carl barks

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yabakuboi · 3 years

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A pinch hit written for the @kkirzine! Leftover sales are almost over! Check it out here!

Sakumo’s face lights up, his lips turning up into a wide, excited smile. Kakashi’s hand is so small cupped between his father’s, one of his thumbs rubbing along the line of kanji on Kakashi’s skin. It doesn’t smear like ink but shines brightly as if it had just been brushed on. “The gods have blessed you,” he says, looking at Kakashi as if he couldn’t have been prouder. “Your soulmate was born today.”

“Oh,” is all Kakashi has to say about that, because he’s four and he’s really not sure what a soulmate even is.

Read it here on Ao3!

Kakashi’s four when he finds it. He’s pulling on his shirt by himself—because Kakashi’s not a baby anymore and only babies have to be dressed by their fathers—when he notices it. The black lines are stark against the creamy white of his wrist, and for a long moment Kakashi stares at it, confused.

“Otou,” he calls when he hears Sakumo walk by his door. “Did you write on me again?”

Sticking his head in the door, Sakumo raises his brow, his face open and indulgent. “What was that?”

“Did you write on me again?” Kakashi repeats, holding out his arm as his father crouches in front of him.

“Oh,” is all Kakashi has to say about that, because he’s four and he’s really not sure what a soulmate even is.

“It’s traditional to send a gift,” Sakumo adds, chuckling at his disinterest. “What would you like to give them?”

Kakashi thinks about it a moment, nose wrinkling under his mask. “Maybe a new kunai?” he says and pouts when Sakumo snorts.

“Well, they’re a baby right now,” Sakumo says, rolling Kakashi’s sleeve back down and fussing with Kakashi’s flyaway hair. “They won’t need kunai just yet.”

“It’s never too early for kunai,” Kakashi says, matter-of-fact. “Maybe a sword would be better, anyways.”

Sakumo actually tilts his head back and laughs with his full body.

Kakashi’s formal kimono is stiff and itchy and heavy, and he’s never worn it before today. But his father told him that they were having very special guests tonight and even paid the woman down the road to cook for them. Sakumo gently swats Kakashi’s hands away from his obi and fusses with Kakashi’s hair when it refuses to lay flat.

“Hatake-san,” Yua, their neighbor, says as she peeks around into the room. “Your guests are here.”

“Thank you, Yua-chan,” Sakumo says, pulling Kakashi into a more formal position on the floor. “Please show them in.”

“Who’s even here?” Kakashi grumbles as she turns away. “Why do I have to wear this?”

Sakumo presses his hand to Kakashi’s back, straightening his spine. “A good shinobi sits quiet and observes until the answers come to them,” he says, his voice chiding but gentle, and he smiles at Kakashi when he immediately falls silent and attentive.

Yua slides open the doors, presenting a man and a woman, both kneeling at the threshold. Together, they bow low, and it’s then that Kakashi notices the baby in the woman’s arms.

“Hatake-san,” the man says, his voice almost too soft to carry. “Thank you for your invitation.”

His hand still at Kakashi’s back, Sakumo bows just as deeply, Kakashi mirroring him. “Umino-san, welcome to our home.”

Umino-san smiles nervously at them when they rise, hands twisting in his kimono, but his wife is smiling. “If it’s fine with you Hatake-san, let’s skip all this formality,” she says. “Hatake-kun, come meet Iruka!”

“Kohari!” Umino-san hisses, embarrassed, but the woman just grins, beckoning Kakashi over.

Kakashi, stunned, looks at his father, but Sakumo nudges him forward. “Go on,” he says, and Kakashi goes.

Sitting up, Kohari adjusts the bundle in her arms as Kakashi approaches. In the folds of the blankets is a round little face, smooth in sleep, with a thick tuft of hair on his head. “This is Iruka,” Kohari says as Kakashi bends closer to see. “Please be good friends with him and take care of him in the future.”

Looking from her to the baby in her arms, Kakashi nods hesitantly, saying nothing. Kohari isn’t put off at all, gently shifting her baby until she can show Kakashi his arm, chubby and round with baby fat. Kakashi’s whole focus narrows down, the world fading away. At this moment, the only people that exist are this strange woman and the baby in her arms, because there, on Iruka’s delicate skin, is Kakashi’s name in the same bold letters, almost too big for the tiny wrist cradled in Kohari’s hand.

“He’ll grow big and strong,” Kohari says. “One day he’ll be a formidable shinobi, just like his mom and dad, and he’ll make you an excellent partner, Hatake-kun.”

Iruka wakes as she talks, blinking too-big eyes sleepily. His eyes are a deep, warm brown, and they focus on Kakashi, unblinking. Kakashi can see Kohari smile out of the corner of his eye.

“Iruka-chan,” she coos. “This is your soulmate. Say hello!”

Iruka gurgles back, a high, childish pitch, and he waves his arm at Kakashi, fingers grasping. Kakashi reaches up without a thought, and Iruka’s hand wraps around one finger, already calloused and scarred from regular throwing practice.

Sakumo leans in close over Kakashi’s shoulder, a steadying hand at his son’s back. “Always remember him, Kakashi,” he says softly. “Always remember how blessed you are.”

It’s only a few months later that Sakumo is dead.

Umino-san and Kohari still knock on his door to see him, or to leave him groceries and gifts. But Kakashi is a soldier. Things like family, like love are useless to someone like Kakashi.

They never stop coming by for nearly ten years. And when they stop, Kakashi barely notices—the loss of his sensei, his Hokage and commander, leaving him numb. By the time Iruka even crosses his mind, he’s graduated from the academy, an independent kid with his own life. And Kakashi feels he has no right to invade it.

But if he leaves a few vegetables on Iruka’s windowsill, then that’s just for Kakashi to know.

When ANBU get hurt, there are no emergency contacts made for them. But for a regular shinobi, soulmates are the first notified in the event of a hospitalization. Kakashi’s soulmate is an academy teacher though, and he’s glad for it, that the most danger Iruka faces is a few badly thrown shuriken.

So when he appears in Iruka’s hospital room in the dead of night, he already feels wrong-footed and Iruka is already glaring at him from where he’s face down on the mattress.

“Visiting hours are over,” he hisses.

“Maa, I just thought you could use some company,” Kakashi says, probably the first real thing he’s said to his soulmate since the day he was born.

Iruka’s eyes soften a fraction, because Kakashi’s voice is a little weak, shaken, and he sighs. “I guess that’s fine then.”

Kakashi can separate his life in chapters of a book: the prologue he’s forgotten and many chapters of death that make up his history. But now, Kakashi thinks he might like this new chapter dedicated to his students, and to Iruka’s smile that grows more familiar as the months pass.

“How do you get him to stop?” Kakashi whines from where he’s buried his face in his arms.

Sipping from his coffee, Iruka gives Kakashi a thousand-yard stare of a man who has twenty-three kids to teach as opposed to Kakashi’s three. “You don’t. You distract him.”

“I’m running out of cool jutsu though!”

“Don’t you have like a thousand?”

“That number is highly exaggerated, it’s more like high seven-hundreds.”

“That’s still a lot!”

“And yet I’m still running out!”

Iruka has a snorting, ugly laugh. Kakashi thinks he loves it. “Wanna go on a date Saturday night?”

“God no,” Iruka says, wrinkling his nose. “That’s my only chance to get a decent night’s sleep. I plan on passing out for a solid twelve hours.”

“Lucky,” Kakashi sighs, finally lifting his head from the table. “We have a mission Sunday morning.”

“Sucks for you.” Iruka’s smile is the exact opposite of sympathetic as he stands, shouldering his bag and draining his coffee. “Well, I need to get to the missions room. See you next week.”

“Maa, I don’t even get a kiss good-bye?”

Iruka slaps his back hard as he walks past, sending Kakashi sprawling across the table. “Nope!”

Kakashi lands in Iruka’s windowsill with a heavy thump and rattling of glass.

“I don’t have time,” Iruka says, not even looking up from the papers. “I have exams and homework to grade and I’m behind because the Hokage—”

“Iruka.”

Iruka takes one look at him and immediately shepherds Kakashi to the couch. Kakashi strips off his vest and gloves with a sound of disgust, burying his face in his hands when Iruka disappears into his kitchen to put the kettle on.

“Do you have something stronger than tea?” Kakashi calls.

The soft thump of the sake bottle set on the table rouses him, and Kakashi gives Iruka a grateful stare before he pulls down his mask and takes a long draw, straight from the bottle. The alcohol burns its way down his throat, tasteless and cheap and exactly what Kakashi needs right now.

“Buy me something nicer to replace it,” Iruka says.

“As long as I get to drink it with you.”

Smiling, Iruka sits down beside him with two cups of ramen, which Kakashi really doesn’t want, but it is the spicy kind that he likes best.

“Marry me.”

“Not on your life.”

“Iruka-sensei,” Kakashi whines. Inwardly, he’s surprised he’s gotten close enough without getting stabbed. Iruka ignores him and continues stomping home. “Please, just hear me out.”

“I’m sorry, Jounin-sama, but I really need to get home.”

Kakashi tightens his arms around Iruka’s shoulders until he can haul himself up enough to wrap his legs around the man’s waist. Iruka doesn’t even stumble, carrying Kakashi’s full weight easily. It’s incredibly hot. “At least let me apologize!”

Iruka pauses. “You’re going to apologize?”

“Yes, please.”

Huffing, Iruka elbows Kakashi off his back and faces him. “Alright, let’s hear it.”

Dropping into a perfect ninety-degree bow, Kakashi says formally, “I am very sorry for not taking your concerns seriously and for not speaking to you as an equal.” Iruka splutters in front of him. “Furthermore, I apologize for embarrassing you in front of our colleagues and the Hokage. It was wrong of me to—”

“Okay, okay!” Iruka says hastily, grabbing Kakashi by the shoulders and righting him forcefully. “I didn’t need all that.”

Smiling, Kakashi shrugs. “I figured I should be serious.”

“It’s awkward,” Iruka says, flustered, his arms crossed in front of him. “I apologize as well, for not trusting your judgment.”

Kakashi dares to take a step closer. “Call it a truce?”

Iruka eyes him from the side for a moment, before sighing. “Fine. But don’t come crying to me when it all blows up in your face.”

“Are you an idiot?”

Kakashi looks up from his book, completely unphased by the shouting or the nurse’s surprised squeak. “Why, if it isn’t the love of my life,” Kakashi coos as Iruka stomps towards him.

“Shut up,” Iruka snaps, coming to a stop right in front of Kakashi. “Really? Ebisu?!”

“Maa, I just,” Kakashi starts, and knows he has to be careful here, “Naruto struggles with the basics, and he really needs to master them to catch up to Sasuke and Sakura. Not that I’m making a comment on your teaching methods, Iruka-sensei—”

“I know that!” Kakashi takes the knock to the head with dignity. Iruka pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “Naruto’s always struggled, but he works hard and has really come a long way.”

Rubbing the lump on his head, Kakashi glares at him. “Then, why are you so upset?”

“He won’t take Naruto’s training seriously!”

“Really?” Kakashi hums, tilting his head back to gaze at the ceiling. “He seemed honored by my request and has already run his training schedule by me.”

Iruka stops grinding his teeth long enough to consider Kakashi balefully. “You actually reviewed it?”

Kakashi pouts. “Of course I did, Iruka-sensei. Naruto-chan is my precious student after all.”

That earns him a kick to the shin, but the line of Iruka’s shoulders relax. “You should still pay him more attention, you know?” Iruka says with a huff. “He looks up to you.”

“He’s not my problem child at the moment,” Kakashi admits, tilting his head to acknowledge Iruka’s curious gaze. “Maa, I may be out of town for a bit, sensei. Do I get a good-bye kiss?”

Iruka kicks him again. “No way.”

“So violent,” Kakashi says. “You sure you won’t marry me?”

Iruka doesn’t even bother to respond.

Kakashi doesn't startle when Iruka flips the light on while he's haphazardly laying across Iruka's couch. Iruka is still in his funeral clothes, looking worse for wear. Kakashi shifts just a bit, and Iruka flips the lights back off before he sprawls across Kakashi, tangling their legs together. Kakashi wraps him up and rolls him to the side until Iruka’s pressed between the back of the sofa and Kakashi’s front. They don’t say a word, even as the night passes between them, silent and dark.

Naruto’s been gone for nearly five months when Iruka falls into the booth beside Kakashi, making the table rattle. He easily joins the conversation that Kakashi was ignoring, like water flowing into the ocean, laughing along with everyone else. But he’s a warm line along Kakashi’s side, pressed thigh to thigh, their elbows bumping comfortably together.

When the bartender yells for the last call, Iruka hooks his arm with Kakashi’s and drags him outside.

“Sensei,” Kakashi starts as they leave the bustle of nightlife behind them. They walk with their steps synced, their arms around each other. He thinks they would look like a couple if he could see them outside himself, so in love they can’t be separated even to walk home together. “Isn’t it a school night?”

“Actually, I have tomorrow off,” Iruka says. Kakashi turns his head enough to glance the smile on his face. “Are you free?”

“For you,” Kakashi says. “Always.”

Iruka snorts inelegantly. Kakashi loves that about him. “Then, would you like to go on a date?”

Kakashi straightens his spine from his slouch, jostling Iruka beside him. “I thought this was a date!” He shouts, indignant, to cover his shock and Iruka’s laughter.

“Dates end in kisses,” Iruka chuckles. By now, they’ve made it to Kakashi’s front door and he finally realizes that Iruka’s walked him home. “Though I guess, since you’re my soulmate,” he says, like an afterthought as he turns to stand in front of him. “I’ll make an exception.”

He pulls Kakashi’s mask down and kisses Kakashi. For years and years, Kakashi has felt on edge, teetering on his toes, but kissing Iruka is like finding solid ground again. He chases that warmth when Iruka shies away, and whimpers when Iruka meets him again, open-mouthed and wanting. Kakashi wonders if this is what being whole feels like.

“There,” Iruka says, a little breathless, his lips cherry red and shining. He’s looking at Kakashi with smiling eyes, and it feels like standing in the summer sun.

“Marry me,” Kakashi croaks, and it’s worth the embarrassment to watch Iruka laugh.

“Maybe later,” Iruka says against his lips, smiling.

#naruto #naruto fanfic #kakairu #kkir #kakairu fanfic #kkir zine #my fic #shush mal #uwu

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lookwhatilost · 3 years

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did they ever change the simpson's cars? they've gone from extremely common decade-ish old beaters to so ancient they'd stand out on the road almost as much as an Edsel. the modern equivalent would be like ~2000s oblong cars. like a dodge intrepid and a ford escort wagon.

I'll never stop being fascinated by the anachronism of Late Simpsons. so many iconic/archetypical elements of the characters that are fixed in a certain time and place, and they try to change them but can't really change them too much, so you end up with a weird temporal mutant. the simpsons began in 1989, roughly concurrent with the fall of the berlin wall and the 'end of history', so it seems oddly appropriate it'd become symbolic of this deathless atemporal eternal past-present, changing but changing, decaying but deathless, a zombie.

the simpsons are supposed to be very working class, not terribly well off, but people now pay a small fortune to buy a house of comparable size and quality, and not in or near a major city. and they often need help from affluent relatives getting there in the first place.

a variety show hosted by a clown, bart's banana board, homer's unionized industry job, the autocrat sole-owner industrialist, the stay at home housewife, the show was in some ways already anachronistic from jump st, the world it depicted already slipping away. the characters’ core traits, those things that can be exaggerated and smoothed down and, well "Flanderized", are still inextricable from their context. the simpsons were a caricature, but a relatable one, to a family in 1990.

but do any of the characters, their core malleable but inaliable traits, their whole dynamic, make any sense as a family of millennials raising zoomer kids? does Homer make sense as a guy born in 1986 who grew up with PlayStation, Nickolodeon and AngelFire webpages? This isn't a criticism of the show. “New Simpsons Bad” is observation so far beyond banal. but the fact that it persists like this just pricks at my brain. nothing about it makes any sense. I don't even know who's watching it. It's a thing out of time lurching on under pure inertia.

i remember occaisionally reading those old newspaper comic strips as a kid, and though I couldn't describe it, I'd get some crude from of this same sense. beetle bailey and the family circus made about as much sense in 1998 as the simpsons does today. although not as weird, because these where just artifacts for older people. they didn't really change that much or try to. the simpsons is constantly on a quixotic quest to make itself contemporary. if in simpsons-world, the 90s simply never ended, it'd be less jarring.

I wish I could put name or more precise description to this concept/feeling, the thing that is always changing but never changes, the always present future-past, this breakdown of historical progression, context and continuity, that I think so dominates contemporary media. either in the awful megalithic form of marvel movies (cartoon characters from our's and our parent's childhoods recast into every variation of 80s-90s blockbuster formulae), constant remakes and reboots, live action disney cartoons, and other acts of cultural necromancy.

the simpsons has done multiple episodes imagining their futures, adult bart and lisa, elderly homer and marge, and yet we've arrived at those futures and bart is still 10 and lisa is still 8. comic book characters have this same problem, but comic books are more niche (we'll see what the movies do), and the cartoons reboot themselves every generation... but the comics maintain a nominal continuity. or at least, attempt to, and it's bizarre. there's an old joke about superhero comics, that the only character that stays dead is uncle ben. nobody dies, nobody gets old, nothing changes, batman gets meaner, or nicer, gets a new batmobile, a touch screen batphone, whatever, but he never stops being batman.

I think it speaks to some problem with letting go. being so overawed by the present/near-past as to not be able to imagine any break with it. we can't let things die, or let them grow and evolve so much they become unrecognizable (and thus dead). they become stunted mutants. on some level, for whatever set of reasons, I think we've come to accept the belief that we can't ever really do better than this. that to toss away these rotten and decrepit things is to lose something irreplaceable, not make room for something greater.

anyway, I let this go on long enough as it is. didn't mean to post a bunch, it's just the thought train leaving the station without breaks. ah well. anyway share your thoughts, or post what cars you think modern simpsons should drive.

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queercapwriting · 5 years

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Writing Home to You (Carol x Maria) 2

This can be read as a standalone, but part one is here. continued at the request of @wearerobin90 <3

Maria Rambeau had never been the ‘waiting at home by the phone’ type of woman.

Sure, there had been that political science major in college that she’d pined after - before she and Carol either realized or admitted how they felt about each other - but even then, she’d never been the type to just... wait around for anyone.

Because when Maria Rambeau wanted something, she figured out how to get it.

Even when it cost her everything.

(She did the same with Carol. It just... took a few years for either of them to realize how desperately they wanted each other to be best friends and then some, rather than only best friends.)

But then Carol “died”, and then Carol came back.

And then, Carol left again.

Because of course she did. Because she had to. Because there was an entire galaxy full of people to help, an entire race of refugees to protect and help resettle.

And this damn galaxy had over 100 billion stars.

One hundred billion.

And one woman - Carol, her Carol, it was always going to be her Carol - was going to take on the evils amidst them all.

Of course she was.

It was what Maria had fallen in love with about her, all those years ago.

Part of her had always known that the nature of their jobs - the nature of wanting to change the world, to maybe even save it - would rip them apart from each other.

It had been worth every moment, anyway.

But she worried about Monica.

She’d chosen a life with Carol - with a woman who was the one who insisted on going if lives were on the line because Monica needed her mother, with a woman who willingly blew herself up to protect people she’d never even known about until a breath before, with a woman who was too stubborn to die so she came home with a new name, a new uniform, and fists that were made of fire - but Monica?

Monica hadn’t chosen who her other mother would be.

So Maria worried. And she knew Carol worried, too.

So whenever Carol called - she’d given Maria and their daughter a much more advanced communicator than she’d given Fury (she didn’t need to chat with Fury about his day, to see his face, to have him see her face, to stare longingly into his eyes; she just needed to know, from him, if the Earth was about to be destroyed and it was too much for SHIELD to handle) - Maria would linger, just for a moment, to watch the delight course through their daughter’s entire body.

She never intruded on their conversations - except when the three of them would snuggle up for old episodes of Fresh Prince together, even with the holographic projection of Carol originating from halfway across the universe - but she did let herself watch their daughter answer the call, watch Carol’s uniformed figure appear, with a new haircut that looked like it was straight out of a comic book superhero’s.

A new haircut that looked like everything Maria wanted to run her hands through while they were making love.

Most of the times, though, the communications weren’t live.

Most of the time, she and Monica had to wait - painstakingly, wait - to download messages from Carol. And they’d retreat to their separate rooms to watch them, to cry, and to record their own messages back.

Hey Lieutenant Trouble, Carol’s messages to their daughter would usually start, and she’d have that lower swagger, soft and solid confidence, in her voice that had always made Maria melt.

And nothing made Maria Rambeau melt.

She didn’t hear the rest of her messages to Monica, not usually, but she heard Monica laugh and she heard her cry in response, before composing her own message to her mother.

Hey Lieutenant Trouble,

It’s been a minute, huh? Sorry if I worried you and your mom. I’m fine, and so’s Talos and his family. And don’t worry, kiddo: his daughter hasn’t changed her eyes, not for anyone.

We found a planet for them, one that looks like it could be safe. And I did a lot of scans, and it doesn’t look like they’d be interfering with any evolutionary history on the surface. Your mom said you’re eating up any books on exobiology you can, so I figured you’d wanna know that part.

But the Kree found us, and anyway. It wasn’t pretty, and I’ll be honest, we could’ve used a stellar pilot like your mom. But we got by okay. Everyone’s okay. And everyone says hi to you, and sends their love. You really know how to make an impression on people, you know that, Lieutenant Trouble?

I miss you, Monica. I’ve always wanted to fly, you know? To help people. I know you want to do the same. You’ve got your mom’s blood in you, so of course you do. And I love it up here. I want to bring you one day, and your mom. I love what I’m doing and I love the people I get to meet. I’m sending some pictures for you, attached to this message. Just for you and Mom, okay?

So it’s amazing out here, but I miss you. Every second of every day. The more beautiful it is out here, the more I miss you and your mom.

It’s not your job to take care of her, Monica. It’s your job to be a kid first, okay? But please give her an extra solid hug, every day and every night, alright? I know you’re getting older, and I know it’s gonna stop being cool to tell your mom you love her pretty soon. But please don’t stop telling her, alright?

I love you, kiddo. I love you bigger than anything or anyone.

Tell me about school, and everything and anything you want.

See you up here soon enough.

I love you.

Maria didn’t eavesdrop on Monica’s responses, but sometimes Monica would record them with her in the room. It both buoyed her and broke her heart.

Ma!

Remember when I called you Auntie Carol? You and Mom were so funny, thinking you were fooling people with those shenanigans. Well, no. I guess you were smart. Jerks see what they want to see, I guess, right? Jerks isn’t a curse, Mom, I can say that! Gotta earn my name, right Ma?

I’m glad you’re keeping Talos and his family safe, and that no one’s changed their eyes for anyone. That’s what Mom always told me about my hair, when I started going to school and people were jerks. Anyway.

I want to hear everything about the pictures you sent me! You can’t just send me pictures of nebulas and planets and not expect me to want to hear everything about them, Ma, seriously. I know you’re busy saving the galaxy. But some captions? If that’s okay? It’s also nice to think that I’d get to hear your voice extra.

School’s good. Too easy, but Mom made sure I got put in all the advanced classes. The other kids seem really stressed about their grades, so I try to help them. It just doesn’t stress me out. But I guess it kind of does a little? Because I want to show them what the kid of a single mom can do - I know Mom’s not single, but you know what I mean, Ma - and also because I want to get into astronaut camp!

You heard me right! And not just any old astronaut camp: Stark Industries is sponsoring this one. And I don’t want Nick to give me any favors, I want to get in on my own. Mom says I will. It’ll be so cool! Mom told me what zero-g felt like, when you and her and Goose were in that ship together, and I want to feel it for myself! This summer, fingers crossed. Are your fingers crossed? I hope so.

I miss you, Ma. I miss you all the time. Sometimes I cry about it. I’m not trying to make you feel bad, but Mom says I shouldn’t be afraid to be honest with you. But I’m really proud of you. Like, mega proud. Both of my moms are superheroes! Sure, Mom doesn’t have tea-making hands, but still. I’m really proud of you, Ma. Or should I say Captain Marvel?

It’s a cool name. Almost as cool as Lieutenant Trouble.

I love you, Ma. I’m gonna let Mom do some recording now. Please be safe and don’t get hurt, okay? Mom would be impossible to deal with if we lost you again. I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Well, I’m not, but you know. Be careful. I love you so, so, so much.

So much.

When Monica recorded in front of Maria like that, Maria would kiss the top of her daughter’s head and Monica would positively scamper away. Like she knew that Maria needed privacy. That unless they were recording a family message, her moms needed to be alone together, in their messages.

Carol. Hi.

Sometimes I want to tell you everything. I want to talk to you all the time. All the little things about my days. The little habits that Monica’s developing. The crushes I suspect she’s developing. The way the leaves are coming back on the trees and the way the breeze smells in the morning, just before sunrise. How I’m maintaining your Mustang for you, but it really doesn’t matter, because whenever I take my Camaro out, I know it’ll still dominate.

And sometimes... I don’t even know. Sometimes, there’s nothing to say to you. Because sometimes, I just... I know you already know everything. How much I love you. How much it kills me that you’re out there and I’m not with you to watch your six. I’ve been helping Fury out, with SHIELD. A lot. And I know it matters. I know it makes a difference. But sometimes, I don’t even know, Danvers.

Sometimes, all I want to do is kiss you and strip your clothes off, and god, I hope Monica has her headphones on. I just want to lay down with you and kiss your neck and hold you, or be held by you, and it’s... it’s stupid, isn’t it? Well, I guess not. Not really. I know you want to do those things, too. Your last message... damn woman, I want those things too. You know I do. Just more awkward for me to record them when our daughter’s in the next room.

I just miss you, Carol. And sometimes I’m so angry at you. For being so damn perfect. For being so damn brave and needing to go out and save the universe.

But you’d better stay exactly that way. You’d better stay too stubborn to die. Because I swear I’ll come out there and kill you if you’re not.

I love you, Carol. I remember when we didn’t have to say it, not really. Because I could show you, every day. I can’t exactly show you, now, so I guess I have to resort to being corny as all get out.

I love you. I’m in love with you. It’s nothing you don’t already know. It’s just something I want you to hear as often as I can tell you, and I need you to keep it even closer than that ridiculous yet oddly sexy uniform you’ve got. Alright?

I’m in love with you, Carol Danvers. If you ever start doubting that, you’d better get your ass home and let me show you.

And I know you’re out there saving entire planets and stopping entire genocides. Because of course you are.

I’m proud of you every day. Don’t you give up, understand me? And don’t stop being as kind as you are, you hear me? Don’t stop believing you can do it, and that you can come home when you need to.

I love you. I’ll tell you more about SHIELD next message. Tonight, I just... tonight, I love you feels like the only relevant thing to say.

Keep yourself safe, you hear me? If I say I love you one more time, I think Monica’s gonna start pretending to vomit in the next room.

So let’s do it: I love you, Carol.

God. You’ve made me so cheesy. I blame you entirely.

Higher further faster, baby. My baby. Stay safe.

She heard Monica giggling maniacally in the next room. “My moms love each other so much!”

Maria wiped her tears and smiled. Because their daughter definitely wasn’t too old for some good old-fashioned tickling and pillow fighting.

They both made sure to hit record before the playful attacks began, so Carol could be part of the family fun, too.

#carolmaria #carol x maria #carol x maria fic #danbeau #danbeau family

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hopevalley · 4 years

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What's your opinion on the child characters of the show? What do you think makes a good child character or not?

This is a tough question, mostly because it’s more complex than it initially appears to be, but I have answers!

The child characters of WCtH are a solid meh/10. I mean this as a collective whole, of course: “the children” are slapdashed third and fourth placers at best when it comes to continuity, continuum, and consideration. They don’t come across as important to the story, they don’t feel important to the other characters, and I think it could be successfully argued that there isn’t really a solid child to child connection at the core, either.

Most child actors aren’t wildly amazing; they don’t have the skills and experience yet to be so. That’s fine. I think all the kids who have been on the show did their best with what they were given, which…sometimes wasn’t much. Go back into S3 or so and listen to some of Cody’s lines and then come back and tell me to my face you think the actor is bad! Nope, some of the lines he was given to say are just terrible, and there’s only so much anyone can do with bad dialogue.

The biggest issue I have with the children on the show is the lack of continuity. This is the kind of community where people spent their whole life here (as long as a job remains for the breadwinner of the family). It’s bad enough that the adults come and go, but it’s worse for a teacher to do that.

I don’t have the connections to do a deep-dive into the show’s spending, but if I had to wager a guess, Hallmark wasn’t really willing to keep on the same core group of children (and pay them for staying on, vs. looking for other roles or just paying starting wages to random children). Maybe I’m too cynical to assume everything boils down to money, but let’s be honest with ourselves: it usually does.

The unfortunate side effect of Elizabeth’s Carousel Classroom is that the children as a collective whole suffer from it. Their bonds don’t feel strong, their stories weaken, their closeness in S1 in the wake of tragedy becomes meaningless.

The first season did reasonably well with its children because the group remained the same and many stories revolved around the different ways people in town (children, adults, newcomers) dealt with/handled/considered the mining disaster.

It gave us all kinds of little stories that felt interconnected. Molly’s relationship with her daughter Rosaleen. Rosaleen’s friendship with Anna. Cat’s relationship with her children and her husband, the children’s relationship with one another and other students, with Jack and Elizabeth, and with their father. We established these stories, made them (and the relationships portrayed within) meaningful, and these things made the viewer care and feel invested.

Then those children were stripped away, making all the work put into them…dust in the wind.

Cody was one of the only children who showed up and meant something and maintained a role on the show with consistency. You could argue that Emily and Anna have been around longer, but their roles have been nil for more seasons than not, and with Cat gone, Emily’s presence no longer makes sense, anyway. A shame, because later seasons did make the effort to build her up.

Becky was an abysmal failure of an addition to the show, if only because her role was eliminated before it even really began. She was then used as a prop in one of the holiday movies (to stir up imaginary drama against Henry), and promptly disappeared forever. Harper’s entire personality was written in a contradictory way by writers who don’t actually talk to each other. Robert barely has a personality when Cody isn’t around. Opal’s entire personality is “cute widdle kid” even though the actress is much older and is probably capable of much better work than making cute faces and saying things that would be cute for a four year old to say. (At this point just write her as being 8 or 9 and still wanting to carry around a teddy bear. IT’S FINE.)

Allie took the show by storm because she feels like a fairly realistic child character, and she’s been given development. If the show keeps that up, she’ll at least remain interesting and likable. If they let her down, though, her role will stagnate and people will start hating the character/role she plays just like they started side-eyeing Cody.

–

As to what makes good child characters? The same thing that makes good characters in general, honestly.

Good writers. Consistent characterization. Character development that feels like a natural evolution due to their environment/circumstances. Attention to detail. Playing to the actor’s strengths and weaknesses.

They had all the time in the world to build Cody up and give him storylines that felt meaningful, but they made him “comically” bad at baking and treated him like an 8-year-old character and not a pre-teen. They eliminated his dog from the show with no real warning (when they could have given us an emotional goodbye storyline that would have resonated with most viewers because we have pets of our own that we’ve had to say goodbye to). They relegated him to background discussion and a trophy child for Abigail instead of a human being in her life she cared about and loved. They never followed up on Cody’s desire to stay in contact with Frank, either—though I’ll admit they weren’t given much time for that, they sure put in the time to give Abigail another love plot in S6 that nobody wanted, so make of that what you will!

I’ll shill Road to Avonlea until I’m dead. It’s an ensemble show like WCtH with two core groups within the show:

The Children

The Adults

They even have a third group (The Elderly) though to a lesser extent. This is a period drama that takes place before WWI on Prince Edward Island, and primarily deals with shenanigans and emotional connection between people. It’s wholesome family fun and manages to be extremely heartfelt while also giving you plenty to laugh about.

The first thing I have to admit is that Road to Avonlea was undoubtedly better funded than WCtH, and double+ the length per season, so they had a lot more room to play around in. Throughout the series we follow a group of children (largely siblings, cousins, and friends from their one-room schoolhouse) and their parents (many of whom grew up together or have histories with one another). The children don’t change too much over the many years of the show, and this helped immensely in giving the viewer continuity. First of all, it’s safe to like the characters because they’re around for the duration of the show (and in fact, we follow most children to adulthood); secondly, these children are written as…children? But their role in the show is JUST as important and JUST as impactful, and JUST as hilarious (when applicable) as those of the adults! When one of the actresses left (over a pay issue, I believe), they replaced her and it worked fine.

What made this show work so well was its dedication to telling good stories, not its random abundance of amazing child actors. The actors weren’t THAT amazing (though I’ll not dunk on any of them, particularly Sarah Polley who went on to help produce the Alias Grace miniseries on Netflix) but they had heart, their stories had heart, and the writers made the effort to write the children as children. (The older children acted like older children. The younger kids acted younger. IT MADE SENSE.)

And I think most importantly the children made mistakes and learned from them. WCtH could certainly take a page out of Road to Avonlea’s book, or at the least recognize where their own writing strengths lie and stick to them. I don’t need child storylines in WCtH, so if they’re going to bother with them at all, PLEASE just make them good! (And don’t tempt me to make a RtA blog. It’s my favorite series of all time.)

–

The short version of all of the above: writing characters like people is what makes good child characters; they’re exactly the same as adults in that regard.

WCtH has mediocre child characters at best right now (with Allie being the only good one, just by virtue of being the only one who has gotten any real material to work with).

#long post #anonymously asked #answered mail #when calls the heart #wcth critical #analysis and meta discussion #character studies and information

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umichenginabroad · 5 years

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A Darkness that must never be forgotten

By: Dustin Fletcher, Aerospace/Mechanical Engineering major, German minor

Program: Technische Universität Berlin (TUB)

My previous two posts have been very joyful and happy. However, this post will take a more somber tone. Before you begin reading this, I want you to remember a couple things; the following topics are can be very emotionally heavy, and parts of this might be difficult topics for some people to read. However, of all the posts I make during my exchange, this one is arguably the most important and I hope you read it all the way through.

Following the end of WW1, Germany was in shambles. The country as a whole needed to pay off the debt from the war, and this stemmed into riots, some demonstrations, and political vulnerability. As a result, it was very easy for people to find something, or someone, to assign the blame to. This is where Adolf Hitler comes in. As a young man and new politician, Hitler joined the DAP (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei -> German Worker’s Party), which later changed its name to the Nationalsozialistche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), or Nazi for short. This party was strongly opposed to the democratic style government that Germany had adopted during the Weimar Republik. Hitler quickly gained popularity in this party, since he was a riveting speaker, in fact the best in the party. Hitler’s charismatic speeches of anti-Semitism and nationalism largely unified the people of Germany and drew large crowds towards his cause. Many people thought “This is exactly what our country needs, a strong leader who will speak his mind and get the job done!” Scary… You may be thinking, how could someone with such strong hate be elected as a leader? Excellent question, and I’m glad you’re asking it. You’d be surprised how often people say that phrase about very hateful people. Anyways, remember the thing about needing to assign blame to someone? That’s exactly what Hitler did. Rather than directly spreading anti-Semitic hate, Hitler spread it by saying that the Jews were the reason Germany lost the war, that they sabotaged the war efforts, that they’re the cause of all the political and social unrest in Germany at that time… It’s crazy what desperation can do to people’s moral compasses. In 1933 Hitler was appointed Chancellor and soon thereafter a bill was passed that stripped all power from the Reichstag. This effectively made Adolf Hitler the dictator of Germany, and thus das Dritte Reich (The Third Reich) was born.

I won’t go into as much detail about the war itself, since that’s the part that everyone already knows, but I wanted to talk about the preceding events, as few people actually fully understand how Hitler came to power and how WW2 began. Hopefully this isn’t sounding like a history book, but you need the background knowledge to really feel the emotions.

As a group, we visited the “Deutsche Unterwelt”, which was a tour of one of the bunkers found in Berlin. During this tour, we got to learn a lot about events leading up to the war, as well as how the German government was able to mitigate panic or spread propaganda, which they used to “brainwash” the public. Leading up to the war, Germany needed to start preparing, but the big question is, how do you get an entire country to prepare for a war that you are starting as an attempt to “purify” the world? Simple answer, you don’t. Instead, Hitler told Germany that other countries were preparing to wage war against them, and enforced mandatory “defense” preparations, such as practice air raids (callback to bunker we were in), manufacturing weapons, so on and so forth. The German government spread propaganda during the practice raids by having magazines that contained the Nazi ideology. But don’t forget the children! To make the air raids family friendly, the government so generously provided board games depicting war and Nazi ideals for the young’ns! Learning about this was extremely important for me, because it really helped me to fully understand how Hitler was able to get Germany fully onboard with his radical ideas. Most people think that the German people knew Hitler’s plan from the beginning, which makes it really easy to judge them for joining in at Hitler’s side. I know I definitely judged them, because I just couldn’t grasp how people would just so willingly torture and kill people. The reality is that it was a long, deliberate, and thought out process over a course of a decade where Hitler slowly convinced people to listen to him. Through these small things like slowly hiding Germany’s true intentions, to lying about the war, to feeding propaganda to children, it’s actually quite easy to understand how Hitler could manipulate the entire country. Some other things we were able to see were bathrooms, waiting areas, and the bunker rooms themselves. Sitting in a room with our tour group was already fairly crowded, and we were at about the maximum capacity for the bunker room. We were told that the bunkers were only designed to make the people feel safer, since the German government never thought bombs would reach Berlin, so they really couldn’t handle all of Berlin’s population. At the end of the war though, bombs started landing in Berlin, and so everyone that could fit in the bunker did. Imagine, 100 people sitting in a room. Now, imagine that the room was designed for 20 people. Now imagine that it’s unbearably hot, and people are using the bathroom right where they sit, and you have to stay there for hours. Sitting there thinking about that really made me appreciate all of the things I have, and how comfortable my life is in comparison. And finally, to drive the idea home of how terrible this all was, the people in the bunker were the lucky ones. Compared to the people in German concentration camps, the people in the bunker were living like royalty.

The thing that surprised me the most from the Unterwelt tour was the fact that the German post-war inhabitants tried to hide the past. Until around 1960, the survivors didn’t really talk about the events of WW2, and even when kids or young adults that didn’t live through the war asked about it, they would push the question aside and change the topic, and because of that, young Germans didn’t know what their country was responsible for. Eventually, people found out, and once they did, they decided that they couldn’t stand around and let the world nor Germany forget what they had done. This movement is what sparked the construction of many memorials all throughout Berlin, as well as the rest of the country.

While we’ve been here in Germany, we’ve had the privilege of visiting a couple of these memorials. So far, we’ve been able to see memorials such as the book burning memorial, Gestapo, Die Deutsche Unterwelt, the Jewish Victim memorial, the Neue Wache, and more. Each and every one of the memorials was very powerful, and all work in tandem to remind us of the past, so that we can never forget it.

The book burning memorial isn’t large, but the person who designed it did a very good job of getting its point across. In the middle of an empty courtyard surrounded by large buildings, including the Humboldt University, is a single plaque and a lone plastic window on the ground. The plaque basically says that when people burn books, it is only a prelude to them burning people as well. In the beginning of the Nazi reign, young Nazis ran into the University and grabbed any book that contained knowledge opposing their ideas and beliefs. They then brought them out to the courtyard, where they burned all of the books. Under the plastic window in the ground is a room filled with empty bookshelves that would contain the number of books that were burned. Looking at the empty bookshelves really helps to visualize just how much knowledge was lost, and it helps us to remember how the destruction of knowledge leads us down very dark paths.

The Neue Wache is a roman-revival style building in the middle of Berlin. Inside is an almost empty room with a circular hole in the ceiling. Directly below this hole is a statue of a mother with her dead son. In front of the statue is an inscription on the floor that says “Den Opfern von Krieg und Gewaltherrschaft” which means “For the Victims of War and Dictatorship”. While I was there, I didn’t really understand the feeling that overcame me. I realized later after some reflection that the sensation was that of vulnerability. The statue is trapped in its place, unable to escape the weathering from the environment. In the winter, the statue is covered in snow, in the summer is baked in the heat, or drenched in a torrential downpour. The fate of the statue, much like that of the victims, is completely in the hands of the seemingly unwavering force that ails it. I can’t even come close to imagining the vulnerability and helplessness that the victims had felt, but the experience was powerful nonetheless.

Every memorial I’ve gone to has been very emotionally evoking, but the one that had the most powerful feeling for me was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The memorial is a grid of gray obelisks, and you can walk between them. As you come closer to the middle, the ground gradually gets lower and the obelisks get taller. I have absolutely no idea how to describe the feeling I felt while I was in the middle, but the closest I can come is an overwhelming feeling of loneliness and sadness together. It was one of the most powerful auras I’ve experienced in my life and was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. This is definitely a memorial that you need to see for yourself to find your own interpretation.

There are so many things I could talk about, but it would all be too much for a single blog post. I ~HIGHLY~ recommend taking some time to freshen up on the history of the war and post-war Germany and then take a trip to visit some of the memorials. Every single one is worth seeing, and I promise you that you’ll be glad you did it. The last “memorial” I’d like to talk about, and what I think is the most important, are the Stolpersteine. The first time that I had heard about Stolpersteine was in my 3rd year German class back in high school. Stolpersteine are golden bricks that are put into the sidewalk with the name of a Jewish holocaust victim, as well as their date of birth and date of death. When I first learned about them, I thought they were all gathered together in a single spot in Berlin. However, they aren’t all in one place, but rather spread all throughout Germany. Instead of looming monuments like most memorials, they’re just a single stone or small group of stones in the sidewalk around every corner, and you can spot one in the ground everywhere you go. What I think makes this idea so effective is the frequency at which you see them. Being able to see a Stolperstein anywhere you are really helps quantify the sheer number of people that fell victim to the Holocaust. Also, you see them almost every day, but still not quite often enough to start ignoring them, making them serve as a daily reminder to prevent us from forgetting the past. And as George Santayana said so well, “Wer sich seiner Vergangenheit nicht erinnert, ist dazu verdammt, sie zu wiederholen“ – He who does not remember his past is thereby damned to repeat it.

#UmichEnginAbroad #IPEBerlin #DustinFletcher #IPE Summer19

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astudyinsarcasm9 · 5 years

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Pink Diamond and her character ark. Who is she supposed to be in the SU narrative? A villain? An anti-hero?

I’ve been meaning to make a bigger post about PD and her role in SU as of now.

First off: the Human zoo.

I am of the opinion that her character could’ve been written better. And by that I mean that if they wanted to make her truly morally questionable they should’ve stuck by the characterisation we got before ”A single pale rose”.

What do I mean?

Well, before that we thought and we were told that the Human Zoo was Pink’s and that Blue was just maintaining it in her absence, as a way to remember her. Garnet said PD would take humans there as trophies of her conquest. Now, I can imagine PD made up that story as a way to maker herself seem more evil in a bid to make the CGs have even more reasons to fight her. It certainly seems more evil than saying Blue and Yellow started the Zoo to shut up Pink.

The sad fact is the Human Zoo is really consistent with PD’s personality. She came to be infatuated with humans and until Greg she only saw them as play things so it makes total sense that she’d have a Human Zoo. It fits her to a T. She’d think she’d be doing a good thing by caring for them and providing them with basically a paradise version of Earth.

Hell, I would’ve loved a couple of episodes focusing on Pink Diamond slowly discovering the Earth and humans, watching them interact and deciding she likes them because they can evolve and change, unlike gems. Then, naturally, she would’ve wanted to take one or two for herself, to keep them closer to her, as she was not really allowed to be on Earth in the first place. So she asked Yellow and Blue to make the Zoo for her which they did. Maybe afterwards, after wandering on Earth some more she finds out how gems are made and how their creation strips the Earth of its life and then decides to fight for Earth. It would’ve made so much more sense. Instead of showing her see ONE human and deciding: OMG I need to save this planet. It felt lazy.

SU has a really interesting story and some really interesting characters and I really wish they did what Adventure Time did and just dedicate a couple of episodes to certain characters to develop them better. And with SU’s narrative it would’ve fitted nicely.

Second: Her weird characterisation.

Anyway, after ”A single pale rose” we found out the zoo was not hers at all and she had nothing to do with it. Gah! In the same episode we also find out she was always, more or less, a sweet, naive diamond which really does not go well with her debut when we saw she was incredibly spoiled and entitled. Ok, one can make the argument that she was younger, and when we saw her in ”A single pale rose” she already got her colony and already got bored of it and realized what a chore it was to be a diamond.

The problem with that is NO ONE WANTED TO SEE THE END RESULT.

Let me offer an example:

Zuko!

Zuko started out as the villain of the series. He was set in his views, he wanted the Avatar so he could go back home. Still, during Book 1 and Book 2 he went through a change. He had an inner battle with himself trying to decide which path to take and what his morality was in the end. Only in book 3 does he realize exactly where he stands, what he feels and what he has to do and during the second half of it he joins the protagonists and truly embraces his change of heart.

Now, imagine we were never shown Book 2 and we went from angry, bitter, entitled Zuko, who felt everyone was beneath him, up until a point when Iroh taught him humility, to the Zuko we had in the second half of Book 3 where he suddenly was on the good side and was nice and mostly pleasant. It would’ve sucked, right? We wouldn’t have seen the wonderful development he went through to get to that crucial point in his life.

Same with PD

When we first saw PD all she wanted was to be considered as one of the diamonds and be given the same respect as them. She wanted a colony. She was bratty she was spoiled. In the same vein Zuko wanted nothing more than to be back home, to be accepted back in the royal family and treated with the same respect as the other members. Except, unlike Zuko, we didn’t see PInk’s journey into becoming who she was. Hell, we’re not even sure we know who she was because as soon as we were told she had flaws, they were taken back and we were given the PD we know now.

All we saw was: PD wanting a colony and saying she is a diamond too and therefore should be treated as such - time skip - PD got her wish but got bored of it and because of said boredom she went out on the planet and discovered it had life, saw a human and decided she wanted to save it. To save it so she can live on it. But we’ll talk about that in a minute.

For some that would be pretty clear. Yeah she got bored of her colony. that’s it.

Yeah but, wouldn’t it have been more interesting to have some episodes gradually showing PD going from bratty and entitled to sweet and nice? To see her gradually lose interest in the colony, to see her observe what having a colony meant? To see her be neglected by the other diamonds, as it was implied was the case?

I don’t know. For me the PD from Jungle moon and the PD from A single pale rose seem like entirely different characters.

I’m sure the episodes were thought out long before they actually got feedback from us. But my bet is that between Jungle Moon and A single pale rose someone decided that the first PD was not what they wanted PD to be so they made the change.

The war!

People are really torn when it comes to the gem war.

I for one think that the creators wanted to have their cake and eat it too. What do I mean by that?

Pink Diamond chose to fight for the Earth because she saw what gem production was doing to the planet. It is assumed that while going out with Pearl and seeing Earth she observed how life was being affected by the collonisaton.

This is what PD says in ”A single pale rose”: We can leave our old lives behind. If this is really my world, I want to give it to the Crystal Gems. I want to live here with human beings! I wanna live here with you! We'll both finally be free!

This means that she wanted to free Earth more for the sake of her being able to be free on it, than because its life was affected. She wanted to be free of her duties as a diamond, she wanted to be free and live with humans and with Pearl.

Ok, after she met Garnet we were told she started to fight for other gems, but I don’t think that was entirely right. If she did want to fight for all gems she would’ve tried to liberate all the gems from under the diamonds, but she made sure not to harm the other diamonds (Bismuth, wink-wink). So she just wanted the safe route out.

That’s what I meant by the creators wanted their cake and to eat it too. They should’ve picked one or the other, because, as it is, PD comes off more as somebody who wanted to get out of her duties and just found the perfect excuse to do so. Im sure she cared for life on Earth but I am more sure she cared more for her own freedom.

This is why PD’s characterisation suffers a lot. That’s why people argue over it. Because these two beliefs cannot be reconciled.

I would’ve rather seen a PD who, while having her colony, saw, gradually, how her own colony affecter life on Earth. Maybe Pearl took her on the planet, multiple times, to see the damage. Maybe, one day, she’d ask Pearl what was going to happen to the planet after she was done colonising and Pearl would show her the plans and she’d be horrified. A lot of maybes.

But instead, even in her last moments as PD she didn’t say: ”Pearl, I want to save this planet. Look at it, I am destroying it and pretty soon nothing will be left if I don’t act.” Instead she once again reaffirmed her desire to be free of being a diamond.

In my eyes she is sort of an anti-hero. I am sure she had the best intentions but they were selfish intensions first and the noble ones afterwards. At least that’s what her characterisation is telling me.

And it is sad. The show is going to incredible lengths to sanitise her, as if she was just naive and misunderstood. Yes she was naive but she was also misguided, selfish and immature and until she met Greg she lacked empathy, for humans anyway.

And another thing: The show also went to great lengths to show us how gems are under a dictatorship, how there’s a caste system in place, how fusion means a death sentence etc. Yet, PD never talked about it. Rose never talked about it. Rose never meant a point to fight back against that system. Ok, one can make the argument that as PD she had no idea. Ok, cool, but as Rose I’m pretty sure she found out. And even as PD she had to know, to some degree how other gems were treated. She at least knew fusion was unheard of and by extension punished, so she must have known how gems were treated under the diamonds.

Bismuth was the only one who saw that and who wanted to take action against it. Pearl knew, heck, she was a slave by Homeworld’s views, and did not express a desire to save other gems from such a fate. Garnet knew and didn’t care even though Ruby almost got shattered because of that same system. And when Bismuth expressed the desire to free the other gems Rose bubbled her because of course she did she couldn’t have allowed the shattering of her dictator sisters.

And I hear some of you say: yeah but they are her sisters and her family. Yeah, cool but, and I go back to Zuko, when Aang was to face the FireLord, Zuko did not kill Aang or trap him somewhere so he couldn’t fight the Firelord because the villain happened to be his father.

In the episode ”Sozin’s Comet, Part 1: The Phoenix King” Zuko says this to Aang:

”You'll have to take the Fire Lord's life before he takes yours.” And this ”Well, that sweet little kid grew up to be a monster, and the worst father in the history of fathers.”

See? Zuko acknowledges that Aang has to kill his father for the greater good, to liberate the fire nation people, to save the world. AND he also acknowledges that Ozai is a terrible person.

This is how the Bismuth-Rose should’ve went if Rose gave two shits about the homeworld gems.

Some say SU is a kids show and can’t portray such things but iIT CHOSE TO TALK ABOUT WAR AND GENOCIDE AND LIFE LOSS - and as such, exactly like ATLA earned itself the right to go into more serious topics, despite being a show mainly aimed at kids.

If you talk about war and all that implies then have the balls to do it right and tackle all the issues.

All in all I think PD was a missed opportunity to have a great character ark for someone considered to be part of the villains but the reforming and taking the side of good and going against the system she was a part of. Exactly like Zuko.

I am really interested to see what will happen next but I suspect that as far as PD is concerned her character ark is pretty much over for now. There’s nowhere to go.

In the end she was just a selfish person who wanted to escape her life and duties because she found them boring and in doing so she found a really good reason for it: The colony was hurting the life on Earth. So she took that to heart and saw it as the perfect opportunity.

Let’s not forget that because of her we have gem experiments, the Cluster, corrupted gems etc. She couldn’t have known some of these would happen but she was a diamond so at least she could’ve known that the Diamonds have the ability to fuck shit up should they chose to.

Feel free to leave comments and discuss.

As always this is just my opinion and is not written in stone.

#steven universe #su critical #pink diamond

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bigskydreaming · 5 years

Text

Random bits of writing beneath the cut. Yo @russianspacegeckosexparty, these are scenes yanked from the 10 years ago manuscript I was telling you about, the magic I cannibalized to use for the magic system/worldbuilding in this series.

Mostly just action scenes so the only thing you really need to know in order to follow is that the Cunninghams are a family of nine kids (yeah I know, look this was a very early book of mine), who each have magic that manifests via a specific medium. They can do pretty much anything they can imagine involving that medium, even if it doesn’t make any kind of physical or logical sense or just riffs off of symbolism - however it doesn’t always work the way they think it will. Its magic without instruction manual. They’re all just winging it.

Other key detail is that for most of the book they were all dealing with a curse someone’d put on their family years ago, where the sight of one another whipped them into a homicidal rage and thus they had to stay apart and take great care not to be around each other in ways that could trigger it. Eventually, they discovered that there was another magic family out there (well, several), and one in particular had put the curse on them for Reasons.

Anyway, of the Cunninghams, oldest was Serena, whose magic involved tears, Trent (shadows), Dennis (blood), Cam (art), Alice (mirrors), Rowan (coins), Katie (echoes), Megan (fingerprints) and Micah (dust).

The other family in this had similarly distinct magic, with Paul (breath), Mina (light), David (music), Jonas (crossroads) and Teri (memories).

Oh and the last three scenes that don’t make sense chronologically are flashbacks of Micah’s (the narrator) from when he was younger, thanks to memory magic making him relive them.

***************

I spun to see the windows lining the side of the house that faced us – changing, for lack of a better way to describe them. The glass folded out away from the walls, then grew together in a slick, sinuous movement that formed a bridge into the sky, snaking and curving back on itself. It thickened until the bridge was a column that expanded towards the base, branching out with a thinner neck, wings, legs, arms. The whole sight was painful to watch, trying to wrap my mind around the impossibility of it and just how many laws of physics were violated as Alice grew a glass dragon out of Mom’s prized windows.

“Oh, that’s just Alice,” I said. “She and Cam are having a little spat.”

“I see.” Teri sounded faint. “Do we really want ring side seats for this?”

“Probably not. Especially since Alice’s mirror magic can’t really do something like that on her own. A stunt like that only works if she’s mirroring someone else’s magic, like, a kind of reflection of it.”

“Which means Cam’s probably test driving his new tattoo,” I added as a trumpeting roar shook the beach and a giant golden dragon crashed through the wall of my house. “Also, run!”

I grabbed her by the hand and we tore down the beach, the sand catching at our heels and making us stumble. The mirror dragon roared back, a strange tinkling sound somehow reminiscent of both wind chimes and nails on a chalkboard. The ground darkened beneath their shadows as the two behemoths slammed together overhead, and then strange prisms of light danced across the dunes. The sun was shining through Alice’s dragon as much as it was forced around it. Her and her damn glass and mirrors. She liked to mess with physics as much as possible. You’d think she had a personal beef with Einstein or something.

We reached the cliff and pressed ourselves up against its face. I hoped the angle would be enough to protect us from sight. I could never be sure how the logistics of Cam and Alice’s magic worked. Alice could scry through mirrors, but could she see through her mirror dragon’s eyes? And if so, would catching sight of me that way be enough to trigger the curse? And what about Cam’s dragon? Being a tattoo, I figured it probably had a closer link to him than Alice’s.

Ugh. Fucking magic. The headaches it gave were so not worth the price of admission.

“What do we do now?” Teri panted. I had no answer. Instead we just stared up at the two beasts as they circled and dove through the air at each other. The golden one caught the other by one leg with its talons, and with a crash and a ragged splitting sound glass rained from above. The mirror dragon whipped its tail in response. The shards at the ends of it ripped into the gold’s wing and blood fountained free.

******

“This is going to end well,” Teri muttered, but she followed me inside and up cracked hardwood steps. We climbed three flights of stairs into the gloom of the seemingly deserted apartment building. It wasn’t that late, but I heard no noises from the apartments we passed. We made our way down a dingy hallway that sported dirty gray carpeting and stained green wallpaper. The lights in the wall sconces were on their last legs. A roach skittered out of our path.

I didn’t have to worry about ruining the locks on Megan’s door. It was already ajar, and a Really Bad Feeling rose wailing from the pits of my stomach. I batted it away and cautiously pushed the door all the way open. It creaked on unoiled hinges as I stepped inside.

“Is it too late to go back to the car?” Teri asked. I raised a finger to my lips. She hesitated and stepped across the threshold behind me. The apartment inside was way better maintained than the rest of the building. And my sister had been here recently, judging from the relative lack of dust lining the surfaces. We ventured further inside. I closed the door.

“Should I turn on the lights?” She wondered. I shook my head and looked around. It was sparsely furnished, with only the minimum of pieces. A dining room table, a couple of wooden chairs. A small TV stand beneath an even smaller TV. A painfully bright orange couch probably rescued from some college dorm room, and a coffee table straight out of the Ikea catalogue. There were two potted plants decorating a low, long set of bookshelves that stretched across one wall, beneath a window that opened out onto a fire escape. Instead of books, the shelves were lined with dozens of glass jars.

“What are those?” Teri wandered to the nearest jar and reached out a finger, just shy of touching it. I pulled her back. More jars crowded the kitchen table, the coffee table, the counters and shelves of the small corner kitchen. They were all empty, just glass jars full of air, lids sealed tight and with tiny strips of masking tape to serve as labels. Names and dates written across them in small letters. Delicately printed in black Sharpie.

“Megan’s armory,” I whispered. Couldn’t say why I felt a need to keep my voice down, but my Really Bad Feeling hadn’t fled far. It still crouched behind my too-quickly beating heart, twined around my nerves, keeping them tight and coiled and ready to spring at the first sign of danger. “Her magic is keyed to fingerprints. She can find people with them, access their thoughts and histories. Take on their shapes and skills and very identities.”

I picked one up, careful to keep my fingers around the lid, and raised it to the window. Silver moonbeams spilled through the panes and shone through the glass of the jar. Several fingerprints gleamed in the light. Thumb, index, middle fingers of both hands. “This is how she stores them. So that even when she changes back to her real form and the person isn’t around anymore, she can still tap into them if she needs to use their shape or skills again.”

Teri drifted through the apartment, eyeing the jars with wide-eyed wonder. “There must be hundreds of them.”

I shrugged. “Megan’s always been more at home being other people than herself.”

It didn’t take a shrink to figure out that probably wasn’t that healthy, but we were Cunninghams. Magic and issues came included, batteries sold separately.

“Micah, she has one of you. And all the rest of your siblings, I think.”

I nodded and followed her into the kitchen, where nine jars sat by themselves right behind the sink. “Yeah I know. When she taps our fingerprints and takes our shapes, she can use our magic too.”

“Damn. That’s pretty potent.”

“Yeah. But it’s Megan. She’s pretty much the only one of my siblings I’d trust with that kind of mojo. I mean, Alice and Katie can sometimes kinda echo or mirror the stuff the rest of us can do, but they can’t tap into our power sources directly like Megan can. Now if Rowan or Serena could do that – forget about it. Time to run screaming.”

Teri chewed a strand of her hair, unconvinced. “If you say so. Why does she have one of her own fingerprints?”

“Oh.” I frowned and looked back around the apartment. I wasn’t even sure where to begin hunting for clues to her present whereabouts. Maybe the dust could tell me something? “She’s kinda paranoid about getting stuck in someone else’s shape and not being able to turn back into herself. The magic’s – tricky like that, sometimes.”

******

“Micah, cover your eyes,” Trent yelled from somewhere nearby, and I obeyed on instinct. It wasn’t that I suddenly trusted him again, it was just…I had no idea what the hell was going on anymore, and I was happy to listen to anyone who seemed to have some kind of grip on reality.

On the plus side, I was no longer convinced I was going crazy. It was the universe I thought was going crazy, instead.

I felt the cold, slimy grasp of my brother’s shadows wind around me, and then there was a brief sense of disorientation, of the world falling away beneath me as he slipped me through dark nether dimensions. I emerged into the cool humidity of the September New York night.

“Look straight ahead,” Trent directed then, coalescing from the shadows right next to me. He reached out to grip my hand in his, and I jumped. It took every bit of concentration I possessed, focusing intently on every nerve and muscle in my body as I fought the urge to glance over at him. I may not have known what was really happening, but I knew triggering the curse was the last thing I could afford to do right now.

We were on the sidewalk in front of a traffic circle. The tall bronze statue of a rearing horse and its rider loomed in front of us and its shadow stretched beneath the streetlights, landing at the shores of our feet. Trent reached out a hand to caress the shadow of the horse’s back – I could see that much of him without anything happening – and with a restless shudder, it came to life.

“Cover your eyes,” he said, just before he grabbed the flailing hairs of the stallion’s mane and heaved himself up on its back. “I’m going to pull you up, and then I need you to turn yourself around so you’re facing the other way from me.”

“Wait, you want me to ride your magic shadow horse backwards?” I protested, even as I covered my eyes with one hand and let him drag me up behind him with the other. I expected him to have to struggle a little, but he managed it with ease. I’d forgotten how strong he was. “Are you nuts?”

“Desperate times, desperate measures,” he said grimly, and I was reminded of a similar situation with Teri just a few hours ago. It seemed like a lifetime already. I settled on the horse and leaned back into my brother, wrapping one arm around his waist behind me and bracing the other against the muscled shadow flesh we sat upon. Our steed pranced in place, aggressive and straining to be set free, but Trent held it back. We were a block down from where Teri stood with Paul, Mina and the others, but they were racing in our direction, Paul gliding through the air while the other four sprinted down the block.

“Trent, what the hell?” I asked at last. “Why is Teri with them?”

He didn’t answer at first, still consumed with the task of feeding some kind of directives to the shadow mount. It reared up on its back legs, and I almost slid down its flanks before it landed on all four feet again. Then we were off galloping down the street in quick, fluid motions. The buildings whizzed by us.

“She’s their sister,” Trent said. The winds of our passage burned my face and roared in my ears. I had trouble breathing.

“What?”

“Paul, Mina, the other two, she’s their sister,” he said again. “It wasn’t a coincidence that she was in the coffee shop this morning; she’s been following you for weeks. Same with the other two guys…the one David, he’s got some kind of music magic, we think, he was tailing Cam, but could never get close. The other one, Jonas, he was sticking by Alice.”

“How do you know this?” It couldn’t be true, I mean, it couldn’t have all been a lie, right? And yet, looking back behind us at Teri and her what, siblings, as they gave chase…I knew Trent wasn’t lying. Paul rose into the air, climbing higher and higher into the sky. He was arrowing towards the roof of a nearby apartment building. From this distance I could just make out the outline of a woman…and then thunder crashed overhead and stormclouds gathered with supernatural speed, and I knew it was Serena. Within seconds, rain came pouring down.

“Let’s just say Serena and I had our own encounters with Paul and Mina,” Trent said grimly. “Speaking of which, hang on.”

The stallion reared again and turned left onto a main street, still busy with traffic even at this late hour. People leaned out their car windows to gawk at us, but at least the cover of night made it look like we were just randomly riding a horse through downtown Manhattan, rather than a physical manifestation of my brother’s shadow magic.

The river of light that cascaded around the corner in pursuit of us was a little less easy to explain.

Colors flowed down streetlamps and off flashing neon signs to join in the chase. A serpentine length of red luminescence struck from the bulbs of a theater marquee, and we dodged just in time. Blue and green ribbons split off from the gaudy sign of some high end night club, and the yellow beams of several cars’ headlights bent and swerved in mid-air to flank us on both sides.

Strands of multi-colored light wove and twisted themselves around each other and across our path, looking like nothing so much as sparkling strands of DNA, complex double helixes that snapped at our heels and in front of us like tentacles or the arms of some demented, magical octopus. Trent pulled darkness from rooftops and alleys and splashed them all around us, dousing the lights under buckets of black painted shadows.

We cut through a park and crossed a small man-made river, our horse running across the top of the water without making splash. The other side led out into the heart of the concrete jungle, and curtains of light dropped down the lengths of skyscrapers all around us, gaining fast.

I realized we weren’t alone. Alice was racing through the reflections alongside us, flashing briefly through one window before reappearing in the next. She threw me a grin and then grew, until her reflection was one story high, and then two, and then three. Giant sized Alice reached down with a hand that was six windows high and three windows wide, and grabbed a fistful of light like so many ribbons. Despite everything, I laughed. Silly Mina. Don’t try and play with light when Alice and reflective surfaces are around. My sister refracted the illumination through the windows of her body, and a thousand tiny golden threads shot back through the air at dizzying speeds, heading backwards along the trajectory that had led them here.

Then space warped, and twisted. My stomach tied itself in knots. In the blink of an eye we were two blocks ahead and facing the other direction. I’d never travelled so quickly or seamlessly with any of my siblings’ brands of magical transportation.

Space warped again, and a blink later the two guys I’d seen with Teri, Paul and Mina were standing in the intersection in front of us.

“Shit,” Trent cursed, but there wasn’t time for anything else. One of the guys pursed his lips and whistled a sharp, vaulting melody. David, I guessed. His tune crescendoed up the musical scales and cracks raced up windows of the skyscrapers on both sides of the street in sympathetic harmony. Alice opened her mouth in surprise and then the windows fell apart, raining down on us below. The tinkling chimes of falling glass sounded almost like a scream as my sister’s reflection vanished.

“Alice!” I shouted and an answering screech echoed my cry. Cam’s gold dragon dive bombed from above, plunging down the lengths of the buildings, jaws opened and ready to flame despite the rain coming down. The other man grabbed handfuls of air and folded them. Space twisted again, and a blink of an eye later and the mighty beast crashed into the street a block away. “How is he doing that?”

“That’s Jonas,” Trent spat. He threw a rolling wave of blackness hastily over Cam’s dragon like a blanket of shadows, and kept it advancing across the street towards the other two men until Jonas just grabbed his brother and they blinked behind us. “His magic’s something to do with crossroads, or intersections and doorways. Can’t tell, it’s hard to pin down.”

I nodded, feeling useless. There wasn’t much I could do to help as long as Serena kept this storm up. Any dust I could raise would just be beaten back down by the downpour. Unfortunately, she didn’t have enough control over the waters she summoned to work around my magic. She just turned storms on and off, she couldn’t control what they did or where they went once she’d conjured them. Lightning flashed and Mina wrestled control of the jagged electric spears from wherever she was hiding. A bolt crashed down into the street right next to us and the sudden burst of illumination extinguished Trent’s shadow stallion in a wash of white light. We fell to the ground.

I think it was safe to say we were getting our asses kicked at this point.

*******

By the time it dissipated, Trent and Cam had vanished, and Serena was pulling a pouch full of small glass vials from her pocket. Alice was several stores down from us, and every time she passed a window her reflection leapt out and joined her, until the far courtyard was filled with an abundance of Alices.

“Can Jonas come out and play?” She called mockingly. The target of her derision jumped to his feet and took off across the tiled floor. But instead of sprinting towards her, he was headed in the opposite direction, running scared. Space warped and he crossed the room in the span of a few blinks, jumping intervals of twenty feet at a time. But then Alice stepped out of a window right in front of him, and slapped him in the face, fingernails hooked like claws. Blood spewed from his lip and he blinked away.

Only to find another Alice waiting for him. He blinked again, and she was there too. Everywhere he jumped, there was a reflection of her waiting. And for every reflection, she had a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, until he was mobbed by her in multitudes, no matter which way he turned.

A sound like nails on chalkboard scraped across the atrium and I turned to see a chalk outline sketching itself along the wall of the courtyard’s upper floor, overlooking us from above. Stark white lines superimposed themselves across walls, windows and doors, the shape and imagery of crackling flames that sprang to life. First they flickered two dimensionally, then they gained depth and volume, color and voice and fire ringed the floor above. Cam appeared, leaning over the upper balcony as he scooped his hand through the flames. Molding a perfect sphere he hurled it at David, raining down fire from above.

I’d totally forgotten how much of a pyro he was. Freak.

Paul levitated straight up into the center of the courtyard, his winds sweeping up water from a large bubbling fountain in front of the nearest department store. He flung a mini-typhoon at Cam’s inferno. The flames hissed angrily when doused, but there were a lot of them and Cam didn’t need much to fuel for his fireballs. He grinned and threw several more at David in quick succession. The last Bradley brother sang a quick, discordant melody that slammed into the balcony beneath Cam, shaking it and tossing him from his feet.

Serena drew forth a vial of her tears and threw it to the ground in front of David. The glass shattered and smoking acid bubbled forth, eating away at the tiled floor and spreading like a virus. He cried out and jumped back, and Paul whipped up another wave to wash away the acid. Then he caught Serena in a whirlwind and threw her into the fountain.

Mina crooked her fingers at me and multi-colored rays of light shot in my direction. I dodged and a shadow hound hurtled itself from a corner behind her and knocked her to the ground. I pointed my hand at the ceiling and rained debris down on her, burying her in a mound of rubble and then I was falling too, somehow gone from the floor to the ceiling in the blink of an eye. Crap. Fucking Jonas.

I hollered in a possibly slightly unmanly fashion and flailed arms and legs uselessly, but I couldn’t muster the concentration needed to turn myself to dust when falling from two stories up. I jerked to a stop anyways, bobbing up and down in the air like I’d reached the end of a bungee cord, and I looked across the way to see giant sized Alice reflected in a window. She held my T-shirt pinched between massive fingers.

She set me down gently, and then she was gone, racing through windows. I caught sight of Teri behind me in a reflection, and I spun as she conjured more of her sister’s light shows in a riotous rainbow display that sparked and fizzled around me like fireworks. I stumbled backwards, and Cam sketched himself into the scene between us, appearing first as lines drawn into the air, then fleshing out with color and dimension.

Teri set her jaw and a wall of shadows surged forth from a shop behind her and poured into the shape of a pack of snapping wolves. Cam swept his hand through the first shadow wolf and turned the memory into a photo, mashing it down into two dimensions bordered within a Polaroid frame, a snapshot of any of the dozens of times Trent had pulled that trick when we were kids.

A silver and copper cloud of coins erupted from the fountains and came wailing our way with all the screeching fury of a banshee. Cam made a picture of that memory too, and a snapshot of Rowan’s typical gaudy display of force fluttered to the floor. Teri sketched fireballs from mid-air, cried tears of acid rain and drafted ghosts to animate the mannequins the department store windows. They marched our way like so many toy soldiers, but Cam packed them all up in a small frame and banished the memory with just a photograph to keep in its place.

She yelled in frustration and turned and ran down a side corridor, headed for the escalators to a lower level. I sprinted after her, Cam close behind me, but a harsh, grating melody cracked the ground in between us, forging a jagged chasm that left Cam on the other side. He whipped off his shirt and his panther tattoo leaped free, bounding across the floor towards a wide-eyed David. The other man ducked behind a potted plant and conjured a tune to soothe the savage beast.

*****

I rose to my knees, choking - but it wasn’t his grip on my neck that had me gasping for air. His magic was a sandstorm swirling in my lungs. Every breath I took stabbed the walls of my throat with shards of spells and broken glass. Paul grinned down at me through the white spots dotting my vision and I batted at his arm, trying desperately to break free. Dude was on steroids or I was really just that scrawny, but either way, I was still going to die here. Young. Virginal. Alone.

Epic fail, universe. Epic fail.

And then winter came early.

The sharp crackle of ice knifed through the empty food court like an overactive toddler popping bubble wrap without supervision. And if you don’t like my similes, blame my brain’s current lack of oxygen. Paul let his magic and me slip free and I slid bonelessly to the floor, wheezing and flopping around like a geriatric trout with asthma and a smoking problem. I raised my head in search of whoever had kicked the AC into overdrive and found my sister standing regally at the top of the escalator.

God. She was such a drama queen.

Serena was soaked head to toe from her impromptu swim in the fountains earlier, but if it bothered her you’d never know. A silent wind tossed her raven hair behind her, and an endless stream of water dripped from her t-shirt and jeans, pooling around her bare feet and cascading down the steps of the escalator in far more quantities than her clothes could have ever contained. Her face was pinched tight with cold fury, and a chill leaked from her bone-white skin. Frost coated the railing of the escalator beneath her hand and three frozen tears tracked slowly down her cheeks. Big Sis was pissed, and I was just glad that for once it didn’t seem to be at me.

I scooted out of the way just to be on the safe side.

“I think you‘ve been a pain in my family‘s collective asses long enough.” Serena announced into the vastness. Only the rhythmic trickle of water rushing forth from her kept her voice from echoing like a bell. Like a death knell. “And no one gets to kill my baby brother except me.”

Now that was just unnecessary. I frowned. “Okay, see, stuff like this is exactly the reason Megan’s my favorite sister.”

They ignored me in favor of making angry eyes at each other. Serena started slowly down the escalator. One frozen tear dripped free of her cheek and fell into the water puddled at her feet, freezing it over in an instant. It spread forth from there in a river of blue-white light, rattling like dancing ice cubes. Unlike the glaciers they resembled, there was nothing slow moving about either her anger or her magic. The ice coated the escalator in seconds and raced towards Paul.

He swore and leapt higher into the air, twisting, shimmering until he was nothing but fog and mist. Pale smoke riding the wind. Serena smiled, showing teeth, and raising a hand to her cheek collected a second frozen tear on her fingertip. She flicked it at the rising fog and Paul crashed into a near table, all tangled limbs and solid, weighty flesh. He jumped upright but the ice reached him before he could take a step. It locked him in place and kept climbing slowly up his legs.

“Bitch -” he snarled as Serena reached him. She silenced him, pinching his lips together between her fingers. His eyes bulged, furious, but the ice had reached his arms by then and locked them at his sides.

Paul tried to shout something between smashed together lips, but Serena just reached her finger to her cheek again and collected her last tear, placing it on the tip of his nose.

“No more talking now,” she whispered. His eyes widened but too late. The ice rushed over his face and down his chest, pale blue forks of frost burrowing deep beneath his skin and replacing his veins. In moments he was completely translucent. Not just covered in ice, but flesh become ice. Serena pushed gently and he toppled over backwards, shattering with a sharp screech like a single, stunted scream.

*******

We made it as far as the escalator before a song hit us full in the chest, knocking us both on our asses and sliding back along the floor.

“Murderer!” David shouted at Serena. He whistled two sharp, high notes, and she raised her hands to her head, screaming in agony. Whatever he did to her passed, and she glared at him through dripping eyes.

“Pot, meet kettle,” she coughed and brushed a finger across her face. She flicked the moisture she found there at him and he stumbled back, hollering as her tears raised red burn marks across his skin. They burrowed into his flesh, worming their way down to blood and bone. David sang a song of agony and rage, and the ground erupted beneath Serena, plunging her into a hole that gaped open like a ready grave.

He turned towards me with red-rimmed and hate-filled eyes, spitting out sharp, staccato notes that hammered into the wall behind me, punching holes into the plaster. One note caught me in the shoulder and I spun, thrown backwards by the impact.

“You people,” he rasped, standing over me and placing a hand above my chest, “have caused my family nothing but grief.”

David started humming and I gasped as I felt his magic wash over me. His music matched the rhythm of my heartbeat, and then he twisted his song. My heartbeat followed the lead of his music, angrily accelerating at a supernaturally rapid pace. My heart rate tripled in seconds. I grabbed frantically at my chest. It felt like it was going to explode. Was this what a heart attack felt like? Or was this something else altogether?

******

I was eight. Katie nine, Rowan eleven. We were in the 7-11 nearest our house, which meant a three mile hike, basically. Which also meant we were entirely justified in any trouble we got up to there as a result. We’d earned it, after all.

So Katie and I prowled the aisles of the empty convenience mart, snickering as we grabbed every bag of candy and oddly flavored soda that caught our eyes. Rowan dutifully added them to his already overloaded hand basket, laughing himself each time a new addition made the mountain of junk food spill over the sides and onto the floor. We scrambled to gather it all up off of the stained linoleum tiles and piled it in the basket. And then Rowan would struggle to pick it up again, usually with a violent heave that made it all spill back to the floor. We made a big production of it. We had time to kill.

The lone clerk watched us with bored, jaded eyes. He was red haired under the cheap visor they all wore here, and skinny and pale beneath even cheaper fluorescent lights that buzzed and flickered sporadically. Freckles, acne and a sour disposition marred his face. Peach colored fuzz that could use some grooming spotted his chin and his uniform shirt was wrinkled and dirty. If ever there was a kid who hated his job more, I’d yet to meet them. Judging from his frown, he definitely knew us. But then, it was a small town in North Carolina, and our family had something of a reputation. Everyone knew us.

Restless fingers fidgeted with the scanner – probably itching for a cigarette, if his teeth were any indication, yuck - and every so often he would look up like he was about to say something. Maybe yell at us to get out. He definitely knew we were going to make his otherwise peaceful shift difficult. He just hadn’t figured out how yet, or how to prevent it.

I almost felt bad for him. But then, I was a total shit back then, so the feeling passed and I added some more M&M’s to the basket.

By the time we got up to the register, our basket was so full I had to help Rowan get it up on the counter. The bell over the door tinkled as three more customers piled into the store and headed straight for the beer, talking loudly at each other and giving each other obnoxious shoves on the way. The clerk sighed. Rowan grinned. Katie smothered giggles behind her hands.

It took several minutes to scan everything in our basket, and by the time the clerk gave us our total of fifty some odd dollars and change, the three men were waiting in line behind us and two more customers were wandering the aisles.

“You sure you can pay for all of this, kid?” The clerk asked.

Rowan made a show of digging around in his pockets, and nodded. He looked up with an apologetic smile, his face as angelic as I’d ever seen it. He was still capable of seeming innocent back then. I attributed it to the baby fat still lining his cheeks. “I only have change. Is that okay?”

The clerk looked like he’d just swallowed a lemon. “I’ve got other customers waiting, and I don’t have time for games, kid.”

Rowan bit his lip and seemed to give this some thought. “Can I give you what I have and anything else you can just put back?”

He sighed. “Hurry it up, then.”

“Cool,” Rowan said and pulled two big handfuls of change out of his pockets. Dumping them on the counter, he started to count them out. Slowly. It was mostly nickels and dimes. The customers behind us started to stir restlessly.

“Here, let me help you,” the clerk said, and tried to reach for the coins scattered all across the glass counter.

“Hey, I can do it! I’m in fifth grade you know.” My brother glared.

“I didn’t mean that you couldn’t.” The kid behind the counter knew better than to lose his patience with any customer, even a little punk like my brother. Especially with the two women who’d been browsing the store now standing in line as well and smiling indulgently at that same little punk. Rowan knew how to run a con even before middle school. He might be a dickhead, but he was as precocious as all of us, in his own way.

It took about five minutes to count all the change on the counter, and it came to a little over eleven dollars. The clerk moved to take some of the candy off the total, but Rowan stopped him, digging around in his pockets again.

“Wait! I think I have some more.” He pulled another two handfuls from his pockets and dropped them on the counter. This time there were almost twice as many coins.

The clerk stared, confused. I could see him trying to figure out how my brother had all that change in his pockets. There was no way he’d been walking around with twenty to thirty dollars in pocket change weighing him down just a few minutes ago. Katie squeaked behind her hands and shook with silent laughter. Rowan just beamed and resumed counting.

“Hey, aren’t you in my sister Serena’s class?” He asked the clerk, seeming distracted by his math.

“What?” The clerk was busy eyeing the men behind us nervously. I took a peek behind us at them, and one of them scowled down at me beneath a thick salt and pepper mustache and squinting red eyes. He wasn’t happy. I smiled politely.

“My sister,” Rowan said. “Serena Cunningham? I think you’re in her class at school.” He pulled another handful of change from his pocket and started counting it out. All pennies this time.

“Yeah, I know Serena. How much more change do you have, kid? I really need to get to my other customers.”

“I don’t know.” Rowan gave him a withering look. “That’s why I’m counting. And I’m not ‘kid.’ I have a name.”

“Sorry, ki-“, the clerk started to say impatiently, before he caught himself. He tried to smile in apology at the customers behind us, but they weren’t having it and he wasn’t as practiced at it as Rowan.

“And you shouldn’t call my sister a slut,” Rowan continued. He was still intent on his counting, but when Katie and I looked at him, startled, we could see he wasn’t keeping his head down for any great attempt at concentration. He was just trying to hide the smirk that played across his lips.

“What?”

“My sister, Serena? You shouldn’t call her a slut. It’s not a nice word,” my brother said. He was the very picture of innocence.

The clerk swallowed, really nervous now. His eyes darted around, but he found no support from the customers behind us. Particularly not from the two women who were by now listening intently.

“I didn’t,” he started to protest, but Rowan cut him off.

“Oh. That’s too bad. Because my brothers think you did, and they’re kinda pissed. You know my brothers right? Trent and Dennis? Trent’s on the football team.”

“Yeah, I know them,” the clerk said weakly. His face was looking considerably paler now. I wasn’t totally sure what was going on anymore, but I had picked up enough at this point to take some pleasure in that.

“Serena doesn’t know you said that yet, though, so that’s lucky,” Rowan continued. He pulled out some more change. “Because she’s a lot worse to piss off than my brothers. Trust me. When she gets mad, oh man. Look out, you know?”

The clerk swallowed. His head bobbed up and down.

“Look,” he said. “I’ve really got to get to my other customers. How about I just take care of the rest of this stuff for you? It’s on the house.”

“Really? Are you sure? I think I have enough change for the rest, still.”

“No, it’s cool, I’ve got it.” He hurriedly piled our spoils of war into a few plastic bags and shoved them across the counter at us. “And tell your sister that whatever she hears about Jimmy, from trig class? Tell her he’s really sorry and he just was really drunk at that party and said some stupid shit – stuff, I mean, he just said some stupid things.”

“Okay, I’ll try,” Rowan said, sounding a little doubtful as the three of us pulled the bags off the counter. They were so heavy they almost dropped straight to the floor, but we managed. “I don’t know if it’ll help though. She doesn’t always listen to me, you know. She thinks I’m just a kid.”

Weighed down by our bags, we tottered out the door. One of the women from line had to help us with it and she beamed down at Rowan.

“Thank you ma’am,” he said politely. The door chimed overhead and we made our way outside into the sweltering spring humidity. Heat danced off the pavement, twisting the air in warped, waving ribbons. I could still smell the smoke from the clerk’s last cigarette break and I looked back into the store. He was staring after us while ringing up the next guy.

“Rowan, what’s a slut?” I asked. We crossed the street to the small shaded park on the next block.

“It’s a bad word nobody’s ever allowed to say about our sisters. Got it?”

I nodded vigorously. Katie looked thoughtful. Then she clapped her hands and started to skip. The sound of her handclap echoed back to the convenience store’s parking lot and a sudden boom erupted in the middle of the three or four cars there. Two different car alarms started blaring in opposition to each other, off tempo and allowing no reprieve from their wails. Still weighed down by our bags, we ran off through the park, laughing as customers piled out of the store to see what had happened.

It took us three hours to eat all that candy. We were up puking most of the night. Totally worth it.

*******

“Micah! Katie! Get back here!”

We laughed and ignored Serena, continuing our wild spins across the hallway. Our sneakers squeaked across the stained white floor, probably accounting for a good half of the short black streaks that marred its surface. Then we lost our balance and crashed together. We fell in a tangled heap against the water fountain, but this only made us laugh harder. And Serena more pissed.

“Seriously you two, enough! We’re in a hospital,” she hissed. Uncomfortable green chairs lined the hallway, but just because she was sitting in one reading her stupid magazine didn’t mean we had to. Reading was boring. Spinning was fun. It seemed self-explanatory to me, but she reached down and grabbed me by the arm anyways, pulling me to my feet and steering me into the seat next to her.

“But why?” I said. I moaned and kicked my feet. “We’re not sick.”

“Yeah,” Katie chimed, dancing out of reach of Serena’s grasping talons. Her fingernails were long and pointy and they hurt. “We never get sick.”

“Katie, sit!” Serena snapped her fingers and got that dangerous look in her eyes. Katie sulked but plopped next to me. You could only push Serena so far, after all. “And you had your chance to go home with Trent. You’re the ones who wanted to wait here until Mom got off work, well here we are. Running around and acting like baboons while people are trying to get better wasn’t part of the deal.”

I rolled my eyes and slid down my seat like a snake. Her arm lashed out like an even faster one and pinned me in place before I could squirm all the way to the floor. “No, we wanted ice cream,” I clarified. “Mom said we could have some when she got done working.”

Which nobody told me would take hours. I felt lied to.

“Yeah, I changed my mind,” Katie said. “Can we go home now?”

“No, we cannot go home now. Trent has the car and I’m not ferrying you brats home in Mom’s just to turn around and have to come back and pick her up. Now stay put, zip it, and stop pissing me off.”

She gave us a stern glare and whipped her magazine back up in front of her face. Katie and I eyed each other. Rowan would say she was being a B-I-T-C-H, and I mouthed as much to my sister. She giggled, and Serena snapped. “Watch it, Micah!”

I sat bolt upright and wiped the guilt off my face as best I could. “I didn’t say anything!”

“Learn to be less predictable, baby brother. And stop hanging around Rowan so much. He’s a bad influence.”

She flipped a page and dismissed us. I crossed my arms and joined Katie in sulking. This sucked. There was nothing to do. Serena sucked. She wouldn’t even let us get candy from the candy machine.

“Can I have money for the candy machine?” I tried again anyways.

“No.”

“Then can I just use my magic – “

“No.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” started echoing up and down the length of the hallway, bouncing from wall to floor to ceiling and back again like someone was dribbling a basketball while paying no attention to gravity.

“Katie!” Serena slapped her magazine against her leg.

“I didn’t do it!”

Our oldest sister shook her head and rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. “Mom really needs to start paying me for this.”

The automatic doors at the end of the hallway wheezed open.. A nurse in flower-decorated scrubs slowly wheeled an old man past us. For several minutes, Katie and I passed a century’s worth of commiseration back and forth via athletic facial contortions.

Serena ignored us. I nudged her leg with my knee. “Rena. Rena. Rena!”

“What?!”

“Now can I have change for the candy machine?” I grinned up at her. She groaned and threw her head back. It banged into the picture right behind her on the wall. Katie laughed and wiggled out of her seat onto the ground.

“Katie. Off. The. Floor.”

“Yeah Katie. Somebody probably threw up on there.”

“Eww!” She shrieked and jumped to her feet, blond hair swinging wildly as she scrubbed herself. It hit me in the face.

“Eww, puke hair.” I howled and shoved her away from me.

“That’s it!” Serena stood and pointed down the hall. “Both of you! Go find Dennis and Alice. You can be their problem now.”

I looked at Katie. She looked at me. This sounded too good to be true. It had to be a trick.

“Where are they?” I asked cautiously.

“I don’t know. Why don’t you go find out?”

I looked back at Katie. She shrugged.

“Okay!” We took off running down the hall.

“And don’t go in anyone’s room,” Serena hollered after us. We made no promises.

Instead we slid around corners and chased each other down halls, ducking into doorways and behind water coolers and crash carts any time we crossed paths with hospital staff. Even we knew better than to make Mom look bad at work. Well, not intentionally anyways.

“Where are they?” I complained at last. Katie stopped and squinted, sparking a speculative gleam in one eye.

She cupped her hands around her mouth and whispered. “Oh Dennis…”

Then she cocked her head and listened as her echoes travelled through every room in the hospital. He must have answered in some way only her magic could hear. Either that or my sister was really good at holding one-sided conversations.

“We’re looking for you. Where are you?”

“What’s he saying?” I hissed. Katie waved her hand at me, concentrating.

“Come on,” she said at last, racing down the hall towards a pair of heavy double doors. She smacked the metal plate on the wall that opened them automatically. “Follow me!”

We sprinted down another hallway and through a side door and up a flight of stairs, taking them two at a time and shouting “echo, echo, echo” down the stairwell in our wake. The hospital was a maze of corridors that all looked exactly alike, and there were way too many people to dodge, even at nine o’clock at night. Wasn’t everyone supposed to be asleep by now? The only reason we weren’t was because Mom was still working. And we hadn’t gotten ice cream yet.

Even following the course Katie’s magic laid out, it took us a good ten minutes to find Dennis and Alice. We plowed to a stop just outside the doorway of a room on the third floor. The lights were off and our siblings were hovering around the bed of a sleeping man around Mom’s age. Katie and I looked at each other, debating the wisdom of defying an Edict of Serena and venturing inside the room. For now we settled on just peeking around the doorframe.

“What are you guys doing?” I asked. Dennis jumped and Alice glared.

“Shh!”

Katie threw up her hands in exasperation. “Why does everyone keep saying that? It’s not like we’re in a library.”

“Katie, he’s sleeping.” Alice squinched her eyes at us through her new square-rimmed glasses. She looked like a total dork, but Mom said she couldn’t have contacts again until she learned to take care of them properly. Dennis didn’t say anything. Just looked nervous.

Clearly, something very interesting was afoot. Interesting enough, I decided, to risk the Wrath of Serena. I ventured a cautious step into the room. No lightning rained down on me from above, and growing bold, I walked over to my brother and sister. Katie shrugged and followed.

“Are you sure he’s sleeping?” I asked doubtfully. “He looks dead.”

“He’s not dead,” Alice said. “And you two shouldn’t be up here anyways. Go find Serena.”

“Ugh,” Katie moaned and stamped her foot. “Serena said go find you. You say go find Serena. I’m tired of finding people. I want to stay right here.”

She folded up and sat smack in the middle of the floor with crossed arms and a defiant stare. The room was silent save for the occasional slow and steady beep of a heart monitor.

“Puke floor,” I whispered at last.

“Oh shut up, Micah!”

Alice sighed. “Fine. You can stay, but be quiet. Dennis needs to concentrate.”

“Why does Dennis need to concentrate?” Alice ignored me and turned back to one of her boring textbooks, sitting on a nightstand next to the guy’s bed. She flipped pages with purpose. I felt neglected, and turned to my brother. “Why do you need to concentrate, Dennis?”

My older brother licked his lips and darted a quick glance at me. I’d never seen him so nervous. He opened his mouth but instead only shook his head and turned back to the sleeping man. Who still looked dead to me.

“He’s not dead, Micah,” Alice said when I declared as much. She never looked up from her pages of gross looking pictures. “He’s just in a coma.”

“Like the guy from Sleepless in Seattle?” Katie asked excitedly, perking up from her seat on the floor. It was this old movie Serena had acted a scene from for drama class. She’d watched it like, a thousand times to study it or whatever. Katie was addicted to it.

“No, not like the movies. He has a rare blood disease. Dennis is going to cure it.”

“Wow,” Katie breathed, eyes wide.

“Huh,” I said. I grabbed the railing on one side of the bed and stood on my toes for a better look. Dennis was on the other side of the bed, staring down at the man. He looked like he was about to faint, like Rowan did that time he woke up face to face with the snake Cam put in his bed. “You can do that, Dennis?”

“No. No, I can’t. This was a stupid idea,” my brother blurted suddenly. He ran for the door. Alice grabbed his arm as he passed. “Get out of my way, Alice.”

“Dennis, wait,” she said. “You can do this. You came to me, remember?”

Dennis hesitated, shaking his head. His messy black curls flopped over his forehead and hid his eyes. Alice jabbed a finger into his chest.

“You said you could feel it. You felt the badness in his blood, and you wanted to know what it was.”

“I could,” he whispered. “I mean, I can.”

“Well then you can take it away!” Alice gestured triumphantly. “Look, its just like the pictures in my book. This is what the diseased blood cells look like, and this is what they should look like. You just have to use your magic, change the bad cells to healthy ones.”

“I can’t. I’ve never done anything like that before.”

“Well duh, that’s because you’re a wimp.” Our brainiac sister rolled her eyes. “You have just as much magic as the rest of us do, you just need to stop being so scared to use it.”

“That’s easy for you to say! Your magic can’t kill people.”

Alice reared back, insulted. “My magic could so totally kill people.”

Feeling neglected again, I piped up. “So could mine!”

Katie bobbed on the floor, raising her hand. “Me too!” She frowned and wrinkled her nose. “Wait, why are we killing people?”

“We’re not,” Alice said severely. “Nobody’s killing anybody. That’s the point. Dennis, you can do this. You could totally save this guy’s life.”

I really had no idea what was going on, but when Dennis still hesitated, rocking back and forth on his feet uncertainly, I supplied additional incentive. “And then we can get ice cream!”

“”Micah!” My brother snapped. “Just, be quiet okay?”

I huffed and flopped on the floor next to Katie. She leaned over and patted my leg sympathetically. “You know how everyone’s always like, Micah why can’t you be more helpful?” I griped at her. “See? This is why!”

She nodded, sharing my pain.

Dennis took a deep breath. His hands flexed at his sides, clenching and unclenching. “You really think I can do it?”

“Yes!” I shouted.

“Oh my gosh, just doooooooooo it,” Katie moaned, rolling on her side on the floor. Both our older siblings whipped out their soon-to-be-shouting faces again, and she sat back up. “Oh. They weren’t talking to us.”

“Well, I don’t think we should talk to them either,” I said. “How is your day, sister Katie?”

“Very boring, brother Micah. How is yours?”

Dennis and Alice stared at us some more, but we pointedly ignored them. That’s when you put extra effort into ignoring someone. I know because Serena said she was doing it to me all the time. Alice put her hand on Dennis’ arm. “You’ve so got this. Just let the magic guide you.”

Despite their extreme rudeness Katie and I both watched, fascinated, as Dennis took another deep breath and with a shaky nod walked back over to the bed. He raised his hands over the not-dead guy’s chest and looked at them, turning them this way and that as though he didn’t know what to do with them. Alice peeked out the door into the hallway and checked both ways.

“The coast is clear,” she said.

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Katie muttered. Alice shot her a quizzical look. “Even though noooooooobody will tell me what’s going on, I made it sound like everyone is sleeping up here. You guys are really loud. That’s how much I love you.”

She sniffed. Pointedly. “Just so you know.”

Alice closed her eyes and Dennis laughed, looking up for just a second.

“Thanks Katie. I love you too.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Come on, Dennis,” Alice said, walking back to stand next to him. She squeezed his arm. “You’ve got this.”

My brother curled his fingers one more time and then spread them wide. A warm, ruddy glow started in his fingertips and spread until a wash of red light bathed the bed beneath his hands. I’d only seen Dennis unleash his blood magic a couple times before. Like Alice said, it wasn’t something he liked to use a lot. But each of those times it’d been an angry, violent color. Hungry, almost. But this was different. Comforting. A wide grin broke across Dennis’ face. Alice made small approving sounds.

Then a small tendril of darker red wiggled up from the bed, swimming across the pool of light like a worm or small snake weaving its way across a field. Panic chased the elation from my brother’s expression and he snatched his hands back.

“Dennis, no! You have to let it finish,” Alice shouted, but it was too late. The light had vanished as though someone had flicked off a switch. We all knew our brother well enough to know he wouldn’t be touching it again anytime soon. The steady beeps of the heart monitor changed to an angry, insistent whine and Katie shrieked and clapped her hands over her ears. The man on the bed started jerking like a puppet dragged clumsily across the floor, yanking on the wires and tubes that connected him to machines alongside the bed. Alice frantically tried to hold him in place. “Dennis, help me!”

But Dennis just backed further away from the bed, looking anywhere but it as he put as much distance between himself and the man as he could. Then he ran out of room, his back up against the window along one wall. He clutched at the curtains, knuckles white around fistfuls of fabric.

Footsteps pounded down the hall outside, accompanied by urgent shouting, and a small mob of people in blue and green scrubs and white coats started to pour into the room. Mom was in the front, and she pulled up in shock when she saw the four of us, questions and horror rising simultaneously in her eyes as she took in the scene and leaped to her own conclusions.

“I was trying to help,” Dennis said in a small voice. He looked terrified. Alice looked guilty, but couldn’t seem to figure out if she should aim it at him or our mother. She bent and grabbed Katie and I by the arms, dragging us to our feet and propelling us across the room towards Dennis. We piled into him and back into the window. It opened up into new dimensions and the room fell away as Alice led us into the reflection and away from the mess we had made.

*****

Cam launched himself at Trent with an animal, inarticulate cry, crashing into the bigger boy and knocking them both back into the glass coffee table. It shattered under their combined weight and glittering shards sprayed everywhere.

“Cam!” Megan shrieked. She and Alice jumped off the couch.

“Both of you, cut it out!” Dennis snapped, pushing off the wall.

They ignored him as shadows massed into a line of leering wolves and poured in a wave at Cam, knocking him off of Trent and onto his ass. They clawed and bit at him and he cried out before arching his back. His skin bubbled, and his panther tattoo fought its way free of the two dimensional confines of his flesh. Growling as it grew to full size, it leapt at Trent.

“Dennis, do something!” Alice yelled.

“What do you want me to do? I could hurt them both!” He yelled back, panicked. He paced at the edge of the fight, hesitant to step in the middle of the chaos. Trent rolled across the ground, struggling with Cam’s panther. Its jaws were inches from his face, snapping furiously as he frantically held it at bay. Shadows flowed up the lengths of his arms, wrapping them in gauntlets ,and absorbing some form of strength from them he threw the great cat across the room. It slammed into the wall and flipped back to its feet before leaping back into the fray, this time aiming for the dark swirling dogpile Cam was buried beneath.

“Now is not the time for performance anxiety! Do your slow the blood trick and put them to sleep.”

“I can’t,” Dennis insisted, shaking his head. His unkempt black hair flew wildly. “Serena, stop them!”

Serena was standing with eyes closed and fists clenched tight. Tears streamed down her face. The windows slammed open, rattling in their frames and a warm breeze flowed into the room. I inched back along the walls as the air grew thick and heavy with humidity. We were all sweating, I noticed.

“I am,” she said, icily calm.

“Well that doesn’t sound good,” Alice whispered. She grabbed her book and scrambled to the door. Rowan beat her to it.

“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” Katie screamed at our brothers, now wrestling on the floor. Cam slammed a fist into Trent’s face, and his nose erupted in a spray of blood that spattered across the white carpet.

Katie’s magic kicked in and the echoes of her shout multiplied. Rebounding from wall to wall, they increased in intensity each time until they were a single, continuous high pitched whine that clawed through our ears and made straight for our brains. I fell to my knees, clutching at my temples. Beside me, Dennis and Megan did the same. Caught in the grip of their own magic, Cam, Trent and Serena were afforded some protection. Then the ground started to shake.

The far side of the living room was lined with a wet bar, Dad’s pride and joy that he insisted would come in handy for all the parties he wanted to throw. This was before he realized he’d fathered a litter of freaks, of course. It’s hard to pretend you’ll still be inviting company over after your eldest two toddlers have spawned thunderstorms and armies of shadow goblins whenever they felt neglected by their parents. Now the wet bar was rolling as if it were caught in the epicenter of an earthquake. The faucets in the sink vibrated in fury. I looked outside and saw thick fogs weaving their way through the windows. Every glass surface in the room was streaked with condensation.

Then the fog poured in, a single, rolling wave and it wasn’t fog anymore - it was a literal wave of crashing water that slammed into our midst. The first crush hit Cam and Trent directly, but we all got caught in the backwash. All save Serena, who stood calm and composed and utterly unaffected as the raging waters whirled through the room, hurtling us against the walls.

The wave subsided as swiftly as it had been summoned, escaping down the hallways and probably out the side doors. We all coughed and sputtered, spitting out mouthfuls of water as we dragged ourselves, sopping wet, off the floor.

“Damn, Rena.” Rowan’s voice floated from above. He and Alice were crouched at the top of the stairs in the foyer. They peered down the length of the hall through the doorway.

“Seriously,” Megan said, scowling and stomping her feet through puddles. “Overkill much?”

Serena shrugged, unfazed. “It’s not quite what I was going for, but can’t argue with results. I trust I made my point?”

That last was directed at Trent and Cam. They both grimaced at her and glared at each other, but the effect was somewhat lessened by the fact that they looked like drowned rats.

Trent opened his mouth, no doubt for some smartass rebuttal, but it never came. Instead we all followed his gaze past Serena.

“Uh oh,” Megan muttered. “Mom’s home.”

She stood in the far doorway, still in her hospital scrubs. Her hair, streaked with gray, was pulled tightly into a bun and her mouth even more tightly in a frown. Serena started to speak, looking guilty for the first time, but Mom just raised her hand.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she said. I think we all winced at how tired she sounded. It was always easier when she was angry. Then we could muster righteous indignation at how parents just don’t understand us and all that. But here, this, now….there was really no way to justify anything that had just happened.

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paopuofhearts · 6 years

Photo

CLEOPATRA If it be love indeed, tell me how much. MARK ANTONY There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd. CLEOPATRA I'll set a bourn how far to be beloved. MARK ANTONY Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.

For the Halloween Prompt:

Should Percival be Antony or Julius Caesar to Credence’s Cleopatra? Alternately, Credence is Antony.

[Warning: minor scene of Credence/Grindelwald attempted noncon, defined as a creepy pass of pressuring.]

Grad school is kicking my ass so I’ve literally only managed to push all this out. It’s completely unedited and unrevised, so I apologize – but I’m way past the deadline so I feel like I need to get something out to you! I’ll probably go back over this during winter break [hopefully by then I’ll be able to focus on all this writing instead of thesis and platform and portfolio writings instead].

Annual Humanities Division Halloween Haunt!

The garish orange was blinding against the dark black background of the gaudy poster and made his eyes hurt. Furry brown bat cut outs clashed against the construction paper, fluttering off the sides as a silver cauldron of green bubbles frothed and spilled along the bottom edge. It was a horrifying eye sore – with several others posted up and down the corridor, garish pieces slathered together as if an embodiment of the holiday itself threw up all over the walls of the hallway. He had spotted a few others in the other buildings as well, dangling off community boards and hanging precariously next to unsuspecting classroom doors. He had even caught a glimpse of similar atrocities draped in the café he visited on his morning coffee run – how anything managed to make its way through the hidden labyrinths to the sacred depths of the hallowed Arts basement was anyone’s guess. No doubt there were more littering the upper levels of the Literature department as well.

But it did its job, at the very least – it pulled focus, enticing the grad students suffering through the mid semester slog of research to take a break and join the holiday festivities. It was exactly why Modesty had done up his face with a flourish of glittery makeup and shoved him out the door before taking off to her own undergraduate party with friends from her OChem class.

Friends.

Apparently he needed those.

Dress code: Recognizable historic / literary figures!

None of those awful stereotypes! No appropriation allowed!

Be creative, not boring!

The encouragement had been tacked on underneath the poster, pinned to the door of the large house across from the library on campus – a mindful afterthought that hadn’t managed to make its way to the other posters. The vivid exclamation points made his heart shudder in his chest, turning the blood in his veins to ice as his palms began to sweat.

Go as Cleopatra, snag yourself a king, Chastity suggested. She had forced him into an awful thing: a white jumpsuit made to imitate layers of linen – a “modern take” on the Prince Of Egypt adaption the Theater department had developed into an experimental straight play. He hadn’t been able to see it, but the outfits Chastity had worked on were nothing short of amazing. How she snuck one back from the mysterious void of the storage rooms, he would rather not know.

[“I made them. It’s only fair.”]

Modesty had straightened his hair, setting a golden circlet in the shape of a snake upon his brow and settling half a dozen wiry gold bracelets across his arms and wrists. She had even gone the extra mile to paint his eyes – deep, shadowy kohl and bright, vibrant blue. He was pretty sure the design was based on Elizabeth Taylor, not actual hieroglyphics. Someone was bound to tell him off – if not for the improper design, then at the very least for the fact that he was some pale pasty white kid decked out in ridiculously vague allusions to ancient Egyptian attire.

It was a nightmare, and he hadn’t even stepped through the doors yet.

But it was too late. A loud and rambunctious group of students rambled up, hands blindly reaching for the door as they raucously giggled at each other. Shrinking away, he couldn’t avoid being jumbled up into the widespread wall of costumed bodies, tossed out into the fray of the party inside. The music was blaring, a cacophony of stilted techno thumping against the walls as a woman droned in a shouted monotone. It was dark, the only lights coming from glow-in-the-dark stickers flung across the sparse bits of furniture and glow-in-the-dark paint splattered across the walls, dim purple UV lights strung up against the crown molding of the ceiling seams. It was tacky and disorienting. Trying not to stumble into some sanctimonious argument of Dracula vs. Lestat and the merits of the Cullen family, he quickly stepped into the next room.

This room was a bit brighter, though just as awkwardly decorated. Several table lamps were placed strategically in the corners and beside cheap beige chenille couches, covered in gauzy red scarves that threw the room into a bloody shade of red. Speakers were hidden beneath the tables, droning out strange atmospheric noises of wallowing and wails, reedy whistling of a nonexistent wind eerily pressing around the room. The Poe atmosphere was effective, but it had to be a fire hazard of sorts – though none of the occupants seemed to care. There was a heavy scent of smoky incense, curling wisps creeping against the darkened corners. He attempted to hide within such an alcove, tentatively sidestepping toward one such area to get a better view of the room, when a hand shot out to grab his wrist.

“Are you Cleopatra?” He spun around, coming face to face with a sturdy young woman assessing him curiously. Her short hair was done in a thick braid that barely reached her shoulders, and a plastic bow was slung unevenly across her back, the string pressing against her chest.

“Yes?” he answered warily. This was it – he was going to get yelled at, he was going to get kicked out, he was going to get –

“Great! We’ve been looking for a Cleopatra. I’m Tina – History department.” She grabbed his hand without warning, dragging him toward a corner by a tall bookshelf. “You?”

“Credence,” he said faintly, wondering why she of all people would need a Cleopatra. “Literature.”

“Even better! That’s his department too!” Before he could ask for clarification he was being welcomed into a small circle of loitering students huddled together over a book. Of course.

“It’s Minimalism. Its short, its ordinary, its mundane. The man is on an escalator for the entirety of the story,” the shorter man groused, crossing his arms over his chest with a huff.

“Its Maximalist! It’s a long rambling piece of nonsense full of digressive dribble!” a chubbier man exclaimed, waving his hands about enthusiastically. The first rolled his eyes.

“You aren’t even studying modern literature – “

“Post modern literature, Percy!” an energetic redhead crowed, easily slinging an arm over his shoulders. “And anyway, who cares? Where’s the fun in being stuck on an elevator? Now being stuck in Croatia – “

“Teeny!” A blonde woman shoved her way between the two, pretending she hadn’t interrupted such an important discussion as she pulled the strange woman that had kidnapped him to the other side of the circle. “Oh! You found one!”

Credence glanced at them nervously.

“Hello!” another redhead piped up. “That’s a wonderful outfit – a male Cleopatra, brilliant idea!”

“Thank you?”

“Perfect for our Marc Antony!” They pointed to The Minimalist, dressed in a deep brown leather chest plate – supple and buttery, shining smoothly as it hugged his form in all the right places. Gold paint swirled in intricate patterns threading between the golden rivets piercing the pieces together, matching the red wrist guards clasped on his arms and the thick red pteruges strips layered against his thighs, strands of golden fringe flickering as he moved. He wasn’t a history major, so he couldn’t judge the accuracy, but it was an impressive outfit that lovingly emphasizes the wonderfully sculpted ripples of muscle outlining his body.

“Percival Graves,” The Minimalist introduced himself, offering a hand.

“Credence Barebone,” he replied, allowing his hand to be taken into a gentle but firm handshake.

“This is Tina, Newt, and Theseus as our local Katniss, Peeta, and Gale,” the blonde woman continued. “My name is Queenie, and this is Jacob – “

“Hephaestus and Aphrodite,” the cheerful man cut in adoringly, grinning up at her like a lovestruck fool.

“Nice to meet you.”

“So what are you studying?” Newt asked curiously.

“Reformation literature.” Credence shifted, unsure of their reaction.

“Like – religious stuff? All that Milton and Pilgrim’s Progress?” Theseus prompted.

“I – well, technically.” Credence shrugged. “I study Reformation comedies. Like – the Country Wife. It’s a – little more – controversial.”

“Is that code for raunchy and promiscuous?” Theseus teased, waggling his eyebrows and laughing loudly as Jacob snorted. His brother – at least, Credence presumed they were related, given their matching appearance – elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

“Play nice,” Tina reprimanded with a frown, before turning her attention back to him. “My sister and I study modern history. I study counter cultural movements in America during the 1970s and 1980s, and my sister studies the impact of ethnic studies in education.”

“They’re with us!” Newt clarified. “I study the effects of nature on city development, and my brother here is studying the Balkan Wars.”

“I tried to convince Percy to join me, but he stuck with his boring post modern literature,” Theseus lamented.

“Modern literature,” Percival corrected. Theseus waved him off.

“What’s your opinion on it?”

“I – “ Credence flustered, unsure how to answer such a vague question correctly without disappointing any of them.

“Ignore him. He isn’t worth it,” Percival insisted, slipping his hand against Credence’s elbow. “Why don’t we go grab a bite to eat – let him gather his manners?”

Percival threw a reprimanding glare at the man, who cackled in response. Credence could feel the heat of Percival’s hand drifting to press against his lower back, carefully maneuvering him toward what he could only presume was a kitchen. It was comforting, if a bit embarrassing. He felt a shiver trailing down his spine.

The kitchen itself was a travesty that also made him shudder – fluffy white clouds of fake spider webbing cascading across the dining table in billowing curtains, plastic spiders dangling precariously in squished upon droves. Punch bowls and jello molds upon the table held all sorts of mismatched creepy crawlers – worms, octopus’, skeletons. Chain link centipedes were plastered to the cupboards, preschool levels of artwork sloppily thrown together. Cheap junk food haphazardly thrown into grotesque displays were crammed to cover every inch of available counter space. The Art department would have a field day with such an eyesore.

At least it smelled clean – the sharp scent of fake pine and a lingering undertone of bleach creeping through the atmosphere.

“What would you like – pretzels and chips?” Percival asked dryly, raising an eyebrow at the sad excuse for food as he peered over the offerings. He leaned over a gelatin mold, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “You think they would get a little creative with the goods.”

“Picquery set up the good stuff in the upstairs office room,” someone called out behind them. They turned to see a young man in a bright blue sweater and dull orange pants grimacing as he tried to pluck a lego Cthulhu from his scoop of jello. “Abecedarians!”

“Think you should have gone with Captain Haddock if you’re using such language, Abernathy,” Percival tutted, twining his fingers with Credence’s and leading him out of the room. “Of course Sera set up her own area – come on then, she knows what she’s doing, most of the time.”

They weaved in and out of the crowd, clambering up the stairs to the second floor. There were no Halloween decorations, though there was quite a bit of commotion coming from the last room. They quickly made their way in.

Credence was pleasantly surprised to find far more tasteful decorations and treats displayed. Carved pumpkins sat grinning on either end of the lace covered table, smaller painted ones lining the tops of bookshelves. Fairy lights shaped like bats hung in loops along the walls, while a colony of paper ones spread in flight across the ceiling Fake candles were placed between books on shelves and cascaded from corners, illuminating white skulls and gray gargoyles peeking out of the shadows. The corner seams were filled with thin, knotty sticks and black vines, black roses artfully tacked onto them. Even the food was themed – a chocolate cake set like a graveyard with marshmellow skeletons, hot dogs wrapped in crisped biscuits like mummies, chocolate cookies slathered in icing with finely cut strawberries and blueberries set to look like eyes. There were so many twisted and grotesque foods Credence could hardly keep track.

“Percival, how nice of you to show up.” A tall woman slid up next to them, draped in deep red and white folds of a dress, a copper sword strapped to her back. He hair was wrapped in a shimmering metallic scarf to match. She stood proud and regal, scrutinizing Credence with a keen eye.

“Abernathy was singing your praises downstairs,” Percival said with nonchalance, pulling Credence to his side. He slung an arm around his shoulders – made slightly problematic, given the height difference neither had noticed. “Your department has outdone itself yet again.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Graves. Who’s your lovely Cleopatra?”

“Credence Barebone, English department – Reformation period. Who are you supposed to be tonight?”

“Oya, Yoruba goddess of storms. Does Credence Barebone know how to answer for himself?” she shot back, eyeing Percival with disdain. Credence settled himself, ducking his head in a way that gave an appearance of submission, but tilting it in a way that could also imply a challenge. He had plenty of practice in meek deference, but refused to waver under some stranger’s judgment.

“What do you study?” he asked – an innocent enough question, on the surface. She lifted her head, catching his game, a faint smile gracing her face as she turned her attention back to him.

“Remixed classical art. My current thesis is on the impact of Kehinde Wiley and Harmonia Rosales have on the interpretation of traditional pieces in a modern context of racial perspective. Have you heard of them?”

“Ah – no,” Credence admitted, shifting uncomfortably. She flashed her teeth, a wide smile too sharp and dangerous to be friendly. Like lightning – beautiful, but able to shred a man to pieces.

“Shame.” She turned back to Percival. “Do try the werewolf brains – the paper mache was quite an effort.”

Credence kept his head down as he watched her leave, a swirling hurricane of wild force that commanded the room. A trio of girls in the doorway parted for her like the Red Sea, giggling in awe as she strode past. A friend of Percival’s and a force to be reckoned with, and he had just blundered the whole first impression away.

“Never mind her,” his Antony said, nonchalant as he snagged a plate from the edge of the table. “We were going to open up a law firm together, once upon a time. She’s still a bit bitter we didn’t pass our LSAT.”

“We?”

“Theseus too. And Tina.” He picked at the food, taking small scoop of gelatinous brain, red food coloring dripping from the spoon. “Speaking of Theseus and Tina, what should we bring back to them?”

Credence tilted his head, nitpicking at the edge of his own plate.

“The – um – spider crackers?”

“No, come on – pick something you actually want. And please don’t say the caprese eyeballs.”

Credence studied the array on spread before them, a feast of holiday goods for the taking. His gaze settled upon a collection of cookies, dark chocolate brownies cut into circles, a dollop of sprinkle covered crème upon it, a coned chocolate kiss settled gently on top.

“The witch hats.” Percival shot him a crooked grin, wryly amused.

“A good choice.” Credence watched as Percival piled food upon the plate, bits and pieces of everything stacked high. Rather than following suit, he quietly left his plate on the corner. “Ready to head back down?”

“I need to find a bathroom.” They started back out the door, Credence trailing behind. He watched others pass by, laughing and nudging each other as they walked up and down the stairwell.

“Bathroom should be on your left.” He was pointed down a long side hallway, where several people lingered. “Come find us again when you’re done.”

The line was taking forever. He shuffled from foot to foot, beginning to grow impatient as he waited. Perhaps it would have been better to have simply gone back to the corner with his new found friends. Could they be considered friends yet? At the rate it took to get into the bathroom, perhaps they would think he had ditched them. It would have been better if only he had stayed –

A hand fell upon his shoulder, squeezing tightly.

“Well aren’t you a cute little thing.” Credence turned around, shrinking away. Before him stood a tall man with pale hair and paler eyes, decked in a toga and crowned with laurel. A Caesar – what were the odds of that?

“My apologies, where are my manners. Gellert Grindelwald – assistant professor for the modern literature department.” The man took Credence’s hand, bowing as he placed a kiss upon his knuckles. Old fashioned and uncomfortable, to say the least. “And to whom do I owe the pleasure of such a beautiful Cleopatra?”

He squirmed away, twisting out of Gellert’s grip.

“Credence,” he answered reluctantly, not wanting to be impolite. Yet his hand continued to roam, tracing across his shoulder and down his back.

“Credence. A lovely name for a lovely face. What’s a beautiful thing like you doing at a party like this, hm? Who did you come with?”

“No one.” He could feel the bottom of his stomach drop at the honest admission. The hand clawed at his belt, eager and excited.

“Oh? Perhaps you’d like some company then?”

“I’d rather not,” Credence admitted, still trying to move away. Gellert just moved closer, crowding into his space.

“A pity. Does that mean you have company here?”

“Yes, actually.”

“I can promise you I am much more entertaining than anyone else you’d meet here.”

Credence fidgeted, unsure what to do. Gellert continued to croon, attempting to convince him to leave. Several moments later, with panic flooding his veins and pulsing beneath his skin, itching to get away, he caught the eyes of his knight – his gladiator, his Antony. Gellert turned to track his line of sight, displeased at such a distraction. His face contorted with fury and disgust when he realized who was headed their way. With a sneer, he grasped the collar of Credence’s outfit, the strain on the outfit almost enough to tear it apart.

“I could ruin him,” Gellert hissed harshly into his ear. “I could ruin all of you. Now play along like a good little boy.”

The two wandered over, Percival standing tall and menacing and in need of a dramatic flair of a cape, while Theseus brooded behind with a sharp glare.

“Credence. We were wondering where you’d had gotten off to,” Percival started, leveling a cold tone as he stared unblinkingly at Gellert.

“Didn’t realize you got stuck with this asshole,” Theseus started, crossing his arms over his chest.

“He isn’t – that bad,” Credence attempted.

“He’s a fucking asshole who gets off on torture porn,” Percival growled, glaring furiously at Gellert.

“Now Percy darling, just because I didn’t invite you back to my little dungeon last Christmas – “ Gellert drawled, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Fuck off, you prick,” Theseus interrupted loudly, shoving Percival to the side. “Leave the kid alone.”

Credence felt Gellert’s fingers dig into his back, nails scratching through the fabric. The hand clawed at his skin tightly – painfully. Credence stood as still as he possibly could, thinking of the cold marble statues outside the library, tall and unfeeling.

“He’s hardly a child,” Gellert pointed out. “What do you think, Credence – would you rather be off with these foolhardy Neanderthals, or continue our lovely conversation, hm?”

His body was frozen, heavy like lead, unable to move. He stared unblinking at the floor, wishing to be anywhere else. A beat of silence, and Theseus huffed in annoyance, nudging Percival as he turned and left. Percival frowned, but followed after, figuring it to be a lost cause. He glanced back once more, dark eyes piercing through the dim light, but Credence held his head down. Perhaps if he stayed quiet, Gellert would get bored –

“See, what did I tell you?” Gellert trailed his hand down, soft and gentle as it caressed the thin fabric of his outfit. Gellert’s face drifted closer, voice dropping several octaves into a whisper. “Now, where were we? I do believe you were about to tell me of this young Margery – “

His body blocked the hallway, and Credence shrunk back, plastering himself against the wall. Another hand found its way to his waist, a hand settling against it and sweeping downward.

In a fit of panic, Credence lashed out. His mind blanked, nerves firing too fast to keep up. Within seconds, he had shoved Gellert into the wall, pinning him there with a hand wrapped around the man’s neck. He felt wild with the adrenaline rushing through his veins as an overwhelming tempest of fear and rage tore through his bloodstream. His hand twitched and tightened against the pale column of Gellert’s throat.

“Come now, Credence,” Gellert rasped, both hands wrapping around Credence’s wrist. “Control yourself.”

“I don’t think I want to,” Credence growled, pushing harder against him. He could still feel the creeping tremors twisting against his skin, an unsettling film of disgust plastered against his body, seeping beneath his costume and into his bones.

“Mr. Barebone.” His head snapped to the side, locking eyes with none other than Seraphina Picquery herself. Her face was stone still as she took in the scene, mouth a firm line. “Perhaps it’s time you take your leave.”

Anger burned through him, a fierce spark of vengefulness blazing into a firestorm against his ribs. In a burst of blinding fury, he slammed Gellert’s head back into the wall, releasing him as he crumpled to the ground, clawing at his throat as he gasped for breath. Credence shuddered, face twisting as he snarled before shoving past Seraphina, a dark cloud bolting for the door. She watched him go, then turned her attention back to Gellert. The man smirked, chuckling under his breath.

“He’s a miracle, isn’t he?”

“Get out before I call the cops on you,” she sneered, rounding her shoulders back as she turned to the main room. “Everyone out! This party is over.”

Credence made his way to the library, the cold air biting through the whirlwind of his emotions and leaving him feeling like a naked, helpless child. Horror slithered across his skin, twined in the breeze that slid through the thin white linen hanging off of him. He stumbled into the bushes, heaving as he dropped to his knees. He blindly fumbled for his phone, dragging his body up against the brick wall of the library. His shoulder pressed against the rough stone, part of his outfit snagging against it.

Hey Cree. Chastity picked me up and took me to some haunted house they’re doing. We’re staying with Eve and the crew tonight. Hope you had fun!

He leaned heavily against the wall, swallowing hard. If he went home, he would be alone – the very last thing he wanted to be. But it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go. He didn’t have friends, didn’t have pets, didn’t have anyone waiting for him to keep the vivid memory of hands creeping up his thigh and words whispered in his ear as the world closed in on him in the darkness –

“Credence?”

His head snapped up, eyes widening as he spotted none other than Percival, stopped on the walkway before him. He craned his head and saw the others making their way across the square on the other side of the street, laughing obnoxiously as Tina and Queenie burst into song. It looked as though they had taken their leave as well – the party dying down as the clock struck midnight, as it were. Which meant that Gellert –

Another wave of nausea had him doubling over, though his body seemed to be done with even attempting to dry heave. A bout of dizziness struck him, his hands gone clammy, body shaking apart. The next thing he knew was a distorted shuffling as a pair of sandals made their way into his view.

“Credence, are you alright?” A hand made its way toward his shoulder, and he flinched.

“Alright, it’s okay,” Percival assured, taking a step back. “Take your time. Here, try to match your breathing with my counting, alright?”

His mind was whirling far too fast, skipping over the numbers being listed as he tried to think of what to do. One, Percival was here, trying to calm him down, three, but why, he had left Percival, five, had gone off with Gellert, surely Percival hated him, eight, thought less of him, ten, wanted nothing to do with him, eleven, but maybe he could redeem himself, twelve, that’s why Percival was here for him, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…

Slowly, Credence managed to come back to himself. Percival watched with a careful eye as the young man brought himself back from hyperventilating, steadily regaining his awareness. After a few more moments, once Percival had calmly made his way to thirty, Credence straightened himself, though he still refused to look up.

“Thanks,” he whispered, voice rough from – whatever had happened.

“Do you want to tell me what that was about?” Percival prompted, not bothering to skirt around the issue. He was worried, of course, and wanted to know – so he wasn’t going to ignore it. Better to be blunt. But if Credence didn’t want to talk, he wouldn’t push.

“It was – “ Credence glanced up from behind his fringe of hair, wary like a caged animal.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Percival assured with a shrug. There was a beat of silence as Credence assessed the situation.

“Gellert tried to – do things.” Percival frowned, gritting his teeth as he surveyed the area in hopes to find the man walking by. What he wouldn’t do to punch that smug bastards face in –

“It’s my fault. I – I should have listened to you.”

Percival placed his hand upon his back, a solid weight and comforting warmth that guided him back to the walkway.

“Do you live with anyone?” he asked. He bit his lip, shaking his head. “I’m going to give you some options, alright? Would you like me to walk you home and stay with you, or would you like to come to my place?”

“My sisters – if they – I don’t know how they would react to someone being there,” he managed to say. Percival nodded understandingly.

“Would you like to stay with me tonight?”

“But I – “

“It’s not a problem, that’s why I’m offering,” he cut in calmly. He thought of his options, before finally caving in with a nod. “Let me call a cab then.”

The ride was a blur of lamplights flashing against his eyelids and the soothing hum of the taxi sailing down empty streets. Percival kept his distance, but let his hand rest between them, palm opened upward if Credence so chose to take it. So far, he was more content to huddle against the cool plastic of the door, leaning his head against the window pane.

Percival’s face was washed with a pale white light, brightened like a spotlight as he gazed down at his phone with furrowed brow. His fingers struck the screen in quick succession, pounding out rhetoric toward Seraphina, skipping words like stones on a lake of ice in an attempt to crack through her tight-lipped wall of excuses to figure out what truly happened. His face twisted in fury, and he finally flung the phone to the floor, unable to contain his ire.

The noise made Credence jump, head turning to see what had happened.

“It’s nothing.” Percival crossed his arms, straightening his back as he leaned against the seat. He looked almost regal – Credence could almost picture it, shifting the world away and painting in the crushed velvet and glittering gold of a palanquin, enshrining Percival in a mystic abyss of light curtains, sun shining through to offer but the glimpse of his strong silhouette peering through.

“You’re a very good Marc Antony,” he said, tilting his head to the side. The picture changed, warping in on itself, swirling into an arena. A sword as firm as his stance, solid and steady, face set in determination. Shoulders down and back, ready for whatever the world would throw at him. A soldier, a gladiator, a knight as it were – brave and steadfast in heart and mind.

[“You are a child unworthy of the grace of the Lord.”]

“Credence?” Percival’s hand came into view, gently brushing against his own in the space between them. “You’re shaking.”

“I – “ There was a moment, standing on the brink of something overwhelming, the edge of a cliff into the unknown. Terror pressed against his heart, squeezing tightly and shrinking his ribs, wrapping around his lungs so he could hardly breathe.

They slid as the cab turned a corner sharply. The moment collapsed, tension exiting is a rush.

It was over. Credence turned back to the window, watching the streetlights pass them by.

“It’s nothing.”

The corners of Percival’s mouth dragged downward, but he made no move to speak into the silence. Instead, he simply pressed his fingers into the spaces between Credence’s, filling the gaps and holding tightly. Credence bit his lip, but let himself be held. It was – nice. Too nice, perhaps. But – nice. Percival’s hands were nothing special – just as warm as his own, just as soft in the hidden places, just as rough in the calloused pads and knuckles. They were smaller, but wider – complimentary to his own, in a way.

They stayed like that, in comforting quiet, to the point where Credence began to lull off, nodding against the window as his eyes fluttered shut. But eventually, their journey came to an end. Just as he was about to dive into sleep, the car pulled to a stop.

“We’re here,” Percival muttered, clutching his hand before letting go to get out. Reluctantly, Credence did the same, managing to maneuver himself out of the car to sidle over to Percival’s side. Percival took his arm gently, carefully guiding him up the driveway and into the house. It was a nice home, to be sure – the typical American dream of a white picket fence and a small white porch.

Credence didn’t pay much attention, instead letting his mind drift.

“Are you hungry?” He shrugged, uncaring. “Alright. Well, here – sit down. I’ll grab you a blanket.”

Percival disappeared into the depths of the other rooms, leaving Credence standing awkwardly in front of a pristine leather couch. It looked far too expensive to even glance at, never mind touch and rest upon. Hesitantly, Credence ran a finger along the sewn seam of the side. It was smooth as silk, dipping beneath his fingertip – gaudy and ostentatious as a black leather couch was, it was also quite beautiful.

“It won’t bite, you know.” Percival stepped toward him, sandals shuffling against the wood floors. He carried a large pillow in his arms, a thick blanket tucked beneath it. “You can sit, it’s fine.”

Credence obediently did as told, sliding onto the seat as Percival took his place beside him.

“Do you want to talk, or just sleep?” As much as Credence wished to stay up, filling the space between them with poetry, waxing lyric on language and literature, delving into the depths of their respective fields – he was exhausted after the events he suffered through, and could feel sleep pulling at his eyes, tugging at his mind, dragging him away.

“Sleep, I think.”

“Lay down then.”

Percival gazed at Credence’s face, watching as the moonlight pouring through the curtains graced his pale face. The young man was quite beautiful, bathed in silver, curled up under soft black blankets.

He would put Cleopatra herself to shame.

Someday…

Okay first off apologies; I took this prompt while I was teaching abroad this summer, and when I got back I started grad school and realized I’d need more than one job to pay for it, so I have been absolutely swamped with work. I didn’t finish everything I wanted with this – but I wanted to post something out here, just to get it out here, so that the prompt was filled before Thanksgiving season. I’m so sorry I’m late with it.

Anyway! Gosh this prompt hit on all my academic enjoyments so I probably went way overboard on that instead of, you know, focusing on the Anthony / Cleopatra / Caesar bit in a more direct way. Like, overall I kind of followed the general plotline of how Plutarch wrote that mess of a threesome, with a hefty dose of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy take thrown in – Cleopatra gets all hung up on Anthony, tries to appease Caesar so Caesar stops going after Anthony, Anthony thinks she doesn’t love him, Cleopatra realizes mistakes were made. And then I tried to make the ending a bit happier, where they come back together and Caesar kind of just disappears. Probably too much influence and reference to cram into what I tried to keep as a light and abstract outline, so it probably ended up seeming more like it was just “woo Halloween costumes and some sad pathetic plot”, so. Apologies.

I also got really into the whole academia setting and spent way too much time dreaming up headcanons for that [wherein Seraphina, Percival, Tina, and Theseus were all Law focused undergrads who ended up failing their LSATs, so they went into grad school research with things they enjoyed most from their undergrad work, hoping to find work through that. Queenie and Newt kind of just followed their siblings along, though they’re the ones who got into grad school because they’re actually paid for their research, and then they met Jacob, who’s been doing research studies for far too many years, and foreign exchange student Gellert, who’s just all sorts of red flag levels of creepy. Credence took up grad school in hopes of getting funding to publish a textbook on Reformation literature so he can support his two sisters in their undergrad schooling, though Modesty will likely be the big breadwinner out of all of them since she’s the one going into Med school, but that’s also pretty expensive, so].

Anyway. It was my first attempt at any sort of holiday prompt type thing [the only other time I filled out a prompt was as an Anon on some Kink Meme way back in the LJ days; either way, I’m not much in on this practice]. Hopefully it wasn’t too terrible and did something for you. Woo.

#gradencetrickortreat #gradence trick of treat #potterland

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casual-lip-bites · 7 years

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Prologue and Chapter 1

To Everyone in the Whole World. Every small thought or action or choice every single person has ever made has warped the universe into what it is now, and for that I thank you.

Prologue I bet you thought that this was going to be an insightful book or something. Well, you were wrong. This book really sucks. No one thought it would ever get published, much less finished. Not even my mom believed in me. But as I kept writing it, I thought of all the stupid teen romance books I’ve read and thought, hey, if those could get published, why can’t I publish a book too? So I’m really sorry if you decided to buy this or something. I hope you kept the receipt, because in truth, my book probably isn’t worth the five dollars or however much it cost you. Not in this economy. Unless, of course, you borrowed it or got it from the library or illegally downloaded it online or something. I hate writing. My vocabulary is passible at best. I never thought that I would write a book, like, ever, but look at me now. Just to let you know, I did not write this whole thing. I had help from my best friend and a Mexican kid who has told me multiple times that he wishes I was dead. These are literally the only people I ever talk to. I’m warning you right now: I don’t know what they’re going to write. Personally, I’m going to try to be PG-13, but I’ve been told that have a swearing problem, so that’s not always going to be possible. You know it’s bad when you have to Google “what does it take for a book to be banned”. It’s right there in my search history. Right above “why are teenagers so smug” and “when can I legally drop-out of high school”. Nothing really matters to me anymore. I’m just here to exist for as long as possible. I don’t like putting effort into anything, really. College is out of the question. I mean, someone has to wipe down gas station toilets. I only agreed to write this novel because there’s not too many realistic YA novels out there. Not everyone can have their dream relationship. (I’m going to marry a trashcan.) Not everything ends happily, and sometimes things don’t end at all. (My story begins at the end.) I never really have any deep thoughts. (At least, not in the way that it’s shown in teen books.) And most teenagers have boring-as-hell lives. (Either that, or I just assume that everyone else does too.) Really though, the deepest thought that I’ve had in a week happened when I dropped a bowl of soup and thought “oh shit son” and then wondered if soup has the ability to understand the concept of gender identity and family relations. Truly deep thoughts come and go. It’s usually only the stupid things that I remember long enough to write down. I’m just going to go ahead and warn you, some of the insightful stuff I try to write comes out like it’s supposed to, and other times it will just look like: boop boop boop Are trees vegetables? Exact words are not my forte. I’m lucky that I came up with “forte” right then. I’m really not sure how this will turn out at all. I haven’t even read most of this. I’m not allowed to read what Lily and Ethan write, and they’re not allowed to read what I write. We’re basically publishing it without proofreading each other’s work. It’s supposed to “encourage honesty” or something. So we’ll see how that turns out. Yeah. There’s probably a reason why books like this don’t exist. Again, sorry. Anyway, I wrote this for you because I care a lot about you as a person. I needed this book to exist because I need you to know something. I don’t care if it’s cheesy. You need to hear it. Things can and will get better. Do not kill yourself. I wrote this for you, so you’d better learn something from it. I have bled and suffered and bled some more to get this book out. If you kill yourself, I will murder you. Someone is always ready to listen. Sometimes we forget about people we can count on. There’s always that one person that you forget about. Like siblings. No matter how much you hate each other, no matter how horrible to you they are, no matter how shitty the personality, your sibling(s) will listen to you if you seriously need someone to talk to. Another thing I didn’t consider, until just recently, is talking to someone who has a crush on you. If they like you, chances are they probably don’t want you to hurt yourself. However, if he/she is one of those freaks that crawl in your window at night or design you-inspired sex dolls, you should probably think of another option. Like a guidance counselor. They’re legally obligated to care about your feelings. Don’t forget those people. Someone will listen. There’s always someone. I know this because I was forgotten. Wait, what was I writing about again? I have a really untraditional writing system. I first write out a bunch of BS that I really can’t use and then scan over it the next day. I delete little sentences that don’t make sense here and there until I’ve deleted the whole chapter. Then I re-write it and then ignore it all for a month or two if I’m getting behind on schoolwork or something. Sometimes in the middle of the night I take it out, read it, and type little scraggly messages on it to daytime me. They look like they were typed out by a toddler. I can’t even tell what most of them are supposed to mean, so I spend a lot of time trying to decode things like “bread water” instead of writing the actual story. My favorites are: “com on grill u cans rite better than that” and “higher than meth”. Oh yeah. I also hate it when authors get you attached to a character and kill them off right at the end like they’re actually trying to ruin your emotions forever, so I’m going to go ahead and warn you now so you hate me less for making you read this book. My sister dies in the first chapter. No amount of character deaths in YA books could have prepared me for what had happened. That’s another reason why I needed this book to exist. The suddenness and finality of death is unreal. It’s kind of like a text message ding going off and then the sound cutting out right in the middle of it. And then a random electrical wire snapping and burning and suddenly everything’s on fire and you’re on fire and your pets are on fire and it’s painful and even though you embrace death and dying and enjoy pain this is too much. Another thing: You’re probably wondering what gender I am. Even if it wasn’t at, like, the fore-front of your mild, you were probably subconsciously trying to figure it out. I won’t make you play “Guess That Gender” until my name appears in dialogue or something. This isn’t Walmart. My name is Kirsten Bloom. I also hate it when authors write shit like “his dark, leaf green eyes looked at me, comforting me and giving me memories of summery afternoon walks in the woods with my father” to describe how people look. Like, no. My face isn’t the type of face that could be described in poetry anyway. So here’s what I look like most of the time: I have brown hair. I would have black hair, but my mom won’t let me dye it. I have washed-out green eyes. I’m pale. I dress kind of gothic. (Eyeliner, 90’s choker, black leather boots, black lipstick, black/purple shirt, black skinny-jeans, black jacket with a skull on it.) My style is basically “economically disadvantaged girl trying to act cool and gothic but failing hard”. Just so you know, I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to write this just yet, but I’m sure that it will be really horrible for at least the first two or three chapters. I’m sorry about that, but believe me; it will be so worth it. If you’re anything like me at all, I guarantee that this book will save you from some shit. I have one hell of a story to tell you. And so it begins.

Chapter 1 Katherine Bloom is dead. She killed herself. I can’t believe that she’s never coming back. She was alive just a week ago. She can’t be gone. But she is. Her death is one thing that I have accepted. Once a person is pronounced dead by medical professionals, there’s no way around it. But my heart feels like it’s been ripped to pieces. She was my other half. I never fully comprehended how awful deaths are until I saw my sister on a cold, metallic operating table, her lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling. Seeing nurses in lab coats covering her thin frame in a sheet, gone forever. Watching my mother choke and sob in front of me. Not being completely sure if the screaming sound I heard was coming from my vocal cords or if it was just the sound of my brain collapsing in on itself. After three days of pure depression sprinkled with rage and denial, I know that my little sister is never coming back. Death is permanent. Death is unshifting. Death is cold. And I don’t love. [I warned you it would be like this. Just roll with it.] It’s as if she never existed, except she’s more here than ever. I can actually feel her absence. It’s heavy and empty at the same time, especially in her room. All of the Christmas lights that she always kept in there have been packed away into a little box, just like all of her other things. Mom said earlier that we could donate it to charity, but she hasn’t followed through on that. I have a feeling that her things will stay here forever. My little sister will always have a place in our house. But right now her room is mine. I’ve been sleeping here since I basically smashed everything in my room into a trillion pieces. It has a depressive presence in it, though. This place is so empty without her. I spend most of my time in here drawing invisible circles on her bed that’s been stripped bare, and think. She slept on rosy red sheets, which are now packed away in a box. It was her favorite color. Now her ashes rest in a rosy red urn. It was originally for grandma. We were hoping that she would die. I really wonder about what my sister was thinking about during the afternoons that she spent locked away in here, wasting away. A lump grows in my throat, but I can’t even cry anymore. I’m just done with it all. I still haven’t figured out why she would kill herself. No matter how many things I try to decode from days I can barely remember, I’m no further along than the previous hour. She wasn’t a depressing person. She smiled a lot. She had lots of friends. The only thing that was different about her attitude was that she stayed in her room for extremely long periods of time, listening to music. I didn’t find that alarming, because that was one of her favorite pastimes. Only she usually did it for less than five hours at a time in a locked room. I thought that she was just becoming one of those teenaged girls who like to keep to themselves. Like me. I guess it was more than that. And now she’s dead. I put my head down on the flat bedspread. I am determined to find out the truth. I need to know the truth more than I need oxygen. Someone rings the doorbell. What the hell do they want? I force myself out of bed and trudge over to the front door and open it. My heart starts fluttering and I just can’t believe my eyes. It’s Katherine. She smiles at me and I hug her so tightly that I just might kill her. I’m shaking so hard right now. “I missed you so much. Please don’t hurt yourself. Ever,” I say. When I stop hugging her, I see that she too is tearing up. There’s a bright glow around her. She starts to say something, when- And then I wake up. My sister is dead. And I’m still lying on her bed. I just dreamed it all. I’m ashamed to say that that was not the first time that I had done that. There’s nothing I want more than for my sister to come back. But she’s gone. All that’s left are bittersweet memories. Ashes can’t dance. Ashes can’t sing. Ashes can’t ride bikes. Ashes can’t feed birds in the park. Ashes can’t sit under the stars and watch them twinkle all night. Ashes can’t smile or love. They can’t do any of the things that my sister loved to do. I know for a fact that she didn’t just randomly decide to kill herself. No sane kid just looks in the mirror and goes: Hey. Today was a fun day, but I think that I should just hang myself now. She is, was, a very cheerful person. I secretly envied her for that reason. She was great. We had near perfect childhoods, but for some reason she was the only decent one out of us. The only conclusion that I can come up with is that she was bullied. And once I find out who caused this, I will kill them. All of those bastards are going to die tonight. I’ll stab them over and over and over and over and over and over and over again with the pocket knife she harmed herself with, after I make absolute sure that they feel guilty for their actions. Blood will be spilt tonight. And I hope those faggots rot in hell. I found her pocket knife in her bedroom closet yesterday, when mom and I were cleaning out her room. We were deciding what of hers we should keep and what we should ‘’give away”. We were just expecting to find old toys and stuff like that. Then I found that thing. Actually, it really wasn’t that hard to find. It stabbed me in the kneecap. I gave mom the knife. I didn’t give any explanation at all. The knife said more than any words could say. Apparently, that was a bad idea, because she didn’t say anything after that. She just got in the car and left me there, holding out the bloody knife. Now, that said more than words could say. For a wild moment I thought that she had abandoned me to start a new life. Wouldn’t be the first time someone did that. Apparently, mom went to the liquor store to drown her feelings in alcoholism. But she might as well leave, with all the support she’s given me. It’s like her soul was sucked out of her eyes. I hid the blade in my jacket pocket the minute she left Katherine’s room, assuming that she would take it from me eventually. But she never intended to, for reasons that I already covered. Katherine was just a kid. What did she do to deserve this? What did I do? There’s no way that she hung herself. But she did. She left mom and me. She didn’t leave a note or anything. There was no warning. It just happened. Everything reminds me of her. I’ll have to get used to it, considering the fact that I live here. I shut my eyes. I hate everything in this house, especially the mirror, which I can’t stand to look into. My face isn’t my face anymore. It’s Katherine’s: the same Katherine who was hanging by her neck in the bathroom, staring at me blankly. My make-up probably looks really runny and shitty. I decide to brave looking in the mirror. I look for only half a second, and then shut my eyes. My chest feels heavy. I lose my breath. When I say I can’t stand how I look, I mean it literally. Anyway, my eyeliner looks how I thought it would look. I look like a raccoon going through a gothic phase. I’m never going to heal if I stay here. Sometimes I just think about getting in the truck and leaving home forever. Like in every non-supernatural YA novel ever. But then my mom would have no one, except her liquor. Sometimes I think if I got drunk maybe I could experience whatever magical delusional feeling she’s experiencing, but I come from a long line of people who ruined their lives with alcohol, so I’m not going to take that chance. I am the generation that finally gets it right. I smoke instead. I strip off my jacket (aka security blanket) for the first time all day and walk right out the back door. The night air feels warm and cool at the same time. Crickets are chirping. The wind feels amazing. I’ve always preferred night-time. Usually in the summer I change up my sleep schedule where I wake up at 3:00pm and go to sleep at 5:00am so I can mostly stay up at night, but still do stuff with friends in the afternoon. Plus, going out and doing whatever at night means that there’s zero chance of getting sunburned, and everyone’s asleep, so it’s like I live in my own little world. It’s just me and the sky. I’ve decided to not do that this year, because I need as much stability as I can get. I get out my lighter and cup my hand around it. The flickering flame illuminates the cigarette just before I light it. Contrary to popular belief, smoking is actually a great way to cope. First of all, it’s fun. Second, I can get a nice buzz going without losing my mental facilities, and not just because I lost it all beforehand. Third, you get to light things on fire. That’s always fun. And fourth, you can slowly kill yourself by doing it. Then I’ll die slightly after my mom so she won’t have to outlive both kids. Drag. Hold it in. Hold it in. Hold it in. Hold it in. Exhale. Repeat. Drag. Hold it in. Hold it in. Hold it in. Hold it in. Exhale. Repeat. Drag. Hold it in. Hold it in. Hold it in. Hold it in. Exhale. Repeat. I got these from a place some of my friends call “the tube”. I found it by accident a couple months ago. It’s where all the drug-addicted teens at my school hide their drugs and alcohol. They’ve apparently created their own complex mini-black market. I used to be friends with some of them, but now they’ve turned into bitches. Not from drugs; just from being themselves. I would tell you where the tube is, but I promised not to tell. We made a deal. If it was stuff like meth I would report it, but why ruin my joy of having all those people owe me? When I wanted some of their cigarettes, the deal got that much more complicated. I had to make a little trade. You see, in the tube, there’s something they always need. It’s worth its weight in gold, and it’s the same color. It’s pee. They love pee. They have to like it, if they still want to keep their drugs. Each person that trades there keeps a small plastic bag of clean pee on them at all times in case of random drug testing at school. Clean pee is hard to come by for them, though, because mostly everyone who knows about the tube is high as fuck on all the drugs, and therefore do not have clean pee. I am their source of security. I agreed to trade with them. One gallon of pee buys two packs of cigarettes. I think it’s a fair trade. What would I do with all my pee anyway? A car zips down the road. The wind and dust hit my face a few seconds later. I gag and spit out the dust. Smoking by the road really isn’t safe, but at this point in the game, I really don’t care if I die. Actually, I care just enough to live just so I don’t inconvenience others. I wish I could end it all sooner. Ever since the suicide I sometimes notice my breathing and go: why? Why did she die instead of me? I’m not going to rush anything, but if I got hit by a school bus tomorrow, I don’t think that I would really care at all. My stomach jolts in a funny sort of way. Tomorrow is the last day of school. I hate school, but I always miss it when it’s gone. Sure, it’s shitty and stuff, but it does provide stability. I need to go back, even if it only is one last day. School will hopefully bring something normal back into my life. It will also give me a chance to spend time with my friends before summer break, if you can even call them friends. They’re basically just the people I hang out with at lunch so I don’t look stupid sitting alone. They seem to like me enough to tolerate me, which is nice, I guess. Those people are very, um, interesting. First of all, there’s Molly. She’s the smartest person at our school. Everyone wants to be her friend. She helps people she likes with their homework and stuff. After spending so much time around people who are brown-nosing her, I forgot the stereotype about nerds having no friends. I honestly have no idea where that came from, because at my school, we treat the smart people like royalty because we depend on them for, like, not failing. There’s this kid named Jacob who also sits at my table. His stupid hairstyle has not changed in sixteen years. He’s strange and vaguely fucked-up, but I guess we all are to some degree. He gives off a weird sexual vibe, but not really a rapist/child molester one. It’s softer and seems more obscure, like maybe he’s sexually attracted to goats. I really should stop his description here. And then there’s Lily. She has the weirdest stories. I read one of them and my eyes nearly bled. It was a Twilight fanfiction in which the characters were all gangsters. Her face is always really flushed and she laughs at everything. Except when she’s on her period, which in that case she turns into the nastiest, loudest, bitchiest person you’ve ever met. A lot of weird shit happens at that table. My favorite was when we created a match.com profile for a burrito someone dropped on the ground. It was the most amazing thing in the world. “Burrito1230345 looking for a one-night stand. Bring candles, incense, and lots of lube.” Lily tried to reposition it so it would look as sexually suggestive as a burrito could possibly be, but she failed horribly. Jacob took over and did the job right in less than a minute. How he managed, no one knows. It all started when Jacob’s crush dropped the burrito on the ground as she walked to her table. Jacob started staring at it because, of course, he’s a freak. We started to joke with him about him wanting the burrito, because Jacob just has the kind of pervy face that makes him look like he wants to screw everything. He said that he didn’t want it. We felt bad for this little burrito, because not even Jacob would make love to it. Somehow, ten minutes later, we created a full profile for our burrito. Those were good times. I’ve laughed a lot a that table. I miss those little fuckers. I haven’t seen another human being besides the local news and the pee collectors in a week. The news people did a story on my sister’s suicide. I remember watching it. Our story was the second to last thing on there. The day before the news report, they interviewed Mom. That did not go over well. When they tried to talk to me, I turned away and walked into the house. I don’t need their sensationalistic crap in my life. I thought I was through with them, but then they entered my house WITHOUT PERMISSION and asked me “WHAT MY MOOD WAS”. Take a fucking hint. What did they think? Did they consider it a possibility that I was elated that my sister committed suicide? Did I look like I was jumping over rainbows and skipping through meadows or something? You know, this is why I am no longer considering journalism as my career. I now hate the media. This whole thing has really opened my eyes. They didn’t show either of the failed interviews, thank God. I will give them that. Even so, the newscasters had blank, empty faces when they were giving the report about the suicide. Then, not a moment later, they were smiling and talking about a baby animal that was born in the local zoo. It’s clear that they don’t really give a damn about anyone’s feelings. About a second before I fall asleep (I collapsed on the rocking chair we have outside), my mom pulls up into the driveway, back from her midnight run to the liquor store. She ran into our trashcan pretty hard. That’s just wonderful. She’s driving drunk. Actually, she’s probably not even drunk, but depressed slap-happy. It’s a good thing that I have my own car so I can drive to school without chicken bones flying off the hood. I got mom’s old one about three months ago after I got my driver’s license. I always hated the school bus. I’ve seen some shit there. Mom got a new Honda a year ago. She was supposed to get a used one. To be fair, Hondas aren’t the most expensive cars, but still. She’s going to run that thing in the ground if she keeps that up. I hope that the car insurance will cover the damage. But I have a really bad feeling that the car insurance is actually my college fund. Bye, college. Mom gets out of the car, kicking out some wine bottles in the process. I don’t really want to witness this. I snuff out my last cigarette and go inside. My lungs were starting to struggle anyway. I crash on the couch and quickly fall asleep, praying that my brain won’t force me to relive my sister’s death again like it usually does. I wake up at what feels like seconds later, but it is pitch black outside, and the sound of thousands of horny cicadas chirping is louder. I’m thirsty and covered in sweat. My dead sister didn’t revisit me again, so that’s a plus. Forcing myself off the couch, I get a glass of milk and put it in the microwave. My head spins, due to either the smoke, the alcohol smell coming from mom’s bedroom, or how fast I moved in a short amount of time, or all three. It takes me a minute notice Mom, in her room, passed out. I suddenly wish that microwaves had a “silent” option. Mom would never hurt me intentionally, but you know. After the infernal beeping sound ends, I quietly get the milk out and slowly trudge over to the table. I sit down, taking quiet sips from my glass. Mom herself said that it was unhealthy to have addictions. But here she is, passed out, wine running through her veins instead of life. I wish mom was happy again. I wish that she would go to work and pay attention to the last daughter she has left. But wishes are empty. We are not happy. It’s like we all died that awful night. In some ways, I did die. My dreams are rotting away. My sanity is hanging by a single string of skin. The better half of me is gone. I’m ripping apart at the seams. Emotional pain is probably the worst abstract concept ever. I would burn off my right hand to see my sister for one more day. I would walk across hell if it would give her one year on earth. I would die a thousand painful deaths to make her happy. If only I cared enough about her before the suicide. Forget walking across hell. I couldn’t even walk to her room. A lump grows in my throat. What sort of things did my sister experience? Does she still remember it? Whatever it was, I hope that she’s stopped suffering. I really hope she didn’t go to hell. She couldn’t have, though. She’s too pure. Everything is temporary. That’s just one harsh fact of life and the workings of the universe. However, it would have been nice if the universe was kind enough to allow my sister to be a little less temporary. I look at the pictures on the table. You know what’s funny? Family photos are funny. They’re like little windows into the past. It takes me back to when I dressed normally, Katherine was little and not dead, Dad was here and still loved my mom, we lived in this big house by a river, and life was generally just, like, better and stuff. It sickens me, the fact that the happy people in those pictures have no idea about what the future holds. I chug the rest of my milk, accidentally spilling half of it on the table and my chest. I’m not cleaning that shit up. Stretching, I quietly go back to my sister’s room and fall onto her bed. I stare at the ceiling fan and watch it spin around and round. Just like my brain. I shut my eyes. Rain lightly taps on our metal roof. How long was it raining? I tilt my head to look out Katherine’s window. Water falls gently upon the water-starved ground. It runs and runs until it finds a low area to rest in. Then the soil draws it in like a slow breath. My eyelids close once more and I focus on the rain and nothing else. A boom of thunder wakes me. Unfortunately, I’m the type that stays awake all night if I wake up. Now I’m alone with my thoughts. I’m just tired enough to not be able to grab my phone. I wish I could play some music to drown out my thoughts. My brain won’t shut the hell up. I’m being reminded of everything I’ve ever said or did with her. I miss my sister so much it actually physically hurts. I wish I killed myself instead of her. I really have no idea why she killed herself at all. I can’t think of any conversation or anything that could even slightly read as “suicidal”. She’s not even that good at keeping secrets. What am I missing here? Is it just really obvious or something? I’m so frustrated. She didn’t even leave a suicide note. I really wish she had. I mean, isn’t that something that you just do when you kill yourself? I mean, I guess there’s not really a rulebook or a protocol for that sort of thing, but yeah. I have to go to school tomorrow. Maybe that would help me sort out my thoughts. Maybe I can consult with Jacob and Lily and Molly and see if they might know anyone who can help me. I need to find out what happened to my sister. It just doesn’t make any sense at all. I wish I could just find something that would answer all of my questions just like that. It’s probably going to take a while to know the whole truth, but I will do everything it takes. Mark my words.

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shontaviajesq · 5 years

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A Tale of Two Chicagos: What I Learned From Becoming and Surviving R. Kelly

America’s major cities each have their own vibe. The hustle and bustle that weaves between New York’s skyscrapers is legendary. Los Angeles is well-known for its sunny weather, beautiful people, and Hollywood sign towering over America’s most historic film industry. The Las Vegas Strip beckons tourists with its bright lights, drive-thru weddings officiated by Elvis, and empty promises of winning it big on a slot machine. Even if you have never visited these places, you know the city’s personality.

Chicago also has a vibe. As a former Midwesterner, Chicago is a place that I became familiar with over nearly a decade (especially #SummertimeChi). The people, food, festival season, sports teams and music scene (among many other things) make it a great city. Unfortunately, recent years have focused on they city’s perceived propensity for violence.

For me, what has always stood out—more than Michael Jordan or the former Sears Tower or that silver bean-looking thing—is how much people from Chicago LOVE Chicago. And I mean…LOVE Chicago. I don’t care who a person is, if they are from Chicago they will let you know within the first 3-5 seconds of your interaction with them. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard an interview with Common or Chance the Rapper where they don’t mention their city. The Chi is always on their minds.

Chicago Bears GIF from Chicago GIFs

The city has also been on my mind a lot lately. I, like more than 3 million other people on the planet, bought Michelle Obama’s book, Becoming, when it came out. Almost immediately after the book’s release in November 2018, I began getting texts from others in my circle who literally could. not. put. the. book. down.

Despite the rave reviews, Becoming sat on my floor in its Amazon.com box for several months. I did not begin reading it until around the New Year. True to Chicago form, Mrs. Obama shouted out her city (and especially her neighborhood on the South side of Chicago) literally on page 1 and continued throughout the book to reference her beloved hometown.

via GIPHY

Around this same time, the Lifetime network was preparing to set a huge, raging dumpster fire in the internet’s front yard. On January 3, 2019, Lifetime released part one of Surviving R. Kelly, a SIX-PART documentary about the girls and women who survived harrowing, horrible, disgusting [I need like a million more words here] pedophilia, predatory behavior and abuse at the hands of R. Kelly, an R&B artist that many folks muted long before the documentary aired. The six part series is jarring, shocking and incomprehensible (the decisions made by people, not the documentary itself) at times.

R. Kelly is also from the South Side of Chicago, and the city serves almost as a featured character throughout the documentary. The documentary describes his childhood and high school days in Chicago, his common presence at a McDonald’s near the high school, and his local studio and home. Chicago is front and center from the first few minutes of part one, and it plays a major role throughout the full documentary, which aired in parts over the span of several days.

Interestingly, I was finishing the last few pages of Becoming at the same time that Surviving R. Kelly was being aired. I went back and forth about whether I should watch it, because I knew it would be tough to hear the stories—when I was in law school, Criminal Law was the class I hate most…I could barely stand to read the details of the cases describing various types of homicides and assaults. I knew the Surviving R. Kelly documentary was going to make my stomach churn. I ultimately tuned in several days after it originally aired, perhaps out of some feeling of shared solidarity with the many black women talking about its themes across my social media platforms.

As I read about Mrs. Obama’s life and experiences in Chicago, I was struck by the reverence with which she talked about Chicago and the South Side. It nurtured and supported her, and later, her soon-to-be famous husband. When I watched the Lifetime documentary, Chicago seemed literally to be a different place. It was a place that had knowingly protected and revered R. Kelly despite being well-informed of his dangerous and evil predilections. It was the evil and depraved Mr. Hyde to Mrs. Obama’s Dr. Jekyll.

I was fascinated by this contrast and have a couple of observations to share.

Now, look—before we get into this. I know people from Chicago LOVE Chicago. I also appreciate that, as much as people from Chicago LOVE Chicago, they HATE equally as much (if not more) when people who ain’t from Chicago have something to say about Chicago. If that is you…bear with me. And take your finger off the holster of your Twitter fingers. I come in peace.

I should say at the outset that it feels weird comparing Becoming with Surviving R. Kelly.

If the forever first lady is on one end of the spectrum as it relates to protecting and championing the cause of young girls, Robert Kelly is so far on the other end of the spectrum that he ain’t even on a spectrum. Even his own daughter has called him a monster.

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Michelle Obama, as an accomplished, 55 year old professional woman from the South Side of Chicago, is the physical embodiment of an American success story, no matter whether you agree with her political or ideological views. She grew up in a working class family, worked her butt off in public and magnet schools, went to college, and worked her way through several upwardly-mobile job opportunities. Her accomplishments are impressive and plentiful and she has positively impacted the lives of countless girls of all backgrounds.

On the other hand….

Robert Kelly, a 52 year old man also from the South Side of Chicago, grew up in a home where he was sexually abused from age 7 to age 14 or 15, barely made it through grade school, and is functionally illiterate. In some ways his story could have also been a success story (and probably is to his ride-or-die fans). There was a time when he was the golden goose of the music industry, despite his upbringing. He is, by the numbers, one of the best selling music artists in the United States. Rolling Stone has said that he is "arguably the most important R&B figure of the 1990s and 2000s.” But, as we have learned at varying points in history, he is, quite literally, a monster. Surviving R. Kelly, for many people, was the exclamation point on decades—quite literally generations—of stories about his predatory, pedophilic, abusive behaviors again (primarily black) women.

Despite the fact that these two people have nothing in common other than being members of the human race (and I’m not even sure he deserves to be considered human), two things stuck with me as I compared and contrasted Becoming and Surviving R. Kelly.

Because similar paths can starkly diverge, we must carefully sow principles of love & survival into our children.

Obama starts Becoming with a description of her formative years in her South Shore neighborhood at the end of the 1960s. Because she was a good student who worked very hard, Obama had the opportunity to attend the Whitney M. Young Magnet High School. Because the school was across town, she had a roughly 90 commute by bus to get there. She describes the experience in the video below. The part I’m talking about goes from about the 1:30 minute mark until the 3:00 minute mark.

This magnet high school exposed her to all kinds of new things—she met black kids from wealthy, professional families, which she had never seen before. As Obama articulates in the video, the school helped her "find a place where [she] could be smart and feel good about it.” Because every student there was striving for success, Obama was able to cultivate her own dreams of success. Because she was in this environment, she would spend each day of her 90 minute bus commute doing homework and preparing for the next day of school.

In part 1 of Surviving R. Kelly, the documentary recounts an eerily similar commute for Jerhonda Pace (then Jerhonda Johnson). In 2008, Pace also had a long city bus commute to her Chicago high school, where she was a 15-year old freshman. Pace was also an R. Kelly superfan. When Kelly was criminally prosecuted on child pornography charges, his trial was held in a downtown Chicago courtroom. When Pace found out, she skipped school and instead traveled 40 miles by train and bus to attend his trial—it wasn’t hard for her to do because she had to take the bus to school anyway, and her single-mom was working several jobs and oftentimes not at home.

Pace was a visible attendee at the trial—She was photographed alongside Kelly and was a mainstay during the entire trial.

The photo below is of her in 2008, at 15 years old, waiting outside the court house.

At 15 years old, Pace was even quoted by MTV after Kelly was acquitted, saying:

"They can't call him a pedophile anymore," Johnson said. "They can't say he likes little girls. They don't have proof of that. Because he's innocent now. He's free."

This is one place the Surviving R. Kelly documentary began to throw me for a loop. Pace describes how, after the trial, Kelly called her (he was 41/42 at the time and she was probably 15/16). He invited her to his home and took her virginity that same day. This led to a multi-year spiral of abuse.

Listening to Pace’s story and thinking about Obama’s experience starkly illustrated for me how similar paths can diverge.

Obama’s long commute led her to a supportive place where the people around her had a vested interest in her success. Because she felt this all around her, she was propelled in the direction of her dreams. Pace’s commute, on the other hand, led her to a place where the one person she believed in ravaged both her mind and body for two years. She has said the last straws for her were when he slapped, choked, and spit on her.

These two things lay bare how carefully we must sow love and survival principles into our children. They can and will find themselves having to make any number of decisions. How we guide them could lead to either heaven or hell. There are good and bad people in the world waiting to exert their influence, and we owe it to the children in our lives to expose them to the ways that their paths can diverge.

By saying this, I do not intend in anyway to blame Pace or her mother for the situation she found herself in. Her victimization is solely the fault of her abuser—her naïveté was exploited. <<Who among us has never found themselves in a place where they knew they had no business being?>> My point is merely that we can and should offer kids the tools and opportunities that help them both identify and avoid unsafe situations.

2. We must eradicate cultures of silence.

The second big thing that I couldn’t shake was the difference between the sibling and other familial relationships of Michelle Obama and her brother, Craig Robinson, and Robert Kelly and his younger brother, Carey Kelly.

Obama speaks with love about her big brother and how she always wanted to be like him and do the things he did. She talks about them being “tight, in part thanks to an unwavering and somewhat inexplicable allegiance he seemed to feel for his baby sister right from the start.”

Obama idolized her brother and, once she was old enough, she followed him places and learned how to navigate her adolescence by watching him. And Craig understood this. He was, to quote Obama, “the portrait of brotherly vigilance and responsibility.”

The Robinson kids were also taught to avoid being dishonest and dishonorable. There’s a story in the book that I’ll leave to page 47 of Becoming to articulate:

I can’t say that I had the moral compass or mental fortitude of 8th grade Craig. As I read this story and Obama’s other characterizations of her brother, I thought about the power of having this kind of role model as a kid and how positively these images must have been for her.

Carey Kelly speaks similarly about looking up to his older brothers, including Robert, and wanting to do everything they did. As the youngest of four, Carey followed his brothers around and emulated them. In a particularly jarring scene in Surviving R. Kelly, Carey talks about being sexually abused by his oldest sister at age 6 and going to Robert to tell him about the abuse:

Carey recounted going to his older brother, Robert (aka R. Kelly), about the abuse when he was a child. “Robert, him being my big brother, I brought that to him and told him what happened to me,” he said. “And when I told him, he didn’t really respond to it like I felt he should. When I told him, he said, ‘No, that didn’t happen.’ And I said, ‘Yes it did.’ And Robert said, ‘No it didn’t.’ And I left it alone. I really didn’t want to take it to my mom, because my brother was the test. And if he believed me, maybe I could’ve taken it to an adult.”

Whew. I was in tears through several parts of the documentary, and this was one of them. It is just sad all around. R. Kelly has also spoken in the past about being sexually abused by an older female family member, though he has never confirmed (at least publicly, who that was). Carey has said he doesn’t know if he and his brother were abused by the same person because they have never discussed it. And he did not believe any of the adults in his life would believe him.

In digesting these two experiences at the same time, I saw the striking impact that secrets can—or cannot have—on families. Fostering a culture of communication in our households can protect children from a lifetime of damage (or, in the case of 8th grade Craig, from being prematurely confronted with situations that they are not prepared for).

Keeping dark secrets is deeply rooted in African-American communities—firmly established in a history of slavery, discrimination and oppression. Themes like passing as white, rapes by slave masters of women and the resulting mixed-race offspring, and sexual abuse of enslaved men and boys helped foster this culture of secrecy. These patterns of silence have been passed down through the generations.

Of course, cultures of silence are not specific only to African-American culture, but history has certainly provided us with some unique circumstances and challenges. While it will be difficult and messy work, we can and should break free from the vestiges surrounding our arrival to this land. This includes rejecting family secrets that place children, relationships and mental health at risk.

Ultimately, both Becoming and Surviving R. Kelly illustrated for me that no place can be defined as just one thing. Chicago, like every city, is multifaceted and shaped by its people and experiences. Places can be simultaneously nurturing and dangerous. Good and evil. Accessible and inaccessible.

It is not enough to believe that good things happen in some places and bad things happen in others, or that one side of the tracks leads to success while the other leads to despair. Paths can diverge. Cultural strongholds can throw a person’s trajectory into a tailspin. If society is to improve and progress, we cannot view it as a monolith.

It makes all the sense in the world that people from Chicago LOVE Chicago. If you’re still reading at this point, you must feel some kind of way about Chicago yourself. From Becoming to Surviving R. Kelly, Chicago is a mirror for many points on the cultural spectrum in every city. I suppose we all play a role in what we ultimately see when we look into that mirror.

——-

If you read Becoming and watched the documentary, what are your thoughts? Were there other common themes? Leave a comment below so that we can discuss those too.

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acuratorslife · 5 years

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Remembering George Kolombatovich

Kathleen Reckling

December 2, 2018

An excellent conversationalist.

Knowledgeable.

A gentleman.

An opportunity maker.

Kind.

A fencer’s advocate.

A bow-tie wearing badass.

When I was preparing my remarks for today, I asked some of George’s college coaching colleagues and some of his former fencers how they remembered him, and these are some of the words and phrases they shared.

An excellent conversationalist.

Knowledgeable.

A gentleman.

An opportunity maker.

Kind.

A fencer’s advocate.

A bow-tie wearing badass.

That last one is probably my favorite – and it came from Oriana Issacson, an epeeist and team captain, class of 2009 – it’s probably my favorite because I can’t remember ever seeing George without a bow tie.

And George was a badass.

You always knew that having George strip-side was the equivalent of having a member of royalty in your corner. Your ref was going to make sure he got things right.

Like a lot of fencers who would come to join the Columbia lions family, I first really met George at Summer Nationals, in between my Junior and Senior years of high school – it was a “recruiting meeting.”

Fencing was relatively new to me. I had only started as a freshman in high school, but fell in love with the sport and threw my heart… and my parents’ money (I’m still paying them back)… into it, full throttle. I earned cadet and junior points quickly, but I was for all intents and purposes a no-namer… untested…

I wasn’t on the World team, I was captain of my HS fencing team…That meant something to George.

I had visions of gold medals, and Ivy League rings, and NCAA rings, and Olympic rings… I had aspirations. That also meant something to George.

So, in our meeting we probably spent about 15 minutes talking fencing… about what I had done and what I wanted to do… And then I mentioned I was a classically trained violinist. Well, then we spent the next 45 minutes talking about art, and Joshua Bell and opera and Paris…

George was an exceptional conversationalist.

Over the following months, I’d have a few other conversations and emails with George, and then came the famous phone call. You know, the one that goes like this:

George: Are you sitting down.

Athlete: Yes.

George: Well, I just wanted to call you to say that I can’t call you to tell you that admissions has reviewed your application and accepted you to Columbia University. I can’t call you to tell you that, so I’m not calling to tell you that. Happy Thanksgiving.

Now, for some context for the current team… getting recruited in the Ivy League was a different process 15 years ago. There was no such thing as a “letter of intent,” and there was no “signing day.” Sure, you’d have a verbal commitment, but there were “horror” stories of fencers who had verbal commitments, only to find they were rejected by admissions. We were like every other non-sword wielding muggle who had to submit an application and wait. Hanging over our heads was a certain degree of uncertainty that we’d get accepted. So that phone call meant a lot… and then we had to keep quiet about it.

This was because the Ivy League didn’t believe in recruiting. The ethos was that to be scholar-athlete in the Ivy League was to be a Scholar above all.

George felt differently… because he knew differently.

In that first recruiting meeting he told me about Olympian Ann Marsh – who happened to be and continues to be one of my fencing sheros -- how in between bouts at World Championships she’d be reading her organic chemistry textbooks, studying for the MCATs. He took pride in her prowess on the strip and in the classroom. Later, once I was a full-fledged lion, George introduced me to Ann at a NAC. A couple of hours later, I would have, let’s call it the pleasure of drawing Ann in a DE… and while she was really pleased to meet me, she was also really pleased to beat me.

Without the benefits of scholarships and meal-plan perks, George made Columbia fencing among the most sought after collegiate program in the country because he believed with all his heart that it was possible to be a scholar and an athlete in equal measure… and to be equally exceptional in both.

My time as a scholar-athlete at Columbia is punctuated by a two-year captainship, first team All-Ivy, All-American honorable mention, third place team finish at the NCAAS, and what is perhaps my most memorable experience at Columbia, an Ivy League Championship. I traveled with George to World Cups. in fact, at one, I had food poisoning and George in his capacity as head referee made sure I had a strip near the bathroom, so I could throw-up between bouts… not the same as Ann studying Orgo between bouts, but it does show how George took care of his fencers at home and abroad. I was also Dean’s List, a 2x Academic All-Ivy, a staff reporter for the Spec, and a class marshal at commencement – anyway, listing this is not really to tell you about me, it’s to testify to how George made personal success possible.

And I think about my teammates Emma Baratta and Jeff Spear among others, who were not only on the national senior teams, they were Academic All-Americans – Like, they were the smartest College Athletes in America.

George loved boasting that Columbia’s fencers were Olympians and All-Americans – I think he had 150 over his career. But he also loved to boast that our team carried the highest GPA of all athletic teams at Columbia. I think Mike loves boasting about that too.

All this to say, you wanted to go to Columbia because you knew you’d have the support, the resources, and the access to be a collegiate athlete, a world class athlete (if that’s what you wanted), and an academic. You know, have your Ivy League cake and eat it too…

The Scholar-Athlete equilibrium built into the DNA of this program was built by George. Everyone who comes into this fencing room, and gets to sing “Roar, Lion, Roar” is a beneficiary of that legacy. And I applaud Mike for his commitment to ensuring this legacy.

George was one of the advocates for establishing the Ivy League round robin tournament. Before that, you’d fence each school in the League whenever it got scheduled, so often athletes vying for spots on national teams would have to make a choice – world cup, or meet v. Cornell, World cup or meet v. Harvard… essentially, National Team or college team. The Round Robin made is so that those athletes traveling to World Cups didn’t have to choose between college team and national team. Have your fencing cake and eat it too…

He also believed you didn’t need to have a team entirely made-up of National Team members to win championship titles. To make a Team you need more than just wins. You need heart. And so he created pathways for athletes who loved the sport and who loved being part of a team to be on this team. This is what coaches at NYU and St. John’s admired most about him: He made opportunities for good kids.

George was an exceptional conversationalist.

He was an athlete’s advocate.

He also had a sense of humor.

The night before we’d ship off for an away meet, he’d circulate the traveling squads. Now, if you know me, you know my mother. My mother came to all but 2 of my college meets, and is herself a member of many Veterans World Championship Team, and goes way, way back to old Fencers Club days.

So the night before we traveled to Penn State for a set of duals, he posted that Diane Reckling would be starting against Notre Dame, instead of me… honestly, I was totally fine with that… My mother was pretty flattered…

I will always remember our captains’ meetings in his office, surrounded by stacks and stacks of papers and more lions than in all the prides in Africa.

I stayed at Columbia to do my Masters in Art History – which I jokingly referred to as a “trophy wife degree…” George thought that was pretty funny, and would send me punny art cartoons, often to that effect. But he also set-me up as a phys ed instructor, so I could earn some extra money towards all those expensive art books.

There are probably more lows in sport than there are highs. But in lows, George always found the thing to say that made you believe your next “feels” would be a high. I think it’s easy as an athlete, sometimes, often, to look back and focus on the success you didn’t have, rather than the things you did do. Especially when you’re surrounded by such incredible, high-achieving people. If your goal was First Team All-American, and you didn’t make it, or if it was to be an Olympian, and you weren’t, you start to think this is how you’ll be remembered – for the things you didn’t achieve. When I found out I was going to get my picture on the Wall of Fame, I was actually kind of surprised. I mean, I knew what my Teammates had done – James Williams won a silver medal at the Olympics – and the other fencers on the wall, Dan Kellner, Erinn Smart, these were the people I looked up to. I didn’t think what I had done was as deserving. But George just looked at me and said, Common Kathleen. Look at all these things you did. You deserve this. George always made you proud of your successes, because they were yours.

Just an aside about the wall, since this is the first time I’ve been in here in a while… when my picture did go up, it went up with the class of 1937. Right. Like, women didn’t GO to Columbia in 1937. I was with the class of 1937 because the wall was full – I mean look at it. But, I’m not really sure why I was the one that ended up in 1937 – it wasn’t based on the alphabet, because I’m pretty sure Williams comes after Reckling… but I guess if you have an Olympic silver medal, you get right of way, so OK, I’ll let it go. Anyway, it became a bit of a running joke with George whenever I’d come back to campus. George, I know I study old pictures, but that doesn’t mean I want to hang on the wall with ‘em.

I never once heard him yell at a fencer on the team, and he genuinely took joy in watching an athlete improve from season to season.

If I’m making a list of “best days of my life,” the day George called me to say he wasn’t calling to say I had been accepted into Columbia ranks at #1. Because that was when I was given my Columbia family.

I am so grateful to George because he gave me an opportunity to attend this incredible institution, and to walk onto campus with the comfort of knowing I had a built-in group of friends – my teammates – who really were the most amazing support network throughout college and since. I am grateful for his kindness, for his unwavering cheerleader support of me even when I’m not sure I deserved it… and for his pride in who I was on and off the strip.

An excellent conversationalist.

Knowledgeable.

A gentleman.

An opportunity maker.

Kind.

A fencer’s advocate.

A bow-tie wearing badass.

This is how I too will remember you, George.

Thank you.

Roar, Lion, Roar.

#fencing

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backtomylakearearootsstory · 5 years

Text

S1E22

Quincy affirmed “You missed out on some crazy shit”

“A neighbor called the cops suspecting that the kids were up to no good”

Miriam, still in her work uniform [she managed to get a part time job at a nearby grocery store], decided to go inside to fix a plate to eat.

“That’s my daughter” Yvonne said to Faye “We managed to convince her to come to an outing.”

Inside, she decided to ask “What the hell? I hear the news?”

“Walking, then we see two cop cars behind us, blue lights flashing, sirens going off” Brandi said as she took a sip of punch.

“But they didn’t see Zach or Abe? They’ve seen us on our bikes, Even if they didn’t know the rest of you.”

Miriam was correct, in addition to Zach and Abe riding their bikes, They each had neighborhood friends that would be able to attest to their residing there. Not one to immediately jump to conclusions, she begin to throw out possible suggestions.

“I wonder if it’s the new neighbor that just moved in the house at the corner” Miriam asked. “Were yall in somebody’s yard?”

“Nope” Abe said.

After everyone left, Yvonne begin to ask Miriam about how job hours and how it was affecting her school schedule.

She then asked her if Miriam was free this weekend? “Yes, sure am mom, and I also asked my boss if I could have my brother’s birthday off, to my surprise, he said yes and he didn’t fire me”. She said with a relief before going to take a shower and ditch the uniform for the night.

While Yvonne was drinking a hot tidy to simmer down Clarissa was in the process of recording her podcast.

[CLARISSA’S PODCAST]

[Good evening all, I hope you are all enjoying your Saturday night. I have an incident to talk to you about. I’ll keep it brief as it’s late and I have papers to grade. Anyway…….. my nephew came in for the weekend from college. He’s going to college in San Francisco right now and we have a family get together. My sisters, all of our kids, our husbands, you get the idea. After the kids ate, they decided that they didn’t feel like sitting around and listening to us adults talk. With that in mind, they decided to take a walk. My nephew, going on 19 yrs. old decided he would take them all. Within 15 minutes, we heard the doorbell ringing so my brother-in-law decided to answer the door. The kids were all back in the front yard with two cop cars in the yard. The reason? A neighbor called the cops due to them “looking suspicious”. Next, we began to ask things like “were they vandalizing property?” and “Were they in somebody’s yard?” No. The neighbor just said they were concerned about this large group. Needless to say, they were disappointed. With that being said…..I was glad that the officers were kind enough to allow them to prove the residence. We were glad that they all made it home, but things like this a reminder that no…racism isn’t gone. It’s not a thing of the past. Regardless of what people try to suggest. While glad that they returned home, the kids claim that the officers didn’t get rough with them. It is disappointing that one can be in their own neighborhood with their cousins and have the cops called on them. Now you might argue, “What if they really were criminals?”If you had seen them pass your house multiple times, perhaps that would make you curious, however these kids were gone for about 15 minutes before they were back in our front yard which tells me that they didn’t get far in the neighborhood beforehand. Even at that, 911 should be a last resort because too often, these encounters turn out to be deadly. 911 was for emergencies only and not be used for personal recreation. We were taught not to open the door for those who appeared to be up to something. The officer that spoke to us was polite and I do appreciate that he handled them as kids and not adults.]

The next morning, around 9:00 am, Abe decided to drive out to the beach. He picked up his cousins from Deja's house en route and took them to a gas station for soda and snacks. "So you working up there?" QJ asked

"Got a job on campus" Abe said as he took a sip of his Gold Peak Green Tea. Then he asked what kind of project Deja was working on?

"You know her" Aundrea said. "She always finds herself in something-right now it's a cookbook and a book about reconnecting with family. Guess you could say it's a bio. "

"It seems that I've missed out on a bit these past few months"

"Yeah" Malachi chimed in "Grandma's sister died and they all went down to Louisiana for the funeral."

"You know? Mom used to tell us about their adventures down there as children, and I got to meet our cousins in Long Beach. She's Grandma's niece right?"

"Yep" Junior responded "we didn't know she was out here until about a month ago. Me and Darius have become pretty tight since then"

"And I got to connect with a cousin in Baton Rouge via instant message" said Malachi "Mom won't let us have Facebook yet"

"And what is she to us?"

"I think second cousin, it's mom's cousin's daughter"

As he was driving, he received a text from Brandi.

They arrived to the beach where he was able to check his text.

Upon arriving to the beach and finding a spot on the pier to sit down, Abram resumed the text conversation with Brandi. He thought about hard about it. Thinking about the climate that the country was in, he responded by saying He would but neither of them were to wear anything that was too revealing a one piece. “Y’all not gonna have my ass in jail” he said. Additionally, he decided to screenshot the text. He then shared the news about the gathering to his brother and sister. Brandi’s plan was to have the teens get together for a night as have a way to meet guys.

“So who’s putting this together” Amina asked.

“A friend” Brandi said without disclosing too much information.

“Does mom know?”

“Hell no, I told her me and you are having a girls night, teens only. The plan is we leave the house in jeans and evening attire but strip down when we get to the beach”

Amina shook her head as she went to the kitchen to get a can of soda. Being in the eighth grade she rarely went to parties. She had been invited before, however in the three years of Junior High she had only been to two. There was one dance party in the 7th grade and there was a banquet in the sixth grade for her volleyball team. Was she looking forward to the idea of a co-ed beach party? Yes. But she’s not what one would consider to be a whore and didn’t want to give off any impression indicating that she was.

Back at the beach, Abram received a phone call from his mom asking where he was. “Hello’?

“Good morning, where’d you go this morning?” He had breakfast and a cup of coffee near the pier. Having been awake for some time, he did not want to disturb anybody’s sleep, so he decided to take a drive to a coffees hop for some morning java and a breakfast sandwich.

After he ended the phone conversation, they took some time to look at the boats outside. “Yo look at that sail boat over there” Abram said, pointing out ahead.

“There’s a boat race later today” QJ said. “I'll ask mom if we can go later.” Around 10:00 am, they left. “Gotta get you kiddies home”.

After being dropped home, Deja unlocked the door to let the kids in.

After fixing a snack, QJ sat at the kitchen table with Deja and Abe to finish his snack before heading off to his room while Deja disclosed more of what had been going on.

Abram, being relatively new to having being away had already been coached on how to conduct himself, he could hear Phil talking now “no wild parties, no alcohol, I don’t need to hear about your ass being arrested”. Yvonne on the other had would say something along the lines of “We aren’t paying for you to act a fool. You know how many kids go away to college and have to move back home because they flunk out, they lose their scholarships, or they find that they can’t handle the stress”. There were speeches that he’d play in his head over and over. It was as if he had taken a voice recorder and planted it in his brain and the recorder would play any time he was tempted to go to the party down the street vs study for that history test. There was also the scholarship that he was blessed with that covered a portion of his tuition and the dorm. His parent’s paid for his meal plan on campus and went half on his books.

He returned home and put on a pair of shorts and a short sleeved button down and brushed his hair.

“Where’s Miriam?” He asked

“She’s at work. She’s got the evening off, she’s gonna go out with Brandi and Amina this evening.“ Yvonne said.

“Cool deal” he said as he poured himself a cup of Pepsi. As he turned on the TV, Zachariah walked in the living room.

Hey little bro.

Zach left momentarily and returned with a Captain America t shirt, a pair of blue jeans and a navy blue pair of Perry Ellis shoes before joining Abe to watch TV.

After getting up to make a bathroom run, the two of them headed out the door. “Mom, we’re out!” Zach said

“Be safe!” Yvonne said. “I’ll see you two later.”

They at lunch at the pier before watching the race. It was rare that they went out just the two of them. Zach generally did his own thing, he was busy with sports while Abe was kind of a homebody. If anything, college was a chance for Abe to come out of the shell that he was in.

They finished lunch in time to see the lining up of the boats admiring the designs, the sizes, the styles, etc. “That one over there is dope” Zach said. “I wish I knew someone with boats”

“Word is, our uncles back in Louisiana have boats and they go out to the water almost every weekend” Abe replied. “Some of these people have those boats decked out”

As the race began, they spotted Deja and the kids heading en route. Recognizing them, Zach made a gesture with his hand as to signal them to stand next to them. “Where’s uncle Quincy?” Abe asked.

“At home, he didn’t feel like coming” Deja scoffed.

“I’m looking for Juan” Malachi said “He’s supposed to be in one of the races”

“So there’s more than one?” Deja asked.

“Yep,from 1:00 to 5:00″

“Now you didn’t disclose this, are we going to be able to see him”

“Don’t worry, he’s in one of the earlier races”

“I can bring them home”, Abe interjected, “I’m leaving around four, me and Zach have to get ready for another outing this evening.”

“Works for me.”

They watched two races prior to the race that Juan was to appear in

“Killer ride, your buddy’s got” Abe said

“Your boy is getting smoked by that boat at the end” Zach said

They witnessed Juan coming in second. After the race ended, Deja decided she was going to head back home, “I’m releasing my cookbook in two weeks, FINALLY!!!!!” “See you later mom” Aundrea said. She paused for a moment to give Deja some time to get near the restaurants nearby before addressing Malachi.

It wasn’t that he had a crush, Malachi was just an affectionate person by nature. Always had been, and he really values his friends. At times, he’s not sure if they value him in the same way. Their friendship could be described as a “bromance”, but more than anything else, Juan just gets Malachi. Second would probably Carson. After the watched one more race, Juan bought them home, and said that he’s catch them later. The pair arrived home as Yvonne was preparing dinner.

“Wow” Abe said as he got up to go to his room. “I’ll be on my laptop for the next couple of hours”

“Good, gives me time to cook”

Zach followed shortly afterwards, to clarify the plan.

Abe paused for a minute and shook his head and said “I can’t believe that I’m going through with this. I’m the adult in the situation. Please be on your best behavior”

Meanwhile, Amina could be seen in her room with her lamp on reading a teen magazine when she heard a knock. “Come in!”, as Brandi opened the door.

Not realizing that their mom was listening to this conversation, they almost spilled the beans about what was going on. They hadn’t told their mother that there were boys at this outing. With no warning, she opened the door and asked plainly about the status of where they were going.

With that, Clarissa returned to the den. “This conversation isn’t over by the way. We will continue it later”

“Guess we need to watch what we talk about in this house. I just hope dad doesn’t find out” Amina said. With that they resumed the conversation.

Deciding the leave at around 7:30, they grabbed a bottle of water and their bags before stepping out.

“Don’t stay out all night” Clarissa said, before waving goodbye. At the beach, they put their clothes in the car and joined the jamboree at the beach. Beach party included a DJ, bottled beverages (alcoholic and non alcoholic), and a fire. Some were in swim attire, while others came dressed casually. “You see our cousin” Amina asked.

“No, not yet”

Abe and Zach pulled with with Ricky and Vince in the back seat. Miriam arrived and parked on the side of them bringing her coworker with her.

“Y’all got the message too?”

“Yep” Zach said.

“I’ll be damned”

“Looks like a soul train line where the DJ is, let’s get in on the action” Miriam said.

“I’m gonna go find something to drink, I’m parched” Abe said.

At the same time, Brandi and Amina were trying to locate some of Brandi’s friends. She caught up with the party host, Tanner introducing him to her sister.

“Thanks for having me”

30 minutes into the party, they ran into the rest of the gang. “Y’all didn’t waste no time” Brandi said.

“Where the hell were you” Abe said.

“By those stairs over there”

They spent the night dancing and enjoying the ocean breeze. The outing was smooth, until around 9:45 when the music was put on hold. “FIVE O FIVE O” the DJ announced on the microphone.

“Oh SHIT!” Miriam said, noticing blue flashing lights. There were five cop cars on the scene as well as an ambulance.

TO BE CONTINUED WITH EPISODE 23

#tumblr fiction #louisiana #california #creole #family #great migration #lake charles #los angeles #fictional series #fiction #black stories

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