#pulp and mystery shelf | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wayhavven · 3 years

Text

Love’s Philosophy

Gift fic for @mewsly as a part of @loveinwayhaven

Pairing: Adam Du Mortain x Detective Orianna Moreau

Rating: All

Word Count: 2712

Notes: Ah! I’m so nervous to post this! I really hope I did your detective justice, she seems amazing 🥺 I went for sort of mid-romance vibes... this is also the first time I’ve written Adam, or anything TWC actually, so I have been a little worried about how he comes across as well. I really hope you enjoy😅

Summary: Adam spends some time in the library.

Adam grunts as his large fingers slip over the leather bound books on the shelf. He’s tucked away right at the back of the library in the bunker, looking for absolutely nothing in particular. If each title that flicks in his peripheral is decidedly not something else, then, well, he wouldn’t notice. And he certainly doesn’t notice the mug ring on the coffee table at the end of the row. Still wet. He can say with ninety-nine point nine percent accuracy that this is a result of a sickeningly sweet, creamer-laced coffee, probably left half full and forgotten momentarily because it’s owner had been perusing the shelves for something else about the supernatural.

And then it catches him, an old—perhaps very early edition if he remembers right—edition of Pride and Prejudice. She doesn’t know it’s here, because he’s sure she would’ve said.

But when he reaches for it, his hand stops by itself. It drags across the direction toward the dark corners, moving at speed until—plod. Something leather-bound with a worn bookmark partway through. As he gently slides it out, Adam notes the gold type font on the front: a poetry anthology. Shelley, to be specific. He knows a lot of these by heart, three-hundred odd years of people raving about the rakes and romantics will do that to a guy. All the same, he’s sure to thumb carefully to the bookmarked part. The spine squeaks as it opens, a quiet yawn where Adam is waking it from a nap. A little dust flies up and is highlighted in the strips of dim lamplight from above. He looks up briefly, checking his surroundings. Not that the detective would be able to come anywhere near him without his pheromones going off. Even if he wasn’t a vampire, he’s sure he’d recognise the sound of her footfall underwater. Because he has to know to protect her properly, of course.

The page the book has squeaked open to has one poem on it: ‘Love’s Philosophy.’

Adam, not particularly taken with poetry for the most part, doesn’t know this one. Only the very famous ones when it comes to Percy Bysshe Shelley: ‘Ozymandias,’ ‘To a Skylark,’ ‘Stanzas Written in…’

Reading for enjoyment as a rule isn’t his thing. But the little he does recall never really lit anything in him. He has never felt how he was told poetry should be making him feel. Maybe he is too worn from years spent focusing on most things aside from feeling. Absentmindedly grazing his thumb over the page, feeling each grain of the pulp on his finger tips, Adam finds his eyes wandering back to the wet mug ring on the coffee table to his right. Drying now, the sheen dulling to match the light wood. It’s nice wood, light, fresh, slightly enthusiastically holding the weight of forgotten books. Adam’s a little lost in the colour. Because it echoes in his mind a similar colour that has been the focus of many an accidental daydream.

Suddenly, he’s seeing pretty light brown eyes; caramelly, iridescent when they’re in that one chair in the office where the sun has a chance to shine on them. Lighting up when she learns new things, particularly those of his world; the supernatural world. Creasing a little in the corners when she makes the odd sarcastic quip. Dilating every so often when he’s talking to her, for reasons he isn’t sure.

One of the books on the table is leather-bound in a deep red, and Adam finds himself imprinting the image of coils of long hair that exact shade into the space he stares at. Adam actively does not enjoy that his brain wanders like this. That it seems to veer off task for silly reasons.

He shakes his head. If only he had a use for sleep. He doesn’t often find himself wishing that, but these days… perhaps more often. Perhaps he wonders what he might dream of.

But he doesn’t want to lose the control of consciousness. It keeps him in check. It keeps him able to protect the detective.

And he doesn’t want to lose control full stop. Doesn’t let himself think too deeply about any of it for fears he may push himself past retrieval.

Adam finds, as he stands there almost frozen, that his mind wanders to a day not so dissimilar to this one. When he had been reading late, against his wishes, for some information Rebecca requested.

—-

With each line he reads, Adam can feel his biceps twitching to get some combat under his belt. This is more Nate’s expertise; he’d far rather be out trying to get one up on Morgan. But, alas, he has been given other responsibilities. And he always fulfills his responsibilities. He finds himself sighing each time he turns the page, increasingly frustrated that he actually seems to be learning less.

Like a saving grace, the library door creaks open and he looks up from where he stands by the window. One hand in his pocket, one under the old book. Detective Orianna Moreau enters, a candle highlighting the high points of her soft, deep brown skin, shining in the light-hued eyes which find him almost immediately. Her silhouette casts subtle grey shadows on the wall behind her as she nears him.

He’d known she was coming, of course. He always does. But it’s always a different thing actually seeing her. Like he’s never completely convinced she’s really there.

She smiles gently at him, nearing with the candle in her grip melting down itself, flickering.

“You’re up late,” she says, placing the candle down by him on a ledge. “I thought you might need a bit of light.”

Light. Like her. Her charming, friendly, easygoing nature always lights up the room. Adam reveres it sometimes. Sometimes he doesn’t.

It makes him a little nervous, actually. And he hates feeling nervous. Hates losing himself in the light when he has to focus on work and tasks.

“Thank you.”

He doesn’t say anything else, but is acutely aware as he remains standing in his spot, that the detective goes to sit on a nearby sofa. She’s supposed to be researching too, so it’s not too odd, but humans do have to sleep, after all.

“Should you not be asleep?” He turns just enough so that he can see her from the side of his face.

“I have to learn this, and want to. There are far worse ways to be spending an evening.” She smirks at him, suggestive and amused. “Come and sit with me.”

At first, Adam was going to outright point-blank say no. So he’s not completely sure why his legs carry him over to the sofa and lower him down beside her. But far enough away that there’s significant space between them. She laughs and rolls her eyes, scooting over next to him. The small amount of her body which presses up against him sends a shock of ice up his veins. She’s warm, so warm, that he feels like his ice is melting a little. It’s almost terrifying, but Adam doesn’t move. Doesn’t show outwardly how he’s feeling. Lets his thigh burn quietly as though he’s already extinguished the flames.

The book in his hand drops to his lap, his other hand twitching on his thigh. She gives him that smile again and his heart almost stops. Settling back into the cushions, Orianna picks up the book from his hands and starts to dig into it.

“I was reading that.”

“I know, but you weren’t enjoying it.”

That she seems to know this about him, though, isn’t lost on Adam. He believes himself to be stoic and mysterious perhaps, but maybe Orianna can see past that. Through it. The way Nate always does.

She holds the book in her left hand, her right sitting on her thigh somewhat restlessly. Just inches from his own. Ensuring that she’s pouring all of her attention into the book, which she seems to be, Adam drops his eyes subtly to her hand. Unsure why, but seemingly doing things of his own accord, Adam’s impulse is to make contact with her. His pinky falters, reaching out a little by itself, quivering in a way he isn’t used to. A way he isn’t sure he likes. Nonetheless, he uses its movement to bolster the moving of the rest of his hand. Slowly, millimetre by millimetre, Adam lets his hand move away from his body. Slip across to the detective’s. He places his down on top of hers gently, encompassing it, letting his fingers and thumb curl around its shape. He doesn’t dare look at her, but he can’t miss in his peripheral the smug beaming grin which takes over her expression.

They sit like that a long while, Adam still, holding her hand. He should be frustrated that he’s not getting anything productive done, but he can’t be. Something about her hand in his means he cannot be anything other than content and a touch conflicted. The detective’s expression never falters as she reads, doesn’t worry when she has a hard time turning the page with the use of only one hand. Seems quite amused by it, actually. Adam chuckles himself a little internally, unable to stop the smile which spreads over his face. With his free hand, he reaches over and turns the page for her.

“Thanks.”

“It is my pleasure.”

When the detective repositions their hands, winding hers around and up, so that their hands are completely joined, Adam can’t help but finally look at her fully. She squeezes his hand, and looks up at him too. Their eyes bore into each other, melting.

It had all been going so well until Farah bounded in like a puppy with a new toy. Quickly, rushedly, Adam pulls his hand from the detective’s.

—-

He thinks about that day a lot. Wishes he didn’t. Wishes he didn’t think about a lot of things pertaining to the detective.

As though on cue, the fine hairs on his arm stand to attention, and his ears zone in on the sound of smart shoes on the linoleum. She’s coming back.

Forcing his eyes back down to the page, Adam has completely forgotten what he had even been looking at. ‘Love’s Philosophy,’ that’s it. Shelley.

She’s entering, though, and he can’t focus himself enough on what he’s holding to seem entirely nonchalant. Doesn’t give himself enough time to consider that it probably isn’t in his best interests for Detective Moreau to see what he’s holding. She’s bold, flirty. She’d pick up on something and make a remark that would have his cheeks hot and his jaw tightening in a way he doesn’t want it to.

Through the gap in the shelf he can just about see a fitted pencil skirt, shirt tucked in, emerging into the library. She’s holding another book, something supernatural focused that smells a little of blood and Adam isn’t sure where exactly came from.

Next thing he knows, she’s rounded the corner.

“Oh.” He hears her from the side, always debating how the next words will come from his mouth. She just seems a little surprised he’s there, is all. “Hi.”

He can hear the smile in her voice, senses how she places her book down on the coffee table he’d been so fixated on before. The title looks to be written in Haitian Creole.

“Hello. You have been busy.” He nods to the table. She grins. There’s always a sparkle in her eyes when she’s learning new things; especially new things about the world which only opened up to her not so long ago.

“Always have to know more, you know me.”

He does. Knows her scent, the exact amount of time which passes between each step she takes, how she shines like the sun whenever something otherworldly occurs. Knows she would be interested to know about the early edition of Jane Austen he completely accidentally came across. Knows that a large part of him wishes he didn’t know these things.

“What are you reading?” she asks, the tone of her voice something Adam hadn’t even realised he’d been yearning to hear.

“I am not. I picked it up. I will be putting it back now,” he nods, hesitating at the sight of the page. His eyes drag over the words subconsciously: heaven, sweet emotion, sunlight, moonbeams, kiss.

Things which are meant to be pretty and emotive and only seem to be making him think of the one thing he doesn’t really want to think of.

How maybe he doesn’t believe in heaven, but that it might be something close to her eyes when she smiles. Or how sweet emotion is something that Adam doesn’t feel like he can achieve, but if he were to, maybe it would be because of her. The sunlight which shines on her in her office, which highlights her features and matches her personality. Moonbeams… electric, softly-glowing, other-wordly. Kiss… well, he tries not to focus on that one.

But he also thinks sometimes he thinks too much and of too absurd topics. That he shouldn’t allow himself to think these things. He has responsibilities. Duties.

He might have closed the book and placed it back when he hears her start to near, but he feels a little too frozen on the spot.

“Shelly,” she smiles again, pulling down on the corner of the book so that she can see the contents of the page. “A love poem! Romantic,” she teases, in the way that only Orianna knows how.

“I was just interested in the bookmark.”

“Oh, that might have been me, I like this one.”

He nods, moving to close it, but his hand is caught by Orianna instead. He stiffens, the brush from her climbing up the brim in his arm right the way to his heart. Reminding him of when he’d held her hand before.

“Let me read it again.” She smiles, letting her eyes drift back over the page. She’s stubborn, so there’s no point arguing. Not that he’d have much reason to, anyway. Adam finds his curious eyes slipping over the page, too, and he reads the words in front of him.

The fountains mingle with the river

And the rivers with the ocean,

The winds of heaven mix for ever

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle.

Why not I with thine?—

See the mountains kiss high heaven

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister-flower would be forgiven

If it disdained its brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth

And the moonbeams kiss the sea:

What is all this sweet work worth

If thou kiss not me?

When he pulls his eyes from the page, he looks to the woman beside him. She’s mouthing the last line, subtle warmth on her face, and it’s impossible to not focus on the movements of her lips as she rolls through the vowels and consonants.

“Yes, it’s lovely. Just as I remember.”

“I suppose it is not awful.”

She lets out a little snort. “You hate reading for pleasure.”

The smile he returns is ever so miniscule. She’s absolutely right, but seeing her find joy in it makes it not so bad.

He’s drawn in by the pull of her eyes again, struggling to find the right words. Creasing his brow a little, he watches her edge a little closer. Finds himself willing down the impulse to hold her hand once more.

She smiles at him, in a way that tells him she knows the look on his face. It’s frozen, unsure, repressing. So she just leans in, and places a gentle, soft kiss just below his ear. Her lips on his skin sear simultaneously hot and cold, soft. She lingers a little, hand ghosting at his jaw. A little cold touch from the jewellery she wears.

That spot feels incredibly warm even as she moves away again. Even as she pulls the book from his hands, closes it, places it back on the shelf.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Adam.”

Adam starts, not even remembering what the date was. Perhaps he’d been a little too distracted.

“I—well, yes. Happy Valentine’s Day, I suppose.”

#the wayhaven chronicles #loveinwayhaven #twc #adam twc #adam du mortain #twc adam #my writing #a du mortain

46 notes · View notes

svankmajerbaby · 2 years

Text

An Appreciation of the Chucky Series’ Set Design

PART 3: Kim and Devon’s House

we don’t see a lot of devon’s house, really, beyond his bedroom. the only other peek of the place is the hall leading to his room (which feels like it’s in the basement? if it really is so, funny that he’s living in the basement while jake’s currently moved into an attic)

just realized, i feel like there’s no set in this series that has white walls. if there’s any, the lighting makes sure to change that. also, it isn’t super clear from this angle.... but that cute little seventies-style wall hanging there is from a sunflower bouquet :^)

ok so devon’s room is maybe my favorite. not only is it ridiculously spacious in a way that, if it really is the basement, i could believe... but it’s so clear he decorated it with exactly the stuff he wanted to. that huge ass painting behind his little, otherwise normal looking bed. there’s that little telescope that feels like a “Rear Window” reference, if only the windows were a bit lower... and another extremely funky looking lamp (i wonder what the lamp budget of the series was). and then there are The Amazing, Huge Pulp Thriller Posters. i’ve counted six of them, but there’s a whole wall i cannot see, so there may be more just out of sight!

he also has that very comfy looking sofa chair and lamp, perfect to read while pondering which crimes to cover and investigate next.... there’s that column there that actually feels quite realistic, especially since this room is so big. there’s also a ceiling beam in one shot that similarly gives this place that feeling of both being somewhat believable and still really unusual and quirky, especially for a fourteen-year-old.

and of course what every gumshoe in training needs, a huge corkboard to pin theories and clues. i love that apart from the comfy sofa chair by the lamp on the other wall he has a whole little couch for himself to sit and go over his newspaper cuttings. devon takes his sleuthing very seriously.

finally, i just want to address the fact that his podcast-recording setup is not, like most desks, set against the wall: it’s set with his back against the wall, maybe so the light falls onto it (though why he would care about natural light when he has that whole ringlight is quite a mystery), but it’s probably just so we can have a cleaner shot-reverse shot in his dialogue with his mother. regardless, it’s an amazingly professional-looking setup (i have no idea if it’s what actual podcast-recording people would use), and i feel like it does communicate on some level that his mother really does support his interest and his passion for doing this. all that equipment can’t come cheap, you know.

last thing: it’s just barely framed by the microphone, but you can see a little electric guitar in a shelf, along with a skull. i don’t know what that means (we know that devon plays piano, so he might have a guitar as well, lying somewhere?) but it’s a nice little detail i appreciate. it was probably done to fill an empty space, but i still like it. just a confirmation of just how spooky of a boy devon is, if his fascination for gruesome crimes wasn’t enough.

PART 1 PART 2

#chucky series #set design #there's a blue and orange palette in his room that makes me think of the orange light in his hospital room.....#regardless i find it almost funny how devon's probably the only one who has supporting parents #and he has one of the most eccentric rooms

5 notes · View notes

blairwitchbaby · 3 years

Note

Favorite movies?

I'm looking at all of my movies on my shelf for reference lol. these aren't in order or anything:

Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Monster (2003), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Alien, Aliens, A Clockwork Orange, House of 1000 Corpses, The Thing (1982), Prozac Nation, Election, Girl Interrupted, Natural Born Killers, Shallow Grave, Mysterious Skin, literally all the Harry Potter movies, Billy Elliot, Full Metal Jacket, Mystic River, Midsommar, Good Will Hunting, Freeway, The Kids Are Alright, The Virgin Suicides, August: Osage County, Heavenly Creatures, Lady Bird, Ghost World, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Little Children, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Doubt, Psycho, Being John Malkovich, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Titanic (sue me), E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, Little Miss Sunshine, The Help, Donnie Darko, No Country for Old Men, Fargo (def my favorite Coen bros. movie), Room, Jurassic Park, Requiem for a Dream, American Beauty, Fight Club, Pulp Fiction, The Sixth Sense, The Voices, The Silence of the Lambs, The Shining, The Hills Have Eyes (2006), The Exorcist, The Devil's Rejects, Se7en, Saw, Rosemary's Baby, Poltergeist, Panic Room, One Hour Photo, Misery, Let the Right One In, Jaws, Hard Candy, Halloween (1978), Ginger Snaps, Funny Games (1997), Carrie (1976), Blue Velvet, The Blair Witch Project, Mean Creek, Precious, Bound, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand Black Christmas (1974)

#favorite movies

2 notes · View notes

jlf23tumble · 4 years

Text

Top 10 Niche Interests

Fixations? Obsessions? This is incredibly hard because I have wayyyy too many niche interests, so instead of stressing about it, I tried to channel the 10 things that immediately speak to me and maybe aren't so obvious from what I post here, like how much I'm obsessed with wigs, doll furniture, incredibly specific blogs, all forms of clothing with pockets, swimming pools, whimsical bus stops, over-the-top bathrooms, etc. etc Instead, I opted for some specifics that feel a little more evergreen and long tailed, like, so LIFE-long tailed that it's tough to nail down when or how they became part of the national psyche. I thank @alienfuckeronmain for the initial tag, and I'm tagging her AGAIN for round two because I know she has a billion additional niche things, and she'll post them, and I'll scream because it'll trigger five other things I neglected to post here, and I'll probably post my own round two, arggggh, insert aggressive sighing. Anyway, I tag ANYONE who wants to do it, just tag me so I can see!

1. Indoor Trees

I have no idea why this concept PULLS so hard because houseplants are kind of meh to me, but you want to plant an entire-ass TREE indoors, in the place where you live? Me, too, and I'd add a conversation pit plus a combo gold/red bathroom, among other things, and, bam, we're in my imaginary dream home, which I have literally, constantly ALWAYS mentally constructed from the time I was about six or so. (If you're curious, it has multiple themed rooms, and the closest I've seen to it recently is the outstanding Dita von Teese AD feature, but Amy Sedaris’s apartment comes close, too). There are two (2) 1960s houses in Long Beach with magnificent indoor trees, but I can't find them online, so have this modern interpretation and cry with me about how I can't visit the multi-story fake tree inside Clifton's Cafeteria for a good long while:

2. Conventions of Fans of Any Kind

One thing that I don't think I'll ever lose is how much I *love* people who are fans of SOMETHING, people who have a passion and create something about it or cosplay it or simply gather to celebrate it and connect to other people through it. The Internet provides in all kinds of ways, but I'm talking specifically about IRL conventions and the way my heart pitter pats when I first walk in those doors, SWOON! And it doesn’t matter how big the convention is or how random, I've been to smaller events like CatCon and the My Little Pony convention all the way up to biggies like WonderCon and Comic Con, and I have yet to be disappointed. I might know jack shit about what I'm walking into, but I want to see the merch, hear about the panels, and check out the people who are fucking PUMPED to be there. Sadly, I think it's gonna be a lonnnnng time until these come back, but I can live vicariously through my old photos, sigh:

3. Dutch Wax Fabrics and African Fashion

I'm not the snazziest of dressers, but textiles, colors, and patterns have been an obsession that has soothed my visual soul for as long as I can literally remember. Wax fabric marries all three of those touchpoints, plus throws in a healthy dose of style, and I count myself lucky to have seen two big exhibits on the subject (this was one of them), oh, how I wish there were more! For sure, there's a fucked up underlying colonial/imperialist history here, but there's also humor and color and vibrancy, a reclamation of sorts, and multiple levels of fashion that take my breath away. I cannot do the different patterns justice at all, but the fan motif is one of my faves:

4. Hearst Castle vs. Madonna inn

These two fall into my #home tag because they're where I'm from, and they speak to me as equally sublime and ridiculous, camp and kitsch writ large and small, different (yet similar!) versions of Xanadu that two rich white men built as shrines to their own personal "taste." And the irony is that a lot of people shit on Alex Madonna for being tacky (the Madonna Inn is...uh, something else), yet praise WR Hearst for all the high-class art and architecture, most of which is fully lifted from desperate churches between and after world and yet they're both more or less the same concept (lodging for weary travelers, self-aggrandizement, questionable taste-mixing). Hearst Castle edges out slightly for me because it's bigger and has spectacular scenery and history, plus it gives me doses of LA noir thanks to the way Hearst killed a guy in a jealous Charlie Chaplin-related rage and Hedda Hopper covered it up, all kinds of old Hollywood shenanigans happened up there, etc. But I'm low-key an expert on both houses of the holy, I'm OBSESSED with both, and we can leave it at that. I mean, come on:

5. Snow Globes

I had to cull my personal collection slightly just to fit it all on the dedicated shelf in my bathroom, and I seriously need to refill all the water lines, but nothing beats a snow globe in terms of memorable souvenir, especially when you put it in a bathroom. The majesty!!! The jewel of my collection is the one from Sherwood Forest because WHY NOT celebrate a historic place and moment in the basic way?? He robbed from the rich to give to the poor, and the gift shop about 100 feet from the tree he hid in does the same! The circle of life! The irony of all the watermarks on this blessed image...protect:

6. Highly Specific Museums

Look, we can all agree that the more venerated museums in the world are a form of garbage in terms of what they represent, what they've done, and who runs them, but I'm here for the museums that collect and celebrate things that tend to get overlooked. There are too many to list that I love that are still thriving, so I'm going to say goodbye to four recently departed faves. RIP to the Pez museum, I'm so glad I saw you and purchased your stale candy souvenirs. RIP to the museum of terrible food, you were a pop up when Phoenix and I saw you, and I will forever think about the worker describing people literally vomiting during their visits. RIP to the currywurst museum in Berlin, I've had currywurst exactly once and it was not for me, but I respect the Journey you took me on, including obscure east German TV shows that helped make you so popular (??). Finally, RIP to the velvet painting museum, there's no way to mince words, the person who owned you was crazy AS FUCK and had zero clue how to run a business, but I'm so glad I saw you multiple times and purchased my own velvet treasure (not this exact one, but remarkably similar):

7. Liminal Spaces: Grocery Store Edition

Confession time for those who don't know me all that well, I'm a big time voyeur, and nothing fills my heart with joy like a walk at 7 or 8 pm, the witching hour when people haven't pulled the curtains, and I can scope out their decorations/furnishings without it being "weird." Another confession is how much I unabashedly adore grocery stores in other countries and will spend at least an hour wandering aisle by aisle, falling in love with how much everything is different yet completely the same:

8. Agatha Christie Novels:

As a child, I was a fairly compliant reader--I had to read something for school? Okay! For my mom? Sounds good! But the books that sparked the initial fire for me to read something purely for myself were second-hand (probably fourth- or fifth-hand, judging by cover art) Agatha Christie short story anthologies, which were the gateway drug to full Agatha Christie novels, then other mystery novels, and so on. But getting back to Agatha, I obviously loved all the stories, but every decade spawned incredibly good cover art (like, exceptionally good), and this particular artist's are right up near the top for me (I go back and forth on a lot of the '50s and '60s ones):

9. Scopitones

I link my obsession with scopitones both to my love of music videos in general and a shop in Austin, TX, that sold DVD compilations of them in particular, but either way, they're underappreciated and kitschy all in one! Francoise Hardy and the rest of the ye-ye's are my forever girls for this medium, but seemingly every country cranked them out, both actual set videos and "live" performances? If you don't know what they are, scopitones were machines that played music videos in French cafes in the '60s (??), so it was sort of your proto-MTV way to see your faves sing and dance. Oh, Francoise...so moderne!!

10. Cover Songs

I have so much patience and love for cover songs of any stripe, the more genre-bending and/or surprising, the better! My only minor beef is the trend in slooooooooowing down songs to make a point, but even those ones have a special place in my heart if they're effective. Live Lounge feeds my hunger the best, but my meta fave for representing this concept is Pulp's Bad Cover Version, which was already lyrically INSPIRED, a song about bad cover versions in terms of relationships, but then they did a video that was a visual "bad" cover version, with actors lip synching over an audio "bad" cover version, and all of it just worked? The cover for the single is someone in the band as a boy, making his own bad cover version of a Bowie album cover, it's meta meta meta, and I love love love, here's the video, if you're curious. In the more sublime cover category, I'm absolutely addicted to all of Orville Peck's covers, I truly hope he officially releases them sometime soon, but I wholeheartedly support any artist who does it:

#tag games #niche interests #god i have a few

15 notes · View notes

fics-not-tragedies · 5 years

Text

Read a book (or two)

@writeawaymrwick’s amazement by the fact that I work in a bookstore made me write it. All of the books’ titles I mentioned in it are real ones and I can absolutely recommend all of them.

SUMMARY: You work in a bookstore and one time a handsome stranger stops by it to look for new read. Words: 1465; Warnings: none;

Readers tag list:

@spookier-than-u; @sparrowsparrow; @oreofenyloetyloamina; @mikaneonox; @derangedcupcake; @geostarr; @catsmieow; @wickedlangdon; @bodhi-black; @bugalouie; @onebatch--twobatch; @fandom-lover-4; @drunkonyellow; @semtempoirmaoo; @spadesandaces2342; @harrisongslimited; @a–1–1–3; @hhighkey; @lunilate; @i-cant-remember-my-old-login; @sgt-morgan; @coloursunlimited; @childrenofthegun; @weminiaturestrawberry; @silverlambcaptain;

It was late in the afternoon, you shift was finally coming to an end. You were absolutely tired now, the only thing on your mind was to go home and have a relaxing bath. You've already swept the floors, fixed the books on their shelves and now you were sitting in front of your computer, checking out few titled from the upcoming books category. Hands on the clock hung on the opposite wall were moving too slowly. You really wanted to go home already, but there was still an hour left.

Then out of sudden the small bell that was hang above the door jingled and you turned your head to look who just entered the bookstore.

His dark hair was flowing in every direction, which was caused by the wind howling outside. There was some scruff on his handsome face along with few bruises that looked fresh and it felt like he got them on his way here.

The doors closed behind him and he took few steps inside then stopped to fix his messy hair smoothing it out with his hands.

“Good afternoon” he said politely with a small smile on his face, bowing in your direction. You said hi and sent him one of your cutest smile you had reserved for the customers who put the effort to say anything when they entered the place. He held his gaze on you for few more seconds more, then moved further inside.

There was something dark, yet quite mysterious about him. He was much taller than you, the fitted suit was accenting his broad shoulders and you couldn’t help but stare at him browsing the books.

He was circling the store for a good half an hour, so you swallowed the lump that has formed in your throat and slowly walked over to him, “Hello, I’m sorry for interrupting, but you look like you need some help” you smiled a little and stood next to him. He turned to you, putting the book he was holding back to its place on the shelf. You curiously looked at its title, only to find out that it was one of the novels Bukowski’s wrote, “Ah yes, I am a fan of Bukowski” he raised his eyebrow a little, so you decided to continue, “He was an alcoholic, but he had a gift. At least in my opinion” you added quickly before reaching to the shelf and taking one book from it, “His love poems are excellent.”

He scanned your figure with his eyes before taking the book out of your hand and flicked through few pages, reading the small black letter printed on the white paper, “If you’re not a fan of poems his fiction ones are great as well,” you handed him another one, “‘Pulp’ is bizarre, but it won my heart.”

“Is there anything else you could recommend me?” he finally spoke, holding those two books in his hands. His gaze was glued to your face and it seemed like he was really listening to everything you said about those two first books from Bukowski.

“Yes sure, follow me!” you really wanted to show him the world of great authors. He walked after you obediently, following every step you take, “I feel... you like things that aren’t obvious, so how about ‘Memories of my melancholy whores’? Gabriel García Márquez is just ahhh… can’t really find the right words to say how I am amazed by his writing skills. I know how the title sounds,” you handed him the slim book with purple cover and he looked at it, opening it at some random page, reading few words from the inside, “but it’s not what it seems.”

You flinched a little before handing him another title, “I love reading true stories as well, so for you I have this one. It’s ‘Gomorra’ a non-fiction one about Italian mob.”

“Oh, I feel like I had enough of it” he tiny giggle left his throat and you put the book back into its spot.

Then you moved to another shelf and handed him a white book, with the word ‘Terror’ sprawled across the front cover, “It’s a drama and yes, I know how people feel about drama these days, but it’s a one with modern ethical dilemma. Its author is a lawyer, a real specialists when it comes to crime cases.”

He was carefully listening to every word you've said, nodding from time to time. The books were really your world and you could talk about them for hours. He was really into your monologue, you could say that by the look he had into his eyes. They were as lit up as yours are whenever you talk about your beloved authors. You left him with all of the titles you've handed him, so he could pick the one he wanted to read and you moved away to your computer.

Staring at him from the distance you saw how he carefully handled the books, flicking through them, reading a few pages and putting them away. You smiled like a fool to your own self thinking how it would be nice if he’d ever come back here needing your help to choose something new to read.

“I think I’ll take them all” he walked over to your counter placing all of the books you handed him onto it.

“Really hard choice, isn't it?” he laughed a little, “Well I wouldn't recommend you anything I haven’t fell in love with, so don’t worry. They all are great, really” you smiled at him and he held your gaze. The corners of his mouth slowly curled and he returned your gesture. The man was really handsome with his bruised face and hair slicked back, so you couldn't help but stare at him a little more than you should.

He cleared his throat awkwardly and you looked back to your computer’s screen. Without saying anything you scanned the bar-codes from his new readings and looked at him again, saying the amount he had to pay.

“So little money for so many books?” he asked you, before reaching inside of his jacket and taking the wallet out of his pocket.

“I gave you a discount” you smiled a little, trying to hide the fact that your cheeks were burning and your palms got sweaty.

“A discount, but why?” handing you the money he brushed his hand over yours and you shivered a little. He smiled again, taking the books packed into a paper bag from your hands along with the change.

“I thought you were worth the discount since you took everything I recommended you…”

“I loved listening to you describing everything with such a passion… I even got the ‘Gomorra’ one” he reached inside the bag and got out the book showing it to you with a smile on his face.

You laughed, hiding your face in your hands, knowing you were much redder now.

“Um... I-I know how it sounds...” he started, grabbing the bag with his hand, hiding the wallet inside his jacket, “But perhaps you’d say ‘yes’ to some coffee and cake after your shift ends?” he was blushing too, his cheeks colored like a ripe tomato, “I would like to listen to you talking about more books… and other things as well a little more, if you don’t mind of course” you giggled and he looked at you slightly confused, his eyebrows raised, eyes big.

“I finished my shift almost an hour ago. And I haven’t told you that I’m closing, because I didn't wanted you to leave empty handed. Give me five minutes, I need to grab my things and I’m really loving the idea of having a coffee and a cake with you” he smiled widely.

“Even though you don’t know my name?”

“And you don’t know mine either” you turned your computer off and walked from behind the counter. He gently grabbed your hand and leaned in to kiss it.

“Jonathan” he said softly, “Or just… John” he added quickly, gently grazing the skin on your hand with his lips again. You told him your name and his eyes lit up, smile never leaving his face, “I’ll wait for you outside. Be sure to lock everything properly,” you laughed a little watching him leave the bookstore, closing the doors, then giving you a small wave looking at you through the window. You waved back then disappeared in the back office, where you grabbed your purse, turned the lights off and headed to the exit just like he did.

He was waiting for you patiently, his eyes glued to you as you were closing the doors, turning the keys in the locks.

The evening was about to start fantastic, with a tall, dark and handsome man right by your side.

#Read a book (or two)#Keanu Reeves #keanu reeves imagine #keanu reeves fanfic #keanu reeves fic #keanu reeves fanfiction #keanu reeves oneshot #John Wick #john wick fanfiction #john wick fanfic #john wick fic #john wick imagine #john wick oneshot #john wick chapter 2 #John Wick Chapter 3 #kr:oneshot

150 notes · View notes

elucubrare · 5 years

Note

Ooh can you recommend some great (and by great I mean trashy) pulp sci-fi novels to use that bingo card with? 💗

Okay, so, the problem is at least twofold:

1. the sort of thing I like them in is the really early stuff, pre-1950, and 1a) it's very bad on all sorts of technical levels -- I find the bad prose and simplistic but somehow still incoherent plots very charming, in the right mood, but you definitely have to turn a lot of your brain off & 1b) there is so much casual sexism (more than racism, but mostly because other races just don't exist). I can get over it, but it's a high bar & I don't want to ask other people to, at least not unwarned.

2. it's honestly better in stories.

That said, my a-fine-aged-sff shelf on goodreads goes to about the '80s, but has a bunch of stuff that absolutely fits into these tropes.

Leigh Brackett is actually good;

C.L. Moore is...well, less good, but Jirel of Joiry is a fun heroic fantasy heroine;

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, starting with Swords and Deviltry, is a good series, but stop as soon as you get bored -- there's definitely a pattern;

I -- to show you how little you should trust my taste -- like Elric a lot, but as above, stop when you're tired of the pattern (and note: Elric, as a sickly wizard-king who draws his strength from his magic soul-eating sword, is actually a subversion of early heroic fantasy tropes, but has become so iconic that he's his own trope);

Lin Carter is actively bad, but Kellory the Warlock is bad in a fun way, for me at least -- Kellory is the Last Of His Tribe; his name literally means "vengeance," which I hope gives the flavor of it;

I really and legitimately enjoyed Edmond Hamilton's Starwolf, which is better than anything called Starwolf has a right to be;

H. Beam Piper's Paratime is completely ridiculous -- it's about time cops protecting the One True Timeline, so of course half of it is quasi-medieval;

and Helen S. Wright's A Matter of Oaths is from 1990, but it absolutely uses these tropes and is delightful, if not entirely successful.

Also, a lot of the early pulp magazines are online -- mysteriously, no one ever renewed the copyright on the masterpieces in Amazing Stories, so they're on Project Gutenberg.

#i'm also trying to read one weekly on amazed-all-right #book recs #anonymous

336 notes · View notes

missmeikakuna · 4 years

Text

Vocaloid fanfic- The Librarian and the Maybe-Bisexual Bookworm Ch. 3

This is a fanfic I wrote for Vocaloid Amino for a previous Pride Month and thought I’d post it here. Rated: T Fandom: Vocaloid Relationship: Yukari x IA Relationship Type: F/F Description: Yukari is a hardworking student who manages to balance her studies with her relationship with a boy. Things start to change when she meets her high school’s young, beautiful new librarian IA. Yukari asks her to help her find a lesbian-themed novel like one she’s read and all goes well until she realises she might be more like the characters in those novels than she thought.

Chapter Three: Confessing to someone is like telling them about a book that’s your guilty pleasure

IA let go abruptly. “I’m sorry. That was inappropriate of me.”

Yukari croaked, “It’s okay.” She felt as if her skin was on fire. She took a few deep breaths and wiped her tears away.

IA tapped her fingers rapidly against the steering wheel. She looked down at her lap with drooping eyes and sighed.

“Are you okay?” Yukari asked.

IA’s eyes grew and she lifted her head, putting on a smile.

“Of course I am. You’re here, aren’t you?”

This comment sent the warmth from Yukari’s skin to her heart. She smiled and turned her head, covering her mouth.

IA started the car and continued driving as if nothing had happened. Yukari had gotten used to the speed at which she drove by now, but she remained on the lookout for speed limit signs and reminded IA of them whenever they passed one. IA slowed down a bit.

“Please don’t be upset when I ask this, but why do you drive so quickly?” Yukari asked.

IA chuckled. “I don’t know. I’m just always so excited to get to a different place that it kind of takes over me. If you weren’t here to bring me back to my senses, I don’t know what I’d do.”

Yukari’s smile grew bigger.

At the apartment, IA wiggled her fingers for a while before taking a book off her shelf.

She immediately returned it to the shelf. Then she took it out again.

“Okay, this one’s… Don’t judge me.”

She handed it to Yukari while turning her head with her closed eyes scrunched up.

Yukari gulped. It was a pulp novel that appeared to be translated into Japanese. The cover had two women in lingerie, one brunette lying on a bed and the other, blonde, sitting behind her with a mischievous expression. In the corner of the room they were in was a table with a coat and a magnifying glass on it.

IA’s cheeks turned red. “Don’t get the wrong idea! It’s more than just love scenes. I wouldn’t show it to you if it was just that since, you know, that would be kind of weird. It’s a really intriguing mystery and has an interesting romance between the detective…” She pointed to the brunette. “... and the femme fatale she suspects is the murderer.” She moved her finger to the blonde. “It’s surprisingly good for a pulp novel, but the cover makes it a bit of a guilty pleasure. It has some more mature scenes but they’re not that often.”

Yukari’s chest began to hurt from her heart pounding too hard. She nodded and held the book against her chest.

“I’ll give it a go. I’m eighteen, so I think I can handle it.”

“Good.” IA’s eyebrows were furrowed as if she felt guilty about something. “If you feel uncomfortable reading it, you’re not obligated to read the rest. You can just return it to me and we can forget I ever lent it to you.”

“I said it’s fine.”

The two fell silent, just standing there and looking away from each other.

IA gulped loudly. “Okay. I hope you enjoy reading it.”

Yukari nodded and bowed before leaving the apartment.

As she headed home she passed Roro’s house and frowned. Her own eyebrows furrowed with guilt, but she continued walking.

When she finally made it home, she had dinner with her family. After that, she put her pyjamas on, lied down in bed and stared at her ceiling. One question tugged at her mind.

‘Would it be wrong for her to date me?’

There was no age issue, at least in terms of the law, as IA was twenty-two and she was eighteen, but Yukari was still a student at the school IA worked at. Then again, it wasn’t like IA was her teacher or anything like that.

She remembered what IA said.

“That was inappropriate of me.”

Yukari sighed as Roro’s face popped into her head. Was that breakup all for nothing?

She shook her head. He wouldn’t deserve to be led on like that.

She opened the book and began reading it. Some parts of the novel were awkwardly worded, possibly as a result of a bad translation, but the mystery was as engaging as IA said it would be.

When Yukari made it to the first love scene, her entire body went hot. Clunky wording aside, the scene was undeniably attractive to her, and she pictured IA as the blonde girl on the cover as she read the scene. Eventually, she dropped the book and fantasised on her own, the scenario in her mind getting more and more explicit.

When she was done fantasising, she continued reading until Roro’s frightened face entered her mind, convincing her to do homework. After that, she read a bit more until she went to sleep, which was around 11 or 12. It took around half an hour for her to fully fall asleep as the mystery of the novel consumed her mind.

As soon as she woke up, she read some more before her mother yelled at her to have breakfast and go to school.

She shoved the book in her school bag and did as her mother said. During class she kept getting distracted, trying to piece together the clues presented in the novel. She stared at Roro in the seat next to her. He looked back at her and frowned before turning his head and murmuring something she couldn’t hear. She felt her heart sink.

When lunch started, she took her food with her to the library, saw the ‘no food’ sign and ran outside. She sat under a bridge from the classrooms to the club rooms and opened the book.

She managed to get near the end. She was so close, and the answer to the mystery was only a few pages away-

And then a teacher walked up to her. He was tall and had eyebrows so thick it felt as if he could crush someone with them. She hid the book behind her back and the teacher scowled at her.

“Show me what you’ve got.”

Yukari groaned but complied, her hands shaking as she held the book up. The teacher raised an eyebrow.

“Come with me to the Principal’s office.”

“I-It’s not what you think! It’s a mystery novel!”

“Nice try.”

Yukari stood up, trying her best not to cry. She followed him to the Principal’s office, which was inhabited by a short man with a toupee. The teacher handed him the book and the Principal’s eyebrows jumped through the roof. Yukari lowered her head and bit her lip.

“This is… I’ve never seen a girl bring this sort of material to school before. I’m going to have to call your parents.”

Yukari cried, “They don’t know! Please don’t tell them!”

The Principal shook his head. “This is very concerning. Now, where did you get this book?”

“That’s…” IA’s pearly white smile jumped into her mind. “I bought it.”

“And you brought this book here because…”

Yukari turned her head and scrunched up her eyes.

“I wanted to get answers to the mystery in the book. It’s a murder mystery. Look at the magnifying glass on the cover.”

The Principal stared at the cover, trying to keep himself from smiling.

“I’ll have to confiscate this.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t think a girl like you should be reading something like this.”

“But… please…. I’m really sorry. I won’t bring it in again.”

“Well, since this is your first offence, I guess I can give it back at the end of the week.” He ran his thumb against the cover. “Yes, a week should do. You’ll have learnt your lesson by then. I’m still going to have to call your parents. Come here after school for a meeting. And if you try to leave school before then, I think this book will look nice on my shelf.”

Yukari bowed and left. She headed to the library, finishing her food on the way.

“IA, can I talk to you about the book?”

IA nodded, leading her to the librarian’s office. Yukari took a deep breath and bowed again.

“I’m really sorry.” She explained what happened.

IA’s eyebrows were furrowed as she rubbed the back of her neck.

“I… I see. The one who should really be sorry is me. Giving you that book… how inappropriate of me. Should I… stop giving you these books? I went too far. I knew this was a bad idea.” Yukari noticed that there were bags under IA’s eyes.

Yukari raised a trembling hand up to IA’s cheek.

“It’s okay. I… I don’t want to end the time we’ve spent together. I do have something to tell you, though. Hopefully it won’t end… whatever it is we have.”

IA turned away and took a book off the shelf, her breaths ragged.

“I know what you’re going to say.” She and Yukari spoke at the same time. “You’re straight and feel weirded out by me giving you these books.”

“I like you. Could we maybe, I don’t know, go out for coffee sometime?”

IA dropped the book and whipped her head around.

“Could you… repeat that?”

Yukari’s cheeks went pink. “Well, I like you. You know that breakup with Roro? It was because I liked you more. You kind of made realise that I’m bisexual. I was thinking… maybe we could go out somewhere. I get it if you don’t want to! You probably want to keep your job. But we could keep it a secret if you want. But, you know, if you don’t want to… that’s cool… I’ll act cool as a cucumber. Cool as ice. Cool as… What am I saying?”

IA grinned and giggled, her eyes welling up with tears. She wrapped her arms around Yukari and started to cry on her shoulder.

“Thank you. Thank you so much!”

Yukari patted her head before stroking her hair.

“I-Is that a yes?”

“It has to be secret, though. Are you sure you want to worry about keeping secrets?”

Yukari chuckled. “So long as I don’t do anything as stupid as bringing a dirty book to school, I’ll be fine. By the way, please don’t spoil the ending. I didn’t get to finish it.” She released a short gasp. “Wait, can I tell Roro if he starts talking to me again? He already knows I like you and I know he won’t tell anyone.”

IA frowned and let go. “I… I guess. No one else, though. Not even your parents.”

Yukari eyes widened. “Oh god, my parents. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow since my parents are probably going to drag me home after this meeting. Thanks for reminding me.” Both her body and her voice shuddered as she shook her head like a dog trying to rid its fur of water after a bath.

IA took several books off the shelf and made a pile of them, giving them to Yukari, who stared at her with one eyebrow higher than the other.

IA winked. “We have to keep this a secret, right? Don’t want to arouse suspicion around me taking you to my office.”

Yukari nodded with a smile. She turned towards the door and breathed slowly. She took a few moments to appreciate the moment she shared with IA before having to deal with her parents. For a few more seconds it was just her and the ghostlike librarian who became her girlfriend.

#VOCALOID #fanfiction #yuzuki yukari #IA #fanfic #yukari x ia #ia x yukari #romance #bisexual #drama #lesbian #GL #yuri #story #The Librarian and the Maybe Bisexual Bookworm

1 note · View note

xhxhxhx · 5 years

Photo

I removed some books today.

I think of myself as a minimalist, but that doesn’t happen to be true. I have acquired more books than I will ever read. They still sit, stacked and unreachable, in piles by the walls, two dozen books tall and sometimes two books deep.

I don’t think I know where they all came from. I think more came from online than from any physical store. I bought them from Abebooks, the sales search platform that Amazon owns now. Abebooks tell you the names of the sellers, but they seem unconnected to any real place.

From Better World Books. From Thrift Books and Bookbarn. From Silver Arch Books, Motor City Books, Free State Books, Sierra Nevada Books, Yankee Clipper Books, and the Atlanta Book Company. From Green Earth Books and Housing Works Books. From Goldstone Books and Powell’s Books and Kennys Bookshop and Art Galleries. From Satellite Books and the Orchard Bookshop. From Blue Cloud Books and Hippo Books and Wonder Book.

They’re from all over, from places you’ve never been, places you’ll never be. They’re names on a box. But then there are the books from more intimate places, intimately connected

From library’s old bookstore, which sold paperbacks for fifty cents, hardcovers for a dollar. From the basement of the old independent bookstore down on Front Street, where they sold remaindered and overstocked books marked down with red-orange tape. From the thrift store across the street, which charged too much.

From the Chapters at the mall in your hometown, or the Chapters and Indigo in the places you’ve been to, from the shelves of marked-down items where you looked for bargains, for the books you knew you should read, and all the books you never would. Places where you could drink sweet cream and coffee and pretend to read.

From the Borders in Syracuse, where you idled while the family went to the fair, where they always said they were going to build the largest mall in America, but never did. There was another Borders in South Florida, where they were stripping fixtures from the walls because the books had not sold, and so the Borders had to be. They still have bookstores. I’m not sure what they sell now. Postcards, I think.

The books still in my room had postcards from people I will never know, dedications to people I will never see, business cards from people who have moved on to other work. But their spines are unbroken, their pages unmarked. I guess I wanted them that way. I bought them like that.

I sometimes worried they would break through the floor. I would wake up to the collapse of everything I have ever owned as I plummeted a few short feet to my death. I guess it would probably take longer than that. I would have to wait for them to crush me. That mass of books would fall on me, blotting out the light. Crushed beneath nearly everything I have ever owned.

That’s what happened to the clerk Toshiko Sasaki in John Hershey’s Hiroshima, who was seated at her desk on August 6, 1945, in front of a couple of bookcases from the factor library:

Everything fell, and Miss Sasaki lost consciousness. The ceiling dropped suddenly and the wooden floor above collapsed in splinters and the people up there came down and the roof above them gave way; but principally and first of all, the bookcases right behind her swooped forward and the contents threw her down, with her left leg horribly twisted and breaking underneath her. There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.

Miss Sasaki made out alright, although not so well as to not ask the question “If your God is so good and kind, how can he let people suffer like this?” But then, I have more books than she did.

I removed some books today. I still have more I want to remove. I just don’t have the boxes for them. I took the boxes I did have in the back of my car to a mass-market thrift store, where they will end up on the shelves by the leather jackets.

Perhaps they will end on some other shelf, like a postcard from somewhere unknown, in someone else’s memory. But I don’t think they will. I don’t think they’ll sell. There aren’t enough people here who spend money pretending to read.

I don’t know what will happen to them. I suppose they will pulp them. Or perhaps they will end in a landfill, crushed beneath their own weight, suffocating beneath the earth we have made for them until life reclaims them.

I wrote out a partial list of the books I threw out. I don’t know what it says about me. There’s a double significance here: These are books I bought, for some amount of money, but these are also books I am throwing away, because I asked the question the woman told me to ask, which was whether they sparked joy, and I answered no.

Those books in the photo are the books that have not yet been thrown away. Here, below the fold, are the books that have:

Judith Fitzgerald’s Sarah McLachlan: Building a Mystery

Mordecai Richler’s Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!

Jonathan Coe’s The Rotter’s Club

Misha Glenny’s McMafia

Joinville and Villehardouin’s Chronicles of the Crusades

Michael Ignatieff’s The Lesser Evil

Russell Dalton’s Citizen Politics in Western Democracies: Public Opinion and Political Parties in the United States, Great Britain, West Germany, and France

Richard Finn’s Winners in Peace: MacArthur, Yoshida, and Postwar Japan

Ramachandra Guha’s India After Gandhi

Fox Butterfield’s China: Alive in the Bitter Sea

Anthony Sampson’s The Changing Anatomy of Britain

Masanori Hashimoto’s The Japanese Labor Market in a Comparative Perspective with the United States

Donald Keene’s Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era: Poetry, Drama, Criticism

Andrei Shleifer’s Without a Map: Political Tactics and Economic Reform in Russia

Peter Newman’s The Secret Mulroney Tapes

Nicholas Negroponte’s Being Digital

Lesley Downer’s The Brothers: The Hidden World of Japan’s Richest Family

Harold Vogel’s Entertainment Industry Economics

Stephen Goldsmith and William D. Eggers’s Governing by Network: The New Shape of the Public Sector

Donald Harman Akenson, Saint Saul: A Skeleton Key to the Historical Jesus

Philip Ziegler’s King Edward VIII

David Wessel’s In FED We Trust

Robert Dallek’s Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961--1973

David Halberstam’s The Reckoning

David Bell’s The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It

Kevin Phillips’s The Cousins’ Wars

Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence

Michael Oren’s Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Lawrence McDonald’s A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers

Richard Posner’s The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy

William Chester Jordan’s Europe in the High Middle Ages

William Cohan’s House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street

Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

Linda Lear’s Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature

Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals

Allan Brandt’s The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America

Garry Wills’s Head and Heart: American Christianities

Sarah Bradford’s Elizabeth: A Biography of Britain’s Queen

Andrew Gordon’s The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan: Heavy Industry, 1853--1955

John Ardagh’s France in the New Century: Portrait of a Changing Society

Bob Woodward’s The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House

John Julius Norwich’s Byzantium: The Early Centuries

Taylor Branch’s Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963--65

Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker

Tim Blanning’s The Pursuit of Glory: Europe, 1648--1815

Robert Fagles’s translation of Virgil’s The Aeneid

Karl Popper’s The Poverty of Historicism

P. D. Smith’s Doomsday Men: The Real Dr. Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon

Richard Rhodes’s Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race

Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street Years

Alistair Horne’s Harold Macmillan, 1957--1986

Taylor Branch’s The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President

Ian Kershaw’s Hitler, 1936--1945: Nemesis

David Grossman’s To the End of the Land

Sean Wilentz’s The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln

Philipp Blom’s The Vertigo Years: Europe, 1900--1914

Jacob M. Schlesinger’s Shadow Shoguns: The Rise and Fall of Japan’s Postwar Political Machine

Peter Jenkins’s Mrs. Thatcher’s Revolution: The Ending of the Socialist Era

Martin Lawrence’s Iron Man: The Defiant Reign of Jean Chrétien

Marin Lawrence’s Chrétien: The Will to Win

Alastair Campbell’s The Blair Years

Tony Blair’s A Journey

David Kennedy’s Don’t Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America

Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End

Kate McCafferty’s Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl

Martin Wolf’s Why Globalization Works

Charles Fishman’s The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works -- and How It’s Transforming the American Economy

William Easterly’s The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good

Karel van Wolferen’s The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation

Jeffrey Sachs’s The End of Poverty: How We Can Make It Happen in Our Lifetime

39 notes · View notes

brightisthemalice-blog · 4 years

Text

HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT (2015)

I really started going nuts about film in '94. It was mostly three things: PULP FICTION, which I saw seven times in the theater; a cinema appreciation class at my community college, which introduced me to world cinema; & the HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT book.

I had a gas guzzling 1971 Chevy pickup and it was a good 30-40 minute drive to the Green River Community College campus. And since I didn't really date or have a social life (this is how you end up a writer), I'd spend any free time I had between classes in the college library. This was before I really got obsessed with poetry, so I spent most of my library time just sorta mowing my way down the cinema shelf. Orson Welles was my hero at this time, so I'd read anything I could find on him. I tried reading Eisenstein's writings on montage. But I mostly read and reread HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT. So it was a blast to watch Kent Jones' documentary on the book and the odd couple pairing behind it. What I really dug was how much the doc -- and talking heads like Wes Anderson -- fetishized the book itself. Me too, Wes! I reread parts of HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT probably every year. Not as some kind of self-assigned ritual. More likely, as I get deeper into my writing career and begin slouching my way into middle age, I think I can't help wanting to re-access that initial spark. The doc does a pretty fantastic job of condensing the magic of the book and the auteurist conversations within. It also presents wonderfully restored clips from both men's fims, where Hitchcock's majestic use of color and composition really comes blaring through. But what's also incredibly fascinating is seeing the various assembled directors and seeing how they relate to Hitchcock's work. Peter Bogdanovich is his familiar, oddly lovable namedropping self ("As Hitch once told me..."). Wes Anderson is a bit alien, but modest & insightful. For me, though, the really interesting thing about the doc is implicit debate between David Fincher and Martin Scorsese on how to regard Hitchcock. I come to this debate prejudiced: I straight-up idolize Scorsese, while I'm much colder on Fincher than most people are. So I couldn't help but be amused to see Fincher in his sort of smirky, self-satisfied manner discuss Hitchcock mostly as a collection of techniques and perversions. And for him to be seemingly bemused by the idea that anyone would search for something deeper. And then to see Scorsese, in his weary bardic elder openness, sort of sigh and say "yeah, people talk about the sexual obsessions, and that's obvious and easy, but what makes Hitchcock interesting as an artist is how he handles loss." And in the distance between the reactions, I think you can see why Scorsese (like Hitchcock) is a great, immortal artist whose body of work contains mysteries while Fincher is an ace technician who occasionally makes a killer movie when the script is right.

#alfred hitchcock #francois truffaut #martin scorsese #david fincher #hitchcock truffaut

1 note · View note

hayira · 4 years

Text

2-1-20

I fought my codependency and hurtfulness and rage and I spat on it and kicked it into the corner. I spent the next few weeks living a very sober and mostly mild version of diluted bliss, but occasionally I would visit the chewed up remains of my own evil and I'd laugh at it and lean down and go I'm so better than you.    I started to fear it. I would sit at home in my own bed and in my own mind and I would cower in the corner because I knew it was standing on the other side of my door. I tried to get in my car and drive away from it, far away. I started to dread so incessantly the day that it would get back up and find me and beat me into a pulp for ever having abandoned it. I was so preoccupied with this, I didn't even notice that my hand had opened the door for it to come back into me.    I think I liked that it had no mystery. I think I like that it tells me flatly what it's going to do with me, and it does, and neither of us are ever surprised. I think I like that when it fills and surrounds me that it is so big there is no room for uncertainty.    Initially, I thought it was haunting me. I thought my habits were stalking me and watching me through my dirty boarded up windows but I now know this was wrong.    I beat up what I thought were the worst parts of myself and compacted them into a container and left them in a jar on the shelf and that's exactly where they stayed. They were not chasing me. I was not chasing me. No, I was returning to them. In the night, half asleep, I'd go back and I'd rattle the jar and open the lid and smell it.

#2020

1 note · View note

mysteryshelf · 6 years

Text

FRIDAY SF & FANTASY - Shift

Welcome to

THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF!

DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF by Silver Dagger Book Tours. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.

Shift by M.A. George Genre: YA Sci-fi Release Date: June 1st 2018 Summary: Seventeen-year-old Perry Teasdale is a dreamer. She’s not the kind of dreamer who waltzes through fields of wildflowers, twirling her skirts in a starry-eyed daze; or the kind who aspires to be the biggest rock star the world has ever known (not that she’d complain, if that accidentally happened). She’s the kind of dreamer who can’t get a decent night’s rest, because her sleep is flooded with scenes from other worlds—ones that seem as real as life itself. Mind-blowing dreams may sound like loads of fun, but when they start to bleed into Perry’s waking hours—confusing the line between dream and reality, and keeping her in a sleep-deprived fog no amount of caffeine can cure—Perry’s not exactly thrilled. Try as she might to shake the dreams from her mind, they keep gaining speed, growing ever more vivid and intense…until that hazy boundary between real and imaginary fades away, and Perry is forced to consider the impossible: Her dreams seem real, because they are. When disaster strikes, sending Perry’s newfound normalcy into a tailspin, she takes the only logical path left: a whirlwind tour of the multiverse, scouring an ever-growing assortment of alternate realities for the missing piece—the missing person—to put her life together again. Along the way, Perry enlists the help of an ancient wise woman (who may be a tad homicidal); a nerdy-in-all-the-right-ways mathematician (who knows all of Perry’s secrets, even before introducing himself); and a sword (because you can never go wrong with a sword). At times hilarious—at times heartbreaking—Shift is sure to be, well, one of those two things.

Buy Links:

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

“‘Tis hardly the time to turn meek, Your Ladyship.”

The voice is muffled—panting from a knight’s helmet—but the sneer is intact. Clearly he knows meek isn’t in my vocabulary, and he disapproves.

I’d give him a piece of my mind, if I had any clue who he is…and if he hadn’t just blocked a sword a few inches shy of connecting with my neck, burying the point of his battle ax in my assailant’s chainmail armpit.

I swallow. “Thank you.” Is that really the appropriate thing to say to someone using his armored foot to pry his weapon from a bleeding man’s ribcage?

The knight tips a curt bow of his plumed helmet to me. “At your service, Lady Perry.” Definitely a sneer there, although all I see through his visor is a pair of ice-blue eyes. Oddly familiar eyes.

He raises his ax, and Bleeding Man’s head somersaults from his shoulders, followed promptly by the emptying of my stomach. I lean on my sword to keep from swaying.

Wait…I have a sword?

The knight spares me a smug glare, and then the ax swings again. The next opponent’s mace thuds to the ground, along with the arm holding it.

My eyes flinch closed. This isn’t real. It can’t be.

Armless Man’s scream says otherwise.

“Perhaps His Majesty’s guard is no place for a maiden after all,” the knight says over his shoulder. Pompous bastard. He scans the forest clearing for more raiders, the sunrise peeking between snow caps to spotlight the dawn mist.

Oddly enough, I don’t look like a maiden. My armor is just as dented as his, my tunic bearing the same red crest with gold lions; and my sword looks like something forged by the elves of Rivendell. I half expect Viggo Mortensen to saunter out from the forest. I hope Viggo can bring me up to speed on what I’m doing surrounded by mountains and wilderness and half a dozen guys dressed in medieval armor, defending an unseen king against a band of thieves, Robin-Hood-style. An enormous carving of a woman seated on a throne towers from the cliff wall, an intricate crown resting behind her sharply-pointed ears.

I’ve definitely been reading too much Tolkien.

A battle cry roars from the forest shadows, snapping me back to attention. The dead men at our feet were just the first drops, and now comes the downpour. I stumble under Sir Sneer-a-Lot’s rough shove, as he puts himself between me and the building stream of men advancing on us, swarming from the tree line. An arrow dings my helmet, then two more clang off my body armor, and I try not to squeal like a pig. This isn’t just a random thieving raid…

“It’s an ambush!” The knight shoves me back harder, the sneer abandoned. “Get to His Majesty. Now!“

My legs jolt into action, the weight of my armor no match for pure adrenaline, and I don’t look back until I reach the tree cover on the opposite side of the clearing. The guards hold their line to buffer the enemy swarm, each taking on dozens of men. Still more are flooding in. I curse myself for fleeing like a coward, as though I belong in that guard line.

I run anyway.

I race between trees, calling out to whomever hides within, “Ambush!” I hear footsteps and shouts gaining behind me, and I tighten my grip on my sword as I push faster. “We’re under attack!”

The gallop of hooves drums ahead of me, and I skid to a halt, suddenly doubting whether whoever is hiding in the trees is on my side. I’m about to turn and take my chances facing the footsteps behind me, when the horse rounds a tree trunk into view. The rider is a woman, her red velvet dress embroidered with gold and rubies, a matching crown braided into her hair. Before I can blink, she raises a wooden bow, nocks the arrow, and aims past my head. At least, I hope she’s aiming at something other than my head.

My mouth falls open. “Nalya?”

Nalya, my brother’s girlfriend. The one who’s writing her thesis on particle physics, is an avid subscriber to Pottermore, and has been known to survive on cheese puffs and ketchup for days at a time. She is not, to my knowledge, an archer. Or royalty. I expect the dancing pink elephants will be entering stage left at any moment.

She fires three arrows past me before my slack jaw closes. I hear the thud of bodies hitting the pine-needle floor, and for the moment the pursuing footsteps are silenced. The echo of steel and agony from the clearing says more will be on the way.

Nalya gives me a quick nod, as four mounted knights swoop in to form a protective circle around her.

“‘Tis unsafe, Your Majesty,” one of the riders cautions. “Please let the guardsmen contain the—”

Nalya ignores him, shouting through the trees, “I have found her! This way!”

A fifth rider gallops to her call, his horse plated with armor, a crown fixed to his helmet. Does everyone around here have a crown?

He reins in his horse with a relieved sigh. “Perry. Blessed mercy.”

“Ezra?” I stifle a stunned laugh. His accent would be hilarious if we weren’t about to be slaughtered. “You’re the king?”

“Your Majesty—” A weathered knight with a mustache snaps up his visor, his horse fidgeting as impatiently as he is. “The glen is beset with rebels. We must make haste.”

My brother—the king—nods. “We’ll make for Heiber Castle. The Duke of Sutton is expecting us. I trust his men can muster a defense.”

“Someone knew we would be passing this way…” The mustached knight clears his throat. “You have been betrayed, Your—”

“Well, it wasn’t the Duke.” Ezra locks eyes with him. “I’ve known Max since we were children.”

“Who is Max?” I squint. “Ezra, what are we doing—”

Everyone ignores the rest of my question—myself included—because a herd of footsteps comes crunching up behind us.

Mustache Knight gulps, spurring his horse to intercept their approach. “The line has broken. Run, Your Majesties!”

I turn after him, the woods suddenly teeming with rabid men, armor and weapons smeared with blood and filth, savage violence in their eyes and my brother’s name on their lips.

Calling for his death.

My mind is swimming with doubts and questions, but one certainty floats to the top: I’ll spill however much blood it takes—mine included—to defend my brother. I plant my feet, fingers tensing on my ready sword. It feels strangely comfortable in my grip, like I might actually have a clue how to wield it.

Three rebels close in on me, and I swing my sword, parrying and striking without forethought or hesitation. I have absolutely no idea where I learned how to do this, but I’m holding my own. Not just holding my own…I’m gaining the advantage in a three-on-one fight.

My sword finds an unguarded neck, and I blink away the spatter of blood. There is no time to flinch, the second guy’s war hammer is on a path for my helmet. My sword is up to block, my foot planting in his gut, paving the way for the tip of my blade. I ignore the sucking squish as I pull my weapon free, readying for the next in line. I’m alarmingly hungry for a chance to mow them all down, and something tells me I stand a decent chance of doing it. Good thing I already got the puking part out of the way.

The clash of steel is all around me, murderous roars mixed with wretched suffering, and I don’t hear the approach of hooves until a hand has me by the nape of my armor, the chainmail constricting my throat as I’m yanked onto horseback.

“Hold firm, Perry.” We’re already galloping away as my brother helps me wrangle to straddle the back of his horse. My sense of relief battles with the urge to turn back and annihilate every last one of those guys. They may be a product of my imagination, but I hate them no less for it.

My arms tighten around Ezra’s waist as he spurs the horse faster, darting around tree trunks with no margin for error. Nalya is up ahead, weaving her own horse so quickly that the guards who were supposed to be flanking her are struggling to keep pace.

“Who are those men?” I shout over the whip of wind, “Why do they want you dead?”

Ezra doesn’t look back as he dodges another cluster of trees. “They’re probably Trulane’s,” he answers, as though I should recognize the name. “Or Wenforth’s,” he adds. “They’re always on about my ‘robbing nobility of their rightful status’ and ‘raising the common man to undue prosperity’.”

We break into the open, skimming the edge of the foothills to meet up with a dirt road tracing along the valley stream. The giant stone queen is looking down on us again as we rocket past her sandaled feet, each of her toes the size of a small vehicle. Ezra acknowledges her with a quick nod, and I’m relieved when she doesn’t nod back. An eagle circles her left ear and perches at the pointed tip.

I consider checking my own ears. Even if I thought we were a safe enough distance from the action to take off my helmet, I don’t particularly want to know whether I can add elf ears to the list of inexplicable things this day has to offer. I rest my head against Ezra’s back, the thunder of hooves and wind blending with my own ragged breathing inside my helmet.

It all feels so real, the smell of pine mixed with the reek of my own sweat, the horse breaking into a rhythmic gallop—free of the maze of trees—sinewy and powerful and speeding faster than any car has ever felt.

And Ezra.

My brother, my best friend.

Until hearing his voice—hearing that exhilarated laughter as our horse hurdles a fallen tree trunk—I was convinced this was nothing more than a disturbingly realistic dream.

Now I’m not so sure.

When I look up again, stone turrets are coming into view above the tree line, one of our knights signaling to the men posted along the castle wall. The portcullis begins to draw open, and this time Ezra’s boyish laughter is contagious.

“Am I supposed to believe you had this situation under control all along?” I ask, not yet persuaded to loosen my grip on his waist.

“Don’t I always?” He lightens up on the reins, flicking up his visor to turn with a wink. I wish the rest of the helmet didn’t hide his dimples. “Did you doubt your sovereign?” I’m reminded of the time he played Hamlet in junior high, only this time the accent is surprisingly authentic.

I wonder if my own helmet hides my scowl, but my question is answered when Ez breaks into another goofy fit at the sight of it. I’m too caught up in contemplation to join him this time. “This is real,” I mutter. “Isn’t it.” It’s not so much a question as a realization.

Ezra arches a questioning eyebrow, but I wave it off. He keeps studying me, unconvinced.

I give his shoulder a shove. “Just pay attention, so you don’t steer us into a rock wall.”

He complies with another hoot of laughter, intentionally spurring the horse faster despite the rapidly-approaching castle wall.

This isn’t just some flimsy replica of my brother, my subconscious mind’s way of idolizing him, placing him on a literal throne to match the figurative one he’s always held in my eyes. This is the real Ezra; and as long as he is here, I’m not quite so terrified by the fact that I’ve been dropped into a life I barely recognize.

I pull in a full breath, ignoring the stench of manure as we barrel across the moat bridge. As long as Ezra is here, everything will be okay.

Until an arrow comes out of nowhere, implausibly piercing the mail an inch above his breastplate, his body slumping back into me.

Panic shocks through me. I’m too stunned to scream.

I yank off his helmet, tossing it into the dusty wake of our horse’s thundering hooves. I clamp one arm around Ez’s chest and try to reach the reins with the other.

“I’m sorry, Perry.” Ezra’s words are a gurgling whisper, his eyes desperate. “So sorry.”

My voice—my whole body—trembles. “Don’t try to talk, Ez…Just hold on, we’re getting you inside—”

He shakes his head. “Be strong, and keep yourself safe,” he gasps, choking on his own blood. “Nalya will need your loyalty…your counsel. Do not be reckless—” He winces, more blood welling through the links of his chainmail. “Not like your careless brother…” He winks, but then both eyelids droop half-closed, his head lolling to the side.

“No! Stay with me, Ez…Don’t you dare give up!” My helmet echoes my sob and rattles with the frantic shake of my head, my gloved fingers slipping in blood when I wrestle the arrow from his neck.

Nalya and her men hear my screams, doubling back toward us. I struggle to hold pressure on the wound while balancing Ezra’s body on our veering horse. I can will the horse into a straight path—can keep an iron grip on my brother, despite my shaking arms—but I can’t command the spark back into his eyes.

“I’ve got you, Ez.” I cling to his armor, pulling him back against me as the horse charges across the castle bailey. “You’re going to be fine.”

As long as Ezra is here, everything will be okay.

Until he isn’t.

About the Author

M. A. George is part mother of two adorable children, part super top secret agent…Oops, probably just lost that job.Writing is what keeps her up into the wee hours of the night. Fortunately, she has a lot of energy (Read: caffeine is her friend). She has a bit of an obsession with music (It does a fantastic job of tuning out rambunctious children while she attempts to focus).She sincerely hopes people out there enjoy reading her work as much as she enjoys writing it. And if anyone hears of work for a super top secret agent, she’s now available (Discretion guaranteed…).

Author Links:

GIVEAWAY: a Rafflecopter giveaway

BLOG TOUR – Egg Drop Dead

BLOG TOUR – Hiding

SHANNON MUIR’S THURSDAY THOUGHTS – Mar...

FEBRUARY MYSTERY LOVING: BLOG TOUR- Framed

.yuzo_related_post img{width:120px !important; height:110px !important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb{line-height:15px;background: !important;color:!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover{background:#fcfcf4 !important; -webkit-transition: background 0.2s linear; -moz-transition: background 0.2s linear; -o-transition: background 0.2s linear; transition: background 0.2s linear;;color:!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb a{color:!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb a:hover{ color:}!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover a{ color:!important;} .yuzo_related_post .yuzo_text {color:!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover .yuzo_text {color:!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb{ margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; padding: 5px 5px 5px 5px; } jQuery(document).ready(function( $ ){ //jQuery('.yuzo_related_post').equalizer({ overflow : 'relatedthumb' }); jQuery('.yuzo_related_post .yuzo_wraps').equalizer({ columns : '> div' }); })

FRIDAY SF & FANTASY – Shift was originally published on the Wordpress version of The Pulp and Mystery Shelf with Shannon Muir

#shannon muir #pulp and mystery shelf

0 notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years

Text

#1yrago Starlings: razor-sharp stories and poems from Jo Walton

Stephen King once wrote that "a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger" -- that is, sudden, pleasant, mysterious, dangerous and exiting, and the collected short fiction of Jo Walton, contained between covers in the newly published Starlings, is exemplary of the principle. Walton, after all, is one of science fiction's major talents, and despite her protests that she "doesn't really know how to write stories," all the evidence is to the contrary.

Walton's sf often deals with the field's classics. Her Hugo-winning fictionalized memoir Among Others is a tour through the genre's roots, and its nonfiction companion, the reviews collected in What Makes This Book So Great, are a brilliant look at the way that the pulp/mass-market era of sf influenced Walton and a generation.

There's something classical in Walton's approach to fiction. These stories, often very short, are the kind of thing you can imagine Judith Merril publishing in an issue of Galaxy or If, a forgotten Frederic Brown or Theodore Sturgeon story that makes you laugh long and hard when you find it in an anthology you pluck from a sun-bleached shelf in a rented beach-cottage on a rainy day.

Her stories have the great, O Henry-ish sting-in-the-tail structure of the kinds of shorts I grew up on, leavened with enormous wit and the kind of profound compassion that made My Real Children such a tear-jerker that I literally couldn't have it on the desk while I reviewed it, because I'd have dissolved into sobs again.

The longest piece in the story is a work of pure absurdism, a script for a playlet based on the Irish myth of the sons of Tuireann, and it is so convulsively funny that I was filled with instant regret when I learned it had been performed at a sf convention that I was invited to, but couldn't attend.

The last pages of the volume are filled with a smattering of Walton's best-loved poems, which were her entry into the field, published on Usenet and Livejournal in the dim origin-days of the science fictional internet. These are every bit as crisp as they were they day they were written.

Starlings [Jo Walton/Tachyon]

https://boingboing.net/2018/01/30/kiss-in-the-dark.html

7 notes · View notes

zippdementia · 5 years

Text

Part 67 Alignment May Vary: Welcome to Hell

The players awaken and everything is messed up.

You all wake up to the sound of a repetitive blaring horn. Each of you is in a tube whose purpose is not immediately clear. Behind you is soft padding and in front of you is a see through cover made of some kind of hard glass. The world beyond this cover is darkness punctuated by frequent bursts of light that seem to come in time with the blaring horns. The light illuminates a large room.

It takes a moment for them to remember where they are. Once they do, they realize a very long time has passed and the spaceship is in trouble, about to crash land on a mysterious red planet and currently being bombarded by asteroids in an asteroid belt a computer tells them is “The River Styx.” Bob and Fiona are broken and rusted, and there’s no time to figure out what went wrong here. The players flee to the ship’s escape pods, only to have the hull of the ship breached and Aldric almost sucked out when he fails his saving throw. He makes it, but Blackrazor is ripped from his back and spins into space, lost.

All of you are tossed back and forth against the walls of the escape pod as it tumbles and twists and turns, spinning incessantly until you think your body will be crushed from the force of it. You can hear a roar and outside of the pod’s single window you can see heat and flame building up around the outside of your small circular craft. Then there is a mighty, sickening jolt and you are thrown one more time against the wall as everything finally goes still. The door to the pod slides open and a mechanical voice brokenly states “Thank you and have a safe journey” before an explosion of static cuts it short.

You emerge from the broken pod and clamber out onto red rock. The pod has come to rest on a high shelf overlooking a vast red landscape, a maze of dry canyons and valleys that stretches to the horizon. And on that horizon is a massive city scape, so large you cannot see where it ends. It literally encompasses the entire line of the horizon from left to right and though it is very far away, you can already see it is constructed of massive towering structures, like no city you’ve ever come across in your life or heard tell of before. A wind blasts across the landscape, stirring up red dust clouds and pulling at the fabric of your clothes.

At this point in the campaign, we are off book and running my own material. I’ve always wanted to do a planar adventure in Dungeons and Dragons. The possibilities such a campaign offers are exciting, though I have not found many official (or even unofficial) adventures set in the planes. And the ones I have always feel a little... I don’t know... standard. Like they just took the same kind of adventure you’d see in a normal campaign and themed it with different creatures.

For my planar campaign (which I am working on releasing on DMs Guild), I wanted something far more outside the box. Just as the characters are having the boundaries of their worlds stretched, I think the players need to have the boundaries of what they think of as a DND game stretched, too.

So the first thing I’ve changed is that these planes are literally planets, not planes. That lets me throw in a touch of sci fi for a nice spelljammer element. And the first of those planets to be explored is Planet Hell.

Encounter: The Hell’s Angels

The first big encounter here is against four biker devils, a Bone Devil (named Bones), a Bearded Devil (named Beards), a Barbed Devil (named... Cisco, which was supposed to be funny, but now I wish I’d just kept it Barbs, so let’s call him Barbs), and an Imp (Larry). These guys are straight out of Easy Rider, leather jackets and all, and they ride hovering jet bikes. The set up here is that they will attack the players and this will result in a jet bike chase through a maze like canyon full of dangers and driving challenges. While all this is going on, a meteor storm that hits Hell every day is about to start and the players will literally have to outrace the storm to make it to the safety of the world city of the Nine Circles (which is protected by a magic/science shield. Helping them in this endeavor is Alyss, a young blonde punk rocker looking chick who rides in on her own jetbike and warns the players that the biker gang is coming to investigate their crash site.

This encounter ends up being so much fun in so many ways.

First of all, the players don’t want to meet the biker’s head on. So Imoaza decides to use disguise self to look like a devil herself and pretend like she’s captured Carrick, who will then launch a surprise attack. She rolls a high success on her disguise and ends up looking like a classic red satan devil you’d get at a costume store, goatee and all. She also speaks Fiendish, as it happens, so she is able to really complete the disguise. It works and she doesn’t discard the disguise for the whole encounter. This ends up being absolutely ridiculous. Read on.

Beards tries to insult Carrick by peeing on him with a devil’s penis that looks like a living lobster and pisses acid and this is when Carrick launches his surprise attack, the other players joining him shortly.

Early on in the fight, Barbs and Bones escape, Bones dragging Imoaza’s red devil face along the ground until she is too dazed to fight him. He then blasts into the canyon, closely pursued by Alyss on her own personalized jet bike with Aldric riding shotgun and wielding a grenade launcher Alyss tosses him. Imoaza steals Larry’s tiny bike and rides after them, but for the life of her, she cannot roll well enough to figure out how to use the bike well. And while all this is going on, a meteor storm has begun to crash down around them. So what you end up getting is this ridiculous red satan devil (who is really Imoaza) cruising backwards on a hoverbike, screaming in terror as she races into the canyon just barely outrunning a meteor storm.

We honestly think this is the end of Imoaza. I’ve set up challenges the players must face to navigate the canyon and hers ends up being a leap over a wide chasm. With the way she’s been rolling... but then, against all odds, she rolls a critical success on this jump, and it looks a little like this...

The silence surrounding the chasm is broken suddenly by a shrill cry, like a plea for help, and rocketing into view comes a tiny hoverbike, clinged to by a tall red devil with a jet black goatee hanging beneath a mouth open in a wide scream. The Devil is ridiculously large a top the miniscule bike and Every part of his body that can grip something is gripping the bike: knees, buttucks, hands clenched on the seat of the motorcycle, his tall shape crouched low and terrified... and backwards... over the bike as it speeds its way without stopping towards the chasm. This is the end for the devil for sure. Except just before the bike takes its fatal dive, it hits a rock and is tilted upwards and suddenly the screaming devil man is flying, not falling, as the bike soars like an angel across the huge chasm, spinning around in the process, knocking the devil free from his perch, whereupon in his mad scrabbling he gets himself turned the right way around, grabs the handlebars and successfully lands on solid safe ground.

Then there’s Larry. Oh my god, Larry. I initially threw him in just so there would be an easily accessible bike for the players to use during the jet bike chase. But the minute I start voicing him and he keeps hilariously failing to injure Carrick while the Paladin (have I ever mentioned Carrick is a Paladin before?) fights Beards, using his fiery whip to smack away Beard’s attacks, Larry becomes a crowd favorite. Carrick especially loves him, finding the imp’s futile attempts to harm him more cute than anything else, to the degree that once Carrick defeats Beards, Larry takes a liking to him, calling him “Chuck” and determining they are going to be a new gang. He grabs Beard’s bike, tells Chuck to get on, and he rides him away from the Meteor Swarm, saying how cool it is that they’ve met and how they are going to be friends forever.

Well, by the time this happens, Aldric’s launching of grenades in the canyon has caused landslides and certain passages have been blocked off by piles of rock. Larry gets to one of these just in time to see Aldric and Alyss soaring over it in a marvelous display of driving skill and defying gravity, intent on continuing their chase of Bones and Barbs.

Larry looks at the rock wall and takes a deep breath. “Do you believe, Chuck?” He says in his small, hopeful, tremulous voice. Carrick slaps him on the shoulder. “I believe in you, buddy.” Larry then guns the bike, heading for the rock wall, about to perform the same stunt as Alyss. His eyes closed, his legs flailing out behind him (he’s too small for even his own bike), he drives a top speed for the wall.

And rolls a critical failure.

Carrick sees what is about to happen and does what any true friend would. He bails off the back of the bike, misty stepping off to witness Larry drive into the cliff wall, the bike upending itself to smash him into pulp against the rocks before exploding in a ball of fire.

And that’s the end of Larry, short lived favorite familiar.

The rest of the chase has too many crazy moments to list: Aldric finally catches up with Bones, jumping off his bike and impaling the devil, then stealing his leather jacket. Aldric and Alyss outrun a horrible cave monster a little bit like a gaping dragon from Dark Souls. Imoaza has to outrun the meteor storm on the way to the shielded city, and almost doesn’t make it. And Carrick finds Blackrazor in the desert.

This last moment is a defining one. Carrick initially is hesitant to retrieve the blade, knowing it is evil. But he also knows it may not be his call to make: this is Aldric’s burden to bear. The player is so torn, he literally has to toss a coin to figure out the answer. It tells him what to do... he picks up the sword, and Blackrazor is less than grateful, berating him for having let Aldric drop him in the first place. He does finally thank him and tells him that Carrick will play a nice role in his final plans, then makes a joke about eating the souls of children. This last one is too much for Carrick. Not sure whether Blackrazor is being crass or honest leads Carrick to realize he cannot trust the sword’s actual intentions. And in a moment of decision, he drops the sword back in the desert and rides away (he traded his exploded jet bike for a summoned horse... which here in Hell turns out to be a Nightmare). Blackrazor screams profanities at him as he goes, promising that one day he’ll cut off his head and drink his insides.

Eventually the party synch back up on the edge of the city, which this close up they see is actually just a ruined sprawl of ghettos. This is in fact an illusion, created by Alyss to protect them, but they won’t find that out for a while. For now, they wander the dead city with Alyss, who tells them to abandon the bikes except her own, which she hits a button on to cause it to shrink down to pocket size, and which she drops in her back pack. She explains a little about their situation while they walk.

Hell, it turns out, used to be involved in an eternal war with the Demons of the Abyss, in a conflict dubbed the Blood War that mostly took place in the River Styx, the asteroid field right outside of Hell. Some centuries ago, Asmodeus traveled to the Abyss himself at the head of a huge army to finally bring the fight back to the Demons. His plan was successful and he used a magic so powerful that the Abyss was sealed away into between reality, unable to manifest and interact with the real world. But Asmodeus himself did not survive the magic and Hell was left for the first time in its history without a leader.

With the war against the demons over, the devils turned on themselves, waging a war that began as a physical conflict but slowly became more political. Out of this war emerged the Nine Cities, a sprawling conglomerate of nine separate cities, all ruled by different Arch Devils. Hell also became a tense democracy, with the leader of Hell voted into office to serve a fifty year term. The current president is Mammon, devil of greed and pride, who rules from his vast casino-ridden city of Messmiter, the Golden City.

While different presidents have pushed different agendas and together have turned Hell into a technological leader in the universe, one thing they all agree on: Hell’s borders should remain closed, its warships destroyed and grounded. No one comes into Hell except in death. No one leaves Hell. Ever.

Alyss tells them that there are crystals here on Hell which call souls to them when those souls pass around the universe. It’s uncertain why a soul may be called by a crystal to end up reborn on Hell, but it is known that Devils used to be able to make this happen as a contract. Now with Devils forced to stay in Hell forever, the influx of new souls has slowed, leading to a lot of anger and unrest. Devils desire souls, they need them to grow in power. Without them, they feel starved and restless.

Also restless are the few unfortunates who end up being called to Hell. Not only are their souls almost always drained for a devil’s personal gain, but Hell used to operate on one basic principal: Hope. There was hope that with enough penance, one could leave for a better place. This actually used to be true. But no longer, not with the borders closed. So Alyss has joined a group known as the Hell’s Rebels, led by who she says is an incredible leader of men, a visionary. Their goal is to escape Hell.

This gives many reasons as to why the player’s presence is so disruptive and yet so important. One, they’ve broken the closed border rule, albeit unintentionally. Two, somewhere on Hell their working spaceship has landed, which could be the rebel’s ticket out of here. And three, they have fresh, living, souls. That makes them a target. And because Barbs escaped them in the canyon, she is sure word has reached Hell that they are here.

And with this set up, we enter my next planned scenario in Hell, hideout.

Rooftop Showdown

I want this part of the adventure to feel a little like Blade Runner, or Dark City. I am aiming for mystery and a touch of uncertainty and I want to create a daring escape.

So the set up becomes that Alyss brings them to a decrepit hotel room and leaves them, telling them she’ll be back in a few hours but under NO CIRCUMSTANCES are they to leave or open the door. They aren’t even to speak if someone calls to them. Alyss has her own way of getting back in. Don’t speak to anyone, she warns them again, before leaving. The players settle down for a much needed long rest, but when they finish it, Alyss hasn’t returned.

Three days pass. The players stay alive by Carrick casting “Create Food and Drink” and summoning a bunch of random Fiendish foods. They eat them all (except for a summoned plate of fried Bearded Devil Penis, which they leave in a corner of the room, where it begins to acquire a greasy acrid odor). Imoaza passes the time by reading various tomes she’s collected over the course of their adventures, especially the journals of her people taken from the Yuan Ti temple. Aldric digs through Alyss’ left behind backpack, eventually finding the shrunken motorcycle and blithely pocketing it for later study. He also finds an energy capsule which they use to recharge Carrick’s rifle. And he detoxes, not from drugs but from Blackrazor’s influence, slowly wresting his mind free from the blade’s evil influence, which he can still feel reaching for him and calling to him. Carrick finds a cellphone (of course, they don’t know this is what it is) and is able to pull out of his distant other-life memories that this is a communication device. He leaves it alone.

On the fourth day, a knock comes at the door. The players ignore it, and then Alyss’ voice calls to them, saying she lost the key and is being chased and needs to get inside. The group is nervous and anxious, not sure whether this is really her or not. As they hesitate, she becomes more desperate, saying that she will die if they don’t help her. They stay silent. Some time later, her voice returns, only this time she says she’s been caught and will be executed if they do not open the door immediately. She tells them that she will work something out with the Devils to keep them all safe, but they need to open the door now. Again, the players do nothing, and Alyss sobs and cries before there is a horrible crunching sound and her voice goes silent. Completely unnerved, Carrick uses a detection spell to try to sense anything outside the door. He senses a presence so large and evil that it almost makes him sick and he whispers to the others that he hopes they did the right thing by doing nothing.

It is not long after that the cellphone rings, jarring them all. Carrick picks it up and a male voice tells them he’s coming to get them, they have to trust him, that Alyss’ illusion is wearing off (it was never meant to last this long), that something has happened to her, and that they need to go. They decide to trust this voice and it (naming itself as “Jacobs”) instructs them to climb out of the window of the hotel and up to the roof.

Here is where things get crazy. Opening the window shatters Alyss’ illusion and for the first time, the players get a true look at the city they are in. It is not decrepit at all, but rather a bustling metropolis filled with flying vehicles, loud noises, and bright lights. It is night time right now but the city is brighter than day with all of its neon and LEDs. The players climb out of the window and Imoaza casts fly so that they can avoid a difficult climb. Just in the nick of time, too: behind them, the door to the apartment shatters and a Pit Fiend forces its bulk inside the room. But the players are already gone.

I think the sign that this section was a success was the players later asking whether that was really Alyss on the other side of the door. It wasn’t. In fact, it was the devils trying to break through her illusion and find them, but the fact that the question was left in their minds is exactly what I was trying to achieve, that uncomfortable feeling of “maybe we did the wrong thing.”

They end up having to wait on a rooftop while Jacobs makes his way to them. While they wait, they are accosted by a group of 12 Spined Devils and an Erinyes. Imoaza and Carrick face off against the devil’s in ranged combat from the roof, while Aldric flies up to meet the Erinyes, who taunts his bravery as base male bravado while ripping into him with her whip, spear, and arrows. The battle is intense, with spines falling all over the roof while Carrick and Imoaza use their eldritch blasts to fire back at the Spined Devils. Maybe the most intense moment comes when the Erinyes restrains Aldric with her whip and then throws him down into the river of traffic below them.

Damn that Larry, thought Harry as he steered his shiny new hovercraft down Risen Street, taking time to shake his fist at an old van as it puttered along in the lane he wanted to be in. If Larry would just start acting like an adult and less like a child then Harry’s life would be a lot simpler. Larry was supposed to have been back in town after the weekend to watch Harry’s kids (inexplicably, the little Implings loved their uncle Larry) but instead he was nowhere to be found. Harry wasn’t concerned, he knew Larry was most likely off with his gangster buddies and thinking of himself as much cooler than he in fact was. How many times did Harry have to tell his brother to get a real job before it was too late and no company would have him? How many times had Harry had to bail out Larry from some misadventure or another? Despite his anger, Harry couldn’t stop his lips from curling into a small smile as he thought of those misadventures. That was Larry’s one gift: no matter how much frustration Harry felt at him, his damnable brother was just so happy-go-lucky he couldn’t stay mad for long. As the frustration left him, Harry felt a sudden tinge of worry. Where was his brother? It wasn’t like him to just disappear without a trace. To be halfway around the world asking for help, yes, and inconveniencing his dutiful and responsible older brother, sure, but just disappearing was odd.

Harry didn’t have much time to consider the thought. There was a sudden jolt as a man fell from the sky and smashed against his windshield with the force of a dropped boulder. The shiny new hovercraft that Harry had spent nine years saving up for (it could fit all three of his kids and his wife besides) spun madly out of control, being ping ponged around by the other speeding traffic. Harry meanwhile, was flailing against the sudden release of the air bags, unable to see anything past their white bulk. He desperately tried to steer the car into safety, but only succeeded in pointing its nose directly at that old van that he had shook a fist at earlier. The two cars collided and Harry’s shiny new car was chucked aside into a building, Imp and vehicle alike exploding against its side in a fireball not unlike the one that had claimed his brother Larry only a few days earlier.

Eventually this battle comes to a halt. It is on a timer, with me rolling a die each round with an increasingly easy to hit goal number. When I roll that number, Jacobs arrives. There is one last mad dash as the players try to figure out what side of the roof Jacobs has pulled up to, failing all of their perception rolls, and leaping off of three different sides (all of them wrong). This results in Carrick being knocked unconscious and almost killed by traffic, Imoaza having to dodge madly through cars to save him, and Aldric (who got a haste spell from Carrick during the fight) whipping around in traffic like a car himself, madly looking for them.

They eventually all are pulled inside Jacobs’ vehicle and he flies them off to meet the leader of the Hell’s Rebels. Their hideout is a moving target, a giant airship that looks like a cross between a mighty galleon and a blimp, with a huge air bag suspended over the main deck and keeping the whole ship aloft, and giant jet engine pipes coming off the back of the ship to propel it forward.

They are taken on board the massive vessel and brought to see the commander. He stands in a long throne room, decked in an impressive robe and commander’s outfit. He turns as they arrive and eyes them all with a scrutinizing eye.

“Jacobs!” he shouts at last in a quick voice a little bit like a speeding racecar. “If I have tried to teach you one thing while being on board my ship, it is... well, it is my name. And you’ve actually done a great job of learning that. But if there was a second thing, it would be manners! And by all the devils in the nine hells, we do not leave people to bleed on our carpet. It’s not civilized! Did you even offer them something to drink? Get them a bath and a bed and whatever else they desire. Maybe a bowl of my famous cereal. That would perk them right up! Greetings, this is my ship the Jolly Roger Mark II and I’m Captain Krisp, Captain Roger Krisp, at your service. No, I won’t shake. I don’t know where you’ve been.”

And we stop there, with all of us laughing at the return of a favorite character. It’s a huge moment, actually, one I’ve been wanting to get to for a long time. Captain Krisp was one of those NPCs who became so quickly memorable that I’ve long wanted to bring him back into the campaign in a role that felt worthy of him. Being the captain of Hell’s Rebels is perfect. It also keeps alive the feeling of world-spanning that I’ve so valued in this long long long campaign. The fact that an entirely new group of adventurers is dealing with characters and plots left over from other groups of adventurers just makes the whole story feel epic. And of course, the players are the glue tying it all together.

By the way, for anyone ever wondering what Captain Krisp sounds like or how he thinks, I have taken massive inspiration from Varrick from Legend of Kora. Which is a wonderful show for many reasons, but maybe most memorably for Varrick.

Next time, we’ll get deeper into Hell and more crazy scenarios for the players to work through.

#Nine Hells #DNd 5e #Dungeons and Dragons #Campaign Journal #Spelljammer #Planar Campaign

10 notes · View notes

slytherhell · 6 years

Text

PLAYING WITH FIRE.

Prompt; “Make me.”

Words; 1.4k+

( written for the the amazing @squirrel-and-me-quicksilvermaid for one out of two of her of her request(s) from this list.

/ i’m really sorry i’m just now posting this, hon. for this entire week, i kept waking up thinking it was another day, or with the wrong one in mind and it just really threw off my entire mind for this upcoming trip i have. i’ve been up all night, and i’ve barely slept this entire week and i’m really tired.. overall, i’m really sorry for this late posting. && tbh, i really didn’t like with how this turned out, but i hope you enjoyed something out of this <33 )

“WOULD YOU SHUT THE HELL UP ALREADY, MALFOY?!” Harry shouted over his shoulder with a glare, his quill coming to yet another stop on his half-written on parchment due to the rambling from the other side of the shared room. Despite working on it for hours, his parchment only had a few lines written on it, and that was nowhere close to the two rolls assigned, and required to turn in for class.

( And the best thing about it? His essay was due tomorrow! )

Harry sighed and looked back down at his page bitterly. Just great. Not only was he roomed in with Malfoy, he was going to be behind on his work for his redo year.

Behind him, he heard Malfoy shift atop his bed, but the voice did not stop, and Harry shook his head in irritation. He dropped his quill down, and ink skidded across his page; smudging up his last written sentence. Shit. He scrambled to salvage as much of it as he could, pushing his other supplies away from it and managed to, for the most part, to his relief.

Malfoy’s snicker drew him back to the present.

Harry wandlessly ‘scourifyed! ‘ the remaining ink on his hand on his hand. He turned around in his chair, ready to give Malfoy a good and heavily worded piece of his mind when-

Malfoy’s voice stopped.

Harry frowned. That was all it took?

Throwing a glance back, Harry now saw how Malfoy remained still in his spot; un-moving. Originally, Harry had thought he’d been staring up at the ceiling, but a closer examination revealed that Malfoy now laid with his eyes closed, his face looking somewhat content in the mid-day light. And seemingly realizing that Harry had been watching him, Malfoy’s eyes opened and met his. The two stared at one another from across the room, neither exchanging a word. It went on for a while, long enough to begin to giving Harry the benefit of the doubt. But, Malfoy, being who he was, timed it just as Harry was turning back around, before he laid back down, and continued his recitation of the page he’d just read, even louder than before.

Harry sighed and rolled his eyes, running a tired hand over his face. He removed his glasses, and held his head in his hand, He was sick and tired of this.

He had to get Malfoy to stop, he just had to. By any means necessary.

He paused.

Well, not murder.

Harry hand nearly knocked down his chair as he stood back abruptly from it, the idea striking him suddenly. This caught Malfoy’s attention, for he jumped off his bed; staring at him with widened eyes as he watched Harry head closer to his side of the room.

“On Merlin’s beard, Malfoy...” Harry’s voice was low and threatening, “Malfoy, if you don’t stop, I’ll-”

Sensing Harry’s hesitation to continue his sentence, Draco smirked and slowly waltzed up to him, gently biting on his lip as he stared up at him, “You’ll do what, exactly?” He questioned, cocking his head to the side as he folded his arms across his chest.

“I’ll beat you into a bloody pulp,” Harry snarled in reply.

Draco scoffed, flinching on slightly, “Oh please. That would go against your code.”

Harry glared down at him in response, his hands now clenched into heavy fists; bringing back a familiar twitch of his right eye that started when they’d first been assigned as roommates at the start of the year. The room is boring when it gets quiet, Malfoy’s voice from earlier echoed, It needs noise. And I don’t mean that annoying pen tap you’ve got going over there, either.

At the start, Harry, like everyone else, had thought Malfoy would’ve been less of a prat when he returned back for the eighth year. He was.. but the more it became clear that Harry wasn’t out to kill him, he seemingly intensified and got worse with each day.

But it was moments like this that Harry had wished he’d followed through with Malfoy’s previous assumptions.

( And apparently, he’d taken too long to respond, for Malfoy had let out a laugh; brushing past Harry’s arm as he moved around him. It sounded like he’d headed for the spare wooden desk they had by the window, for there was a clank on the stone floor. He walked past Harry again, this time, his arms full of books. He dropped a few on his bed, then leaned over and set the rest on the ground beside him. )

“Oh, shut up. And stay on your side of the room, you’re a nightmare as it already is.”

“And if I don’t?” This time, it was Malfoy who crossed the room; taking a seat on Harry’s crimson bed.

“Shut up, just shut the fuck up before I make you.”

“Go on, Potter.” Malfoy taunted, and sat back on his bed, smirking up at Harry as one leg crossed over the other, “Make me.”

Harry didn’t dare utter a word, and instead, turned and faced back at his desk; all the while forcing himself to calm down. If he wanted this to work, he couldn’t lose his temper. ( Well, anger wasn’t the exact case in the moment; it was actually a bit arousing too catch Malfoy like this. Though, he still couldn’t let his emotions conflict and clash. ) Sure, he could shut Malfoy up with a simple grab at his throat, he was aware of this ability but knew his temper was one fierce enough to not just stop at hurting one person.

He inhaled, taking a breath for both himself and all the damage he just prevented himself from doing. This is gonna work, He told himself.

He was one more - just one more away - from freeing himself of anger, when he heard footsteps clicking up behind him, slow and precise.

Malfoy had something in mind, Harry knew, and whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Having being caught in the middle of his thoughts, he found himself drawing in a sharp breath as he felt Malfoy lean up his shoulder; with the front of his body pressed up against his own back as either hand sat upon a shoulder. “I knew it. “ The whispered words hit the side of his neck, and Harry’s jaws clenched. “You’re too much of a coward to do anything, aren’t you?”

Harry let out a snort, rolling his eyes. “That’s rich coming from you.”

Malfoy ignored the comment and propped his head up on Harry’s left shoulder. Harry could see the grey eyes watching him out from the side of his own, almost enjoying to watch as his anger geared back up. Malfoy then looped either hand under Harry’s arm, now placing them onto the front of his shoulders. He pressed himself against Harry impossibly further, nearly outlining Harry’s body with his, “Oh well,” He said, then withdrew himself, casually adding, “I guess there’s always a next time.”

Before there was time to register the attack, Harry spun around and yanked Malfoy forward by the front of his short, his collar, more specifically. The soft and pristine fabric bunched up tightly by Harry’s hardened hands in his hand as he got a firm grip on it, hen slammed him into the nearest wall; causing a few of the quills and light books to fall off the table Malfoy’s foot had knocked into in the process. Other than a bit back groan, Malfoy made no other sound as his head collided with it. Harry panted heavily, now looking down at Malfoy’s slightly crumpled figure splayed against the wall.

Malfoy shifted slightly. Feeling hot bursts of air from in front of him, he looked up and his eyes widened slightly. He’d done it now. Bracing himself, he prepared for the punch surely aimed at his face.

Though, what he didn’t expect was for Harry crouch down on the ground before him.

Malfoy raised a brow, and watched him go down.

Surely he wouldn’t try to-

Harry held Malfoy’s eye the entire time; from the moment grabbed ahold of Malfoy’s thighs, to when he slowly rose himself up, his face staying a constant five centimeters away from Malfoy’s body - lifting him up against the wall. The act causing Malfoy’s toes to curl up in his shoes, a hand to plant on the wall, and for his other hand to go straight to the back of Harry’s head; fingers grasping his hair, and locking onto them.

Hary found a place in-between Malfoy’s legs and planted himself there.

Harry’s breath was twinged with a sweet lemon, Malfoy noticed, and he felt himself go weak as Harry leaned into. Malfoy could practically hear his heart thumping in his chest, and his breathing becoming hitched. His eyes fluttered shut as he leaned in to meet Harry the rest of the way.

But the kiss never came.

Upon opening his eyes, Malfoy was met with a smirking Harry; one who’d tipped his head to the side as he watched him with interest.

“Looks like I finally got you quiet.”

His tone wore a victorious underlayer, and Malfoy could practically hear the grin within it. Harry dropped his legs back down to the ground. “Oh, and forget about what I said about doing my essay, earlier. I’m gonna take a shower instead. You know, take off some heat.”

Harry stepped back and grabbed one of his unused towels sitting overhead on the shelf above them. “Feel free to join me whenever.” His eyes flickered down to Malfoy’s trouser, “You look like you have an issue that needs resolving, plus you’re right, the room does get a bit boring when it’s quiet.”

There was a mysterious gleam in his eye as he spoke, but before Malfoy could reply, Harry was already headed for the door. Harry rounded the corner, shrugged his shirt off, and left it by the door,; stepping over it as he entered the bathroom. Once instead, charmed on the knobs; adjusting the tone, “Hey Malfoy,” He called through the door, checking the water, “What temperature do you like your water? Steaming hot, or half and half?”

Harry laughed as he heard a strangled cry, and footsteps thudding around the room before Malfoy joined him.

( Harry never had to complain about Malfoy being too loud after that. Though, a few others that lived on the same hall as them often had complaints of loud noises throughout the night.. )

#drarry #draco malfoy #harry potter #drarry squad #writing #hope you enjoyed!!#no matter how many times i rewrite this #it's still bad #like why??#teiatries #wow #i write a lot

155 notes · View notes