#also I wrote a much darker version of this that I might publish later but some of you make him so mean and it makes me sad

[wildechildwrites]

Lucky Charms

Looney Tunes Part Two

Konig/Reader

Word Count: 1.4k

No use of Y/N

Summary: You have some more encounters with König, the mysterious man who lives in your apartment building.

A/N: König being unintentionally terrifying is so funny. He’s shy and he’s a giant murderer for hire, excuse him for constantly throwing off the vibe. Let me know if you want to be tagged in part three!

AO3 Link: Looney Tunes

You've got bags of groceries hanging from your arms, pinching at your skin, precariously balanced, a white knuckle grip on the laundry detergent that's determined to slip through your fingers before you reach your apartment. The man steps on the elevator with you, and you can feel your face heating up as he looks at you.

You haven't seen him since the night he'd kissed you, and you wondered if he thought of you everytime he rode the elevator. You certainly thought of him.

He makes no effort to disguise his staring, looking down at you with a flat expression, taking in your overflowing arms.

"I hate making more than one trip to my car," you say, answering the question he didn’t ask, shrugging as much as you can with your arms full. You swear you see his eyebrow twitch.

Amusement? Irritation? It's impossible to read him. Instead, you drop your gaze, feeling his eyes still on you.

"My name is König." He says abruptly. Your eyes jump back up to his face, and it's his turn to look away as you grin, introducing yourself.

When you go to get off the elevator, he plucks the detergent out of your hand, gesturing silently for some of the bags you carry. He follows you to your apartment soundlessly, placing the bags down outside of your door. You throw your 'thank you' at his retreating form, and he doesn't acknowledge it.

Later, when you're putting away your groceries, you say his name out loud, tasting it on your tongue.

One of the lights in the parking garage is flickering again, and you sigh in annoyance as you look up at it. The apartment complex took months to fix the last broken bulb, so you’re unenthusiastic about the prospects of a quick repair. It puts you on edge, affecting the visibility and giving the garage an eerie feeling.

“It’s just like a horror movie,” you mumble to yourself, attempting to break the tension you feel as you head towards the exit. It’s late, your workday running longer than it should’ve, and you can’t help the itch of anxiety crawling up your spine.

You pass an unfamiliar man, standing still in between some of the cars. His eyes are on you, and you grip your keys tighter in your hand, speeding up. You hazard a glance over your shoulder and find he's disappeared, and your eyes search the parking lot behind you.

Distracted as you are, unfocused on where you're going, you slam straight into a solid wall of a person. You let out a shriek, head whipping back around and nearly fall backwards as you attempt to scramble away. Two solid hands firmly grip your shoulders, preventing you from tripping. König is standing in front of you, and you sag against his hold in relief.

“You scared me!” you exclaim, a hand going up reflexively to your chest.

“You should be more cautious, häschen,” König responds, and you swear there’s the faintest trace of a smile on his face, the subtle quirk of scarred lips. “Most people look where they are walking to, not where they are walking from.”

You let out a sigh and roll your eyes with a smile, the anxiety seeping out of your body. “The stupid flickering light really freaked me out,” you say, gesturing at the ceiling. “And then there was a man staring at me, but he disappeared.” König nods thoughtfully. His hands are still on your shoulders, and there’s a beat as you both stare at each other.

König clears his throat. “I will speak to the complex maintenance about repairing the light. As for your mystery friend–” König pulls back and slides one finger across his throat. You laugh at the joke, even though he’s not smiling.

König insists on walking you back to your apartment despite your objections, and although you know you were just being silly, you’re touched by the gesture.

“Thank you, König,” you say, lingering in the doorway, and something in his eyes seems to sharpen when you say his name.

You're eating cereal on your couch, watching cartoons when you should be sleeping. It's a childish habit, but after a long day, you're feeling sentimental and too burnt out to process anything with substance. Scrolling through your phone, half paying attention, you almost miss the soft knock on your front door.

König is standing outside, his face obscured by something that looks like an executioner's hood. The gear he's wearing makes him seem even more massive, a mountain of a man standing in front of you.

"May I come in?" He asks, his accented voice low, and you're so caught off guard by the request that your jaw drops.

König stares at you and you stare back, contemplating the matter.

You probably shouldn't let him in, this hulking monster in a mask. You don't even know him really, only interacting a couple of times. He's kissed you, and it was a knee buckling, eye rolling kiss, but does that necessarily grant him access to your apartment?

Your logistical side loses when he lets out a sigh, a huff of air that borders on a whine. You step aside, waving him to the couch as you go to the kitchen to grab another bowl of cereal for him. You want to know why he's here unannounced, but you're unwilling to disturb the delicate balance between the two of you, so you say nothing. He pulls off the mask, eyes on the TV.

“Looney Tunes?” he asks, his voice amused. Daffy Duck lets out a shriek in the silence between you two, and you snort.

“Call it a guilty pleasure,” you reply. König’s eyebrow twitches. You offer him the bowl, and his large fingers brush against yours, shockingly warm and rough. His eyes seem to glint at the contact, an almost avian intensity that makes your skin flush.

You sit down a measured distance away from him, and go back to eating your cereal, attempting to display a level of casual that you do not feel. König seems unaffected, sprawled on your couch, crunching away like he does this every night. He's got his boots on still, tacky with a dark liquid you think could be blood.

"Uh… not that I don't appreciate the company…" you begin after a beat of silence, turning to face him. It's the first time you've seen him really smile, and a part of you is unsure if you like it, the almost predatory glint of teeth.

"I just wanted to see if you'd invite me in." He responds to your unspoken question, his voice rumbling deep from his chest, and there's a sharp edge to his words that make the hairs on the back of your neck prickle.

There's a beat, and your expression must tip him off to your discomfort because his eyes widen.

"I didn't mean– I am sorry I misspoke– sometimes my translations are–" he's stammering, and you instantly relax, feeling guilty for your involuntary reaction.

"No! No it's okay I was just… surprised. I'm glad for the company" You say in a rush, your voice unnaturally high. "You're always welcome to come over."

He smiles again, softer than before. His eyes haven't quite lost the cutting focus, but you smile back, relaxing a little as he takes another bite of cereal. You fall back into companionable silence.

It's late, and you're starting to fade, eyes drooping, curled up into yourself. König hasn't moved from his post on the end of your couch, his empty bowl still cupped in one hand, and you drowsily wonder if it's a military habit, the way he sits with perfect stillness. You stifle a yawn, and he glances over at you without moving his head.

"It's getting late," he says quietly. You watch as he rises in one fluid motion, large strides leading him with a seemingly practiced familiarity to your kitchen. He places his dish in the sink and reaches for the soap. You sit up.

"It's alright, I'll wash the dishes tomorrow," you call out, wiping your eyes, and he nods. You stand as he heads towards the door, your legs slightly unsteady.

"Thank you for the cereal," he says quietly, a hand on the doorknob. You think there is a light dusting of pink around his ears, but it's too dark to really tell.

You smile at him. "You're welcome."

König pauses, turning towards you.

You idly wonder if he'll kiss you again. He looks down at you with an inscrutable expression, bringing a large hand slowly up to your face, the ghost of his fingertips skimming your jaw. You let out an involuntary gasp at the contact, your skin electrified, and he drops his hand.

He opens the door, and you notice his fingers are still curled, as if he's cupping the sensation of your skin against his, holding it in his palm.

"Good night little rabbit," König whispers, a silhouette in your doorway. "Catch you later."

○○○●●●○○○●●●○○○

Taglist:

All for you @whos-fran my beloved (the first person to ever ask to be tagged)

If anyone else would like to be on the taglist for part three reply or reblog this post :)

#pls pick up what I'm putting down with catch you later we all know he didnt just seamlessly insert an american phrase into his vernacular #konig/reader #konig cod #konig x reader #konig x you #cod mw2 #cod x reader #konig: do you need me to kill that guy for you? because I'll snap his fucking spine under my boot no hesitation #reader: hehe youre so funny #also I wrote a much darker version of this that I might publish later but some of you make him so mean and it makes me sad #I'm unhappy with how it came out but maybe if I keep writing one day it won't suck

[ev--writes]

Master wip Intro Post (I’m so sorry lol)

I mentioned in my last post that I had notes for upwards of 15 projects in a ton of different formats (side note to myself:whyyyy). Ergo, I thought it would be helpful to do a short overview of all of them, as I’ll probably be doing update posts for all of these at some point.

Also: Thank you for 6 followers already??? I honestly didn’t think anyone would see my last post (especially as I had no idea how tags worked until after I posted it).

Novels

GRACE

“After the sudden death of her childhood best friend and crush Vicky, Robin is invited to spend the summer with her estranged father, his new husband, and her half-sister at their Maine cabin. As her relationships with her father’s family and a fellow vacationing teen Claire grow, her relationships with her remaining friends and mother back home begin to fracture.”  

Oh boy does this book have a backstory.It’s a little complicated to get into right now (I’ll talk about it in my post for this wip), but I got the idea for the original version of this book in April 2016, and it’s been through three major overhauls since then. I’ve done enough planning to start drafting the newest version, but I’m waiting to get a few mostly-complete projects done before I jump in. 

Attic (working title)

“The discovery of a dead body in the attic of Theo’s new house puts a damper on his fresh start. When a singular death becomes a series, Theo and his new friends decide to investigate and discover that the explanation isn’t able to be explained.”

This story also has a long history. I wrote this for NaNoWriMo 2017, overhauled it for NaNoWriMo 2019, and overhauled it again in the middle of that month. I’m currently stuck with a certain aspect, so I’ve put it to the side for the moment.  

Pinewood Guild

“A group of scholarship students at an elite private boarding school obsess over the seemingly unexplainable death of a fellow student.”

This is very much a baby idea, from April of this year. I was having a grand old time writing a different project Three Can Keep a Secret (which I’ll get to later), and I wanted to write another book about terrible people being horrible to each other. I don’t have very many plans for this book at the moment. 

Blood in the Water

“Paul returns to his hometown for the first time since high school to attend the funeral of his brother when he starts to receive anonymous letters. What starts as innocent and quirky quickly turns dark and potentially deadly”

I got this idea in February of this year, as I wanted to write a novel with the letter format. I was supposed to start this project as my “I’m Leaving Highschool Emotional Support Book”, but I’m not sure if I’m going to actually do that.

The Lion Tattoo

“Jordan bonds with classmate Cade over their shared foster care status. As Jordan starts to spend more and more time with Cade, they see a darker side to the boy. When one of Cade’s adventures ends with them sent off to different foster homes, Jordan must turn their life around.”

This is a very old idea that I honestly forgot about. However, there’s still a lot I want to explore with this story, so I’ll probably get to it someday.  

Anthologies

Sunny

“August ‘Sunny’ finally gets engaged to her long-time girlfriend Tatsu, sending her back to the beginnings of their relationship as camp counselors.”

This is a short set of vignettes I wrote as a birthday present to a friend. As it was just for shiggles, it’s not my most sophisticated story, but I’m okay with it. You can actually read this on my Wattpad if you’d like (I’ll add a link here when I figure out how to do that). I also adapted it as a short film because I was bored, if I’m being honest. 

Hypocrite

This is my poetry collection! Some of these poems are based on real life experiences (for example, the poem I named the collection after was based on a friendship that exploded), and others are completely fiction. This might just be my favorite project I’m working on, if I’m being honest. 

Short Story Collection

I can’t title this wip for the life of me, so the name is relatively self explanatory. I’ve written four stories for this so far, and I have three brewing in the notes app.

Safety Orange

“When an accident kills her father and sends her mother into a coma, Angie and her brother Oliver are sent to live with their Aunt Marie. Romance should be the last thing on her mind when a local barista Natalie catches her eye.”

This was my “Quarantine Emotional Support Book”. I had two simultaneous itches--to write something cute and fluffy, and to try out prose poetry. These two ideas birthed this story. I want to get a printed copy for me and my mom, but I don’t have any plans for it after that. 

Three Can Keep a Secret

 “Hattie, her girlfriend Regan, and her best friend Vincent return from a weekend camping trip to discover their town has been ravaged by the undead. Sophie and her brother Joseph are driven from the military’s safety by a tragic accident. Aspen discovers something wrong with her younger sister Paris that might prove more difficult to handle than the walking bodies around every corner.”

This was my other “Quarantine Emotional Support Book”, written for Camp NaNo 2020. It’s technically a short story collection, although I structured the stories with chapters. I also enjoyed the little flash pieces that appeared in-between each story. Like Safety Orange, I want to get a printed copy of this book, but I don’t think I’ll seek publication for it. 

Screen

Horror Web Series

“Outcast sisters Heaven and Eden make a new friend--one that gives them special abilities. While Eden is more timid about her powers, Heaven is almost too excited and drags her sister along on her quest for revenge.”

This is another one of my projects that I just Cannot Title.The description makes it sound kind of lighthearted, but it’s one of the darkest ideas that I’ve come up with. Right now it’s outlined on my phone, and really all I need to do is dedicate a day to pounding it out. 

Video Games

I’m Sorry This Happened

“Archer’s attempts to cheer up her girlfriend Helena accidentally awakens Sylvia, a playfully violent ghost who convinces the girls to get revenge on the two boys that caused her death almost half a century ago.”

This is a visual novel my sister and I are teaming up with to create. We’re still not sure whether we’re going to publish it, but nevertheless I’m having a grand old time writing it, and I guess that’s what really matters. 

Swanhill Convenience 

“A misfit crew of the local gas station convenience store have a strong customer base. When new employee Pearl becomes suspicious of the group, the whole town’s careful facade crumbles.”

This one needs...more time to brew. There’s a lot of basic details that I’m having trouble making solid decisions on (for example, whether the store is a coffee shop or a convenience store), so this will probably have to sit until I have an epiphany or something. 

[I can’t put the working title here because it’s a blatant spoiler]

“You should not have gone into the forest. Now escape, however you can.”

I debated whether to put this on the list because it’s so hard to talk about without ruining the whole thing. It’s a puzzle solving game that I think has some really interesting lore that I can incorporate. I think that’s literally all I can say lol. 

Wow, that post was LONG. Thank you for reading all the way through! Each of these projects will get dedicated post when I start working on them more frequently. Moral of the story: I have absolutely no self control when it comes to starting projects. 

Note: Any photograph used that I did not take myself came from Unsplash.

See you around,

-Ev

#writing #writers on tumblr #writblr #wip wednesday #wip #intro post #wip intro #novel #visual novel #poetry #short story

[cyabae]

I'm going to choose "By Your Side" as the fic I'd like to know more about: -What inspired you to write the fic this way? -What makes this fic special, or different from all of your other fics? -Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

Thank youso much for the ask! ♡ Hokage!Obito has been on my mind ever since Ipublished this and I’ve been wanting to talk about this! ^^ My answer is going to be pretty long since I thinkmy Hokage!Obito excitement is still very present.

1. Whatinspired you to write the fic this way?

There weremany factors, but the most important to me was to explore the idea of Obitochoosing differently and dive deeper into the topic. In canon, he dreamt abouthis possible life in Konoha, but I honestly don’t view it as a realistic set-upgiven that it was a daydream of a dying man. I think that quite many peoplehave those moments when they create a soothing what if scenario in their minds to comfort themselves. So, in a wayI wanted to recreate the said scene but with some harsh realities added to it.

I genuinelybelieve that Obito had many good points against the shinobi system as a canonvillain. I also think that the Infinite Tsukuyomi had potential to be the bestthing that’s happened to the world. People would’ve had more freedom insidetheir personalized heavens than they had in their physical lives. They’d befree to define an entire world for themselves, so I’m actually team Obito here.

The only remarkableargument I’ve heard against the Infinite Tsukuyomi is that humanity as a wholewouldn’t be able to achieve anything after the genjutsu because everyone’sminds are disconnected inside the dream. So, I think Hokage!Obito would reallyregret not taking his chances with the plan because deep down, he’s reallyhumanitarian and even though he hides it well, he cares so much about the worldthat he’s willing to sacrifice everything he has for it. If he knew about theplan without trying to execute it, he would feel that he’s failed.

Naturally,Kakashi has a huge part in all of this. I wanted to see if Obito and Kakashicould have a functional relationship in a situation where they have never beenin the opposing sides, and whilst I have written my fair share ofAkatsuki!Kakashi fics where this happens, one thing that makes the differenceis the guilt over the missed opportunity. Obito is working towards peace but ina smaller scale, and he gets to see Kakashi’s darkest days. There’s no grandgoal to keep him distracted. He knows that some problems keep on existing evenafter peace, and he sees these difficulties in Kakashi.

So, essentiallythis is a character study with a little bit of spice in it.

2. Whatmakes this fic special, or different from all of your other fics?

This is thefirst time when I wrote Obito being pro-Konoha even though he’s still kindaanti. I’ve written a couple of post war fics where he got back to Konoha tobe with Kakashi but I’ve never explored the idea of him coming back until now. I left the reasons behind his decision pretty vague because I think thatObito might be a little bit too rebellious spirit to thrive in an environmentlike Konoha. I think this was shown so well in canon when he questioned Kakashi’s ideaof put the rules over his comrade – sure, Kakashi taught this later to his teambut this way of thinking was far from common when 13 year-old Obito spoke about it.This has always convinced me that Obito has always been a bit anti-Konoha, andthat’s beautiful.

So,basically writing a Hokage!Obito fic encouraged me to view some sides of himthat I hadn’t paid that much attention before. I had hard time justifying hisreturn, and whilst thinking about it was fun, it was also the hardest part ofthe process. Eventually, I went with a classical theme and made it known that thereason why Obito returned was Kakashi. This made me ponder the darkerside of their relationship. In a way, they live in symbiosis, and it’s notalways pretty. I wanted to blur the line between love and obsession whichseemed surprisingly fitting.

3. Werethere any alternate versions of this fic?

I’ve jokedthat all my fics could be tagged as eventualAkatsuki!Kakashi fics. I considered writing this story from Kakashi pointof view. This would’ve allowed me to look at the situation from an entirely different angle – to tell what sort of Hokage Obito is, andperhaps the hypothetical eventualAkatsuki!Kakashi tag says something about it. (But again, that’s alright. Obitomight do horrible job as the Fifth Hokage but I bet that every version of him is goodat revolutions. Narutoverse certainly needs a fighter against the system!)

But Idecided to use Obito’s POV because I really wanted to make a point that Obito’sdream version of himself isn’t him, and I really want to see more of jadedHokage!Obito. No matter which side he takes he’s still Obito who’s just too restlesssoul to feel comfortable in a military-based environment such as Konoha. In hisheart, he’s a rebel instead of a ruler, and that makes him truly beautiful.

#ohayohimawari #cya answer #my writing #kakaobi #obito #kakashi #by your side

[femslashhistorian]

Supercorp AU Fic Recs Part 2 - Hope and Despair

In this SuperCorp (Supergirl) Femslash Fanfiction Recommendation, I have collected 21 excellent Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor Alternate Universe (AU) stories.

Supercorp AU Fic Recs Part 2 - Hope and Despair: of Lighter and Darker Worlds

In all of the included stories Kara is Kryptonian, but she is not always Supergirl. I will collect no-power AUs in a separate post. However, what I have included as AUs are either stories that change a basic premise of the show or diverge strongly from canon. None of the stories is primarily driven by an action or villain/alien of the week plot, in most this is not even touched at all.

This post and all of the stories were written before season 4 started airing. Most Stories were written before or are (mostly) ignoring Season 3.

Overview of the 21 Kara / Lena stories

Detailed recs and links after the cut. My favorites are marked with *

A) Stories in which Kara is Kryptonian but not Supergirl / Stories without Supergirl

Cooking class with Kara Danvers * by ramonaflow: The One in Which Lena Learns to Cook and to Love

You don't get me * by shes_cured: The College Roommates AU

A Ribbon at a Time * by abcooper: The One in Which Kara Had Been Hiding from Cadmus for Years When She Meets Lena

B) Fluffy/Happy Close to Canon AUs

Something Borrowed (*) by janewithawhy: The Three Weddings and a Supergirl Reveal AU

Swipe Right for a Super by eluigih: The Tinder AU

Charity by cautiouslyoptimistic: The One in Which Lena and Kara Meet Doing Charity Work in a Soup Kitchen

In Plain Sight by MsSirEy, sten06: The One with the Quickest Supergirl Reveal Ever

C) Angstier / Angsty AUs

And I'm waiting for the sun by ifyouresure: The One in Which Kara Fears That She Has Ruined the Danvers’ Lives

Lifestyle Choice by kellsbells: The Ultimate Mon-el Hating Fic

D) Fake Dating / Fake Relationships

I'm with you no matter what * by spacemanearthgirl: The Ultimate Fake Marriage / Witness Protection AU

A fiancée for Christmas by kellsbells: The Fake Dating AU with a Dash of Amnesia

E) Unconventional Families

Listen closely and the stars will sing * by celaenos: The One in Which Instead of Mon-El a Small Girl Came to Earth in the Pod

The Fifth Wall * by Black_Tea_and_Bones: The One about Wishes Coming True, with a Dash of Groundhog Day

F) AUs in Which Lena Is Tempted by the Dark Side

Lena Luthor, Evil Overlord by Rhino (RhinoMouse): The Evil Overlord List AU

The Birth of Venus by lostariels: The One in Which Lena Is an Art Thief

Real by cautiouslyoptimistic: The one in which originally Lena is willing to help Lex and Lilian

G) Stories in Which One of Them Dies (Most have a Happy Ending)

Lena dies on a Wednesday * by karalovesallthegirls: The Brilliant Fic in Which Lena Dies - a Lot.

Destruction (sometimes means rebirth) by BloodInTheFields: The One in Which Lena Does Not Actually Die (but Has Powers)

I Blame Myself by Chazene: The Really Sad Reverse Black Mercy Fic in Which Kara Grieves for Lena

Fallen Hero by Chazene: The really sad fic (with happy ending) in which Lena grieves for Kara

Remember me, and let the love we have live on * by civilorange: The brilliantly sad fic about love, living and dying (actual death!)

This series includes

Supercorp AU Fic Recs Part 1 - Distorted Realities: of Time Travel, Amnesia and Black Mercies [tumblr] [WP]

Supercorp AU Fic Recs Part 2 - Hope and Despair: of Lighter and Darker Worlds [tumblr] [WP]

Supercorp AU Fic Recs Part 3 - Complicated Realities: Weddings, One Night Stands and Friends with Benefits [tumblr] [WP]

Supercorp AU Fic Recs Part 4 - Different Realities: Actors, Baristas and Other No Powers AUs [tumblr] [WordP]

A) Stories in which Kara is Kryptonian but not Supergirl / Stories without Supergirl

1. The One in Which Lena Learns to Cook and to Love

Cooking class with Kara Danvers by ramonaflow

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe)

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

1 Chapter, 17k words (completed)

Published: 2017

Lena takes a cooking class and gets more than she bargained for.

After being nagged by Jess, Lena (who is the CEO of L-Corp) enrolls for a cooking class. The instructor is a joyful, slightly clumsy and very cute young woman - Kara Danvers, and thus Lena meets Kara before she becomes Supergirl.

This is a perfect Supercorp romcom. Romantic, cute, funny and very well written. I loved it. There is also a very nice Cat, Lena, Kara lunch scene.

Favorite Quote:

"Sometimes I think you are flirting with me." Kara finally said in a whisper, shoulders slumped, not daring to look at Lena. Oh. Retreat ? "What if I am ?" Kara looked up, lips parted and eyes wide open. "You are ?" Lena laughed again. "Is it so surprising ?" "I don't know. Maybe. You're the first... the first woman to flirt with me." Kara stuttered, not even losing her pink colors. Did it mean she was straight ? Lena falling for a straight girl, what a heartbreaking feeling of déjà-vu. "I doubt that. Maybe you just didn't notice. But do you want me to stop ?" Kara played with her hands. "I don't know." "It's alright. I can leave if you want." "No ! Don't leave."

2. The College Roommates AU

you don't get me by shes_cured

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe); difficult roommates to friends to lovers

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

12 Chapters, 74k words (completed)

Published: 2017

Rating: Mature

Kara had plenty of daydreams about college, but none of them were anything like reality. Lena Luthor is cold and impossible to get along with, but maybe Kara is just what she needs. - A college AU where Kara and Lena start out as roommates and their journey through navigating their first four years of independence together.

 This is a bumpy ride, especially as Kara thinks she is straight at the beginning of the story, but overall this is not this is not a very angsty story. That they don't fall in love right away and their journey to each other are some of the aspects I enjoyed the most about this story and I loved their banter.

I liked that while we get some glimpses into Lena's unhappy childhood, this is not a focus of the story.

While this is an AU, in some respects it feels like it could be very close to canon: this story is a very conceivable take how lonely, standoffish and socially awkward Lena was in college before she met Kara (or Sam). Kara is a Kryptonian and has powers, but she is not Supergirl (yet) and this does not play a major part in the story. This well written story is my favorite collage / university Supercorp fic.

 Favorite Quotes:

It suddenly hit her that the version of Lena she’d been seeing, the girl she viewed as uptight and anal, was actually the relaxed version of Lena Luthor. What a terrifying realization that was.

“You can’t seriously be blind enough to miss how they look at you.”

“We’re friends,” she shrugged. “People never like me like that, trust me. ...

“Everyone likes you, don’t kid yourself,” Lena laughed, still blatantly not addressing the invitation Kara was giving out. “You’re preppy, bubbly and pretty - guys eat that shit up.”

Kara looked down with a smile for a moment. “Complimenting me isn’t an answer, but thank you. Don’t do it again, though, it’s weird coming from you.”

“It’s going to take you out of your comfort zone.”

“Kara, that could be anything,” Lena deadpanned. “I have a pretty small comfort zone. I need a better hint than that.”

To that, Kara just smiled, ignoring Lena’s crossed arms and attempts at intimidation. “If I gave it away it wouldn’t be a hint, now would it?”

3. The One in Which Kara Had Been Hiding from Cadmus for Years When She Meets Lena

A Ribbon at a Time by abcooper ; @abcooper

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe)

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

5 Chapters, 28k words (completed) Enemies to lovers (sort of), Kara is an alien refugee

Published: 2017

Rating: Mature

After Lex Luthor defeated Superman, after the courts declared him innocent, after CADMUS rose to power, 16 year old Kara Danvers went into hiding. Five years later, a chance encounter with L-Corp CEO Lena Luthor throws her back into everything she's been running from.

 Kara is a refugee. Not enough that she lost Krypton, she is also the sole survivor of her (foster) family - except for Alex, but she has not seen Alex for years.

There is a satisfying ending when the story has been told just enough. There are hints what will happen next, and the story could have been much longer, but it ends in a satisfying place to feel enough, to feel complete. What I loved about this story is that despite the very bleak premise and sad moments, it can also be very funny - with a dry humor that I really enjoyed, and it can be very sad. This story is a great AU, brilliant and very well written. I loved it.

 Favorite Quotes:

She gets the job, she finds out a few days later, but she’s pretty sure her amazing interview skills have nothing to do with it. They give it to her because her last manager wrote her a reference letter in which he described her as, “ridiculously strong - you can send her to deliver cement bricks and she’ll just hoist them onto her shoulder and go,” and because when they asked if she was willing to use her own car for deliveries she said yes.

Joke’s on them. Kara does own - and currently live in - a car, but it’s not what she’s planning on using for deliveries.

It slowly dawns on Kara that maybe she hadn’t just been blowing Craig’s question off with a joke earlier, that she might have stumbled across the right answer to it. It’s becoming clear that Lena didn’t invite her into a trap - she might actually have invited Kara back into her office just to show off her ass.

Well. That’s unexpected.

B) Fluffy/Happy Close to Canon AUs

1. The Three Weddings and a Supergirl Reveal AU

Something Borrowed by janewithawhy ; @janewithawhy

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe)

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

3 Chapters, 50k words (completed)

Published: 2017-2018

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. Three weddings and the two women who attend them.

  Kara attends two weddings with Lena and one she attends as Supergirl. I loved the scene in which Lena rescued Supergirl from dancing with an obnoxious drunk guy. We also get to see some a glace into Kara's time at middle school and Lena's time in university

I liked how Kara and Lena dance around the SG reveal for two weddings and then this culminated in one of my favorite - maybe my favorite Supergirl reveal scenes. (I did not include it in the favorite quotes below, because I do not want to spoil it).

A very well written story. Domestic and fluffy, with some very funny moments

 Favorite Quotes

“Auntie Joannie says you’ve met Supergirl,” Carla said, ignoring Kara in favor of Lena. “Is that true?”

“Yep,” Lena answered, popping the syllable a little. She needed Kara to stop fidgeting, except that it was… hilarious. Supergirl’s Identity Outed by 9-Year-Old Flower Girl. Lena had no plans on seeing that headline in the paper anytime soon.

“Is she tall? She looks tall on TV. Is she nice?” Carla sat up, focusing intently on Lena.

Lena chuckled, almost too amused by the situation. She put a finger to her lip, thinking in that exaggerated way people do while talking to children. Kara was wringing the tablecloth between her hands and Lena was almost sure she heard the linen rip.

“Well, we shared a glass of wine and I just found out Kara is Supergirl; and it’s only half past 2.” Lena quipped.

Eliza’s eyes went wide and she put a hand to her chest, clutching slightly.

“Kara is Supergirl?!” Eliza asked, incredulous and breathless, bracing herself against the countertop.

“Oh shit.” Lena felt her face heat up immediately and then Kara was bursting with laughter and Eliza’s face returned to a small, knowing smile, and Lena knew that she’d been had.

“Have you been sitting here waiting to make that joke?” Kara asked, halfway to crying from laughing so hard.

“Only a little,” Eliza said.

2. The Tinder AU

Swipe Right for a Super by eluigih ; @cheddarlight

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe)

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

5 Chapters, 13k words (completed)

Published: 2017

Lena Luthor matches with Supergirl on tinder and she’s convinced that she’s being catfished.

Lena decides to try tinder - just to relax. For fun...

Wonderful and hilariously bad Super pickup lines. Sweet and funny. Very well written. I enjoyed this story a lot.

Favorite Quote

She shudders when she stumbles across her secretary’s profile, swiping left as fast as humanly possible. As much as she considers Jess a valuable employee, perhaps the most loyal, she just can’t bring herself to go there. She needs someone forgettable, she needs a face she’s not going to see every morning as she walks to her office and Jess definitely doesn't fit the bill.

3. The One in Which Lena and Kara Meet Doing Charity Work in a Soup Kitchen

Charity by cautiouslyoptimistic ; @forlornlyoptimistic (deleted old link)

Charity by cautiouslyoptimistic (new link, reposted)

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe)

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

1 Chapters, 6k words (completed)

Published: 2017

for someone so skeptical of others, lena can't seem to shake off the inconvenient way kara makes her feel or, lena finds her trust issues just don't extend to kara

A great, sweet and fluffy fic. Not very Supergirl centric.

4. The One with the Quickest Supergirl Reveal Ever

In Plain Sight by MsSirEy, sten06 ; @mssirey  @stennnn06

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe)

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

1 Chapters, 10k words (completed)

Published: 2017

What happens when Supergirl inadvertently blurts out her real name when first meeting the sister of Earth's most notorious alien hater? Fluff, friendship and deeper feelings, of course.

One of the least angsty Supergirl reveals. A well written, lovely and sweet story. I liked it a lot.

Favorite Quote

“Oh for Rao’s sake, Kara! What are we doing?” Lena exclaimed, her frustration bubbling to the surface before she could process it. Kara froze, her eyes wide, before a huge telling smile broke across her face.

“I….what did you just say?” Kara asked with a bemused expression.

“What are we doing?” Lena snapped, eyes flashing in a panic, desperate not to have to repeat herself. She didn’t think she had the words to explain this beyond vague intentions.

“No...I thought I heard…” Kara raised her eyebrows curiously. “Did you just say Rao?”

“Oh…” Lena bit her lip and paused. “Yeah, I guess I…. did…” She felt the blush creep along her cheeks as she processed what she had done. It was just another way Kara had crept into her life and made herself at home, and Lena hadn’t even noticed. She stifled a grin, before shaking her head. “Anyway, that’s not the point. Kara, seriously, what are we doing?”

C) Angstier / Angsty AUs

1. The one in which Kara fears that she has ruined the Danvers’ lives

And I'm waiting for the sun by ifyouresure ; @ifyouresure

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe); diverges from canon after 2x08

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

1 Chapters, 24k words (completed)

Published: 2017

Kara doesn’t tell her about the hologram of Alura, about the spy beacon she keeps hidden in her night stand, perpetually glowing, waiting for the touch of its twin, but she says, “Sometimes, I talk to them. My mother and her sister – my aunt. Just about my day, my job, my friends and family. It’s ...” “Cathartic,” Lena supplies. Kara was going to say ‘comforting’, but doesn’t correct her. “Sometimes,” Lena whispers, “I talk to Lex.”

(Much later, Kara will think of Lex, still alive, sitting in maximum security, and wonder what Lena meant.) or A lot can happen in the space of a year; Kara and Lena know this better than most.

 Apart from Kara and Lena moving from friends to lovers this story deals with several heavy themes: in particular loss and grief - and the meaning of family.

Lena is struggling with her, family which she had so desperately wanted to lover her, a brother and Mother who are trying to kill her and the obligation she feels to atone for their sins.

Kara who had already felt abandoned and now is deeply troubled after finding out that her father was responsible for the genocidal Medusa virus. In addition to the loss of her entire planet she feels the weight of being the last Kryptonian.

But most of all the central focus of the story is that Kara fears that she is responsible for ruining the Danver's lives. After she came back from earth one - where she found no Supergirl, no Kara, but a happy Danvers family (with Jeremiah alive) and an Alexandra Danvers who is living a normal and happy life as a doctor - without her - she fears that the Danvers and especially Alex would have been better off without her.

Considering all of these heavy themes, there are pretty undramatic Supergirl and Guardian reveals.

Despite these themes and a Kara who is a bit less of a ball of sunshine as she is portrayed in many other fics, for me this did not feel like an overly angsty fic. I enjoyed this well written fic.

 Favorite Quote

“Lena said you and Maggie are sweet together, by the way,” Kara says. “I guess she could tell.”

Alex hums. “Funny, Maggie said the exact same thing about the two of you.”

Kara splutters incoherently.

“There isn’t a single person in this city whose life I haven’t disrupted simply by existing, by being who I am. Believe me,” and here Kara laughs a little, “believe me, I know. I’ve seen how their lives panned out when I wasn’t there to change them, I’ve seen how happy and fulfilled my foster family, my own sister, are without me.” Kara doesn’t explain how, and Lena doesn’t ask. “And I can only believe Krypton exploded with me on it, or maybe it didn’t. Maybe I’m still there, with my own family. Maybe I’m on Earth, ruining the lives of another.”

“They’re happier, for having you in their lives,” Lena says with conviction, leaning forward. Kara almost smiles.

“Tell me something,” Lena says, and Kara remembers the nightmares she had as a child, how Alex brought her back to Earth every time.

“Shrimp legs freak me out,” Kara says instantly, to a crazed little laugh from Lena. “I wanted to study astronomy once, when I was younger. I haven’t had a real conversation in my own language with another living person in years and, sometimes, I worry that I’ll ...” Kara doesn’t say anything for a time. “I paint portraits of home.”

2. The ultimate Mon-el hating fic

Lifestyle Choice by kellsbells

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe)

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

8 Chapters, 34k words (completed)

Published: 2018

Rating: Mature

Warning: Homophobia from a friend, Gaslighting, Emotional Abuse (read the intro and the full tags on AO3)

"I'm sorry, Kara. Are you implying that because I am attracted to women, that I deserve this kind of intrusive attention?" Lena asked, incredulous. Kara gaped at her for a moment. "No, but... I mean, you must be used to it, with your lifestyle and all?" Okay. This conversation was definitely over. Lena squeezed the bridge of her nose between her finger and thumb. Lifestyle?

From nowhere, Kara comes into Lena's office complaining about a magazine article which portrays the two women as a couple. Apparently her recently-returned boyfriend, 'Mike', is incensed at the implication and pushes Kara into talking to Lena about it. This leads to a rift between the two friends until some new information comes to light, changing both of their lives forever.

 This is probably the ultimate Mon-El hating fic.

I am not really sure why I enjoyed this story, why I could not put it down. This story deals with a lot of topics and themes that I usually don’t like / enjoy reading about. But I think the way the author managed to achieve this is by stopping at the place, by moving on exactly the right moment. When more would have been too much (for me).

The conflict and rift between Lena and Kara is difficult to swallow, but the author pulls it of. Kara starts losing faith in Mon-el at the moment where it would have been intolerable had she stuck with him longer.

It is well written story. It is angsty and a bit dark, but I did not feel that it was that angsty. But do mind the trigger warnings.

 Favorite Quotes

“Could I?” Lena asked, pointing at Kara’s stash of potstickers. She didn’t normally eat this much, but it had been a really long day. Kara handed them over absently, and Lena ate a few before she realised that Kara had just voluntarily given her potstickers. She was eating potstickers that Kara Danvers had given to her.

Kara nodded, head dropping, and then she left. Lena stared at the door for an eternity after Kara left, wondering how she was supposed to handle her own feelings for Kara along with the pain that Kara had caused her personally, and the shit that Mon-El seemed to be pulling. She was worried about Kara, worried about how much Kara could hurt her, and worried that Mon-El was going to completely destroy the sweet, caring person that Kara had always been.

D) Fake Dating / Fake Relationships

1. The Ultimate Fake Marriage / Witness Protection AU

I'm with you no matter what by spacemanearthgirl ; @spaceman-earthgirl

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe)

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

14 Chapters, 46k words (completed)

Published: 2018

"Lena’s life is threatened and the DEO urges her to go hide in a small town (in or out of the country) where the name Luthor won’t mean anything, and Kara of course goes with her bc that’s what (superhero) friends are for. So that’s how they end up fake married in a small town and fall in love for real. Or realize they’re already in love?"

 Embedded into a few Lex is trying to kill Lena elements (nothing too graphic) this is a very light, fluffy and domestic story. Apart from the Lex pieces not a Supergirl centric fic. Winn arranging their fake identities as a married couple, including the rings.

This fic has everything: Witness protection / protective custody, fake marriage, friends to lovers. And my favorite trope: Kara listening for Lena's heartbeat. Bonus: Lena worrying that Kara might hear her heartbeat spike. 

A wonderful, very well written story. Loved it. I especially loved the rings thing

 Favorite Quote

Kara is well aware that this look usually works on Lena, it’s kind of embarrassing how easy one look from Kara can make her fold, make her change her mind about what takeout she wants or what movie they’re going to watch, but running is where she draws the line.

“That’s not going to work this time,” Lena says, reaching out and lightly tapping Kara’s cheek with her hand.

She watches Kara deflate in front of her, pout firmly set on her lips in a last ditch attempt at what Alex calls her “kicked puppy” look.

“Go have fun with the kids, I’ll watch you from here.”

Being alone doesn’t help, it only means the extra brain power she was using to look like she was listening to Jess can be used to think about Kara instead.

This is bad, her company is important to her and she’s not going to be able to get any work done until she talks to Kara.

2. The Fake Dating AU with a Dash of Amnesia

A fiancée for Christmas by kellsbells

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe)

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

11 Chapters, 44k words (completed)

Published: 2017-2018

Rating: Mature

Alex is, as always, being hounded by Eliza about Kara's life. In particular, her personal life. Alex blurts out a lie on a whim, pretending that Kara is engaged, and begs Kara to go along with the lie. Kara mentions the situation to her very platonic friend Lena Luthor, who offers to step in. Hijinks ensue. A gift for the lovely Ganewhoo.

 Fake dating AU with a twist, little bit of unconventional amnesia (they sleep together relatively early - drunk - and Kara cannot remember because alien alcohol). There is a good bit of background Sanvers, also we see more of Alex than Maggie. Also nice Lena and Eliza bonding.

This is a well written story that I enjoyed. A it but not a lot of angst

 Favorite Quotes

“I don’t think Lena is oblivious,” Maggie said, shaking her head. She turned to the side again, rubbing her lower abdomen. “Kara has no idea, but my god, the heart-eyes!”

“I know! Every time they do that staring thing, I get this urge to play spin the bottle or seven minutes in heaven, you know? Like, wake up and smell the gay!” Alex said, snickering.

“I’m proud of you, Danvers,” Maggie said. “You’ve graduated from Lesbian Academy with top points in gaydar and detection of unresolved sexual tension.”

“You know, dear, I think we should bring back the practice of carrying handkerchiefs around. That way, I wouldn’t have to see you drooling like that over my daughter’s admittedly impressive musculature.”

“Oh my god,” Lena said, hiding her face in her scarf. Yes, she was wearing a scarf, and Kara was wearing a tiny two-piece bikini. “You are way too okay with embarrassing me, Eliza.”

E) Unconventional Families

1. The One in Which Instead of Mon-El a Small Girl Came to Earth in the Pod

Listen closely and the stars will sing by celaenos ; @banrions

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe)

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

14 Chapters, 119k words (completed)

Published: 2017

Lena casts her mind around for the last time she felt this unmoored, this off-balance, by a woman, and can't come up with anything. Kara Danvers is unlike anybody that Lena has ever met; the sweetest, bubbliest person Lena’s yet to come across, and simultaneously one of the saddest, who is probably lying to everyone that she meets. It’s an impossible contradiction to wrap your head around, and Lena should probably stop hiding in this bathroom and trying. (Or, Kara and Lena get parent-trapped into a relationship by a goofy little alien.)

As with any AU there is a "what if". What if Mon-El was so many things he was not on the show. An interesting character? A girl? What if instead of Mon-El we got a sweet nine year old girl in Season two?

Thankfully apart from the final showdown that takes some elements from season 2’s final episodes, there is little retelling of the show.

I love how Lena deals with her suspicions that there is something not quite right about Kara and Myka. The interaction / dynamic between Lena / Kara and Myka is wonderfully written, heartwarming and often funny. Their relationship develops so naturally and sweet.

There is a very nice Supergirl reveal and the story has a meaningful and satisfying end. There is nice background Sanvers and Alex plays a relatively big supporting role in this story. She is also written superbly and her interaction with Kara, Lena and Mayka add a lot to the perfection of the story. In fact there are some of my favorite Alex & Lena scenes outside of Alena/AgentCorp fics.

This is a wonderful, long and very well written story that I loved. The relationship between Kara and Myka and food plays a central part in the story and it is very cute.

The author has already used by favorite quote in the "official" summary (above) but I have one more to share:

 “We should have ice cream for breakfast.”

“No,” she laughs, reaching for her phone. “We should not.”

“Kara will say yes if you ask her,” Myka whispers, looking over and realizing that Alex and Maggie are still asleep.

“Kara, is not a good role model to base your relationship with food after,” Lena counters.

2. The One about Wishes Coming True, with a Dash of Groundhog Day

The Fifth Wall by Black_Tea_and_Bones ; @blackteaandbones

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe)

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

28 Chapters, 109k words (completed)

Published: 2017-2018

Rating: Mature

Kara goes to bed with Mon-El, and wakes up with Lena Luthor.

But it isn't Kara’s bed, and they’re not in Lena’s apartment, and that is definitely not their baby... Right?

 What if your wishes come true? Even wishes you had never spoken, not even admitted to yourself? What if powers beyond Kara and Lena‘s comprehension had conspired to push them together, to literally marry their fates together. And to throw in a little girl for good measure, a girl that is apparently their daughter. But all of this can’t be real, or can it?

There is a suspense arc that concludes satisfactory, some canon compliant violence and a bit of angst, but overwhelmingly this is a beautiful love story and a kid fic.

We slowly see Kara and Lena’s relationship developing I loved every minute of it. This is an epic and beautiful story that is very well written.

While Mon-El is mentioned in the author blurb, thankfully he plays practically no role in the story: he has only one or two scenes (in one of which we get a good laugh on his expense).

While there are a few scenes with the Superfriends, this is a very Lena and Kara centric fic.

 Favorite Quotes

Lena shrugged. “Well, I may not have much experience with children, but toast and juice are well within my capabilities. Though I have to ask...  What are sucks, and why aren’t we having any of them?”

Kara took a minute to catch up. “Oh, socks.” She snorted. “She refused to wear any.”

“Stubborn,” Lena noted with a smirk. “I wonder who she gets that from?”

She was alone.

Any lingering doubts Lena may have had about how little she actually wanted her old life back died a sudden and inevitable death in that moment. 

It wasn’t the worst thirty seconds of her life, but it was close.

That was about how long it took her to realize she was overreacting. Nothing had changed. She was still in their bed, in their bedroom, in their apartment. The half-empty glass of water Kara had left on her bedside table last night was still there, and when Lena sat up she saw Kara’s pyjamas hanging over the side of the laundry basket. The only thing missing was Kara herself.

F) AUs in Which Lena Is Tempted by the Dark Side

1. The Evil Overlord List AU

Lena Luthor, Evil Overlord by Rhino (RhinoMouse)

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe); sort of but not really evil!Lena

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

10 Chapters, 23k words (completed)

Published: 2017

Warning: read the author’s intro

Somebody has to take out the trash and Lena decides it might as well be her. If the hero's won't do what needs to be done she will, after all she is a Luthor. And if turning to the dark side involves separating Kara from her douche of a boyfriend? Well that's just a happy coincidence. But if she's going to be evil she's going to do it right by following some simple rules. No insane laughter and impractical super weapons for her. No she's going to avoid the pitfalls of lesser villains and she'll do it with style.

 This AU is a bit different than most SuperCorp AUs. It features a slightly alternate Lena that is written very believably. Jess is done well and gets a slightly larger role than in most fic.

A well written and funny AU that I enjoyed. It is probably more a comedy than it is a SuperCorp romance story.

Note: If you do not know about the Evil Overlord list, then look here. Highly recommended.

 Favorite Quotes

“But Lena’s never cared about her safety and suddenly she does?! And what if she gets hurt!” Kara protested.

Alex held up her hand. “You think Lena might be going evil and your concern is that she might get hurt?” She stared at her sister incredulously.

“Well obviously she could never be properly evil, it’s Lena. But what if she tries to become a megalomaniac like her family?” Kara pointed out. She put her hands on her hips, she needed to protect her friend and they just weren’t getting how serious this was. “Her latest project is laser attachments for sharks!”

2. The One in Which Lena Is an Art Thief

The Birth of Venus by lostariels ; @lostariels

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe); sort of but not really evil!Lena

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

3 Chapters, 13k words (completed)

Published: 2017-2018

When Supergirl finds herself in Italy after an earthquake, Kara decides to take a detour to Florence to see the famous painting the 'Birth of Venus', before returning to National City. At the Uffizi Gallery, she catches the eye of another visitor at the gallery, a fellow art lover who's at the gallery for more than just looking. The next morning the Birth of Venus is reported to have been stolen, and no one knows who took it, until over a year later when Kara finds out why her girlfriend just so happened to be at the gallery that day.

 What if Kara (who is Supergirl) falls in love with a Lena who is an art thief? This is a very interesting take how Kara deals with the fact that her girlfriend is a criminal. Not (really) Evil!Lena, but rather a lover and thief of rare paintings.

With this theme it could have easily been an angsty fic, it is not. It is a well written AU that I enjoyed.

 3. The One in Which Originally Lena Is Willing to Help Lex and Lilian

Real by cautiouslyoptimistic ; @forlornlyoptimistic (deleted old link)

real by cautiouslyoptimistic  (new link, reposted)        

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe)

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

1 Chapter, 10k words (completed)

Published: 2017

lex and lillian recruit lena in their plot to end the supers, but lena finds herself more preoccupied with kara's smile than she is with her family's plans or, lena falls in love with the one person she wasn't supposed to

 At first Lena is willing to help Lex and her mother, after all this is how she was raised. Lena's struggle between supporting her families' plan and falling in love with Kara is a different take on SuperCorp but done very believable.

An excellent story that I liked a lot. Very well written from Lena's POV

G) Stories in Which One of Them Dies (Most have a Happy Ending)

1. The Brilliant Fic in Which Lena Dies - a Lot

Lena dies on a wednesday by karalovesallthegirls ;  @karalovesallthegirls

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe), angst with happy ending

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

1 Chapters, 18k words (completed)

Published: 2018

Rating: Mature

Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death

Lena is trapped in a loop, reliving the day she dies over and over again. She just doesn’t know it.

 Yes, there is angst and suffering, but considering that Lena dies many times in this fic it is not super angsty and this is not primarily an angsty fic.

There is a unique blend of angst, drama, romance and humor: The author manages to put all of this together brilliantly and on top of that a somewhat absurd and crazy plot that is consistent and polished.

It somewhat reminds me of Groundhog Day and the brilliant Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Cause and Effect, but with substantially more punch - there is quite a difference form seeing a ship explode and experiencing Lena’s death several times from her own point of view.

Brilliant and beautifully written, fast paced, concise and polished. There is nothing that could be cut away. It’s a full novel plot in less than 20k words. Amazing - one of my favorites. I knew there would be happy ending, but otherwise I never expected where the plot was going, got surprised again and again.

 Favorite Quote

The only word to describe the look Kara gives her at that is ‘devastation’.

“I’ve watched you die a hundred times, Lena,” she whispers.

Lena can practically see the weight of guilt pressing down on her dearest friend.

“Is that why you wanted us to run away?” she asks, instantly struck by the horror at what she might have done before on those other Wednesdays.

2. The One in Which Lena Does Not Actually Die (but Has Powers)

Destruction (sometimes means rebirth) by BloodInTheFields ; @blood-inthefields

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe); Lena has powers; Angst with happy ending

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

20 Chapters, 36k words (completed)

Published: 2016-2017

There’s not much that she can do. The heat, she doesn’t feel. She walks through the flames and uses her x-ray vision to spot any survivor, but there’s nothing. Only devastation. or, in which Kara loses Lena, but does she really?

Lena is presumed dead after a bombing of LCorp tower and Supergirl couldn’t save her.

There are angsty chapters, miserable Kara is done very well and I really felt with her pain and grief. There are some very nice, romantic and fluffy chapters at the end - and also some funny scenes.

I was a bit worried that Lena's abilities were too much and made her overpowered, but the author handled it well. I enjoyed this well written story a lot.

 Favorite Quotes (spoiler: Lena is not a shape shifter)

“What the hell is going on? Who is this,” Alex hisses, pointing toward the bedroom door that Kara has closed behind them.

“This is Lena Luthor, Alex. You’ve seen her before,” Kara deadpans, arms crossed against her chest.

Kara, where did you find the shape-shifter? This isn’t healthy for you! I didn’t even know you were into Lena Luthor like that!”

3. The Really Sad Reverse Black Mercy Fic in Which Kara Grieves for Lena

I Blame Myself by Chazene

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe)

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

1 Chapters, 5k words (completed)

Published: 2017

Rating: Mature

Warning: fake suicide

Kara goes through trauma like no other.

 Kara is grieving for Lena in a kind of reverse black mercy.

This is a very sad and angsty, beautiful and powerful story - with happy ending. A well written short one from Kara's POV.

 4. The Really Sad Fic (with Happy Ending) in Which Lena Grieves for Kara

Fallen Hero by Chazene

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe)

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp) (f/f)

1 Chapter, 13k words (completed)

Published: 2017

Rating: Mature

Warning: Major Character Death

Lena goes through tragedy, one she'd never thought she'd experience.

 Lena is grieving and coping with Kara's death. A sad, well written and angsty story - ultimately with happy ending.

 5. The brilliantly sad fic about love, living and dying

remember me, and let the love we have live on by civilorange ;  @civilorange

Setting: Supergirl TV 2015 (DCU), AU (Alternate Universe)

Relationship: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (Supercorp); background Kara Danvers/Cat Grant (SuperCat) (f/f)

1 Chapter, 9k words (completed)

Published: 2018

Rating: Mature

Warning: Major Character Death

You close your eyes and pretend it’s tomorrow. “Promise me you’ll be okay?” “Aren’t I always?” There's nothing glad about it, nothing happy. // or: Kara Danvers and Lena Luthor through the years.

This fic is basically Lena’s life in 9 k words and it will probably make you cry - It is amazing that one of the shortest stories has the broadest scope. This story also deals with the fact that as Kryptonians live very long, Kara will outlive her lovers.

There is SuperCat in this fic, but as the fic is told exclusively from Lena's POV we do not really see it.

There are two things that I usually not that fond of in stories: second person narrator and Major Character Death. But this is a brilliant, very well written story that won me over. Highly recommended.

 Favorite Quotes

“Telling you I’m Supergirl isn’t—it isn’t just telling you I’m Supergirl. It’s telling you I’m Kara Zor El, it’s telling you I’m the last of my kind because my cousin doesn’t even remember Krypton, it’s—it’s—I liked being just-Kara around you.” She’s crying—but not—they’re in the lashes of her blue, blue eyes and you don’t know how you never noticed that they’re the exact same shade. Blue, on blue, on blue—with a little bit of stardust in the black of her pupil.

You’re angry, you are, but you like being just-Lena around her, too. You like pretending that you don’t go see your brother every Thursday, you don’t like reading every death threat sent to you in the mail—you don’t like being an idea before you’re a person. You’re angry, but you understand.

“You don’t beat time, sweetheart,” you tried, damn did you try, but there was only so much your human body would allow. “But we had a run, didn’t we?”

Ninety years together in one way or another—forty more than you probably should have had, but you are Lena Luthor after all. Reality was fifty percent what you made it. Ninety years, sixteen planets, three universes, and a pretty epic story—if you do say so yourself.

 You have reached the end of part 2, but Lena and Kara will return in Supercorp AU Fic Recs Part 3 - Different Realities: of No Powers, One Night Stands and Friends with Benefits (I will include a link once it is published).    

updated links in April 2020 for re-uploaded fics by cautiouslyoptimistic

If you liked this, you might enjoy more of my SuperCorp / Supergirl femslash fanfic recs:

9 Great and Long Kara / Lena Fics - SuperCorp

10 More Great and Long Kara / Lena Fics (SuperCorp)

Supercorp AU Fic Recs Part 1 - Distorted Realities: of Time Travel, Amnesia and Black Mercies

Or all of them

or my fic recs only sideblog @femslashhistorianficrecs​

#supercorp #supercorp fic rec #supercorp fanfiction #supergirl fanfiction #supergirl femslash #dcu femslash #fanfiction recommendation #fanfic rec

[evotter]

jan, march, sept + one of your choice, love. have a great day, u icon

thank u kyra i adore u

january: what was the first fic you posted this year?

the first fic i posted this year TECHNICALLY was the epilogue of a different path. the first standalone was chewbacca (aka my introduction to the jily world once again and i have such a soft spot for it)

march: do you listen to music whilst writing? 

yes! pretty much always; if it’s not music, it’s a TV show.

september: share a comment or review which still warms your heart?

quite literally anything you’ve left on any of my fics BUT there are a few that i hold dear to my heart. i’ll post them under the cut cause they are LONG :’)

ancient: the first fic you ever posted online?

hahahaaaaaaa. it was my own version of rick riordan’s the son of neptune before the actual book was published. it was on ff.net, and the first chapter got 7 reviews, and i felt so good about myself after that lmfao. who knew i’d still be writing 8 years later?

ask me questions!

OKAY so i have 3 top favorites:

from a different path:

okay so i had seen this in someone else’s bookmarks the other day, thought it was an interesting concept—especially since i too love slytherin!percy and strongly subscribe to ofswordsandpens’ headcanons about it—but didn’t give it another thought until i was listening to a video about the cursed child and went: wait, there’s a percabeth hogwarts au that i saw somewhere. and immediately i hunted this down and i’m just in awe? i tore through it. belatedly, i realized that i made a mistake: i didn’t write down my thoughts as i was reading, which is definitely a disservice to you. however, here are a generalized list of things that i loved.

first of all, with hogwarts au’s, there are three main aspects that i look for: plot, characterization, and quality of writing. normally, fics of this size lack one or more of these key factors, but i was astonished to find that the plot is tremendously tight and intriguing (my lip bled from biting it so much because i’ve been stressed to the max), you write these characters with such distinct voices i can easily picture them saying everything—except, of course, now in a little british accent—and your writing flows so well, it feels almost like i’m reading an actual harry potter book, just with percy and co. you also do a masterful job of weaving together aspects of the pjo universe with the established canon of hp.

and there are so many specific things that i love. primarily, the way you write the relationships in this story; not just concerning percabeth (though i will get to that in a minute), but also with each of the interactions between all of the characters. i applaud you for how you handled luke/annabeth and rachel/percy, and the friendship among them all is just incredibly well done. i especially love how well you wrote connor and zoë and just, a lot of characters that i don’t often think about when i think of pjo. grover and percy’s friendship especially is heartbreaking, i just. he’s so protective because he loves his friends and holy fuck i also love how you wrote grover in this. but i just adored how you wrote annabeth/percy—the love between them, both platonic in its early stages and the romantic all throughout, was doubly apparent. i ached when they kissed each other’s cheeks, and i inwardly cheered when she kissed him in the locker room. there was just such a natural progression, to me, of their relationship. and man did i dig it. i’m excited (and maybe a little scared) to see where you take their relationship in the future.

boy, this is getting long. sorry. but some more just little quick things: loved the b99 reference, with both of their competitive natures playing out in a similar way to jake and amy’s. i kind of want to go back and see if i can find any other references that i missed because i was just too engaged in the story to catch them. also, zoë’s death killed me all over again, thanks for that. i like how you’re working the kronos plot in, and i can’t wait to see how the Final Battle plays out. what else? oh! professor hestia? beautiful. eventual maybe professor percy? outstanding. percy kissing the top of annabeth’s head? breathtaking. rachel being a quidditch commentator? earth shattering. (truly i cackled when i saw that.) mrs. o’leary being a cat? incredible. how you incorporated percy’s water powers? stunning.

ooh, this exchange was beautiful and had me cackling it was so in-character:

“None of us are dying.” Connor clarifies. “Not you, not me, not Annie, not the rest of us.”

“I might have to dispute that.” Annabeth says, from Percy’s other side. “Call me ‘Annie’ one more time, Stoll, and I’ll kill you myself.”

Connor only grins at her. “Sorry, love. No more ‘Annie’. Can I call you Beth?”

“No.”

“Anna?”

“No.”

okay, so i just finished chapter nine and i am blown away. sorry for how long this comment was, but a fic of this magnitude truly warrants it. i can’t wait to see what happens next.

i leave you with just two words: “holy shit.”

from a different path: 

god, oh my god, am i the only dumb bitch who didn’t get what the prophecy was??

anyway, i stumbled on this fic last year, patiently waiting for its completion, and now that i’ve rediscovered it, i’m so glad i finished it all in one go! i couldn’t imagine the tension of waiting for the next chapter, especially since the tension is so well-crafted!! i hardly noticed the tonal shift even as the story got darker and darker as it led up to the war, and in that way i was reminded of how extremely similar it felt to reading the hp books for the first time! you nailed percy very well i might say, and the awkward-yet-caring relationship he has with his dad. i daresay you gave connor and zoe more characterization than rick riordan himself, and the percabeth you wrote is perfect to the nth degree. i appreciate that you didnt bother with all the love triangle and unrequited feelings nonsense as well.

but i have to say, even as i cried at sally and paul’s wedding, or at dionysus’ quiet mourning for castor, what really struck with me most was the way you handled silena. for that, i have no words. that was a job extremely well done. thank you so much for blessing us with this fic.

from chewbacca (a comment from u!): 

A girl in a bright yellow hooded raincoat stumbles into the cafe on one of the slowest nights James has ever seen. Her coat is dripping all over the floor he’d just cleaned (but it’s fine) and when he leans over the counter he sees that her boots match the coat.

First of all!!! Thats the best opening line in the world and nobody can convince me otherwise. I want to become a publisher just so that if you ever write a book, I’d be able to publish it. ( like omg, what an honor??? )

She looks like sunshine, standing there with the amount of yellow in her wardrobe. Briefly, James wonders if that’s her favorite color. It’s got to be.

Im going to quote this whole fic but I really love these lines? Like, you have this distinct style of writiting that I aim to acheive and you’re literally such a rolemodel!!! These are my favorite kind of fics to read. Funny story but I was going through a ‘no thanks Jily’ mood (  a horror, i know !! ) but your fics are just,,,,exceptions? You could write about trash and I’d love it and ask for you to sign me up.

 “Say it again, but convincingly this time.”

ooof this dialogue??? let me breathe

This is the longest he’s stood still since he started working. It’s actually a miracle.

and the funniest person award goes to YOU. also, the most talented and cutest but thats neither here nor there.

james taking care of fleamont, switching off the lights gives me just a nice and realistic vibe? its so simple but i love how you added it.

honestly at this point, ive been sucked again by the fanfic. it feels less like a fic and more like a masterpiece that belongs in a museum but anyway.

“James is supposed to be helping.

James is on his phone.”

ugh i love ur mind. im rereading and its so nice and lovely. even if its like 1am and im exhausted, this fic is sustaining me.

“Do it off the clock, would you?”

PEAK HUMOR

have i mentioned how much i love that scene with euphemia? she seems like such a lovely mom. i love ur euphemia the most. and ahh, both of them just rushing to the hospital ? another 100% good scene.

“Euphemia smiles too, but looks at Fleamont rather than at her son. “Yes,” she says. “It really does.””

fic? or shakspeare? HMMM

A girl in a bright yellow hooded raincoat stumbles into the cafe on one of the slowest nights James has ever seen // “Get fucked.”

the fic!! has made a circle!!! i love how it begins and ends along the same lines. I really want to know how??? are you so talented im in love.

i just really love this fic, okay? i love how james is just the kindest, lily is allowed to have feelings, its just so soft and warm. and it makes someone feel loved, want love anyway.

the dynamic between the characters are just so real and great and im astounded, in short.

your sirius is everything. so many fics potray him as a dick??? which is first of all #rude and also, not at all true. you made me love these characters even more so i sincerely hope you never stop writing.

you’re such a beautiful writer and the way you string words together is just poetic and gorgeous and all the other good adjectives you can think of. i read your spiderman x reader too and i was a goner for you. EVERYTHING YOU WRITE IS SO GOOD. i read it so long ago but i can vividly remember peter whipping the mask off and she just going wtf stop on the window ledge. what im trying to say is that you leave this lasting impression on people that make them remember random scenes and words / prose long after they’ve read it which is a remarkable feat, i believe.

and im so sorry im not on tumblr rn bc i cannot keep recing this fic but i have told my friends about your writing and they loved it too. you’ve got like a million fans. when i do get back from my hiatus, im going to keep recing your fics and people will cry because their universe will shift thanks to the newfound joy of your presence in their life.

lastly, im more of a dog person and that, more than anything, should tell you how much i love this fic. i love u. and basee on your writing, i want to hug you, be your best friend and make you cookies bc again

WOW

#thelaziestgeek #answers #friends! #<3

[bbclesmis]

LES MISERABLES: Dominic West on the new PBS drama – Interview

The actor talks playing Jean Valjean

When most people think about Victor Hugo’s sprawling novel LES MISERABLES, originally published in 1862, they associate it with the hugely popular stage musical and its film adaptation. However, LES MISERABLES has been adapted as a straight drama on a number of occasions.

The newest version of LES MISERABLES, a miniseries originally produced by and aired on the BBC, begins airing in the U.S. on PBS MASTERPIECE on Sunday, April 14. Dominic West stars as reformed criminal Jean Valjean, trying to live a good life as he is pursued over decades by obsessed law officer Javert (David Oyelowo), with revolution in France looming in the background. The miniseries was adapted by Andrew Davies.

Actor West, originally from Yorkshire, England, spent four years in the U.S. on THE WIRE. More recently, he’s starred in the Showtime series THE AFFAIR, which airs its fifth and final season later this year. West’s AFFAIR character, the adulterous, substance-abusing Noah Soloway, is a far cry from LES MISERABLES’s self-sacrificing Jean Valjean. West has played a number of other conflicted souls – Valmont in LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES (the National Theatre Live production), Hector Madden in THE HOUR, Richard Burton in BURTON AND TAYLOR – as well as outright villains, including the rapacious Spartan noble in 300.

West says of being cast as Valjean, “[David Oyelowo] gets people to approach him when they want a great, good man to be played. And people approach me when they want the opposite. And so I get a lot of villains. It was so refreshing to play a hero, who is a profoundly good man, and I only want to do that from now on. Living with Jean Valjean is a wonderful experience. Living with Noah Soloway is not. A few years ago, in one year, I played Fred West, the [real-life] serial killer [in the miniseries APPROPRIATE ADULT], Iago [in OTHELLO], and some other assh*le, and it was a really depressing year. These people get to you. And I’ve discovered that although making evil is more dramatic, it’s more easily made. The Devil has the best jokes, and it’s much easier to make evil interesting. It’s much more interesting to make good interesting. It’s much harder, and I think it’s well worth it, because at the end of the day, I really realized with this, that if you believe in the subject matter, and if you really believe it’s a story that needs to be told, and that will benefit people, it really makes a difference to your day, and getting out of bed, and your motivation.”

ASSIGNMENT X: In 2014, you played a real-life good guy in PRIDE, a gay rights activist who was also a workers’ rights activist. He seemed like a very warm character who did not seem to have a bad side. Did playing him sustain you for any amount of time, or …?

DOMINIC WEST: [chuckles] Actually, yeah. The guy I played is a good friend of mine now, so he’s real. My guy, Jonathan, was the second guy in the U.K. to be diagnosed H.I.V.-positive, and he’s still very much with us.

AX: Do people you seek you out for the darker parts, or do you seek out those characters? And were you surprised to be offered Jean Valjean?

WEST: No, I don’t seek out the darker parts at all, no. But I suppose once you play one, then that’s how people see you [laughs].

AX: 300 is hard to forget …

WEST: [laughs] Yes, exactly. It is tricky, especially with a part like that, where you have to be the villain for other reasons in order to make the hero more heroic, I suppose. But no, I wasn’t really surprised to be offered Jean Valjean. I don’t know what I thought. Well, I suppose I thought, “Well, it’s been done, in the musical and the film, and why are we doing it again?”

AX: Did you come up with a satisfactory answer for LES MISERABLES to “Why are we doing it all again?”

WEST: Oh, absolutely, yeah. To my amazement, it’s only ever been given a two-hour outing for the [most part]. I think the BBC did an adaptation in the ‘60s, but even that was only five half-hours. This is actually the longest adaptation of LES MISERABLES, I think, I don’t know about French television, but I think that’s probably ever been, and therefore there’s every reason to do it, because of the scale of the book, and because, as people have said, people think of it as a musical. And as wonderful a musical as it might be, there’s more to it.

AX: Had you read LES MISERABLES as a novel before you became involved with this version?

WEST: No, I’d never read it. I didn’t really know it. It never really crossed my radar. I did try and watch the film and didn’t get too far [laughs]. So no, I didn’t know it. I read it once I read Andrew’s scripts, which got me into it.

AX: Did you see yourself in the character, or the character in yourself, right away?

WEST: I suppose in any great, very well-written part, you respond to something in it that chimes with you, and a lot chimed with me in this, because the writing’s so great, it’s universal. It’s why it’s lasted this long.

AX: How do you see Valjean?

WEST: Well, apart from the physical – he’s got to be the strongest man in the world, and the greatest superhero ever – apart from that, the psychological difficulty for me was his guilt, the level of his guilt and his feeling of unworthiness. For a long time, I couldn’t understand how you could feel guilty about stealing a loaf of bread and being in jail for nineteen years. But of course, his psychology is so well-charted. It’s the psychology of someone who’s been incarcerated and believes they don’t deserve anything better, that they’re not worthy of being loved and giving love, they’ve been so starved of love and gentleness that they feel that they’re only worthy of prison life. And that’s why he surrenders himself to Javert three times, I think, and I could never understand why. You have to get into that different mindset.

AX: Valjean starts out with a beard of Biblical proportions. Did you have difficulty dealing with the beard?

WEST: [laughs] Actually, it did most of the work for me. Sometimes great hair and makeup does that for you, and costume. And it really did do a lot, that beard. You don’t really have to do anything with that, except that, with your eyes. The wig was far more trouble. The beard, I loved.

AX: How was it working with Derek Jacobi, who plays the Bishop of Digne, the first person to show kindness to Valjean? He’s not in it for very long, but …

WEST: Well, it’s a tricky part. If you hadn’t read the book, it opens with him, and what you realize is that Hugo has written the nicest, greatest man, the most virtuous, the most wonderful, the most compassionate human being who’s ever lived, in the Bishop of Digne, and you think, who the hell can play that? And there’s only one person who could possibly do it. He was actually supposed to be played by Max von Sydow. He was cast, and we were all going, “Max von Sydow, amazing.” But unfortunately, I think he broke his arm just before [shooting, and had to bow out]. Amazingly, we got Derek Jacobi, and you think, it couldn’t be anyone else. He’s a human being who exudes goodness in some way, and it was just wonderful acting with him. And watching him off-set as well – completely contained, slightly detached, not wasting his energy. It was a real education. He’s been a hero of mine for ages, but it was just bliss, acting with him.

AX: When you realized that there’s a large population that are confused about this LES MISERABLES not being a musical, what was your reaction?

WEST: No. It’s been interesting reading the reviews and the Twitter/social media stuff on it when it was airing in the U.K. For the first episode, people were, “Where are the songs? Can you hear the people sing – no, we can’t.” [laughs] But by Episode 2, they were with us. By Episode 2, people were going, “I’m in there.” Is it Episode 2 when Lily [Collins, who plays Fantine] has her teeth pulled out? That’s the scene when everyone went, “Right. I’m here now.”

AX: When you do play darker characters, do you get try to leave it all at work and then go home and be really kind to everybody in real life?

WEST: I think you have to, yes. The worst part was the Fred West part. Anyone who was ever involved in that case, or who wrote a book about it later, had a breakdown. So you have to be very careful with these sorts of characters, and with him, I think we shot the whole thing in three weeks, and it was in Manchester, and I could go home to London and be with my kids.

AX: Now that you’ve gotten to play Jean Valjean, can you imagine yourself in your later years, playing supreme good guy the Bishop of Digne?

WEST: Yeah, I’d love to. If it works out that well, then I’ve led a good life.

This interview was conducted during PBS’s portion of the Winter 2019 Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour.

x

#les mis bbc #bbc les mis #dominic west #Jean Valjean #Interviews #articles #pbs

[yasbxxgie]

8 years ago, famed science fiction author Octavia Butler died suddenly of a stroke, leaving her latest trilogy unfinished and her fans bereft. But now, scholars are sifting through the archives she bequeathed to the Huntington Library — and one has discovered plans for the books she never finished.

Gerry Canavan, a literary scholar at Marquette University, was the first person to open the boxes of Butler's notes, journals and drafts at the Huntington. He discovered a treasure trove that revealed a lot about where Butler's work was going, and what her writing process was like.

He found that Butler often wrote many versions of her novels, with many false starts. Interestingly, the work she discarded tended to be a lot darker and more pessimistic than what made its way into final drafts.

In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Canavan writes about Butler's multi-year struggle to write further books in the Parable series, which are about a woman who founds a new, space-focused religion after a government collapse in the near-future United States:

Nearly all of the texts focus on a character named Imara — who has been named the Guardian of Lauren Olamina's ashes, who is often said to be her distant relative, and who is plainly imagined as the St. Paul to Olamina's Christ (her story sometimes begins as a journalist who has gone undercover with the Earthseed "cult" to expose Olamina as a fraud, and winds up getting roped in). Imara awakens from cryonic suspension on an alien world where she and most of her fellow Earthseed colonists are saddened to discover they wish they'd never left Earth in the first place. The world — called "Bow" — is gray and dank, and utterly miserable; it takes its name from the only splash of color the planet has to offer, its rare, naturally occurring rainbows. They have no way to return to Earth, or to even to contact it; all they have is what little they've brought with them, which for most (but not all) of them is a strong belief in the wisdom of the teachings of Earthseed. Some are terrified; many are bored; nearly all are deeply unhappy. Her personal notes frame this in biological terms. From her notes to herself: "Think of our homesickness as a phantom-limb pain — a somehow neurologically incomplete amputation. Think of problems with the new world as graft-versus-host disease — a mutual attempt at rejection."

From here the possible plots begin to multiply beyond all reason. In some of the texts, the colonists are in total denial about the fact that they are all slowly going blind; in others the blindness is sudden, striking randomly and irreversibly; in others they all begin to go insane, or suffer seizures, or mad rages, or fall into long comas; in still others they begin to hurt and kill each other for no other reason than the basic inevitable frailty of human nature (the same, alas, on any world). In one of the versions of the novel the colonists develop a telepathic capacity that soon turns nightmarish when they are unable to resist it or shut it off; in one twist on this idea it's only the women who are so empowered, with the men organizing a secret conspiracy to figure out how they might regain control.

There's a version where the blindness and the telepathy are linked; Imara becomes able to see out of others' eyes as she loses the ability to see out of her own. In some Imara finds she needs to solve a murder, the first murder on the new world; in still others Imara herself is murdered, but discovers that on this strange alien world she is somehow able to haunt another colonists' body as a ghost, replicating Doro's power from the Patternist books and thereby linking even the Parables to the speculative universe she first developed as a teenager. Sometimes Imara is an Earthseed skeptic; other times she is a true believer; sometimes she is, like Olamina, a hyperempath; still other times the cure for "sharing" has been discovered in the form of an easy, noninvasive pill. Sometimes Bow is inhabited by small animals, other times by dinosaur-like giant sauropods, and still other times by just moss and lichens; sometimes the colonists seem to encounter intelligent aliens who might be real, but might just be tokens of their escalating collective madness; and on and on and on.

One version of the blindness narrative is abandoned with no small grumbling after José Saramago wins the Nobel Prize for Blindness in 1998; another is put aside after she determines it's just too similar to Kim Stanley Robinson's famous Red Mars; still another is abandoned shortly after Butler frustratedly, self-loathingly declares Imara to have "a personality more like mine" against Olamina's "super me — the me I wish I was." Sometimes Earthseed seems more like a self-help philosophy; sometimes it becomes a genuinely mystical, transcendent religion; sometimes we see it begin to shift from the first toward the second; sometimes it suffers schisms, heresies, and purges. Sometimes Imara is a former cop; sometimes she is a trained psychologist; sometimes she's a doctor; sometimes she's that undercover journalist; still other times she was the victim of a horrific series of rapes as a child, saved by one of Olamina's orphanages when no other entity or institution would bother. When Butler begins writing the book, Newt Gingrich is named as the model for the central antagonist; in the versions from the 2000s, it's George W. Bush; sometimes in between it's other science fiction writers with whom Butler didn't especially get along.

I corresponded with Canavan, and asked if he'd found any hints about where she would have gone with the trilogy she began shortly before her death. The trilogy began with her last published novel, Fledgling, a fascinating take on the vampire mythos. Canavan said that she had some notes about the books that would have followed. He explained via email:

She didn't write all that much of the Fledgling sequel but there's the start of something. As was pretty typical of her she was juggling a couple different possibilities for the book simultaneously.

One of them would have had ASYLUM/FLIGHT be the second part of a trilogy: it would have had Shorri wandering around the country with her harem looking for a place she felt safe, living with vampires for a bit, living in Seattle and finding out she couldn't take all the many sensations there, and then finally building a house with Wright and the rest in the woods to start her own colony. Over the course of this she would have also adopted a sister and done some investigation into her own past. Then the third book would have seen Shorri coming into her own as a vampire as she got ready to mate.

Another version of the book (which may or may not have overlapped with the first version) has some of the Silk sons escape the punishment of renaming/exile and kidnap/imprison Shorri in an effort to force her to pair-bond with them (and thereby somehow force a situation where their family-line can continue). This seemed as though it would potentially have been an extremely disturbing thriller and Shorri's efforts to escape imprisonment during the day while being drugged and mistreated at night, as well as her internal debate about whether she should murder the Silk boys rather than risk getting stuck with them as mates. It seems like in the end of this version of the book she would have murdered them, and gotten exiled from vampire society for a year as punishment (thereby setting up the third book to be about her wanderings with her harem, I guess).

A third version of the book has the Silk boys replaced with a Dracula-like figure who is some kind of Super-Ina (but who also seems like his primary agenda would be to imprison and torture Shorri in pursuit of creating his own race of super-vampires).

So it seems as though they would have been pretty disturbing, bordering on torture-porn.

There was a plot running through with a Russian woman who had been sold into human trafficking by a father or a boyfriend as a girl, who would have joined Shorri's harem (and who Shorri would have tried to help get over her nightmares with her power of thrall). This would have been an interesting way to explore some of the more disturbing aspects of the Ina/human symbiotic relationship, I think. There was also some more attention to what it would be like for symbionts to get together and be in a relationship, both with and without the participation of the Ina.

And then there were a few tantalizing hints of a novel set a generation or two later, when many more of the vampires can go out in the sun like Shorri, and what they might do when they had no weaknesses and there was nothing stopping them from taking over the world. This is the one that I'm most interested in because it suggest Shorri as a somewhat darker figure than we might have thought — she really is disturbing a delicate ecological balance with her power to walk in the sun, which could cause a lot of problems down the road when played out to its logical conclusion...

For those of us who sorely miss Butler's writing, it's incredible to get this glimpse of where her thoughts were going with these unfinished works.

Read more about Canavan's research in the Los Angeles Review of Books

#octavia e. butler #octavia e butler #octavia butler #lauren olamina #earthseed #shorri #imara #rip #parable of the sower #io9 #los angeles review of books #lit #literature #black literature #black author #black authors #author #authors #books

[cesarbtqn639-blog]

Who Else Wants To Enjoy Bookstores

It's 1995 and Denver is humming. Telecommunications inventors and investors chase after fame and big bucks, all trying to produce the "next popular trend." Hawk Kidree, a mixed-race Nanticoke Indian, watches the scene having a skeptical eye. One night, Hawk carries a vision: He watches the intense, neon sign of Telwest flicker out since the skyline of Denver is plunged into darkness. Before long, this "outsider" finds himself distracted by a mysterious complex of corporate forces.

This could be the story ? of an culture out of control and one man's journey towards the other side of the darkness ? told in Soundings, the brand new book by Silver City author William Charland (Wheatmark,$17.95).

Though Soundings is Charland's first novel, it is by no means his first book. He's published six works of nonfiction, all variations over a theme to construct a meaningful life and finding rewarding work ? including The Complete Idiot's Guide to Changing Careers, published by then-Alpha Books, a publishing company later purchased by McMillan.

With a doctorate in religion, a good career in outplacement and many years of living in Denver, where actually is well liked wrote a careers column, Charland's foray into fiction seems an all-natural progression. His fictionalized version with the Mile High City supplies the perfect setting by which to explore and expose the darker side of life, greed and ambition he'd observed from years of living there in real life.

Charland started writing Soundings about six in years past, when he with his fantastic wife, Phoebe, were moving into Mexico. "I was looking back on my small years in Denver from your perspective of some other culture ? the one which moves much slower and cultivates some deeper human values," he says. "I may not have come with the story had I not held it's place in Mexico."

He'd found a publisher in Barbed Wire Press in Las Cruces, then run by George Stein, a one-time high-tech communications manager, who keyed straight into Charland's description of Denver's "go-go" years. The plan would have been to bring the ebook out this season, but then Stein died of your sudden heart attack. Charland shopped around and chose to bring it out himself through Tucson-based Wheatmark, a self-publishing and print-on-demand house providing you with marketing support for its authors.

Truth might be stranger than fiction, as the saying goes, but fiction is harder than research and relating facts, Charland says, something he did for years writing journalism (to the Denver Post, Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Examiner and many more) and in the concept of academia.

I find writing fiction far more challenging than whatever else I've done, he admits that. "You need to listen for the storyline to emerge. It's almost provided to you, ideal."

He's written another novel, depending on the closing of his South Dakota alma mater and also the conversion of that campus to some prison. As in Soundings, according to him, a good bit of the story is situated actually. He plans to bring that book out next year, also through Wheatmark.

C

harland and his wife moved to Silver City from Denver four in the past ? via Guadalajara, where they lived to the better part of your year anf the husband taught English inside a university. His wife, Phoebe, is from Tucumcari, so moving to New Mexico was obviously a type of homecoming to be with her. And Charland, having attended college within the little capital of scotland - Yankton, SD, and having lived in other small towns, says he feels right in your house in Silver City. Not quite willing to be completely retired, Charland works part-time, directing the honors program at WNMU.

Of Hawk Kidree, his main character in Soundings, Charland says, "I wanted a character being 'in but not of' the concept of high-tech mania for example I saw in Denver in the mid-1990s." He adds that his own quiet "outsider" quality often leaves him feeling outside social groups.

He also can relate with Hawk's vision. "I'm very attuned to visions, particularly in my dream life," he says. "I think many Native American cultures have a sensitivity to this particular side of life that technologically driven cultures go beyond."

And Hawk Kidree is an excellent vehicle to offer voice to Charland's observations on standard of living and private character. "Most of all, I hope that readers is certain to get involved in a story that invites another examine our race to generate a consistent round of new technology," Charland says. "Denver, in the period I wrote about, was obsessed using a new era in telecommunications. I've been struck from the figure of Joe Nacchio, ex-CEO of Qwest, who had previously been viewed as almost a messianic figure in Denver of the mid-90s. Now, needless to say, he's a convicted felon facing a long prison sentence.

To some degree, I think all of us fed from the excesses inside the 1990s, he adds. "At some level, we had arrived all Joe Nacchio, in their ambition and greed. I'd like to help readers take an extra take a look at that element of our culture as well as ourselves."

#bookstores #bookshop #books

[miloppdq544-blog]

Get The Most Out Of Bookstores And Facebook

It's 1995 and Denver is humming. Telecommunications inventors and investors chase after fame and lots of money, all hoping to produce the "next growing trend." Hawk Kidree, a mixed-race Nanticoke Indian, watches the scene having a skeptical eye. One night, Hawk features a vision: He watches the bright, neon symbol of Telwest flicker out as the skyline of Denver is plunged into darkness. Before long, this "outsider" finds himself caught up in a mysterious complex of corporate forces.

This is the story ? of your culture out of control then one man's journey towards the far wall with the darkness ? told in Soundings, the modern book by Silver City author William Charland (Wheatmark,$17.95).

Though Soundings is Charland's first novel, it really is by no means his first book. He's published six works of nonfiction, all variations on the theme to build a meaningful life and finding rewarding work ? including The Complete Idiot's Guide to Changing Careers, published by then-Alpha Books, a publishing company later purchased by McMillan.

With a doctorate in religion, an extended career in outplacement and years of moving into Denver, where actually is well liked wrote a careers column, Charland's foray into fiction seems a natural progression. His fictionalized version in the Mile High City supplies the perfect setting by which to educate yourself regarding and expose the darker side of life, greed and ambition he'd observed from numerous years of living there in person.

Charland started writing Soundings about six years ago, as they and the wife, Phoebe, were moving into Mexico. "I was looking back on my years in Denver through the perspective of one other culture ? the one which moves much slower and cultivates some deeper human values," he admits that. "I might not have come track of the storyline had I not been in Mexico."

He'd found a publisher in Barbed Wire Press in Las Cruces, then run by George Stein, a one-time high-tech communications manager, who keyed right into Charland's description of Denver's "go-go" years. The plan was to bring the novel out this season, but Stein died of an sudden cardiac arrest. Charland shopped around and decided to bring it out himself through Tucson-based Wheatmark, a self-publishing and print-on-demand house that provides marketing support for its authors.

Truth could possibly be stranger than fiction, as the saying goes, but fiction is harder than research and relating facts, Charland says, something he did for a long time writing journalism (for that Denver Post, Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Examiner and many more) along with the field of academia.

I find writing fiction far more challenging than whatever else I've done, he says. "You need to listen for the storyplot to emerge. It's almost given to you, wonderful."

He's written another novel, based on the closing of his South Dakota alma mater as well as the conversion of that campus to your prison. As in Soundings, he says, a good bit of that story is situated in reality. He offers to bring that book out next year, also through Wheatmark.

C

harland and his awesome wife gone after Silver City from Denver four in the past ? via Guadalajara, where they lived for the better part of your year and the man taught English in a university. His wife, Phoebe, is produced by Tucumcari, so moving to New Mexico would be a type of homecoming on her. And Charland, having attended college inside the little capital of scotland- Yankton, SD, and achieving lived in other small towns, says he feels right at home in Silver City. Not quite prepared to be completely retired, Charland works part-time, directing the honors program at WNMU.

Of Hawk Kidree, his main character in Soundings, Charland says, "I wanted a character to get 'in and not of' the joy of high-tech mania like I saw in Denver inside mid-1990s." He adds that their own quiet "outsider" quality often leaves him feeling outside social groups.

He can also correspond with Hawk's vision. "I'm very attuned to visions, specifically in my dream life," he says. "I think many Native American cultures possess a sensitivity for this side of life that technologically driven cultures look past."

And Hawk Kidree is a superb vehicle to offer voice to Charland's observations on standard of living and private character. "Most of all, I hope that readers are certain to get involved inside a story that invites a second look at our race to generate a constant round of the latest technology," Charland says. "Denver, in the period I wrote about, was obsessed using a new era in telecommunications. I've been struck through the figure of Joe Nacchio, ex-CEO of Qwest, who was viewed as almost a messianic determine Denver with the mid-90s. Now, needless to say, he's a convicted felon facing a lengthy prison sentence.

To some extent, I think many of us fed off of the excesses inside 1990s, he adds. "At some level, we were all Joe Nacchio, in the ambition and greed. I'd like to help readers take a second look at that element of our culture as well as ourselves."

#bookstores #bookshop #books

[linabrigette]

How Lightning’s Elizabeth Stark Raised an Army

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A former academic, Elizabeth Stark likes to play devil’s advocate. Take, for instance, her appearance at the Crypto Springs conference in October 2018.

It’s a sunny morning in Palm Springs, California, and a handful of attendees are lounging by the pool; onstage, however, Stark is busy describing some of the darker potential scenarios for the cryptocurrency industry, ones in which it could fall short of its potential.

But if the words of warning aren’t drawing a response, it’s perhaps because the price of bitcoin is still north of $6,000, and some are optimistic that the so-called “crypto winter” will soon be over, evaporated by an end-of-year upswell in institutional money entering the industry.

It’s not a sentiment shared by Stark, though, who warns attendees that legacy financial players could take stronger measures to impede the sector’s growth. “When you change how money is created and valued, there is going to be major pushback,” Stark says.

Later, Stark draws applause when she castigates the previous year’s explosion of initial coin offerings (ICOs), and the sometimes shady startups that used them as a means of securing fundraising from a market that was suddenly full of unsophisticated buyers.

“I’m all for experimentation, but I’m not for experimentation if it means that retail investors are going to get sluiced,” she says. “Ninety-five percent of the coins that we have right now will probably fail.”

The stance has come to dominate more and more of Stark’s talks of late, that innovation can and must be balanced with steps that avoid consumer harm, and it’s one that’s taking on increasing relevance as the crypto market cools and the industry attempts to take stock of why billions in consumer money came in 2017, only to quickly retreat.

“If you really believe in decentralization then why are you creating all these centralized services?” she continues.

Referring to the way crypto exchanges and certain wallet providers control the private keys to their customers’ wallets, thus undermining the value proposition of personal financial sovereignty, she adds: “We need to get to a world where people can hold their own keys…have this autonomy.”

Yet, as frank and sobering as her talk might have been, Stark has the clout to not only call for change in the industry, but deliver it. After years of quiet building at her startup, Lightning Labs, 2018 has been a breakout year for both Stark and her company.

In fact, Stark’s accomplishments this past year dwarfed those of most other entrepreneurs, as her decision to roll up her sleeves in 2015 and take the helm of an open-source project many saw as the best chance to massively scale bitcoin (but that perhaps had little business value) began to bear serious fruit.

Rallying the troops

If it weren’t for Elizabeth Stark, bitcoin’s lightning network might still be just an idea.

Instead, it’s become a functioning, if niche, payments system; a hotbed of software development; and a beacon of hope for those who believe in bitcoin’s potential as an everyday currency. All in the space of a year.

A law school graduate, Stark doesn’t code much. But there are many who credit the Lighting Labs CEO for much of the remarkable progress lightning has made.

“She helped get everyone to actually make stuff,” said Tadge Dryja, who co-wrote the 2016 lightning white paper with Joseph Poon. “Her thing is not only identifying a super-cool project, but then saying, ‘We should actually build this.’”

As such, Stark is often described as a kind of warrior queen, who now commands an army of elite developers.

Elizabeth Stark onstage at Consensus 2018.

“Her general conviction and ability to organize and arm the troops and to aim the cannon, then allow these really talented people to shoot, is really rare in this space,” said Jack Mallers, who developed the Zap bitcoin wallet using the lightning network’s open-source code.

It was Stark, after all, who recruited Olaoluwa Osuntokun, a Nigerian-American prodigy, to work full-time in the cryptocurrency industry. The former Google engineering intern known as “Lalou,” now Lightning Labs’ CTO and co-founder, has become one of bitcoin’s most prolific developers, taking over the work Dryja and Poon started on the layered scaling solution. (Both have since departed, citing differences with Stark).

More broadly, Stark is also widely credited for turning her friend Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter and co-founder of Square, into a bitcoin believer. Since Dorsey fell into Stark’s orbit, the Square payments app has become one of the most popular ways for U.S. retail investors to acquire bitcoin. He also invested personally in Lightning Labs, the company Stark co-founded that develops the open-source Lightning Network Daemon (LND) protocol.

But perhaps the clearest proof of her influence can be seen in the blossoming of lightning itself during a brutal year for cryptocurrency prices and a period of overall retrenchment for blockchain companies.

The number of nodes on the nascent network swelled from a few dozen in early January to more than 1,900 in mid-December, according to BitcoinVisuals.com. (1ml.com gives an even higher estimate, including some that aren’t currently active, with more than 4,500 lightning nodes.)

Lightning now has the capacity to process about $2 million worth of crypto transactions, based on the balances held in its more than 13,000 payment channels. While that may seem small, it’s an auspicious start considering the beta version of LND was only released in mid-March. Underscoring the health of the young ecosystem, there are multiple implementations of the software, of which LND is only one.

“Lightning is a movement,” Stark told BTC News Today recently, recalling a conversation with a bitcoin fan who first coined this phrase. “We’ve spent the past year building this movement and it’s working.”

From law school to lightning

It’s been a long time since Stark, a giggly vegan who hardly fits the bitcoin stereotype of a socially awkward introvert, started her journey to become an unlikely heroine in bitcoin’s origin story.

“As a teenager, [I] was an internet geek who liked electronic music,” Stark told BTC News Today. “So basically I’m the same person today.”

Growing up in the New York suburbs, she said, she knew her calling was to build new technology. “As a teenager, I interned at startups in New York City,” she said. “Law school was actually an interesting means to study and research the internet.”

Stark was busy honing debate skills and graduating from Harvard Law School in 2008, the year Satoshi Nakamoto published the bitcoin white paper. After law school Stark went into academia, teaching human rights and computer science courses at universities like Yale, Stanford and Harvard.

It was at Stanford, in 2010, where she first heard about bitcoin from a teaching assistant.

A coffee machine is retro-fitted to accept bitcoin lightning payments.

By the time she met with Dryja in 2015, developers had started to theorize what would later become the lightning network, which was then little more than a concept on slide decks and whiteboards. Yet, Stark was ready to lead a startup.

“From the beginning she was clear, she wanted to be the CEO,” Dryja recalled. “She’d seen a lot of ideas that never got anywhere, not because the idea was bad but because there’s a big difference between an idea…and getting it so that millions of people can use it.”

Dryja, who co-founded Lightning Labs with Stark then left the company in 2016, credited his former colleague for prioritizing quality over quantity. Despite being a rookie businesswoman, she lined up prominent investors like Charlie Lee, the creator of litecoin, former PayPal COO David Sacks, and Dorsey. But Stark raised a modest $2.5 million from these investors and avoided the lucrative token sales that were then becoming fashionable.

“Even in 2016, you could have raised a ton of money and gotten a fancy office, but she didn’t want to,” Dryja said.

Stark said she’s driven by a desire to create “significant technology that will have effects on the 10-year horizon and beyond.” In her mind, lightning is a key part of ensuring bitcoin’s longevity.

“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” she said.

Subtly persuasive

Perhaps thanks to her legal background, Stark has the uncanny ability to disagree without being combative and guide decisions without barking orders.

Her presence is unassuming, yet irresistible. The raven-haired CEO is often spotted beside Bitcoin Core developer Matt Corallo at meetups with her omnipresent smile and cypherpunk black wardrobe.

“She’s very socially equipped in terms of networking, something that I don’t do well and don’t enjoy,” Mallers said. “Writing the code isn’t the hard part. It’s aligning the direction, limiting the scope, organizing.”

Yes, you can really hold these in an ethereum address.

No matter where you go in the tech industry, someone in the room probably considers Stark a friend and wants to hear what the level-headed extrovert has to say. This nonchalant charm makes her an anomaly in a field teeming with bombastic personalities.

Although there may be some professional rivalry with bitcoin-focused startups like Blockstream, Dryja said Stark’s approach is to listen to everyone and observe how users interact with a protocol instead of “trying to dictate what people do with it.”

Another sign of her personality: no matter how busy she gets, Stark is generally responsive to chats in the LND Slack group, where developers and fans around the world collaborate, and which now has more than 2,870 members.

“I think it speaks to who she is as a person that she is fostering this community. And it speaks to her savvy as a business owner,” Mallers said.

Referring to Lightning Labs, he added, “all their software is open source and they are very grounded, sticking to their original vision.”

Diversity and mentorship

Another way that Stark distinguishes herself is by deliberately creating opportunities for minorities to contribute to an industry predominantly led by white men.

Stark co-organized the Crypto Springs conference in October, where more than half of the speakers were women, and scholarships for women to attend Bitcoin Core contributor Jimmy Song’s programming bootcamp.

Mir Liponi, an Italian vlogger and co-founder of Blockchainlab, said meeting Stark at a Consensus conference in 2015 inspired her decision to take a more active role in Italy’s bitcoin community.

A statue in New York with a #RECKLESS hat advertising the lightning network.

“The fact that she was so young and respected as a CEO and as a woman was something almost new to me,” Liponi told BTC News Today. “One of the greatest contributions Elizabeth [made to] bitcoin is her constant work and ability to connect experts, projects, people.”

It was Stark who helped Liponi arrange bitcoin hackathons in Milan, with people working on a variety of distinct solutions related to lightning. In part, these meetings helped set the ground work for the lightning interoperability standard called Bolt, which allows lightning-enabled bitcoin nodes to route transactions.

“If you want to design this for people to actually, use, we can’t just design it for ourselves,” Dryja said, adding Stark is one of the leading figures getting “all different kinds of people” involved with building up the bitcoin ecosystem.

Like many young developers in the space, Mallers credits Stark with mentoring him as he went from obscure hobbyist to internet-celebrity entrepreneur.

Speaking broadly to how her mentorship encourages programmers across the ecosystem to connect and ship complementary code, he added: “I give that credit to Elizabeth.”

Patient scaling

Stepping back, to fully grasp Stark’s work to bitcoin, it’s important to remember that the lightning technology was conceived, and Lightning Labs founded, in the midst of a long-running and contentious debate within the bitcoin community over how best to scale the network.

Over the years, as bitcoin’s network volume increased, rising transaction fees and slowing confirmation times had cast doubt on the currency’s suitability for use cases that were touted early on, such as micropayments for web content or prosaic retail purchases (the proverbial cup of coffee).

While few in the community questioned the so-called digital gold’s ability to serve as a store of value, its utility as a means of exchange was now at issue.

One camp, led by CEOs of venture capital-funded startups, wanted to quickly boost the network’s capacity by increasing the size of transaction blocks that are added to the ledger every 10 minutes or so.

The other camp, represented by developers and hard-core users like Stark, resisted such proposals, arguing, among other things, that a hastily implemented change to the software would present a security risk.

Elizabeth Stark, Lightning Labs, at Consensus 2016

(Stark was often outspoken during these debates about how important she believes it is to prioritize security as one of bitcoin’s core principles.)

Lightning, as conceived by Dryja and Poon, offered an alternative. Small payments would be handled off the blockchain, through a mechanism called payment channels. Users could send bitcoin back and forth to each other through these channels, and the blockchain would be reserved for final settlement.

Still, the scaling debate raged on. After a game of chicken, in which the big-block camp tried to push through a software update that might have split the network into two competing currencies, the controversial plan was called off at the eleventh hour in November 2017.

The slow-and-steady camp had prevailed, and the stage was set for layer-two solutions like lighting to flourish. Four months later, in March 2018, Lightning Labs released the beta version of LND.

Today, Stark said there are now hundreds of developers making Lightning apps and contributing to the network’s open source infrastructure. Meanwhile, the number of channels has increased 16-fold over the past year.

Regardless of the so-called crypto winter, Stark’s 11-person company shows no signs of slowing down.

“If anything, the calming of the hype and frenzy helps us because there are fewer distractions and it’s a better time to keep on building,” Stark said. “There’s a lot left to do, but this year has very much exceeded my expectations with the speed of growth and adoption.”

This further distinguishes Stark from many other CEOs of her ilk: She is patient. Speaking to what sets Lightning Labs and its vivacious leader apart from other crypto startups, Mallers concluded:

“It’s very comforting, owning bitcoin and being an investor in the asset knowing that people like her, who stay focused, grounded and mature as a business owner, are trying to accomplish something like scaling.”

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Art by Cryptopop! (@helloluis)

Images via BTC News Today archives

The post How Lightning’s Elizabeth Stark Raised an Army appeared first on BTC News Today.

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#Cryptocurrency news #Bitcoin news #btcoin price today

[pittlit2018-blog]

Olaudah Equiano and Slavery

As a high school student, I was never taught in depth about slavery, the Abolitionist Movement or the key figures involved. If you are a teacher in the Pittsburgh area looking to educate or further educate your students on these topics, you’ve come to the right Tumblr post. In this post I look at and analyze two different versions of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano and one edition of the Slave’s Friend. I have included materials that direct attention towards works for elementary as well as high school students. I have incorporated different resources that teachers can use to further their knowledge and present to their class. There are online resources such as digitized copies of additional works from this time period, which can be found on “WorldCat”. It is important to keep in mind however, that will these resources can be extremely helpful, they come with limitations. The Hillman library does not offer much on Olaudah Equiano, but it does have other works that focus on relevant topics, like slavery. If you would like more knowledge about Equiano himself, it would benefit you to branch out to other libraries and look at multiple online sources. It is my hope that I can help teachers provide information to their students about an important event in history, one that I was not educated on.

https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-life-of-olaudah-equinao

-     This is an image of the of the second edition, volume 1 of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Gustavus Vassa, the African. He published this successful autobiography in 1789. This picture can traced back to the online archive at The British Library Collections, where it is being held . Throughout this tumblr post, I will analyze and describe an adapted children’s book version, as well as a later publicized and edited version of Equiano’s Narrative.

-     For those of you who need some background information about Olaudah Equiano, I have included a short summary. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano is a story about an ordinary man who lived an extraordinary life. Olaudah Equiano was born into the Ibo tribe, part of the Nigerian village of Isseke in 1745. At the age of eleven, Equiano and his sister, were kidnapped by slave traders and forced into a life of slavery. The siblings were separated and young Olaudah never saw his family again. He spent ten years as a slave in the West Indies, America and British Navy. He experienced many life-changing events such as: the religious revival in Europe and America, an expedition to the Arctic, an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, battles in the Seven Years’ War and the initial divisions of the American Revolution. He eventually saved up enough money from his personal trade business, that he bought back his freedom in 1766. He wrote his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano in 1788 and it was published in 1789. His novel is one of the earliest slave narratives. The book was an imperative foundation of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which terminated the African trade for Britain and its dependencies. Olaudah Equiano was part of the Sons of Africa, an abolitionist group which was composed of eminent Africans who lived in Britain.

The Kidnapped Prince

-     The Kidnapped Prince is a version of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. Published in 1994, it tells the story of Equiano, however, it does so in a more simplistic way. This edition of Equiano’s Narrative was written predominately for an audience of late elementary/early middle school students. This book was written by Equiano, but then adapted by Ann Cameron with an introduction by Henry Louis Gates Jr. Since the intended readers were younger children, the novel was modernized and some of the language was shortened for a better understanding and comprehension. This adaptation version was cut short, ending two-thirds of the way through Equiano’s original publication, at the point where he regains his freedom. The goal of this revised version of Equiano’s Narrative was to provide children with a text in which they could easily apprehend but one that also preserved the essence of the author’s time and some of his original language.

-     This version of Equiano’s Narrative is a hardcover copy. On the front cover, there is an illustration of Equiano as a young boy. He is clearly depicted as a slave, with his hands cuffed together in front of him, and he is standing in front of a slave ship. The text inside the book is large and spaced out, it is obvious to assume that it was written for children. The condition of the book overall is well-kept. There is no damage to the pages or the cover. This shows that the book has been taken care of and handled gently.

-     I took this picture from the middle section of The Kidnapped Prince. Pictured above is a map that shows the travels in which Olaudah Equiano embarked upon during the years he was held captive as a slave. I found the design of this map to be very intriguing. Most maps from the 18th century do not include such distinct topographical features as this one does. I have encompassed below, a map you would typically see in the 1700s. The one displayed in The Kidnapped Prince isn’t as intricate to follow. This allows your elementary/middle school students to easily understand the significant message the map is showing.

-     This is a more accurate depiction of Equiano’s travels, one that we might expect to see from an 18th century time period. After doing some research, I found that this map was drawn by a cartographer and composed by a historical geographer. Edward Oliver (the artist) and Miles Ogborn (the preparer) were both intellectuals that worked at Queen Mary, University of London. This is just a ‘thumbnail’ image of the map, and if you’d like to look into further detail about Equiano’s travels, I recommend reading Miles’s article “'Global historical geographies, 1500-1800’ in B.J. Graham and C. Nash (eds) Modern Historical Geographies (Harlow: Longman, 2000).” 

The Slave’s Friend

-     For the students you are teaching to gain a thorough grasp and understanding of the discussed material, it would be beneficial to compare it to a similar text. In this post I chose to analysis The Kidnapped Prince and The Slave’s Friend together. I wanted to relate an edition of Equiano to another work published during the same time period that centered around the same topics. I went to the Special Collections section of the Hillman Library, where I found The Slave’s Friend.

-     The Slave’s Friend is a collection of anti-slavery writings. Written and published by R. G. Williams in 1839, this book was a typical abolitionist periodical aimed at representing Africans, slaves and freemen. R. G. Williams wrote these collections for the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), focusing on pro-Christianity and anti-slavery. This anti-slavery press was a principal part in the crusade against slavery in America. The Slave’s Friend was originally an abolitionist magazine targeted at a young audience in the United States that ran between 1836-1838. The directed audience for this text were young elementary students age 6-12. The content in The Slave’s Friend was full of stories, anti-slavery poetry, religious passages, relevant news items for other sources and original writings. The magazines were inexpensive, with a price of one cent per copy. During the first year, over 200,000 magazine printings were distributed. Due to financial instability, the magazine version of The Slave’s Friend had to halt production in 1838; the last issue made was Volume IV, No. II.

-     Hillman’s Special Collection had in their possession, the small pocketbook version of The Slave’s Friend. This book was very small, measuring only 4.5X2.75 inches. The front and back covers were a light brown with the spine being darker. The pages were a tan color with a darker discoloration around the edges. It was clear to see that this piece of writing was extremely old. The spine and binding were broken, and the pages were tarnished. The wear and tear on this book show that it has been handled an extensive amount of times. The pages are thin and on each there are two-page numbers, this indicates that each volume was paginated more than once. The poems, hymns and volumes are showed on pages of different colors. Most of the messages to the readers and poems appear on yellow or blue pages, where the beginning of a new volume is often displayed on an off-white page. Although The Slave’s Friend is a typical piece of children’s literature that you would see during the 19th century, I was surprised with its layout. In my opinion, this book didn’t feel or look like something a child would like to read. The pages and text were very small and the pictures were not colored. This book also didn’t have an appealing cover page, one that might be intriguing to children and pull them in. However, I thought that the different colored pages did bring some flavor and brightness to the publication, making it more enjoyable to read. I couldn’t find concrete evidence depicting the significance for why The Slave’s Friend was published the way it was, so I thought I’d include some insight of my own thoughts and feelings. It was interesting to see how children’s literature has changed so much over time. Today, we see large, colorful books with easy to read words on each page, along with colored images.

-     Pictured above is the Hillman Library’s Special Collection copy of The Slave’s Friend in the palm of my hand. This image shows an accurate representation of the true size of this book.

-     This video shows a glimpse inside the pages of The Slave’s Friend.

-     A recurrent theme found throughout The Slave’s Friend was cruelty. The stories were often very blunt and illustrated violent behavior the slaves had to face. This relates to The Kidnapped Prince and Equiano’s Narrative, as he recounts stories of his enslaved friends and how they were sadistically tortured and punished. This book relates further to Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography because it incorporates strong religious appeals. Numerous articles in The Slave’s Friend don’t focus on slavery and the abolition movement as much as morality and the importance of religion.

-     The significance of The Slave’s Friend was that it familiarized the youth with controversial subject matter and issues. It was the hope that by making them aware of the horrors of slavery, they would see the need to abolish it.

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

-     The title The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano holds great significance in itself. Equiano titles his autobiography this way for a particular reason. He included his own name to establish to readers his African roots. The full title of his original print of this book is The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African. The added Gustavus Vassaidentifies his slave name and The African as a depiction of his people. Readers can gain a lot of knowledge about this narrative just from the title alone.

-     The published version of Equiano’s Narrative shown above, is intended for a high school student audience. This isn’t one of Equiano’s original prints, it is the text of a Bedford Books edition which follows the first American printing. The editor of this publication, Robert J. Allison didn’t make a lot of significant changes to the text. There were only minor changes in the spelling and punctuation, insertion of paragraphs, and he added notes to the text to help explain to today’s readers, Equiano’s late eighteenth century event portrayals.

-     This edition of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano is a 1995 paperback copy. It is roughly 5.5X8.25, contains a comprehensive introduction, illustrations and a chronology. The book is in very good shape, there are no tears or any discoloration of the pages. The pages are an eggshell white and the text is typed out and easy to read for students.

http://www.briefhistories.co.uk/olaudahequianotimeline.html- 

-     This image is a timeline of the significant events in Olaudah Equiano’s life. It is important because it gives readers a brief history of Equiano’s life with exact dates for a better understanding of the chronology of his experiences. I provided the link above, in case of any additional interest or curiosity.

-     This description of a slave ship was distributed by Thomas Clarkson with his 1786 Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species. This diagram of a slave ship is an iconic image in the world of the early British Abolitionist Movement. This image was submitted as parliamentary evidence in the filing of the bill that was eventually passed for the Abolition Act. I located this picture to its source, the British Museum’s online collection.

III.

TO THOMAS CLARKSON,

On the final passing of the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, March, 1807.

Clarkson! it was an obstinate Hill to climb: How toilsome, nay how dire it was, by Thee Is known,—by none, perhaps, so feelingly; But Thou, who, starting in thy fervent prime, Didst first lead forth this pilgrimage sublime, Hast heard the constant Voice its charge repeat, Which, out of thy young heart’s oracular seat, First roused thee.—O true yoke-fellow of Time With unabating effort, see, the palm Is won, and by all Nations shall be worn! The bloody Writing is for ever torn, And Thou henceforth shalt have a good Man’s calm, A great Man’s happiness; thy zeal shall find Repose at length, firm Friend of human kind!

-     I have included the congratulatory sonnet that Wordsworth wrote to Thomas Clarkson for his success in the passing of the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. This poem holds significance because it shows that Equiano and his story connects to a larger movement and affects a diverse population.

-     This photograph of a medallion represents the anti-slavery movement symbol. This image is featured in the last few pages of Equiano’s Narrative, the 1995 version. It was designed and manufactured by Josiah Wedgwood, as early as 1787 and adopted as the seal of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery. I gathered this information from the Library of Congress. This image persisted as the symbol for the abolition movement through the American Civil War. The question “Am I not a man and a brother?” appeared on the title page of Equiano’s autobiography, the 1815 edition. While the slogan “Am I not a man and a brother?” can be seen on the 1815 edition of Equiano’s Narrative, it did not originate from there. This design was circulating as an image of abolition before Equiano’s Narrative. Later publishers put this symbol on title pages of stories with similar plots to tell readers that this book is part of a familiarized movement. I continued my research on this symbol through the Library of Congress, and learned that this figure sent a powerful message across the globe. The kneeling man with outstretched hands and shackles around his wrists and ankles, represents an enslaved African. Across the top the words read, “Am I not a man and a brother?”. This image was replicated onto multiple items during this period. It is known as the first and most distinguishable image of the 18th century Abolitionist Movement. It was and still is today, viewed as a powerful object that signifies morals, principles and the benevolent mission of the abolition movement. 

-     While reading this narrative, to see things through the eyes of Olaudah Equiano, it is crucial to know and understand the arguments he had against slavery. He had multiple arguments against the slave trade; it destroyed lives and families, it was morally wrong and the trade didn’t make sense economically. In later parts of the narrative, we see how Equiano’s new Christian views shape his negative belief of slavery. Bible verses are significant to this novel because they are one of the most convincing areas of his argument. He encourages slave traders and slave owners to become more knowledgeable of the Bible and all that it offers and to apply it to their own lives. In addition to his religious reasoning, Equaino used economic arguments. He created an argument that slavery should be abolished not only because of the inhumane cruelty, but because the British economy would benefit. He argued that, “Population, the bowels and surface of Africa, abound in valuable and useful returns; the hidden treasures of centuries will be brought to light and into circulation. Industry, enterprise, and mining will have their full scope, proportionally as they civilize. In a word, it lays open an endless field of commerce to the British manufacturers and merchant adventurer. The manufacturing interest and the general interests are synonymous. The abolition of slavery would be in reality an universal good.” (Equiano, 194).

-     The above picture is one that I took while at Hillman’s Special Collections. It includes all of the literary works discussed in this post, side by side. I thought this was a good visual that showed the differences and significance of each work. It is clear to see that The Slave’s Friend (far left) holds the biggest difference of the three publications. This book is much smaller and older than the other two, which would make sense since it’s an original copy (1839). The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (middle) and The Kidnapped Prince (far right) share more similarities, as they range close to the same size and they both were published within a year of one another (The Kidnapped Prince, 1994/The Interesting Narrative, 1995). As time changes, literature becomes more modernized. From what we know about The Slave’s Friend and the modernized editions of Equiano’s Narrative, it’s easy to see how literature has developed overtime. All three of these publications give students supplemental material which will more strongly develop their knowledge, not only on Equiano and slavery, but also literature throughout the years.

Works Cited:

“Aboard a Slave Ship, 1829,” EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2000).

Cameron, Ann. “The Kidnapped Prince.” Children’s Books , 2011, www.anncameronbooks.com/nonfiction/the-kidnapped-prince.html.

Equiano, Olaudah, and Ann Cameron. The Kidnapped Prince The Life of Olaudah Equiano. Aflred A. Knoph, Inc, 1995.

EQUIANO, OLAUDAH. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: Written by Himself. Edited by Robert J. Allison, Bedford Books, 1995.

Geist, Christopher. The Slave’s Friend: An Abolitionist Magazine for Children. Ohio State University Press, www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20771128.pdf.

Olaudah Equiano’s Travels - a Map, Feb. 2002, www.brycchancarey.com/equiano/map1.htm.

“Olaudah Equiano Timeline.” BRIEF HISTORIES, www.briefhistories.co.uk/olaudahequianotimeline.html.

Onion, Rebecca. “How an 1830s Children’s Magazine Taught Hard Truths About Slavery.” Slate Magazine, The Slate Group, 27 Jan. 2016, www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2016/01/27/how_an_1830s_children_s_magazine_taught_hard_truths_about_slavery.html.

“The Slave’s Friend.” The Slave’s Friend | Teach US History, www.teachushistory.org/second-great-awakening-age-reform/resources/slaves-friend.

#Equiano #submission

[english240groupa]

Columbus? How about... No!

https://u.osu.edu/ccbusincbus/

By X. Trujillo

For the sake of expediency and so as not to, like the old adage says, beat a dead horse lets begin with the well-established (and well-earned) premise: Christopher Columbus was a terrible person. I do not say this lightly nor without cause, in fact I could use 100 adjectives that are much worse and still be supported by research. Columbus was despicable. Let’s start with that as an accepted fact. I will not go down that particular rabbit hole today. He was. Period.  And even the tiniest bit of research will prove that if you still have not quite let go of your 6th grade history lesson of the “brave and conquering discoverer of America”.  I am trying not to let this blog go into “rant” territory so I will not use all the description that he so justly deserves. It is true and well-researched and if you do not solely want to take my word for it, you can take the word of historians, Howard Zinn, James W Loewen, or a contemporary of Columbus, Bartolome de las Casas. 

Or if you want a fast and dirty reminder watch this short video by Adam Ruins Everything which pretty much sums it up:

So, as previously established: Columbus was no hero and lacked many characteristics to even be considered a good person.  It is also well established that he did not set off to prove that the earth was round; this was already a well-accepted fact in 1492. This is strike two.

The fact that there were literally thousands of thriving and established communities, with over 20 million native inhabitants, throughout the Americas when Columbus chose to set sail also negates any “discovering” which has been attributed to him. You cannot discover an inhabited land, and this is not even mentioning everyone else (Vikings, Africans, etc) whom might have actually set foot in America (which Columbus NEVER did) long before.  In the book, Lies My Teacher Told Me, historian James W. Loewen numbers FOURTEEN possible encounters before Columbus. 14! Strike 3. He’s out.

        None of this is new information. It is all widely accessible and credible. Which is why many cities and states are replacing Columbus day as a holiday with Indigenous People’s Day. This seems a natural progression of a society which is slowly beginning to question its own cultural assumptions and history: it’s a result of reckoning with its imperialistic and racist past. This seemed like a long-overdue step in the right direction. Finally…Which was why  it was even more surprising when I came across an article in the New York Times last Sunday written by Christina Caron titled, “Why Some Italian-Americans Still Fiercely Defend Columbus Day”. It was an… interesting read. And it made me pause for a second. And for a second I thought, “ok, I can see their point…” but that literally lasted a second because even as I thought that my brain was adding a “but…”.

        Caron cites the racism that Italian immigrants encountered in the late 1800’s and the early 1900s as a driving force behind the push to celebrate Columbus Day. This was done as a way to seek acceptance into the dominate culture by Italian Americans; “Columbus was Italian (a fact we will revisit later on) and he discovered America so… Italians belong!” I get that. Minorities have always had to fight to be seen and had to carve out a space for themselves amongst a resisting and, often times, violent xenophobic society. Truly there is nothing more American than racism and apple pie. It is ingrained in our DNA and all new waves of immigrant populations, especially those with darker skin and identifiable physical differences, are targeted and tried to be excluded by those who “pass”. This has been true throughout American history and should not be denied nor ignored. It is important to meet this head on and to understand how damaging it is to not only the new immigrants but also the ideals of this nation. This issue, of the racism Italian Americans had to fight in order to be accepted into the dominate society, is an important one and one which they tried to fix with the bandage solution of mythicizing Columbus. But perhaps now, almost a century later it is time to rip off that bandage and not seek admittance via the hero-making of a genuine villain. Now that Italian Americans hold a fairly prominent role within American culture and are safe from that past exclusion, we should all look back and recognize their struggle and make sure that we do not do the same to any other ethnic groups. This however should not be done by lifting a vile and violent man on a pedestal; if you seek admittance by the virtue of one man should not that man be truly virtuous?  There are many other Italian Americans who deserve to be acknowledged and didn’t spark a genocide nor the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Here is a short list from the Zinn Education Project of Italian Americans who made valuable contributions to American society.

Not only are these figures vastly less problematic, but they were actually Italian Americans where Cristopher Columbus was not. In his article, “The Five Myths of Cristopher Columbus”, Kris Lane points out that Columbus was born in an area that is now Italy, but when Columbus lived, there was no such thing as an Italian; Italy did not exist until 1861… In Columbus’s lifetime, Genoa was a fiercely independent republic with its own language, currency and overseas colonies… Most historians believe that Columbus was Genoese, but they hesitate to call him “Italian,” partly for the reasons stated above, and partly because Columbus left home early and moved around a lot.”     

Sooooo not good and not even really Italian?  What does this guy even have going for him? Not much it would seem yet his defenders still hold fierce and true: ‘“The ‘tearing down of history’ does not change that history,” John M. Viola, then the president and chief operating officer of the National Italian American Foundation, wrote in a New York Times editorial last year. “In the wake of the cultural conflict that has ripped us apart over these months, I wonder if we as a country can’t find better ways to utilize our history to eradicate racism instead of inciting it.”’ This statement is quoted in the Times article and it makes me both uneasy and laugh a little. This “tearing down of history” phrase has become a sort of dog-whistle of the far-right. I, of course have no insight on whether Mr. Viola meant it as such but it has become the rallying cry of people who try to defend waving the confederate flag and maintaining confederate monuments. No, thanks. I don’t buy what you’re selling. Those symbols are inherently racist and having them in a place of prominence is meant to instill fear not teach history. If history was what you wanted to maintain, lets put those in a museum and explain how most where built long after the civil war as a tool of white supremacy. Let’s teach history and let’s also teach values. Let’s teach that we will not blindly worship anyone and overlook their flaws simply in the name of history.  This is not “tearing down history”, we simply will not stand for the incomplete version any longer.

It is also rather disingenuous, at the very least, for Mr. Viola to say that racism is being incited against Italian Americans because Christopher Columbus is finally beginning to lose the legend that has hidden his true nature. Italian Americans have “made it”, so to speak, and are favorably looked upon by dominate society. They hold a secure place of significance in American culture and will not lose that because of the unmasking of one false legend.  To suggest so is untruthful and a bit of a scare-tactic.

Works Cited

Casas, Bartolomé de las, and Lewis. Hanke. Historia De Las Indias. Fondo De Cultura EconóMica, 1951.

Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New Press : Distributed by Norton, 1995.

Lane, Kris.  Five myths about Christopher Columbus October 8, 2015. Washington Post.

Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World. Oxford University Press, 1992.

Stone, Edward T. "Columbus And Genocide". American Heritage. Vol. 26 no. 6. American Heritage Publishing Company. 1975

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present. 20th anniversary ed., HarperCollins, 1999

#abolishcolumbusday #indegenouspeoplesday #whitewashedhistory #liesmyteachertoldme

[topmixtrends]

IN 1851, FOUR years after the inauguration of his anti-slavery newspaper The North Star, Frederick Douglass decided to reach out to the black man he would later say influenced him more than anyone else: James McCune Smith. In Douglass’s estimation, McCune Smith was one of the sharpest intellectuals of the era. Sometimes considered the most erudite African American prior to W. E. B. Du Bois, McCune Smith — largely forgotten despite his then-resplendent star — rose to prominence as a cosmopolitan who, upon being rejected from Columbia’s and Geneva’s medical schools in New York for being black, earned three degrees from the University of Glasgow in Scotland and thus became, upon his return to the United States, the first African-American university-trained physician to set up his own practice. He would go on to found the Radical Abolitionists and add to his fame through his criticism of Thomas Jefferson’s myopic views on race in Notes on the State of Virginia. Douglass wanted him to compose some sketches for the paper — rebranded that year simply as Frederick Douglass’ Paper after financial difficulties and a merger with the white abolitionist Gerrit Smith’s Liberty Party Paper — and McCune Smith responded with an extraordinary set of works titled “Heads of the Colored People, Done with a Whitewash Brush,” under the pseudonym “Communipaw.” Appearing between 1852 and 1854, the highly intertextual, at times even recondite articles each focused on some aspect of the black working class in New York, portraying vendors, fugitive slaves, interracial sexuality, and more. His evocations of black women’s sexuality, in particular, boldly defied the respectability politics of their time and made even Douglass — who preferred more sanitized, chaste portraits of African Americans — uneasy.

“Word paintings,” McCune Smith declared his installments, and they were just that, anticipating William J. Wilson’s famed 1859 “Afric-American Picture Gallery,” in which Wilson, through text, “painted” ennobling portraits of black subjects, like Phillis Wheatley and Toussaint L’Ouverture. That same year, another series of groundbreaking word paintings of black Americans (and also of the African diaspora more broadly) appeared in the brief-lived Anglo-African Magazine: “Fancy Sketches,” by Jane Rustic, whose real name was Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Like McCune Smith, Rustic remains neglected today but was a prominent intellectual of her era — a black woman who lectured across the country for abolitionism, published prolifically (including poems and serialized novels), and advocated for feminism.

These three series are mentioned in Nafissa Thompson-Spires’s debut story collection, Heads of the Colored People, which can be read — even from its title — as a new millennium’s idiosyncratic version of McCune Smith’s installments. Thompson-Spires’s stories owe many additional debts — a number of which the author acknowledges in an endnote and even in a supplied bibliography — to a wide range of texts, from popular Japanese anime to Percival Everett to Ralph Ellison. Clever, cruel, hilarious, heartbreaking, and at times simply ingenious, Thompson-Spires’s experimental collection poses a simple, yet obviously not-simple, question: what does it mean to be a black American in this day and age?

¤

Thompson-Spires’s metafictional satires, oriented around questions of blackness, join a particular tradition of African-American fiction, recalling the sardonic absurdism of Everett’s Erasure and Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, among others. The opening story’s incessant hedging about language — meant, in part, to parody, ad nauseam, the almost paranoiac way that our language about identity tends to be policed — also echoes the seemingly half-serious, half-satirical narration of Danzy Senna’s recent novel, New People, in which a light-skinned part-black woman is driven near to madness by her obsession over not appearing “black enough.” Not all of Thompson-Spires’s stories are overtly satirical, and they become progressively more serious as the collection progresses, but a thread of outrageous, glaring self-awareness runs through the collection, granting even many of the more severe tales a tone of dark comedy.

The collection’s quick nod to Ellison’s Invisible Man belies its debt, too, to that novel, as these characters, like Ellison’s narrator, are tormented at once by being too visible and not visible enough, though these characters often wish their blackness was more visible. Unlike Ellison’s narrator, some of these characters use social media, and the addictive cost of visibility there, too, becomes a relevant leitmotif. Many exist in liminal states of blackness: black, but not, but inescapably black, but, but. The opening story, which shares part of its name with McCune Smith’s series, begins with a deadpan assurance to readers that a black otaku named Riley who “wore blue contact lenses and bleached his hair” didn’t do any of this out of

any kind of self-hatred thing. He’d read The Bluest Eye and Invisible Man in school and even picked up Disgruntled at a book fair. […] He was not self-hating; he was even listening to Drake — though you could make it Fetty Wap if his appreciation of trap music changes something for you, because all that’s relevant here is that he wasn’t against the music of “his people.”

In “The Subject of Consumption,” Ryan, a black fruitarian, ponders the way other African Americans might frown upon his marrying a white woman, Lisbeth, out of the assumption that he did not care for women of his own race and merely wanted “light-skinned babies.” The blackness of these characters is simultaneously stable and always in question.

“A Conversation about Bread” revolves around Eldwin, who wishes to tell a story about growing up with a boy who defied his blackness by eating fancy croissants and brioche; another black male, Brian, is flustered by how and what Eldwin is writing, claiming that he is composing a stereotypical narrative like a “white anthropologist” that, through its “royal ‘we,’” implies all black Americans are a “monolith.” Eldwin thinks Brian is “on some respectability mess.” The story’s quietly comical drama heightens as Eldwin wonders whether or not “every story provide[d] a narrow representation at best and fetishize somebody at worst” and questions whether or not he should even risk writing his narrative at all, lest black people come off badly by him telling his version of the truth. In one of multiple interlinked stories about a black girl named Fatima, a blonde albino black girl called Violet — her albinism lending her a liminal ethnic identity — advises Fatima how to be “really” black. Fatima “had been accused of whiteness and being a traitor to the race”; Violet ironically teaches her how to be “blacker,” with the “[p]ale Violet” becoming “the arbiter of Fatima’s blackness, the purveyor of all things authentic.”

The key idea that runs through the collection is authenticity. “Authenticity,” Salman Rushdie wrote wryly in “‘Commonwealth Literature’ Does Not Exist,” “is the respectable child of old-fashioned exoticism. It demands that sources, forms, style, language and symbol all derive from a supposedly homogeneous and unbroken tradition.” Authenticity is, in other words, a fraudulent romanticization, an oversimplification of identity, not unlike the European mythologizing of the East Edward Said famously critiqued in his famous 1978 study, Orientalism. In Heads of the Colored People, authenticity is the specter Thompson-Spires almost immediately exorcises, showing that there is no way to be “authentically” black, even as many of the characters are convinced, even fatally, that there is.

Heads of the Colored People refers, as the author notes at the end, as much to heads as to bodies. In this metonym exists a darker, secondary image: that of the literal heads of the colored people, a gruesome evocation that made me first think of a notorious scene in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, wherein African heads on poles surround Kurtz’s encampment. This more macabre reading of the title is apt, given how materially the specter of death hovers over the stories. Death is as frequent as it is mundane and absurd in the collection. “Suicide, Watch” follows Jilly, a validation-craved depressive who posts cryptic, suicide-suggesting messages on social media and obsessively watches and interprets the likes and comments. The story begins with a Plathian evocation:

Jilly took her head out of the oven mainly because it was hot and the gas did not work independently of the pilot light […] she conceded that she would not go out like a poet. But she updated her status, just the same:

A final peace out before I end it all. Treat your life like bread, no edge too small to butter.

Her status is both serious and a test of the “1,672 Facebook friends and 997 Twitter followers […] she collected […] like so many merit badges.” The story is a perfect demonstration of the neurotic addictiveness of social media, whereby serious subjects like suicidal ideation can become little more than repetitive quests for validation of one’s supposed self-worth from “likes.” Death becomes darkly comedic — and, in the twist ending, ironic.

After two unarmed black men are shot by police in the first story, the narrator — slipping from sardonic humor to frustration — mentions, with a casualness suggesting a banality to such evils, the “constants” of the “off-screen” shooting: “unarmed men, excessive force, another dead body, another dead body.” The repetition of the latter, and its use of “another,” speaks quiet volumes to the volumes of needless corpses.

The macabre metafictional atmospherics go deeper still. The opening story’s reference to the mega-popular series anime and manga series Death Note is particularly revelatory. (I may have fangirled at the reference.) In Death Note, Shinigami — gods of death — control human life spans, able to cause someone to die (and even specify how and when they expire) by writing their name in their Death Note, a black notebook; the series begins with a Japanese schoolboy, Light Yagami, finding a Death Note that a perpetually grinning Shinigami named Ryuk dropped on Earth. Light, who is a solitary, rigidly scheduled, successful student, becomes drunk with power when he learns that the book allows him to kill anyone whose face and name he knows, and he assumes a pseudonymous identity, Kira, when the Japanese police — and then governments around the world — learn that someone is able to murder at will. Death Note is a study in god complexes, in the simultaneous terror and tragedy of obtaining great power. So extreme is the series’s body count that sudden, unnecessary deaths become almost quotidian, echoing Hannah Arendt’s famous idea of “the banality of evil,” immortalized in her study of Nazism in Eichmann in Jerusalem, whereby even great evil can come to seem strikingly, disturbingly normal.

Death Note’s fleeting invocation serves as an early example of Thompson-Spires’s sepulchral leitmotif: the ubiquity of death in her stories, and the way that we — especially as nonwhite Americans — are not always in control of our lives, but can, instead, have our lives wrenched from us in a moment due to an unfair power structure. The story’s narrator becomes an ambivalent, unwilling Kira, grinning like Ryuk as they explore the absurdities of the situation even as they are also, clearly, frustrated at how quickly, pointlessly, and unsurprisingly their characters die. To be black in the United States, the stories say without saying it directly, is difficult to define, but perhaps the closest definition is to have death always near, even when there is no sensible reason we should hear her wings.

¤

When McCune Smith began writing about sexuality, an affronted Douglass suggested that “the real ‘heads of the colored people’” could be found “in the way of churches, Sunday Schools, Literary Societies, intelligent ministers and respectable congregations among our people in New York”; where were the “wise and wholesome” black portraits, he mused? His respectability politics echoed how Du Bois, in the following century, would excoriate the Jamaican-born Claude McKay’s 1928 novel Home to Harlem — the first black American best seller — for its luxuriant descriptions of sexuality, drinking, and partying; depicting such things did not, the puritanical Du Bois argued, uplift African Americans. “I feel distinctly like taking a bath,” Du Bois wrote of his experience of reading the novel in a cantankerous review in The Crisis, a paper Du Bois had founded. McKay had portrayed, unrelentingly and unrepentantly, “that utter licentiousness which conventional civilization holds white folk back from enjoying — if enjoyment it can be called. […] As a picture of Harlem life or of Negro life anywhere, it is of course nonsense,” Du Bois said, channeling Douglass’s denial that such joie de vivre could — or, at least, should — be something to which impressionable readers, white ones most of all, were exposed. “Untrue,” he added with a hint of acid reluctance, “not so much on account of its facts but on account of its emphasis and glaring colors.”

The problem was not that McCune Smith or McKay had written untruths; it was that they had written too much of human truths more conservative black intellectuals wished to suppress from mainstream viewership, lest they confirm racist stereotypes. To be black, these critics implied, one had to behave, even in literature.

We are both beyond these respectability debates and not beyond them at all. Thompson-Spires, thankfully, depicts a wide range of people, not seeking either overwhelmingly positive or negative images of a race but capturing diversity — reality — in much of its multifarious beauty and terror: the validation-seeking suicidal teen, the ungainly college professor transplant, the unarmed black men murdered by the police, the fearful single mother, the unapologetic otaku, the hypocritical judgmental churchgoer, the young ASMR YouTuber who performs so much she begins to be trapped by her persona, the pettily feuding parents, the awkward black girl who has an uneasy relationship with blackness, the students writing about blackness who still worry that revealing too much, in too real a way, will be dangerous. The real heads, of course, as this brilliant collection of word paintings displays, can be on anybody’s bodies.

¤

Gabrielle Bellot is a staff writer for Literary Hub. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Tin House, The New York Times, Electric Literature, New York Magazine’s The Cut, Vice, Guernica, Slate, HuffPost, and many other places. She is the recipient of a Poynter Fellowship from Yale and holds both an MFA and a PhD in Creative Writing from Florida State University. She lives in Brooklyn.

The post Twenty-First-Century Word Paintings: Nafissa Thompson-Spires’s “Heads of the Colored People” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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Will a U.S. Adaptation Ruin Sebastian Lelio’s <i>Gloria</i>?

New Post has been published on https://usnewsaggregator.com/will-a-u-s-adaptation-ruin-sebastian-lelios-gloria/

Will a U.S. Adaptation Ruin Sebastian Lelio’s Gloria?

When asked about the field research he conducted for his film Gloria, the Chilean director Sebastian Lelio described going out with his mother and her friends. “When I have a drink with them,” Lelio told the magazine Cromos in 2014, “I see things from their side because they’re living something so fierce: a cruel process of disappearance, of becoming invisible in a society in which beauty is understood as an obsession with youth.” Despite his choice of words, the 43-year-old director—who is now working on adapting a version of the 2013 drama for American audiences—didn’t actually make a movie that dismisses women beyond their child-bearing years as “disappearing.”

Gloria doesn’t insist on an essential tragicomic sadness in female aging like so many films do. The story’s eponymous hero is 58 and long divorced, checking in at an office job by day, and working Santiago’s swank club-circuit for mature singles by night. Played by a radiant Paulina García, Gloria doesn’t explicitly reject her modest place in Chile’s free-market, so-called “miracle” economy. Instead, she seeks alternative fates on the dance floor, in the narcotic power of Lite FM nostalgia radio and in the companionship of a retired naval officer named Rodolfo (Sergio Hernandez). Mostly, though, even with the specter of abandonment and blindness (she gets a glaucoma diagnosis at one point), Gloria luxuriates in her own selfhood. She’s empathic and open and essentially untethered to the stultifying dramas that confine the lives of those around her, including Rodolfo and her grown children.

Critics in Europe and the United States praised Gloria for, among other things, its “authenticity.” Carlos Boyero of El Pais wrote that the film dares to show “with naturalness the nudity of people who’ve entered winter, it shows the desire of their bodies.” Betsy Sharkey observed for The Los Angeles Times that Lelio depicts sex between older adults in a way that “is neither gratuitous nor gross nor glossy.” But this marveling is ironically a feature of how invisibility is assigned and thrives. With Gloria, the tragedy is not in aging, but in the much-remarked novelty of a 60-ish woman in bed as something undistorted and even natural—as if it’s a surprise that human desire might persist to the end of life.

Gloria launched Lelio into the ranks of Chilean directors on the international radar, notably Pablo Larrain (of No and Jackie fame) and Sebastian Silva (The Maid). Lelio’s latest film, Una Mujer Fantástica, starring the trans actress Daniela Vega, opens in theaters across the U.S. in February. His first English-language feature, Disobedience, with Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams, debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival this fall to acclaim. And now, Lelio is also writing and directing a U.S. adaptation of Gloria, which will be inspired by the original story rather than a regular remake, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film will star Julianne Moore, who has made a career of playing fascinating women across the spectrum of human experience, from a porn actress who’s lost custody of her son in 1997’s Boogie Nights to a linguistics professor with Alzheimer’s in 2014’s Still Alice. With a film as innovative as Gloria, whose  ethos of self-deliverance translates across cultural boundaries, the prospect of a “reimagining” is bittersweet. But there’s reason to hope that, with Lelio at the helm, the Hollywood version could be the director’s rebuke to the fact that Gloria has few equivalents in American cinema.

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Most stories about women in or nearing middle age form part of the small canon of post-divorce bildungsroman films, including Paul Mazursky’s An Unmarried Woman (1978), in which an electrifying Jill Clayburgh ultimately thrives after her marriage unravels. More recent examples of similar reckoning include Mike Nichols’s Heartburn (1986), based on Nora Ephron’s novel and screenplay; Richard LaGravenese’s Living Out Loud (1998); Audrey Wells’s Under the Tuscan Sun; and Diane English’s The Women (2008). Still, these movies are about women considerably younger than Gloria and in the midst or immediate aftermath of ill-fated marriages.

Meanwhile, Nancy Meyers’s Something’s Gotta Give (2003) and It’s Complicated (2009) are genial, indulgent films about the desirability of their accomplished, older heroines. But each film winks at viewers with the improbability and counterintuitive humor of its premise; suitors swarm, romantic triangles emerge, and sex is reduced to geriatric antics. Isabel Coixet’s Learning To Drive (2014), based on a Katha Pollitt New Yorker essay, stands out as a quieter study of personal restoration and tackling long-delayed projects in the wake of divorce.

But these are all isolated examples of movies in the vein of Gloria. Since John Cassavetes’s defining films from the ’60s and ’70s, in which the inevitability of aging hangs like a guillotine blade, few directors have taken an interest in the full-dimensional humanity of older women. More typically, an aging woman’s longings are mawkish, or else her besottedness makes for absurdist fun. In Alfonso Cuarón’s Great Expectations (1998), the characters are lithe, contemporary reinventions with the grotesque exception of Nora Dinsmoor (Charles Dickens’s Miss Havisham) played by Anne Bancroft. Nora is all thwarted womanhood, a permanently jilted bride aghast at the dispossession accrued by age. Her face weeps mortician-grade makeup, a willful perversion of Charles Baudelaire’s idea that women wear cosmetics “to make divine their fragile beauty.”

Somewhere on this same small spectrum, Sally Field plays a disheveled 60-something woman who dons a Minnie Mouse bow and stalks after a younger colleague in Michael Showalter’s Hello, My Name Is Doris (2016). Like Gloria, Doris spends her days in a cubicle—that overused emblem of stifled promise. It turns out she’s a “holdover” from a corporate takeover so that even her age is an eccentricity in an office filled with insouciant youth. Then, with one innocuous and misinterpreted elevator exchange, Doris is suddenly reminded of her own vitality, perhaps for the first time since her fizzled aspirations as a bride decades earlier. But now, the movie suggests, it’s too late for her to enter any desirable man’s field of vision, much less a young one. The comedy, of course, rides on her increasingly frantic efforts to do just that.

And this is where Gloria’s protagonist departs from most similar American heroines: She’s not essentially in conflict with herself. Her loneliness is not a grasping sort, but a dignified bid for transcendence. García appears in every frame with near unwavering grace, even when high on pisco sour and making out with a stranger against a graffiti-scrawled lamppost in Viña del Mar. Viewers watch the surface turbulence of Gloria’s life from a still, clear depth, as though the events are ultimately incidental: Rodolfo’s inability to leave the collection of broken, dependent adults that make up his family; Gloria’s ex-husband’s drunken regrets at a fraught family reunion; and her own son and daughter’s unpromising relationships. Gloria cries privately at her daughter’s abrupt departure from Chile at one point, not in a bereft sense, but the way parents can feel like helpless onlookers to their adult children’s flawed lives.

Lelio has said Gloria’s script, written with Gonzalo Maza, draws lightly on his mother’s life, and is broadly an exploration of her generation—women raised for marriage and later caught in the unfettered economic and social changes in Chile after its transition to democracy in the late 1980s. Rising inequality, living costs, and divorce rates spurred by rapid modernization echo in the story’s margins, as do darker insinuations of the country’s unresolved military past in the figure of Rodolfo. The audience sees a backdrop of confinement—stairwells, parking lots, tidy apartments. Santiago is reduced to a gray drift of development that registers vaguely in the reflection of Gloria’s car window. But Lelio defies tendencies to turn each new Latin American film into a thinly veiled comment on history and politics. Gloria’s physical surroundings are bleakly dim and unspecific, with the exception of a brilliant beach where she wakes up at one point, hungover and robbed of her purse.

Of the new English-language version, Lelio has said, “It’s going to be like jazz, you’ll feel the spirit of the original story but it’ll be reinvigorated and vital.” It’s hard to imagine how Lelio’s film needs to be reinvigorated. It’d be easy to make another comically disruptive spectacle of a female character’s post-menopausal sexuality. In less adept hands, if the erratic history of American remakes is any guide—from duds like The Vanishing (1993) and Shall We Dance (2004) to the accomplished The Departed (2006)—viewers might be served up an accelerated plot or sentimental pathos. The Hollywood Reporter inauspiciously suggested that, in Lelio’s as-yet untitled U.S. adaptation, Moore’s character will be “vacillating between hope and despair” over a love affair, before ending on a note of personal vindication.

Admirers of Lelio’s work can only hope the director will handle his new film with the same deftness he used in the original. What’s radical in the director’s vision is that Gloria’s body and desire are gracefully unremarkable frames for seeking pleasure and fulfillment. And that she’s startlingly visible in her ordinariness. Gloria is a sobering reminder that it’s not the “invisibility” of older women that’s the problem, but rather their systemic exclusion from cultural relevance. Whatever acts of contortion Lelio might end up performing to cater to American sensibilities, there’s hope that he’ll at least flout Hollywood biases against the aging female body. And if not, there’s always the original, in which Gloria, in a memorable revenge scene, confronts her fatuous lover with the cool of a hired assassin. How does she follow this act? With a night out—dancing alone.

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Beyonce cheers up Lady Gaga while Kardashians continue breeding

It’s nice to see two of the biggest female stars show support and appreciation for one another during a difficult time. As we previously reported, “Perfect Illusion” singer Lady Gaga had to postpone the European leg of her Joanne World Tour due to chronic pain. The singer has been struggling with fibromyalgia and has been seeing a slew of specialists to find the right treatment for her ongoing, severe pain. Seeing that her fellow performer was going through a tough time, superstar songstress Beyoncé sent over a comforting gift to Gaga. In a new picture posted to her Instagram, Gaga showed off a black and white Ivy Park sweatshirt that Beyoncé sent over to her. Alongside the photo, Gaga wrote, “Not having a good pain day. Thank you honey B for sending me this comfy sweatshirt. Keeps me warm outside in a hammock so I can be [with] the trees, and the sky, and the sun and take deep breaths. Feel so lucky to have so much love…” Lady Gaga, Instagram post: Shortly after, Gaga also showed off a beautiful bouquet of red roses that Beyoncé had sent over, as well as a card wishing her well. Alongside the subsequent Instagram post, Gaga wrote, “Thank you so much honey B. Miss you. This was so kind. If I hadn't seen your videos on TV at grandmas house after I got dropped from def jam records, I would have given up. You inspire us all. The dream you embody kept me going.” Lady Gaga, Instagram post: Feel better, Gaga! For the past few days, reality starlet Kylie Jenner has dominated the headlines. As you have probably heard, there are rumors going around that the young 20-year-old is pregnant with her first child. While she has only been with rapper Travis Scott for a few months now, numerous “sources” have claimed that the two are very happy to be entering parenthood together. However, Kylie is no longer the only member of her family that is causing the world to go into a full-blown frenzy. On Tuesday, various media outlets began reporting that Kylie’s older sister Khloe is also pregnant. Insiders told TMZ that Khloe conceived naturally and is thrilled to be having a kid with her boyfriend, NBA player Tristan Thompson. One source talked to tabloid magazine US Weekly about Khloe’s supposed pregnancy, saying, “Yes, Khloe and Tristan are expecting, and they are absolutely thrilled. This isn’t something they were in a rush to announce to the whole world, and it’s only been in just the past week or so that they’ve felt comfortable telling most of their inner circle.” The same source went on to tell the magazine that Khloe and Tristan were extra careful about keeping their pregnancy news secret after news of Kylie’s reported pregnancy surfaced. The source elaborated, “Things were complicated a bit by Kylie’s announcement as they don’t want to be seen as intruding on that moment for her but it is now reaching a point where Khloe doesn’t want to be openly lying to people, and just staying quiet isn’t going to work anymore.” Neither Khloe nor Kylie’s pregnancy has been officially confirmed. Only time will tell if there is any accuracy to all these tabloid stories… Bruno Mars is expanding his support of a Grammy scholarship for high school students. The five-time Grammy winner had lent financial support for a student from his native Hawaii to attend the Grammy Museum’s Grammy Camp since 2014 to honor his late mother. Now a student nationwide will be eligible, and Mars will cover the student’s tuition, housing and transportation. Mars will fund a student a year for five years. Grammy Camp allows students to learn about the industry from professionals and has sessions in Los Angeles and Nashville, Tennessee. The “24K Magic” singer — who is also a producer, songwriter and plays multiple instruments — expressed his gratitude to Grammy Camp. In a statement Wednesday he called it a “privilege” to be able to help students reach their musical dreams. Mars’ other hits include “That’s What I Like” and “Uptown Funk.” He’s currently on a world tour. Garth Brooks is taking a long look back at his life and career in an autobiography that will span five books, the first of which will be released in November. The country music superstar announced Wednesday that “The Anthology Part 1: The First Five Years” goes on sale Nov. 14. It promises “all the secrets, details, origins, true stories an insider would get.” Some of those stories include background on some of Brooks’ early hits, including “The Thunder Rolls,” ″Friends in Low Places” and “The Dance.” The book comes with five CDs containing 52 total songs, including 19 new, unreleased or demo versions. This is the first book authored by Brooks. Kit Harington and his former “Game of Thrones” on-screen romantic partner, Rose Leslie, are engaged. A formal notice published in the Times of London newspaper Wednesday announced the upcoming marriage of “Mr K.C. Harington and Miss R.E. Leslie.” It describes the couple as “Kit, younger son of David and Deborah Harington of Worcestershire, and Rose, middle daughter of Sebastian and Candy Leslie of Aberdeenshire.” Harington and Leslie were a couple on the HBO series as Jon Snow and Ygritte. Leslie left the cast in 2014. Her publicist and HBO didn’t immediately offer comment Wednesday. Anthony Weiner’s former sexting partner Sydney Leathers tells media outlets she doesn’t think the pervy ex-pol will change his ways — even with jail time. “I don’t think he’ll learn any kind of lesson,” she told us after Weiner was hit with 21 months for sexting with a teen. “I don’t feel bad for him and I don’t think he feels bad — he feels bad he got caught. I can see him doing this all over again. If a teenage girl gives him attention, he’s gonna take it. He doesn’t know how to not fall into that.” She told the media of Weiner’s soon-to-be-ex-wife, Huma Abedin, “He’d said they didn’t spend much time together. She was always away. It’s hard to feel sorry for her. Think of how many chances she gave this guy — so many red flags.” As for Weiner’s sentence: “At least he’s getting some time. If you’re rich enough, powerful enough and have a good enough lawyer — I worried he’d get probation only. I think he does deserve to do time . . . there’s obviously a a deep-seated psychological issue, like an extreme narcissist. Something is very, very wrong. The fact he brought a minor into it . . . was much darker.” Pete Davidson revealed that he has borderline personality disorder. The “Saturday Night Live” star, 23, explained that he thought the symptoms he had been experiencing were because of his “pothead” nature. “Around October [or] September last year, I started having these mental breakdowns where I would, like, freak out and then not remember what happened after. Blind rage,” said Davidson on “WTF With Marc Maron” Monday. Davidson, who announced in March that he was sober for the first time in eight years, thought rehab would help. “I never really did any other drugs, so I was like, ‘I’m gonna try to go to rehab. Maybe that’ll be helpful,'” Davidson said. “So I go and I get off weed. They told me there, they’re like, ‘You might be bipolar,’ and I was like, ‘OK.’ So they’re like, ‘We’re gonna try you on these meds.’ And then I got out [of rehab], and then I started smoking weed again — and I’m on meds.” One “really bad episode” later, Davidson returned to his doctors, who diagnosed him properly. “I found out I have BPD, which is borderline personality disorder,” he explained. “One of my psychiatrists [diagnosed me]. He was always saying before this big meltdown, ‘You’re probably bipolar or borderline, we’re just going to have to figure it out.'” Davidson admitted he still struggles with learning how to live with his diagnosis, but his new medication helps. “It is working, slowly but surely,” he said. “I’ve been having a lot of problems. This whole year has been a f–king nightmare. This has been the worst year of my life, getting diagnosed with this and trying to figure out how to learn with this and live with this.” Channing Tatum���s Free Association has teamed with Marc Turtletaub and Peter Saraf’s Big Beach to option Zack McDermott’s book “Gorilla and the Bird: A Memoir of Madness and a Mother’s Love,” for TV series development. “Demolition” scribe Bryan Sipe is attached to pen the adaptation and executive produce. The memoir, released today (Sept. 26) by Little Brown Publishing Company, chronicles McDermott’s personal battle with bipolar disorder, which affects nearly 6 million Americans and usually presents itself in patients during their mid-twenties, the same age that it affected McDermott. According to the description, “Gorilla and the Bird” follows Zack’s (the Gorilla) fight to regain his sanity after a devastating psychotic break, with the help of the only person who didn’t give up on him, his mother (The Bird). This inspirational mother, who had her own challenges of overcoming domestic abuse and poverty to raise three children on her own, stuck by him and helped him recover as he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Zack’s sudden illness took him on a harrowing journey including delusions of being filmed and receiving messages through the TV, running naked through cornfields, seeing the Virgin Mary, being arrested on a subway platform and being committed to the Bellevue Hospital. Prior to his illness, Zack had a job as a highly successful public defender for The Legal Aid Society of New York. The series will tell the story of McDermott and his mother’s heartbreaking yet inspiring battle. Tatum, Reid Carolin, Peter Kiernan and Andrew Schneider will Executive Produce for Free Association with Schneider overseeing the project for the company. Marc Turtletaub, Peter Saraf and Robin Schwartz will Executive Produce for Big Beach. McDermott will serve as Co-Executive Producer. Free Association, which is behind the “22 Jump Street” and “Magic Mike” franchises, most recently produced feature Logan Lucky and the Amazon series Comrade Detective. The company is repped by UTA, Management 360 and Hansen, Jacobson & Teller. Big Beach’s (“Little Miss Sunshine”) most recent films include “Three Generations”, starring Naomi Watts, Elle Fanning and Susan Sarandon, and “Loving,” directed by Jeff Nichols. The recently formed television arm of the company, headed by Schwartz, is currently in production on new series “Vida,” created by Tanya Saracho, for Starz. Bryan Sipe is repped by UTA, Circle of Confusion and Barnes, Morris, Klein & Yorn McDermott is repped by UTA on behalf of Farley Chase at Chase Literary Agency. While you would assume that someone like Kim Kardashian would never be caught dead repurposing an outfit, the reality star claims she does it all the time. However, it is not in the way you would expect. In a brand new interview with the magazine T Singapore, the star explained that she finds ways to share her clothing with her 4-year-old daughter, North West. During her interview with the media publication, Kim talked candidly about being a mom (to North and Saint). The 36-year-old beauty said, “My whole world is my kids, it’s all I care about…from literally every last thing that they do to what they wear, to all their activities. I love being their mom. I definitely don’t hang out with my friends as much just because I have to be with my kids.” When talking about her kids’ – particularly North West’s – fashion, Kim gushed, “It’s been such a fun journey to figure out how our kids like to dress and how to make cool clothes for kids. We’ve always been tailoring things and cutting things up, or taking dresses of mine and cutting them down to North’s size.” Earlier this year, Kim and her husband Kanye West launched Kids Supply, which is a stylish clothing brand for kids. Filled with dresses, jackets, shoes and various other clothing items for little ones, the line ranges in price from $22 to $240. This week started off on a good note for fans of singer Ed Sheeran. On Monday, Ed stopped by Good Morning America in New York City. While talking with the morning show’s hosts, Ed announced some very exciting news. He revealed that he would be embarking on a big, North American tour in the upcoming year (2018). This time around, the 26-year-old is scheduled to be playing at huge stadiums across the continent. When talking about his big plans for the New Year, Ed gushed, “For me, playing the coasts is one thing, but getting to play Middle America at that level [in stadiums], is pretty cool.” Shortly after he made the announcement on television more details about his 2018 tour surfaced online. The tour will start in August of 2018 and will continue on into November. While fans will have to wait quite sometime before they get to see Ed take over their local stadiums, tickets for the tour go on sale in a few short weeks (Monday, October 16th for Verified Fans and Friday, October 20th for the general public). Some of the stops on his North American 2018 tour include: Seattle, Toronto, St. Louis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Arlington, New Orleans, Houston and Atlanta. After weeks of shutting down romance rumors, young starlet Sofia Richie and troubled reality star Scott Disick have gone public with their relationship. Over the weekend, the two stars were spotted in Miami, Florida, where they were basically inseparable. The duo held hands while walking around the area, letting everyone know that they are no longer hiding their affection for one another. On Saturday (September 23rd), Scott and Sofia were seen dining with friends at a Florida-based restaurant. One of the attendees took to their Snapchat to share a video of the crew at dinner. During the posted video, there was a special dessert shown being brought to the table for Scott and Sofia. This video gained notable attention amongst followers and in the media, as the dessert featured the words “Congratulations Scott and Sophia” written in chocolate syrup. At this point, it is unclear what exactly the young couple was being congratulated for, but this development inevitably further fueled the romance rumors that have been circulating on social media and in the press for the past while. After the video of the dessert and chocolate inscribed message surfaced, fans couldn’t help but make theories about what the congratulatory dessert was in honor of. Despite the fact that their fling is very new and the duo is 15 years apart, fans speculated that perhaps the two were engaged. However, a source close to Sofia and Scott told TMZ that the two stars are definitely not engaged. ABC’s search continues, as it looks to fill the remaining seats on the judging panel for the upcoming reboot of American Idol. As you may have heard, the network already secured pop princess Katy Perry in one of the spots. However, they have reportedly been having some troubles finding the right candidate (particularly one who is willing to take on a judging role for a notably smaller salary than Katy – who is getting $25 million to star on the show). Over the weekend, reports came out claiming that ABC is just about to finalize a deal with country star Luke Bryan. According to media outlet TMZ, the singer should be signing a contract for Idol within the next couples of days. In other American Idol news, singer Lionel Richie, who was once in talks with ABC to join onto the show’s reboot, is no longer interested in joining Katy on the judging panel. In addition, singers Keith Urban (who already judged on previous seasons of American Idol) and Charlie Puth are reportedly very unlikely to sign on to do the show, as ABC is having a tough time meeting their salary expectations – largely due to the huge payout they are giving Katy for starring on the show. Stay tuned for more details about ABC’s reboot of American Idol! And now it’s been made official by Variety. The country star will sit alongside previously confirmed judge Katy Perry at the table, where he'll critique singers from the blind audition rounds all the way up to the final. A third judge has yet to be announced. Hosted once again by Ryan Seacrest, American Idol is slated to return in March 2018. The long-running singing competition originally premiered on Fox in 2002, and helped launch the careers of Carrie Underwood, Scotty McCreery and Lauren Alaina. Fox canceled the series after its 15th season in 2016. Bryan is the second country star to become an American Idol judge, after Keith Urban served in the role for four seasons. Other celebrity judge alumni include Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez and Harry Connick Jr.

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