#the tin tiger house | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

not-your-fucking-kacchan · 2 years

Note

hi! so i was wondering if i can request a oneshot of class 1a & platonic aizawa or just a platonic aizawa (which ever is easiest for u!) x GN reader where the reader received massive burn scars/just scars in general that covers half of their face and arms? just real angsty and fluffy :)

Angst and fluff coming right up <3

Masterlist <3

Warning: burning, mentioned blindness, depictions of blood and injury...

Aizawa and 1-A x Student Reader (Platonic) - Scarring

The students of 1-A had heard about your accident during the entrance exam. That's why, when you walked into the room, you'd heard hushed whispers invading your ears, the class looking at you curiously.

Your face is covered in thick makeup, but your application is good, so it doesn't smear or melt, and it doesn't look cakey.

It still doesn't do a whole lot to hide the horrific scarring, though.

You had been collecting points like everyone else during the exam, when suddenly everything turned dark. You were still conscious, and still moving, but you were trapped under a robot that had caught fire and shut down, and your ribs were close to crushed.

Everything hurt. You still remember the pain clear as day as your ribs got that much closer to puncturing your lungs, blood seeping from your mouth as you vomited. You were surprised to find that the screaming you could hear was coming from you, desperate wails echoing under the huge tin can, too heavy for you to lift.

Your flesh was burning and the smell reached your nose and travelled along the back of your throat, drawing more vomit from you as you clawed at the gravel beneath you. You're not sure who had plucked you out from beneath the rubble of the malfunctioned robot and the brick wall of a house that it had taken down with it, because by then you were unconscious.

The following few days, you had not left your home. Not once. You hadn't even left your bedroom or so much as drawn the curtains.

Your self esteem was forever crushed to rubble.

The burn and cut scars stretched over your left arm and your neck, reaching your cheekbone in a pattern that seemed some sort of mix between tiger stripes and lighting burns, and they had turned a paper shade in comparison to the rest of your skin, as opposed to darker like, for example, Todoroki's scar.

It almost looked like some kind of vitiligo instead of rough scarring, because Recovery Girl had been so quick to attend to you.

You had never stopped being so grateful to her.

By your first day, you were recognised as the kid who'd been crushed at the entrance exam, and every time someone's eyes landed on you, you'd get horribly self conscious, wondering if they could see the discolouration on your face.

That all changed though, when you had actually started to make friends.

And it makes sense that the first people you made friends with were Shouto and Izuku. Their scars gave you a little more confidence that maybe you weren't so hideous, and it was all in your head.

You and Shouto had bonded over the similarities in your scarring, sharing stories of how they happened and how they affected the both of you, and then you found out that as you were now blind in your left eye, so was Shouto. Or at least sort of. He retained some of his sight, but his vision had been impaired, whereas your eye had been crushed by the metal of the robot that had trapped you.

And Izuku, he always knew the right thing to say. He played a vital role when it came to you accepting what happened to you, and assuring you that noone thought any less of you with the assurance of your fellow classmates. He was a real big help, and his kind and inspirational words had you rethinking the way you saw yourself a lot.

However, sometimes there were days when you looked in the mirror and saw a ghost of who you used to be, and what you used to look like. Memories of your mother taking your, then, unharmed face into her hands and calling you beautiful flashed before your eyes, and led you to having bouts of depression where you would skip class because you had gotten so self conscious.

Aizawa Sensei had thought you'd made peace with the change, and trauma of what happened. Looking back on it now, he could see that he was clearly being naive. He thought you were just skipping class because you weren't so sure about being a hero anymore, or you just didn't care. The thought had him angry, to say the least.

He knocked harshly on the door to your dorm room, hearing a few sniffles coming from the other side. Were you upset? Maybe you were sick?

His suspicions were confirmed as you opened the door slightly, revealing just the corner of your face as you looked up at him with a tired, puffy eye.

You had been crying.

"... What's wrong? Why weren't you in class?"

"... 'sorry-"

"-That's not an answer."

You were shocked silent. You didn't expect him to look so angry with you, but you couldn't face the world like this. The comments you had received at the Sports Festival had absolutely crushed you. People could be so cruel sometimes, it's like they don't even realise that they were talking about a kid.

Finally, you broke into little cries, closing your eye and bumping your head against the door softly, feeling so tired and lonely.

"I can't take it anymore- I just wanna look normal- I don't wanna be ugly anymore- did you know that everyone at the Sports Festival was calling me ugly?! I'm sixteen! There are posts on the internet talking about mine and Shou's and Izu's scars! I just want them off my body, it's not fair!-"

Shouta's heart sinks to his stomach. Your voice is wet shaky, and your words get caught in your throat. For god's sake, he can hear the heartbreak and vulnerability in your sobs. He had failed to protect you. And not just you, but Izuku and Shouto as well? He's such a failure.

He knows the world can be a cruel place, and even though he can teach you to be strong in body, you were still kids, and it was his job to keep you safe from that kind of negative attention. You were kids. You didn't deserve to be judged like pedigree dogs. At least not yet. It's stuff like that that crushes young people's self image.

His shoulders dropped and you looked down at you with a worried expression, slowly pushing the door out of the way and enveloping you in his arms. He feels soft, and secure as you cry into his shirt, sniffling and hiccuping while he rubs your back comfortingly.

"If you tell anyone I hugged you I will deny it. But... Don't worry about what insecure people on the internet are saying, because they must truly be dissatisfied with themselves if insulting teenagers makes them feel better. One day, their life will be in your hands, and they'll regret what they said."

The comment about denying the hug happened actually pulled a little laugh out of you, and you felt much better as he comforted you. Your tears slowed to a stop and your breathing evened out, and once you had calmed down, Aizawa had freed you from his awkward hug.

The world seemed just a little brighter than it did before.

2K notes · View notes

tinfairies · 1 year

Text

The Fairy Garden

My Ko-Fi

Commission Directory

My Art Tag: tin art

My ask box and DMs are always open for people to come chat or be horny little freaks!

Don't like it? Block me!

Don't be a cunt.

Dark content including rape, self harm, suicide, murder, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, necrophilia, cannibalism, incest and bodily fluids will be present here.

My only major boundary is scat. It just doesn't interest me.

Bestiality and pedophilia are entirely off the table. Yuck.

I do not consent to my writing or art being translated and/or posted to any other website or being fed to AI.

I go by Tin or Lu, I'm 23 years old.

Filthy American 🦅*eagle noises*

I am bi, enby and more fem presenting. I use any pronouns but use she/her by default since it's just easiest. (what I'm used to)

I represent myself with bears, tigers and orange cats.

About Lu

Lu's tumblr

Lu is similar to an alter ego or imaginary friend if you will. I blame shit on him and project my problems onto him. I use him so I don't have to feel negative emotions. He is my punching bag.

Lu is me and I am Lu and I am in full control of my actions and words.

Lu is represented by black dogs/wolves

I "talk" to him and he "talks" to me

Fun Facts

I have 2 kitties named Mercury and Jasmine and 2 leopard geckos named Mister Man and Dracarys

I do lots of art, I used to write a lot but I haven't had the muse for it lately

Mentally ill but who isn't these days (we live in a society fr)

Kink Stuff

Bisexual, switch. Lots of nasty, icky kinks.

BDSM, pet play, age play, knife play, cnc, dumbification, and piss are some of my top kinks.

A mommy dom, or a ma'am but I like being called daddy and sir too. I love puppy and kitty subs and littles.

I am a kitty sub and a little sometimes.

I like being a brat.

I can be a mean dom or soft dom depending on what my sub wants

Fandom List

(this list updates frequently and you're always welcome to pop into my ask box or DMs to talk about these fandoms!)

Anime/Cartoons: Hunter x Hunter, Death Note, Fruits Basket, One Piece, Black Butler, Hazbin Hotel, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Ouran High School Host Club, Princess Jellyfish

TV Shows: Supernatural, The Boys, Gen V, Alice in Borderland, Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, Criminal Minds, Percy Jackson

Movies: Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Hunger Games, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, MCU, DCU, X-Men, Slasher/Horror Fandom, Star Wars, The Last Unicorn, Repo! The Genetic Opera, Twilight Saga, Phantom of the Opera, Sweeney Todd

Video Games: Left 4 Dead, Fallout, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Borderlands, Resident Evil, Dead By Daylight, Stardew Valley, Red Dead Redemption, Animal Crossing, Sally Face, Fran Bow, Night in the Woods

Misc: Creepypasta, Marble Hornets, Homestuck, Boyfriend to Death, The Price of Flesh, The Vampire Chronicles, Lychee Light Club

Other Interests

Art, writing, history, archeology, anthropology, architecture, vintage era, edwardian era, medieval era, dinosaurs, cryptozoology, speculative evolution, science, mass tragedies, chernobyl meltdown, cults, fashion, historical fashion, horror, true crime, music, musicals

My Hunger Games/TBOSAS Masterlist

My One Piece Masterlist

My Hunter x Hunter Masterlist

My Old Masterlist

760 notes · View notes

thedepthsoffandomminds · 2 months

Text

Maze Runner chapter one

Newt x fem reader.

Friends to lovers, slow burn.

Multi chapter

I'd like to request a story about Maze Runner Newt x reader, of course of all 3 movies (scorch, trails and death cure) and following the story as it is, just a natural friends to lovers, in the movie after Alby came up first, Y/N came in later (with a little pet friend, any kind of animal, a wolf or lion or whatever kind of animal😂), the only girl in the whole boy glade, boys are respectful to the Y/N (she a tough cookie), some boys and Gally sees her as a sister, some has a crush on her (also some are chill with her friend pet friend and some are scared) and in the death cure at the end please let Newt live.

“Y/n, you in here?” Alby asked, popping his head into your room. The wooden structure has been the original shelter you and Alby had made when you first arrived in the Glade. Though since more boys had come up and the shelter extended this one had become your own room. The boys had been happy for you to have your own room and a little bit of privacy. Alby had been the first to arrive in the Glade and he was there alone for twenty four hours before you had arrived. The lift rose up with you, a box full of tinned food and a large crate that houses a tiger cub. All you remembered when the doors opened was your name. For a month you and Alby worked together to build the small shelter, the tiger slowly growing beside you.

At times the three of you would stand at the entrance to the Glade and wonder what was out there, but neither of you had the bravery to go out there.

You weren't sure how old you were exactly but the large supply of sanitary products made it clear that you were most definitely a teenager. In the back of your mind you felt like around fifteen when you first came up.

A month in and the lift you had arrived on came up once more, more food supplies, a large female pig with four piglets and another boy, Minho he called himself. The pair of boys quickly became like brothers to you. Minho was desperate to go out past the Glade walls but Albey kept him back.

Another month passed and you had worked to establish a small patch of vegetables and fruit. You figured you would be here for a while so getting a steady stream of food going felt like the right thing to do.

You were busy bathing yourself in the pond when the lift came up once more. You quickly pulled on your blue shirt and brown pants before running over. Albey was helping a frightened boy out when you got there. His blonde hair sort of glowed in the morning sunlight. Newt, was timid at first, kept himself quiet as Albey walked him around the Glade. It wasn't much more than a cook but, vegetable patch and your shelter. The pigs ran free in the grass and your tiger, mai mai, stayed always at your side.

Newt too was curious about what laid outside your Glade, but Albey was adminet that you should wait.

“Lol two months two boys. Let's just wait and see.” He would say.

The shelter was becoming too cramped for the four of you and your tiger, so you spent a few days working together to build something new. Luckily along with Newt had come several cases of Nails, hammers, ropes and planks of wood. The new building was larger and much more spacious. You used some of the blankets that had been sent up to line the walls in hopes of keeping out the cold a little more.

Four months passed and four more boys came up. You sat down between Newt and Minho at the fire.

“Do you think there will ever be another girl?” You asked, looking over at the boy. He was taller than you but smaller than Newt. He was scared, as you all were when you arrived but there was a determination in his eyes.

A key decided it was time to go and explore. He took four of the boys with him, Minho, Newt and Gally and Ben and out they went. It was a maze that stretched on further than they could map in one day.

Slowly over the next three years more and more boys came up into the Glade. Some you lost along the way. The discovery of the Grievers was the hardest. The creature had stung Trip. It didn't seem to bad at first just a small puncture wound in his shoulder but then as night fell he began to change. It started with the black veins, his eyes turning dark. Trip pounced on you unexpectedly as you cooked by the fire. He was bashing his teeth as you struggled to hold him back. Mai mai your tiger, bit into his leg and dragged him away. Everyone watched as she pulled him kicking and screaming into the maze. When she returned he was gone and you all understood.

Around the second anniversary of your arrival Newt sat by the fire, a cup of Galky’s homebrew in his hand.

“Hey.” You say sitting down beside him, “What's up?” You ask.

He looks at you for a second.

“I saw something out there today.” He said quietly.

“What?”

“A camera…someone, whoever put us in here is watching us. It moved and I heard it. I don't think the others did and I haven't told them.”

For days after that, the little spark of Newt seemed to drift away. He wasn't excited to go running in the maze anymore. Each day he would go out with the other runners and each day you would watch as Mai Mai would pace the opening. The tiger had grown as close to Newt as she had to you and you could tell she felt something was wrong. On the fifth day Mai Mai's ears twitched her head tilting from side to side. You watched her whole body shake before she darted into the Maze. Your heart faltered as you ran to the opening. Too frightened to follow her in. You waited there as others slowly wandered over to wait with you until you saw Minho and Gally running towards you, behind them Mai Mai had Newt on her long back. He clutched to her as she ran, dropping him by your feet when they were back in the Glade.

Newt had broken his leg, but he would tell you what happened. The tiger refused to leave his side for weeks.

That was the first time you felt something more than friendship towards Newt. After that you decided he would sleep in your room with you and Mai Mai. Newt was never the same after that day. A sadness had fallen over him that he tried to hide from you all. He stopped running and instead started helping you with the vegetable patches.

Life in the Glade in its own way became easy. Everyone had their places and their jobs and if you worked together it was even nice.

Frypan had become the main cook and he sure made a mean stew. None of you thought anything would change until one day the lift came up and inside the box was a greenie that would change everything

Next part

@fandomfan-102 @deanstolemydragon @afalls14universe

#the maze runner #newt x reader #newt maze runner #thomas brodie sangster

54 notes · View notes

lorei-writes · 5 months

Text

HC: Crochet! Princes - Foreign Affairs Faction

Clavis, Chevalier, Luke, Nokto Content Warnings: none Word Count: ~1.3k Inspired by @keithsandwich 's work :)

Quiet. Be quiet, little ones. For what would have happened if humans saw you come alive, with your little crocheted heads and wire spines? Children of yarn do not see eye to eye with those born from blood.

So be quiet.

At least for now.

Clavis

He falls asleep come midnight, so he spends his days wandering in the shadows of his human maker. (Who, as it happens, is now certain that Clavis doll is possessed — how else could they explain the fact that it is him and him alone who is always misplaced?)

A multitude of legends has grown around Clavis the possessed doll. Likewise, rules followed. For the protection of his co-habitants, naturally.

Rule #1: If you see Clavis doll appear in the kitchen while you’re cooking, do not turn your eyes away from the food. Otherwise, it will be magically transformed into gruesome in appearance, although technically edible, abomination.

Rule #2: If you hear the plink of glass out of nowhere, pinch your nose and proceed as usual. If you see any colourful vapours, run.

Rule #3: Say “I adore you to the moon and back, Clavis!” whenever you hear hyaena laughter.

Rule #4: If you see Chevalier doll fighting with Clavis doll — no, you did not. Follow any steps specified by Clavis doll until you’re outside the reach of Chevalier doll. Were you to fail at the task… Clavis doll does enjoy digging in the ground.

Cyran doll is still in the making. As such, Clavis doll is… Well.

His ambition is to find a needle and to add certain “adjustments” to Chevalier doll. However, he’s been unsuccessful thus far – largely because any yarn needles are held within the big tin box of doom on the upper shelf, guarded by a hedonist-doll-hater orange cat by the name of Potato.

An ancient prophecy says that on the day of final judgement Clavis doll with descent from heavens riding on an orange lion. It is highly likely that Potato’s disdain for all things Clavis is what prevents the apocalypse.

Whether that will remain the case is still unclear, as Clavis doll has taken interest in growing plants… including catnip.

Chevalier

Chevalier doll can generally be found somewhere around any large bodies of books — bookcases, attics, perhaps his maker’s backpack (whenever their route leads by a library). That being said, it “conveniently” always so occurs that it’s perfectly reasonable for Chevalier doll to be there. As such, nobody ever questions it.

The people who have seen Chevalier move do not make it far. (Typically not outside the door; provided that they do not execute the instructions of Clavis doll).

The house hosting Chevalier doll is rather old. As such, the primary focus of Chevalier doll is the maintenance of his kingdom, for the benefit of the doll kind. Using his superior wadded (with polyester) brain, he slays mice and moths with toothpicks, unclogs toilet bowls, calls appropriate companies to fix the roof… The list goes on.

That being said, Chevalier doll does indulge from time to time. Not only that! He finances his endeavours on his own!

Can you really be sure the person you talk with online is a person and not a crochet doll? Can you? CAN YOU NOW?!

With the internet at his non-existent fingertips, Chevalier doll can accomplish things no ordinary (meaning lifeless) doll could dream of. An inconspicuous doll by day, Chevalier spends his nights as an editor for an established publishing house — the fearsome Bloody Tiger who will not let the smallest error slide!

His work laptop (and personal e-book reader) is hidden below his makers bed, next to their secret toy box. They do not dare question it. The placement of the device was meant as a threat and it clearly has worked.

Yes. He has his own bank account.

And somehow, a driving license.

Nothing is impossible for the rare genius crochet doll born made every 1 000 years.

But maybe let’s not think about that too deeply. Lest we are to arrive at human-doll hybrids.

Luke

Luke is one of the few dolls who have actually befriended a human.

Her name was Leila. She was the niece of his maker and she instantly took a liking to him. She’d take him out on walks, make clothes for him, sing him songs, feed him pretend honey cakes… and she’d also tell him things. Things she’d never tell to anybody else.

In turn, Luke protected her — whenever she was afraid of demons living under the bed, he’d go and “scare” them away. He’d check inside wardrobes, hush any mosquitoes, bring her cookies after she had already brushed her teeth. He’d keep a flashlight on the ready and he’d do his upmost to present her with shadow theatre whenever she couldn’t sleep while visiting.

However, Leila grew and she continued to grow… and eventually, she convinced herself that she had merely dreamt of Luke coming to life. It all must have been a silly game played by a child bored with yet another visit to her relatives.

That being said, Leila still comes by. She also still plays with Luke, or at the very least takes time to greet him properly and shake his hand. She often brings (now an actual honey) cake and sets a good portion of crumbs aside aside, just for him… Although she tells herself it must be mice that eat it. Surely. Just old mice.

Luke finds it hard to accept this reality. The little girl that has once played with him is no more. He is happy to see her well, however, he also struggles with the fact that their lifespans clearly differ. Luke the doll will go on living. Leila the human is already an adult. She will age, and then… How does one mend humans? What does one do when their stitches become loose? When moths eat away at their cotton flesh and their strange button eyes fall off?

Nokto

Nokto doll is an absolute hit with women of all ages. For… vaguely unexpected reasons, perhaps.

The way Clavis doll is seen as cursed, Nokto doll (together with Licht doll) is thought to be blessed. Having Nokto around supposedly brings good luck during job interviews, dates, social gatherings of any type, and language classes.

Given the above, he is brought… everywhere. Nokto doll enjoys a rich social life. His wardrobe is expansive — how else could he become the high fashion accessory craved by many but possessed by few? Some of his outfits are downright scandalous… not that he complains. (That being said, he may consider it most curious, given the intricacies – or lack thereof – of his crochet anatomy).

The sad truth of Nokto’s life is that he never stays for long with anybody. It may be that he’s grown to accept it, or to even prefer this state of affairs (although he cannot say why that could be the case). He sleeps in many beds, just to be brought home in the morning, to sleep away all day and be back at his post at night.

The secret behind Nokto’s “magical qualities” is that, whenever people aren’t looking, he disappears from the crowd and sneaks in below the floor, to converse with local rats.

Nokto doll is the best cheese dealer in town. And other-things-dealer too, but we do not talk about that. The rat king sees him as a valuable ally and so, his subjects are to do as Nokto commands.

Since one of Nokto’s commands is to avoid his own house of origin, Chevalier doll does not see this situation as a potential threat. Even though Nokto may be actively working to overthrow the major of their town. For what purpose? Well… That still remains unclear, although the recent evidence suggests a certain eyepatch has been crocheted. Who knows, perhaps somebody else is pulling all the relevant strings…

You've seen a typo? Please, tell me!

Tag List: @lancelotscloak @violettduchess @pathogenic @fang-and-feather @tele86 @rinaririr @keithsandwich @cheese-ception @bis-enti @claviscollections

Tell me if you'd like to be added to my tag list :)

#chevalier michel #ikepri chevalier #ikemen prince chevalier #ikepri #ikemen prince #ikemen series #clavis lelouch #ikepri clavis #ikemen prince clavis #nokto klein #ikepri nokto #ikemen prince nokto #luke randolp #ikepri luke #ikemen prince luke

70 notes · View notes

thequerydearys · 16 hours

Text

Hello everyone, here's my random and completely insane theory on the tiger who came for tea.

Now, is this theory needed? No, of course not. Am I looking way too deep into a children's book? Yes, yes, I am.

I was recently reading The Tiger who came for tea, and it got me thinking, "Is this tiger real?" And I now believe yes, yes it is, and why do I think this? Well when the tiger knocks at the Sophies looks up at it and is clearly shocked at the presents of a tigar at her door and you're probably wondering why didn't she shut the door and scream? Well a few reasons 1. It's a tiger... be cool or he'll munch you 2. I think these strange creatures are normal in this world and you're probably thinking "what make you think that?" The way the dad reacts at the end. His completely calm and relaxed when his child and wife tell him that a TIGER came over and ate all their food! His not like "Umm this sounds very unlikely. Are you sure there wasn't a gas leak?" my bro is like 😐 "say less let's go out for food" and all of you who've read the book are most likely like "wait but there's a cat at the end of the book clearly it was just a naughty kitty cat" and to that I say FOOLS! explain to me why Sophie and her family then buy a large can of TIGER FOOD at the end of the book? All in all, the tiger is a real scary creature that goes into people's houses and eats their food. Now now you might think this is silly why is this person going on about a silly little book. Well truth is I don't know anyways back to the point at hand

Before the dad comes home even Sophies mum says "I don't know what to do. I've got nothing for daddy's super the TIGER has eaten it all" meaning Sophies mum is clearly aware of these tigers and to end it off going back to the tiger food the book finishes with "and they also bought a very big tin of tiger food, IN CASE THE TIGER SHOULD COME TO TEA AGAIN!" why do shops sell tiger food? Why would he come again? What is happening?!.... well I don't know.

This has been a theory a GAM... bye.

#theory #silly #funny #stupid post #this is so stupid #weirdcore #my post #vent post #conspiracy theories #conspiracies

23 notes · View notes

historia-vitae-magistras · 11 months

Text

Part Three: Ghosts

Part One: Here. Part Two: Here. Part Three: You are here. Part Four: Here

Author's note: Inspired by the 1950s short story "The Man Who Came Early" by Poul Anderson. Red Sail Hall is what I decided to call Arthur's house. The referring to Alfred as 'Yan' comes from @oumaheroes! It's one of the only remaining parts of the Cumbrian Celtic language. And we're leaning hard into fantasy now. TW for gothic imagery, I guess?

Red Sail Hall

21st Century

“Oi, what tea am I supposed to make?" Rhys asked and listened, waiting for Arthur bustling about through the doorway to answer. The pantry with the extra board that dropped down as a counter from the cabinet currently held more than a dozen new tins, boxes and sets. Honestly, the man had a problem. “There’s another dozen in here since I last stopped by!"

He lifted a foot, felt a gentle pressure on his calf and glanced down to see the massive house tiger Arthur and Matthew insisted on calling a library cat. It was rubbing against his leg affectionately. It was just as well. There’d be no getting hair off his trousers anyway.

“Go get that blighter of yours,” He said, gently prodding the cat towards where Arthur would be.

Then the cat squealed; there was a crash. Flicking the kettle off, he shot through the doorway. Arthur was in the pose of a mariner on rough seas, ready to spring into movement in any direction depending on the chop of the vessel. Two broken bowls were on the floor, and the soup was slopped everywhere. He looked like he’d been in his grave for a week, all colour lost, bloodless lips moving silently, eyes fixed. There was no wound, no blood. Finally, he glanced up. A moment later, he collapsed against his brother, suddenly sympathetic.

There before them, semi-opaque right through the kitchen table heaped with spring seedlings and mail like a marble pillar, was their mother. Her red hair braided away from her face, her golden brooches clasping her blue and fur mantel over the greens and browns of her clothes. The empty scabbard of the sword he held in trust dangling from the belt at her hip. As they had buried her, she appeared at the altar at the mouth of her burial barrow and now here, in the kitchen.

“Mam?” he asked.

“My sons.” Her translucent green eyes danced in the slant of sunlight, and she looked so happy. Arthur had lost millennia in moments, his eyes rounder in his face than they’d been in centuries as he took unsteady steps forward.

“Mother?” His voice was so uncertain.

“Hello, little one.”

On the rare occasion where Arthur accompanied them to the barrows on Samhain, he’d had weeks to prepare himself and usually had one of his children in his arms. This was a shield against his guilt, against the boy he’d once been. Her mouth opened, and her words were as wind.

“Yan has passed between worlds he should not have."

And then she was gone, and all was as it had been, save the broken bowls on the floor.

“Mum?” Arthur was still transfixed.

Arthur's phone suddenly rang, breaking the spell that had enveloped them. Arthur remained transfixed momentarily, his gaze fixed on where their mother had floated, before slowly reaching for his phone.

“Did that–” Rhys could barely hear him over the ringing.

“I’ll put the kettle on.”

“Rhys–”

“I’m putting the bloody kettle on.”

“Fine.” He glared, slid his thumb to take the call and collapsed in a chair, putting his phone on speaker.

"Something's wrong," Matthew's voice echoed, tinny and hysterical. “Something’s wrong.”

He dumped water into the kettle, hands trembling, guts suddenly water as he heard the distress. Arthur dragged a hand down his face.

“What’s happened to your brother?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. But I can’t feel him. I just woke up and I can’t sense him. He’s supposed to be up on the ISS, but I can still sense him when he's up there, but I can’t... Dad, I can’t feel him.”

Rhys glanced at the clock. Ah, it’d be the very early morning there.

“Matthew, breathe.” Arthur said like he wasn’t this close to hyperventilating.

“I’m breathing!” Matthew snapped. “I’m breathing, I’m about to puke, and then I’m getting the first flight to D.C. and finding my fucking brother. You'd better meet me, or Arlington is going to need a fucking expansion.”

#hws england #hws america #hws wales #hws brittania #hws mama brittania #hws canada #my writing || cacoethes scribendi #arthur || stone set in the silver sea #Rhys || my word for heaven was not yours #matthew || my country is winter #the dangeld axe to grind: the viking age time travel au

100 notes · View notes

love-takes-work · 1 year

Text

Steven Universe episode titles

Steven Universe episode titles that are exactly what it says on the tin

Laser Light Cannon

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Steven’s Lion

Arcade Mania

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Beach Party

Rose’s Room

Island Adventure

Watermelon Steven

Future Vision

Sadie’s Song

Steven’s Birthday

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Steven vs. Amethyst

Three Gems and a Baby

Steven Universe episode titles that sound pretty epic and actually are

Giant Woman

Steven the Sword Fighter

Mirror Gem / Ocean Gem

Rose’s Scabbard

The Return / Jailbreak

Sworn to the Sword

We Need to Talk

Cry for Help

The Answer

Message Received

Gem Drill

Storm in the Room

Are You My Dad? / I Am My Mom

The Trial

Lars of the Stars / Jungle Moon

A Single Pale Rose

The Question

Reunited

Legs from Here to Homeworld

Change Your Mind

Steven Universe episode titles that don’t sound very epic but THE EPISODE PUNCHED YOUR FACE

Coach Steven

An Indirect Kiss

Space Race

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

On the Run

Keystone Motel

Catch and Release

Super Watermelon Island

Mr. Greg

Bismuth

Earthlings

Bubbled

Mindful Education

That Will Be All

Stuck Together

Off Colors

Lars’ Head

Can’t Go Back

Made of Honor

Steven Universe episode titles that sound like epic main plot developments but THAT’S A LIE

Garnet’s Universe

Rising Tides / Crashing Skies

Hit the Diamond

Kindergarten Kid

Last One Out of Beach City

Gem Harvest

The New Crystal Gems

Back to the Kindergarten

Sadie Killer

Escapism

Steven Universe episode titles that you need context for or are just vague af

Tiger Millionaire

House Guest

Secret Team

Fusion Cuisine

Maximum Capacity

Story for Steven

The Message

Full Disclosure

Keeping It Together

Chille Tid

When It Rains

It Could’ve Been Great

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

Alone at Sea

Crack the Whip

Beta

Steven’s Dream

Adventures in Light Distortion

Doug Out

Dewey Wins

Gemcation

Pool Hopping

Letters to Lars

Familiar

#steven universe #myblog

351 notes · View notes

stripperblvd · 2 years

Note

Hey umm so i have this idea for a fic and i would love to request it!! So basically, eddie (metalhead who is great at sewing) is best friends with reader (baseball player who sometimes end up with ripped clothes after practice).

But the thing is, no one knows about them being friends because they are rarely seen in the same room together. So when the hawkins squad saw eddie stitching a baseball shirt with reader by his side, the others freak out like "dude, you're friends with [reader]????"

So like yeah, just some fluff and maybe funny stuff happening.

And uhhh i hope you dont mind making it platonic only and with a gender neutral reader... (shout out to the they/thems out there <3)

Stitches and Surprises (Eddie Munson x platonic!Reader)

Warnings: None really, just pure fluffy friend!Eddie, some cursing but meh Word Count: 1.4k

Note: As per my lovely Anon, gender neutral reader.

Playing sports was something you loved doing, even if it took up a lot of your time but it simply was so exciting to you. You smile at your friends, waving goodbye to them as you walk towards your car, duffel bag at your side. You sigh as you sit, letting the car rumble for a bit before going over to your bag to grab a bottle of water. You unzip its opening, frowning as your eye catches all the dirty uniforms and sports shirts that very desperately need a wash.

You pull into your house’s driveway, kissing your parent’s hello as you head straight for the washing machine, wanting to leave your laundry load running while you eat dinner and let it dry while you take a shower. As you take out all the items out of the bag you start separating the colorful shirts, making sure no white garment get’s in the color’s load. As you finish up you whine, picking up your “86’ Hawkins Tigers” baseball shirt, frowning as you watch one of the sleeves hanging off in an awkward manner. “That’s right” you think, your mind traveling back to a couple days ago when you were in the locker room, tripping over your own feet as you tried to race out of there, accidentally grabbing your shirt as your pants and ripping one of the seams as you tried to stick your foot in it.

You leave the laundry room, sticking everything else into the washer and heading towards the kitchen. “Hey guys, is it okay if I head to Eddie’s for a bit? My shirt needs stitching.” you ask, heading into the kitchen while your parents talk, muttering something about the Johnson’s bee infestation down the street. Your mom's head perks up a bit, letting you know her attention is on you, “Sure, let me pack you your dinner, bring the rest to Wayne.” she says, quickly getting a small tupperware for you, and a medium sized tin to stick in the rest of the large meal. “ You know back in my day, the kids sewed their own stuff up.” you dad laughs, jabbing at your very real inability to do so. “Yeah well in this case, this child has a perfectly helpful raging metal head as a friend, who just so happens to sew his own patches onto his jackets.” you sass right back, thanking your mom for the food. Your dad laughs as you pick both your meal and the one for the Munsons, placing your folded shirt on top, “Okay kiddo, whatever you say.”

Your car rumbles quietly as you see the trailer park ahead, pulling into the rows of small homes, careful not to run anything over. You stop near Eddie’s trailer, parking and turning your car off as you grab the food and your shirt. You walk towards the entrance, knocking slightly, seeing that Eddie is home given his van’s location right next to the trailer. Wayne opens the door grinning as he sees you, “ Y/N! Long time no see kid, what brings you round these parts?” he asks, giving you a quick hug and stepping aside so that you can walk in, propping the door open with a wooden triangle to let some of the outside breeze in. “Oh my shirt has a freaking rip, you know how bad I am with stitching so I’m bringing it to Eds, my mom sent you some food though.” You smile, raising the tin in your hands. Your ears catch the echo of a voice, and an equally familiar bush of slightly damp dark curls emerging from the back of the trailer. “Do my ears deceive me or have we been blessed with the amazing Y/N Y/L/N” his frame dramatically jumps towards you, smiling wide as he takes you into his arms. You return his smile, wrapping your arms around him for a quick squeeze. “Keep it down boy, the neighbors will hunt me down if you wake up their baby.” Wayne scolds, scooping some of the food from the tray into his own tupperware. “Okay well that spawn has been a “baby” for the past like decade.” Eddie mocks, with a nasly almost Italian accent. Wayne only rolls his eyes, snorting, “ All right, just keep it down. I'm heading to work. See you in the morning.” he responds, giving you both a small hug before leaving with his bag and food.

Eddie turns to you, “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he plops down, knowing your weird liking to sitting on the floor. “My fucking shirt man, I was rushing out of pratice like a few days ago and I accidentally stepped on it like weird. See?” you hold the flimsy item up, allowing him to see where his work was needed. He laughs, clearly amused with your clumsy nature, shaking his head as he speaks, “Alright, lemme get my stuff, you dearest friend of mine please pass me a plate of whatever your mother’s magical heads whipped up.” he shakes your shoulders, walking off while you grin, never a boring moment with Eddie Munson.

You’re chatting and munching away, Eddie finishing his food before you despite taking breaks from it to neatly stitch some thread in and out of your shirt. “No dude I’m telling you, those girls nearly ripped their coach’s head off when they lost. They literally abuse him!” you joke, Eddie barking with laughter at your over exaggeration of a game you saw when visiting your cousins in another town, not being able to believe how a group of teenage girls can rough up their coach. “You’re fucking telling me that girls that looks like freaking Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz are bullying their coach?” you grin but before you can respond with another joke, footsteps behind you catch your attention, the voices belonging to the bodies calling out to Eddie. They stop mid sentence,

Standing in Eddie’s doorway are some freshman from his club, Dustin Henderson and Lucas Sinclair, a smaller middle school aged girl who you only recognize as the latter’s little sister and most notably, Steve Harrington, Nancy Wheeler and a girl from school, Robin Buckley. They stare at you like you're covered in bees, eyes wide and mouths slightly agape. “Uh, guys. The hell are you doing here?” Eddie questions, confused as to why his friends were visiting at nearly 7 pm. You watch the boy you recognize as Dustin gulp, pushing his way into the trailer, “Uh um, you never showed, we were gonna have a movie night at Nancy’s remember? 6 pm bring snacks? He stutters, still not taking his eyes off you. “Oh shit, yeah I forgot to phone in. I got home a little later than usual, I was gonna be late. But uh, this is Y/N, Y/N -”

“Y/L/N yeah we know.” Steve chimes in, not believing his eyes. Eddie Munson, sitting with one of Hawkins’ most notable athletes, Y/N Y/L/N. “‘You guys know each other?” he asks breathly. “Oh yeah, we’ve been friends for a few years now. I was just here to have Eds stitch a rip in my tee.” You smile, still slightly creeped out with how many new eyes are just blatantly staring into you. “Oh. Oh cool.” he steps back, relaxing a bit. Your eyes shift to Eddie’s as an awkward and very uncomfortable silence falls upon his room. Nancy smiles, “Would you like to join us for tonight? We don’t usually get to meet other friends of Eddie’s” she says, pointing outside. “Oh, yeah sure, sounds fun, if that's okay with everyone.” you glance around, laughing slightly as you get a string of ‘Oh yeah’s, and ‘Totally’s. You grin back at the girl, “Cool.” you watch as Nancy ushers the group away, a very noticeable conversation starting the second they step outside.

“Boom.” Eddie chimes, holding your shirt up to display his newly stitched work. “Dude you’re the best.” You smile, taking your shirt from his hands. He smirks, getting up quickly and grabbing his keys. “Let's go, I'll give you a ride.” he says, making sure to turn off all electronics. You follow him outside, Nancy yelling over to follow along with her car. You both nod, climbing into Eddie’s van, clipping your belt on knowing how rowdy of a driver your friend is. You smirk, “So, hanging with King Steve now huh?” which only gets you a small shove on the shoulder, Eddie turning his radio on to play some music for the ride, “Shut up” he laughs.

Man I love me some bestie Eddie fics, thank you for requesting Anon.

7-3-22

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson platonic #platonic!reader #friend!reader #friend!Eddie #platonic!Eddie #stranger things #stranger things 4 #st4 #st4 vol2 #gender neutral reader #gn!reader

170 notes · View notes

delightingintragedy · 3 months

Text

Jupiter Correspondences

From Christian Astrology by William Lilly

(It is mostly word for word. I tried to format it to fit into a nice correspondence list, but the information itself is untouched.)

Zodiac: Sagittarius is his Day-house, and Pisces is his Night-house. Detriment in Gemini and Virgo, Exalted in Cancer, Fall in Capricorn.

Nature: He is a Diurnal, Masculine Planet, Temperately Hot and Moist, Airy, Sanguine, the greater Fortune, author of Temperance, Modesty, Sobriety, Justice.

Profession: Judges, Senators, Councillors, Ecclesiastical men, Bishops, Priests, Ministers, Cardinals, Chancellors, Doctors of the Civil Law, young Scholars and Students in a University or College, Lawyers, Clothiers, Woolen-Drapers.

Diseases: Pleurisy, all Infirmities of the Liver, left Ear, Apoplexies, Inflammation of the Lungs, Palpitations and Trembling of the Heart, Cramps, pain in the Backbone, all Diseases lying in the Veins or Ribs, and proceeding from corruption of Blood, Squinzies. Windiness, all Putrefaction in the Blood, or Fevers proceeding from too great abundance thereof.

Savours: Sweet and well scented Odors; or that Odor which in smell is no way extreme or offensive.

Colours: Sea-green or Blue, Purple, Ash-colour, a mixed Yellow and Green

Herbs: Cloves and Clove-Sugar, Mace, Nutmeg, Gillyflower, the Strawberry, the herb Balsam, Betony, Centaury, Flax, Arsesmart, Fumitory, Lungwort, Pimpernel, Wallwort, Oregano or Wild Marjoram, Rhubarb, Self-heal, Borage, Bugloss, Wheat, Willow-herb, Thorough-leaf, Violets, Lackwort, Liverwort, Basil, Pomegranates, Peony, Liquorice, Mint, Mastic, the Daisy, Feversend, Saffron.

Plants & Trees: Cherry-tree, Birch-tree, Mulberry-tree, Coral-tree, the Oak, Bayberries, Olive, Gooseberries, Almond tree, the Ivy, Manna, Mace, the Vine, the Fig tree, the Ash, the Pear tree, the Hazel, the Beech tree, the Pine, Raisins.

Beasts: The Sheep, the Hart or Stag, the Doe, the Ox, Elephant, Dragon, Tiger, Unicorn, those Beasts which are Mild and Gentle, and yet of great benefit to Mankind, are appropriate to him.

Birds, etc: The Stork, the Snipe, the Lark, the Eagle, the Stockdove, the Partridge, Bees, Pheasant, Peacock, the Hen.

Fishes: The Dolphin, the Whale, Serpent, Sheath-fish or River Whale.

Places: In or near Altars of Churches, in public Conventions, Synods, Convocations, in Places neat, sweet, in Wardrobes, Courts of Justice, Oratories.

Mineral: Tin.

Stones: Amethyst, the Sapphire, the Smarage or Emerald, Hyacinth, Topaz, Crystal, Bezoar, Marble, and that which in England we all Freestone.

Weather: He usually produces serenity, pleasant and healthful North Winds, and by his gentle Beams allays the ill weather of any former Malignant Planet.

Winds: Northern Winds

Element: Air

Number: 3

Angel: Zadkiel

Planetary Alliances: Friends with all planets except Mars.

Week Day: Thursday

Correspondence posts for the other planets: [Sun] [Moon] [Mercury] [Venus] [Mars] [Saturn]

#astrology #planets #jupiter #planetary #planetary magic #correspondences #magic #witchcraft #witchblr #astrology witch #magical correspondences #witches #witch community #witch #astro community #zodiac #zodiac signs #astroblr #astrology facts

5 notes · View notes

obscurecharactershowdown · 10 months

Text

Round 3 Matchups!

This round has no 3 way matches, and I'm going to try to see if I can arrange round 4 so that doesn't happen there either. Matches are below the cut!

GROUP A

Leila Vernon (The Magic Misfits by Neil Patrick Harris) vs Rosalia Rossellini (Trauma Team)

Miyabi Hanakouji (Persona 2) vs Merim Felspar (Three of Hearts Podcast)

Tragedian (pathologic) vs Rose Red (Ghost Quartet)

Nin (Paranatural) vs Itakura Akira (Talentless Nana)

Raikou Shimizu (Nabari no Ou) vs Cyber 6 (Cybersix)

Kate (Shadow’s House) vs The Guardian (Hyper Light Drifter)

GROUP B

Tougou Mimori/Washio Sumi (Yuuki Yuuna is a Hero & Washio Sumi is a Hero) vs Tirsiak (Spooky's Jumpscare Mansion)

Anima (Why Shouldn't a Detestable Demon Lord Fall in Love?!) vs Walter Walzac (The Brave of Gold Goldran)

Pappy van Poodle (Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball) vs Isaac (Awful Hospital)

Oopsy Bear (Care Bears (2007 series)) vs Xuanli (Lanxi Zhen)

Hikaru (Hikaru ga Shinda Natsu) vs Red Savarin (Solatorobo)

Bennett (Hello Charlotte) vs Sheila (Witch’s Heart)

GROUP C

Bolt (Crypt of the Necrodancer) vs Vella (Velouria Beastender Tartine) (Broken Age (video game))

Bai Lang (My Tooth Your Love) vs Aliya Elasra (Heaven’s Vault)

Sawamura Tetsuo (Yuureitou) vs Katook (The Katurran Odyssey)

The Spider Core (The Lab - Core Slingshot) vs Satyarani (Raven: The Secret Temple)

Rambler (Happy Happy Clover) vs Felix Iskandar Escellun (Last Legacy)

"good" Tom (El Goonish Shive) vs Dee Kennedy (Dayshift at Freddy’s)

GROUP D

The Exsurgent Virus (Eclipse Phase) vs Heart (Moonlight Chicken)

Es (Milgram) vs Ulala (Space Channel 5)

Diggory Graves (Hello from the Hallowoods) vs Brutha (Discworld)

Kusuriuri (Mononoke) vs Tin (Triage The Series)

Silver (Oneshot) vs Gary (Faith the Unholy Trinity)

Shijima Tsukishima/Shimeji (Shimeji simulation) vs Nuch (Not Me The Series)

GROUP E

Sarah Collins (Dark Shadows (1966-1971)) vs Zaknafein Do'Urden (The Legend of Drizzt (Forgotten Realms))

Leonie Beaumort (Aviary Attorney) vs Magda (Vapors)

Principal Shirley Oddwell (Oddport Academy) vs The Cashier (Midnight Museum)

Seaweed (Gloomverse) vs Stag Malinay (Krystar First Fragment)

No Significant Harassment (Rain World) vs Sally Swing (Betty Boop)

Shrimp (The Upturned) vs Cecilia Sylvie (Cross-dressing Villainess Cecilia Sylvie)

GROUP F

Gabrielle (Gabrielle's Ghostly Groove) vs Liv (Spooky Month)

Fumi-ba (Kamen Rider Ghost) vs Corona Hoshino (Swans in Space)

Granger (NeverHome game series) vs Gaap Goemon (Mairimashita! Iruma-kun)

Forest Friend (Gris) vs Protagonist (Melatonin)

Turnip (Chicory: A Colorful Tale) vs Agent (Penguinronpa)

Uhh… these guys? (Rhythm Heaven Fever) vs Tiger of the Wind (Monster Rancher (1999))

#obscurecharactershowdown #masterpost

18 notes · View notes

howmanyholesinswisscheese · 3 months

Note

Hello! List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals and followers :D

Aah thank you!!

1. My dog, Coby, and Tiger when I see him.

2. Thunderstorms on my house’s tin roof.

3. Good Omens fics. I don’t care that it’s the same ship over and over again I love them all.

4. Wintertime. Ah, 11 degree C nights I miss you dearly.

5. THE LOVELY AND BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE I SEE ON MY PHONE EVERYDAY. THATS YOU. I LOVE YOU GUYS.

#ask #arter speaks

3 notes · View notes

turtleations · 11 months

Text

Pink Couldy Sky, Chapter 04 – Howl (Summarized) - Part 2

Chapter 00 - 01

Chapter 02

Chapter 03

Chapter 04 Part 1

At that time, practice was always at the “Pentastudio” in Yokohama. They always went there in bassist Jimmy’s worn out white Fair Lady Z 2-by-2 T-bar roof, much like the model REM’s university friend was also driving. Except Jimmy’s model was lowered and had wings and was extremely flashy. Also, the classmate’s car was new and shiny and Jimmy’s car was old and on the verge of scrapping.

Those who know something about cars would know this, but the car was originally meant to be a two-seat sports car. Jimmy’s car, being a 2-by-2, had four seats, but the backseats were originally meant for children, presumably. They were hellishly narrow.

This car was filled with four grown guys and the trunk with their equipment. [Note: Since the band had five members, I can only assume that either REM meant “four guys in addition to the driver” or that they tied one person to the roof.] The people on the back seat always had to sit slouched over. Hide, who was weak to moving vehicles, always went onto the backseat first for some reason, only to groan that he wasn’t feeling well the moment they took off. One time they were on the way back from a live in Tokyo, when hide suddenly opened the window with a pale face and puked onto the express way. Another time they went to have a barbeque on Sarushima, an island in the bay of Yokosuka. The ferry ride only took seven minutes, yet hide turned white as a sheet and complained about feeling ill.

That same hide absolutely loved Jimmy’s crappy car.

He would say something about how one day he, too, would ride up to the livehouses in a Jaguar or a Ferrari, abandoning his guitar, but for now, the Z is it! And then he would climb into the narrow backseat.

That said, it was a pretty awesome car for a musician with no family. They called it the “White Demon”.

At some point, they figured that the maximum speed of the Z was 120 km/h, provided you still wanted the breaks to be effective. And that you shouldn’t drive it if you couldn’t estimate how long it would take you to stop if you didn’t want to tailgate the car in front of you. One time, Jimmy drove all the way back from Chiba using only the engine break, because the break-pedal was broken.

Jimmy, who calmly drove that “Demon Z”, was perhaps a genius driver who put Ayrton Senna to shame.

In that white Z, they did a lot of tours to haunted places, or to Mount Fuji in the middle of the night. Usually, those were hide’s idea. He loved planning stuff like that.

Three o’clock in the morning. Dobuita-Street. Hide: “Let’s got to the Fuji!” or “Don’t you want to go to the sea?” or, “I learned about a haunted place we absolutely must check out!”

So of course their rowdy bunch, including REM, piled into their “Demon Z” near daybreak, and went to the foot of Mount Fuji, the sea at Shônan, or haunted locations in Kamakura or Kannonzaki. By the time they arrived, the sun would come up, but they were all cheerful as if infected by hide’s energy and fooling around.

One day, they were on a haunted tour with a group of about 15 people. As usual, hide was the one who suggested going to a popular “Monster Mansion” in Kamakura. Between SAVER TIGER, another band, and some female fans, there was an entire army on the move. It was a cold winter’s night with heavy snowfall, and they did not care one bit as they got into several cars and drove from Yokosuka to Kamakura.

When they arrived, they found the ruin of an old house inside a Shinto shrine. The tin roof was rusted, the walls full of holes. It was the kind of place that made you feel like you should leave. As they timidly moved closer, someone in the group suddenly screamed, “Something came out!” and they all ran away, screaming “WAAAH!”

REM got taken by surprise, lost his orientation, slipped and fell. Seeing his miserable appearance, covered in snow and mud, everyone freaked out and one person even fainted, apparently. REM spend the drive home in a mood of “I should quit this band already.”

Eventually, car-loving hide got them their own equipment van. Up to that point, they used the wagon car of the student council of REM’s university to get all their stuff to the livehouses when they did a show. They could rent it for 3000 Yen every time, which was fortunate. Less fortunate was that the vehicle had the words “Kanagawa Dental College Student Council” written on the side. SAVER TIGER used to cover the words with camouflage tape and wrote their band name over it.

The pattern of events was the same every time: After the live, they returned to Yokosuka for the afterparty, which lasted until six or seven in the morning. REM and hide would then return the van to the campus, and REM would bring hide home on his bike.

Their bodies were exhausted, the heads heavy with fatigue and alcohol, their hair fluttering in the wind. But REM still vividly remembers him and hide riding the bike together along the coastal road, the sea glittering in the morning sun: The light of hope that knew nothing of shame.

As the number of lives increased and this method became increasingly impractical, the topic of getting their own van came up. But everyone in the band was poor, so there was absolutely no money for that kind of thing. In the end, their brainstorming on this problem resulted in hide getting a Hiace Long with money he gradually paid back to his parents.

The day their shiny new vehicle arrived, REM and hide got emotional and spend the entire day driving around pointlessly. That night, hide said, as usual: “Let’s go to Disneyland!” So the two of them drove to Uruyasu. However, Disneyland is a harsh place for two musicians who love alcohol and didn’t bring any. They hung out with their “My Fair Hiace” on the gigantic parking lot under the light of the mercury lamps, then drove back to Yokosuka and – as goes without saying – got determinately drunk on Dobuita Street.

Before they got the van, hide and Jimmy once got into a fight on the way back from a live in Tokyo. For some reason, hide really wanted to drive the Z that day. Jimmy, being Jimmy, wanted to drive it himself. Neither wanted to give in. In the end, Jimmy was the one who did the driving, since it was his car.

That day, they had a live at the livehouse “Rokumeikan” in Meguro, and since they had no money, they endlessly tracked along the country road instead of taking the expressway. The entire way until Kawasaki, hide and Jimmy sulked and didn’t even look at each other. Then, near Oppama, where they planned to stop for a drink, hide said, “Sorry, Jimmy, it wasn’t a big deal,” and just like that, they were friends again.

Going from sour faces to everything being alright from one moment to the next was typical for hide.

The next car-related story happened after SAVER TIGER’s rhythm section changed and Kyo joined them as their new vocalist. At that point, hide and drummer Kosuke were the only ones with a driver’s license, so it was always them who had to drive the band to lives or to rehearsals. In order to help them out, REM and new bassist Tokihiko decided to get their driver’s license as well.

The place they chose for this endeavor was a training camp in a town called Kobuchisawa at the foot of the Yatsugatake mountains in Yamanashi prefecture. [Note: The town was merged into the city of Hokuto in 2006.] They had the plan to practice guitar and bass and create music at night after the driving lessons, hugging their instruments on the train ride to the camp. They should be able to combine lessons and practice in one go, and moreover, it would be a change of air and a separation from their usual, unhealthy lifestyle. However, their plans were shattered soon after they arrived.

Because their friends arrived shortly after. Led by hide, a group of people otherwise consisting of Kyo, REM’s former LAFERIA-bandmate Shiomi, as well as hide’s childhood friend Yoko, leader of the band UNITED [Note: Yokoyama Akihiro, bassist, 10 September 1964 – 13 May 2014] came to visit them in their isolation. In the end, they were hardly ever at the camp at night.

Hide and the others stayed for quite a while. They slept in the car while REM and Tokihiko had their lessons and enthusiastically dragged them across the area at night. They got chased by spirits on the local cemetery, went down haunted roads facing certain death… And then went to the picturesque town of Kiyosato for the next trip. Off to Shinshû! From all they had heard about it, Kiyosato seemed like paradise to them, and they were excited about going. Kiyosato was famous, but none of them had ever been there and so they were not prepared for how much of a fairy-tale village it really was, completely unsuited for the likes of them.

Having explored the mountains far from human habitation for a while, they were eager to get to a place full of people. What they found, though, was a pastel-colored nightmare of a cityscape, were girls were floating around with fluttering lace in their hair…

The guys all had long hair, were dressed in black leather pants and boots. Just a bunch of rockers from Yokosuka walking down the candy-sweet, picturesque main street, floating around sadly. Feeling uncomfortable and dazed, they even forgot to call out to the girls, who seemed like they didn’t even come from the same planet as them.

Then, suddenly, they couldn’t believe their ears:

In this unlikeliest of places, they heard a familiar rock-beat: Their own song DEAD ANGLE, blasting from the radio of a random car. So they went and enthusiastically shook hands with the owner of the car. Kiyosato is a magical place, after all. Not long after, their training was over and they triumphantly returned to Yokosuka with hide and the others who had stayed in their “Car Hotel” until the end.

In any case, hide’s power to create events was different from that of an average guy. And his love for mischief received a power-up when he was drunk. That wasn’t always a good thing. His usual energy and drive towards random trips got raised by several levels.

An example: One night, they were once again drinking with several people at REM’s place, when he carelessly showed hide the Calpis in his refrigerator. It was the classic, undiluted stuff that had to be diluted and refrigerated. By the time they all noticed that hide was suspiciously quiet, it was too late: hide had mobilized every glass in the room and used up the entire bottle of Calpis, which they had been drinking cluelessly until everyone got heartburn.

Not long after that night, hide, who was worried about REM’s health because he put all of his allowance into alcohol, stuffed a bento-box full of his mother’s homemade food and brought it along when he visited. As usual, they spend the night drinking, and then slept in a pile. When REM got ready to rush out in the morning to get to his first university lecture of the day, hide, who had gotten up first and had been rustling about in the kitchen for a while, handed him a small package. It was a bento hide had made for REM from the leftovers of the food he brought before. He had gotten up early in the morning with a hangover just to make a bento for REM to take to class.

What to say… hide was a person who never forgot to be kind, and caring, and considerate. REM still has that bento box. It’s a small, scratched, and worn thing that has the characters 松本秀人 [Matsumoto Hideto] written on it in childish letters, so it probably dated back to hide’s elementary-school days. But to REM, it is an important treasure, stuffed tightly with the memory of what hide has really been like.

A little story about Dobuita-Street: There used to be a store called “Ichifuku” near the entrance to the shopping district, where REM and hide always went to eat (and drink). It was a rustic, cheap restaurant run by a lady of about 80 years. (REM sends his apologies in case she was, in fact, younger than that.) One day REM and hide were there once again, snacking on granny’s food while REM got drunk. (The darker the Japanese Sochû, the faster he got drunk, it seems.) For them, who had no money and were always hungry, this store was a paradise comparable to Disneyland or Hawaii.

Some of it remains even today, but back then Dobuita-Street was a wild and dangerous place where violent incidents were common. All it all, it was rather representative of a base-city like Yokosuka.

On that night, when the two of them were at Ichifuku once again, washing down their food with alcohol, they heard some commotion happening right outside, thought “Eh, another fight,” and continued drinking without thinking anything of it. About an hour later they went home, and on their way out they saw two figures stretched out on the ground in front of the building. They judged them for drinking themselves unconscious right there on the street and moved on. The next day, they were shocked to learn from the news that two people had been killed in a violent fight on Dobuita the night before…

Another time, REM went home early because he wasn’t feeling well. After he was gone, hide and the others went to a place called “Yoshino-ya” to get some Gyudon to eat. A guy by the store who looked like a hooligan sneered when he saw them and spat “Beggars!” in their direction. The next moment, hide threw his gyudon into his face, like the sensible person that he was. Another moment later, about ten of the guy’s friends came rushing over to hide and beat the shit out of him. The next morning, hide couldn’t remember the incident and was genuinely surprised at the state of his swollen and scarred face.

When he was drunk, the destructive impulses hidden deep in hide’s heart woke up more and more. REM thinks that everyone probably has such a part that they cannot control in certain moments.

Sometimes, when they drank until morning, they would sit on the rotary in front of Yokosuka Station and watch the people with normal jobs rush to work. Sitting on the cold concrete, they somehow enjoyed the sensation of going against the flow and being isolated and ill-fitting in the crowd.

Of course, they also drank in livehouses like PUMPKIN and ROCK CITY and other places that no longer exist. And when they drank, they drank all night. Getting thoroughly wasted has always been SAVER TIGER’s style, then as it is now.

After hide joined X and left Yokosuka, REM often went drinking on his own in a place called “99” near the city center, which later had a connection to the revived SAVER TIGER, and at POPPEYE’S on Dobuita Street.

POPPEYE’S was a bar with a strong American touch that belonged to a former nuclear engineer called Tak, who had a wild and dramatic personal history. The patrons were mostly American soldiers, sometimes accompanied by their Japanese girlfriends, and its interior décor was amazingly ugly and tasteless.

Sady, REM never got to take hide there. It was his favorite bar and he always promised hide to go there with him one day, but with hide’s busy schedule, the opportunity never came up.

It is something REM regrets even now.

Chapter 05

#hide #pink cloudy sky #REM #summary #saver tiger #today's episode: monsters mayhem motherhenning and murder #just your average day in #yokosuka #at this point I feel like the city deserves its own tag #also in this episode: trips to the country side and sleepy cuddling and shared bycicle rides along the coast in the morning sun #with purple prose and all #I swear those were REM's words not mine #I'm not making this up I'm just delivering it

12 notes · View notes

banned-books-daily · 2 months

Text

Banned Book: The Wizard of Oz

Intro: The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, in 1900. Banned in all public libraries in 1928 depictions of women being strong and in leadership roles. Banned across many US states throughout the 1900s for its strong female characters, use of magic, promotion of socialist values and attribution of human characteristics to animals. Challenged in many schools and libraries in states where it was not banned for the same reasons.

Major Plot Points/Topics in Book: -Power to Women -Leadership by Women -Rejection of Societies Values -Care of each other -Magic -Scams -Distrust of men -Opinions based on appearance

Brief Synopsis: In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her dog Toto find themselves in the strange land of Oz after a cyclone hits her Aunt and Uncle's house in Kansas. To return home, Dorothy must follow the yellow brick road to find the famous Wizard of Oz who lives in the beautiful Emerald City.

Trigger Warnings: -Death -Upheaval of Life -Orphaning

Long Summary: The orphaned Dorothy lives on the Kansas prairie with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry and her little black dog, Toto. When a cyclone hits, Dorothy is looking for Toto, so she doesn’t get to the cyclone cellar in time. Suddenly, the cyclone lifts the house with Dorothy and Toto inside high in the air. Dorothy wakes up in the Land of Oz, where she discovers that her house has landed on and killed the Wicked Witch of the East. Dorothy meets the Munchkins and the good Witch of the North, who gives Dorothy the dead Witch’s magic silver shoes. Dorothy wants to return to Kansas, but to do so, she must travel to the Emerald City to ask the help of the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy sets out on this challenging journey protected by the Witch of the North’s kiss.

In the first part of the journey, Dorothy finds traveling companions. She rescues a Scarecrow from his lonely life on his pole in a field. The Scarecrow asks to accompany her on her journey so he can ask the Great Oz for a brain. Soon, they come across a Tin Woodman who has been rusted in place for a year. Dorothy helps rescue him by oiling his joints. The Tin Woodman also asks to join the trip so he can ask the Great Oz for a heart. As the travelers continue through the forest, a Cowardly Lion scares them. Dorothy slaps the lion for scaring Toto. The Cowardly Lion admits he is a coward and wants to join the others so he can ask the Great Oz for courage.

The travelers run into a series of challenges for which the Scarecrow often comes up with solutions and that the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Woodman, and Scarecrow use their special abilities to overcome. Dorothy and her friends must find ways across deep, wide ditches; save themselves from the attack of the part bear, part tiger Kalidahs; and cross a wide, swiftly flowing river. The Scarecrow and Tin Woodman must rescue Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion from the poppy field, which they do with the help of a thousand field mice.

When Dorothy and her friends finally arrive at the Emerald City, the Great Oz agrees to meet with them. Appearing in a different disguise for each traveler, he tells each he will grant their wishes only when they have killed the Wicked Witch of the West. So, the travelers set out for the land of the Winkies in the West. The Wicked Witch of the West makes several attempts to stop them with a series of unsuccessful attacks from a pack of wolves, a flock of crows, and a swarm of bees. The Witch then uses her magic Golden Cap to call on the Winged Monkeys. The Monkeys scatter the Scarecrow and drop the Tin Woodman on rocks, but because Dorothy is protected by the Good Witch’s kiss, they transport her carefully along with the captured Cowardly Lion to the Wicked Witch’s castle.

When the Wicked Witch of the West uses her magic to snatch one of Dorothy’s silver shoes, Dorothy throws water on her, causing the Witch to melt away. Freed from enslavement, the Winkies help find and repair the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow. Once again, the travelers set out to return to the Emerald City but call the field mice one more time to tell them how to get there. The Queen of the Field Mice suggests Dorothy use the magic Golden Cap, now in Dorothy’s possession, to ask the Winged Monkeys to fly them there. On the way to the Emerald City, the King of the Monkeys tells Dorothy the story of the Golden Cap.

Back in the Emerald City, the travelers demand that the Great Oz fulfill his promises. Toto accidentally knocks down a screen that reveals the Great Oz is, in fact, a little old man. Still, the Great Oz, who reveals he is from Nebraska, uses his humbug wizardry to fulfill the Scarecrow’s, Tin Woodman’s, and Cowardly Lion’s wishes. The Great Oz then asks Dorothy to help him make a hot air balloon that will transport the two of them across the deserts of Oz and back to their homes. But at the time of departure, the balloon accidentally takes off with the Great Oz but not Dorothy, who is chasing after Toto.

Close to losing all hope, Dorothy learns that she must ask Glinda the Good Witch of the South how to get home. The Scarecrow, now ruler of the Emerald City, decides to travel with Dorothy and the others to Glinda’s Castle in the Land of the Quadlings. On the way there, the travelers encounter more challenges. They must find a way past some hostile guardian trees, cross a country made of fragile china, and help rescue some wild animals from a monstrous spider. When they can’t get past some Hammer-Heads, men who use their heads to punch the travelers when they try to pass, Dorothy again calls the Winged Monkeys to transport them safely to the beautiful land of the Quadlings, where they are directed to Glinda’s castle.

Glinda promises to tell Dorothy how to get home in exchange for the Golden Cap. Glinda plans to use the Cap to return the Scarecrow to the Emerald City, the Cowardly Lion to the forest to be King of the Beasts, and the Tin Woodman to the land of the Winkies to be their ruler. Glinda will then give the Golden Cap to the Winged Monkeys so they can finally be free. Glinda tells Dorothy she can click together the heels of her silver shoes three times and command them to take her home. Dorothy does this after bidding her friends a tearful goodbye. Very soon Dorothy arrives home again in Kansas, without her silver shoes but happy to be home and in the arms of her Aunt Em.

#banned book #banned books #wizard of oz #wonderful wizard of oz #love #strong women #women #magic #scams #wizards #l. frank baum

4 notes · View notes

mackerelphones · 1 year

Text

Ozma of Oz, the Third Oz Book and Source Material for Return to Oz

This continues from my previous post about The Marvelous Land of Oz. Please consider reading that one first.

Ozma of Oz, the third Oz novel, published in 1907, shows that L. Frank Baum had no talent for titles. The previous title, The Marvelous Land of Oz, is generic to the point of being meaningless. Since it is about the rise of Ozma of Oz, if anything, it should be the book bearing that name.

The title Ozma of Oz is also comically misleading: only the final two chapters of the twenty-one present in Ozma of Oz feature the Land of Oz, and our favorite transgender princess, Ozma of Oz, is not the protagonist. However, Ozma of Oz is abbreviated. Given its length, the somewhat more accurate full title seems more sixteenth century than 1907. It is Ozma of Oz: A Record of Her Adventures with Dorothy Gale of Kansas, Billina the Yellow Hen, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger; Besides Other Good People Too Numerous to Mention Faithfully Recorded Herein by L. Frank Baum the Author of The Wizard of Oz, The Land of Oz, etc.

Ozma of Oz is also much better than the previous two books. 👀

According to the Author’s Note, Baum’s readers wanted more Dorothy. So she would be the protagonist of every Oz novel until the seventh, The Patchwork Girl of Oz. It may be relevant to mention that Baum likely intended to end the series with the sixth book.

Dorothy Gale is aboard a passenger ship sailing for Australia with Uncle Henry when a terrible storm blows her into the sea, where she clings to life in a floating wooden chicken coop that also blew overboard. Compared to the house being carried away in the first novel, this is more distressing because it seems more realistic—houses do not spin around intact inside a tornado, but a storm could blow a child into the ocean. Dorothy and the one surviving hen, Bill, wash up on the shore of a strange foreign land. Dorothy quickly realizes this is a “fairy country” or “fairyland” like Oz because Bill can talk there. (Note that in the novels, Oz and the other fairy countries are real and not dreams.) Being an unimaginative stick-in-the-mud, Dorothy says Bill must be named Billina because “Bill” is a boy’s name, Billina says she doesn’t care, and then they set out into the wilderness.

Dorothy learns from a robot named Tiktok that she is in a country called Ev on the other side of the Deadly Desert that surrounds and isolates Oz. (Tiktok was constructed by Smith & Tinker, not ByteDance.) The King of Ev was a cruel man named Evoldo. Tiktok, not being alive, was the only of Evoldo’s servants he did not beat to death. After his reign of terror apparently depopulated much of the land (he killed a lot of people, and almost nobody seems to live in Ev), Evoldo sold his wife and children as slaves to the Nome King. Later, remorseful, Evoldo killed himself. This is a lot darker than the previous books! Ozma of Oz, along with fan favorites the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion, as well as the new Hungry Tiger and Oz’s twenty-seven-man army, arrive in Ev in time to rescue Dorothy and Billina from the local dictator, Langwidere. From here, Dorothy joins Ozma on a journey to free the Royal Family of Ev from the diabolical Nome King, Roquat of the Rocks.

(Wikipedia claims that the Nome King is named Roquat the Red, but he only takes on that name later, presumably because he becomes so consumed with rage that he turns red.)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz drags on for a number of chapters that seem limp and dull after the climactic battle against the Wicked Witch of the West. Ozma of Oz has a brisk pace from start to finish. Also making Ozma of Oz more appealing is much tighter writing, with little of the rambling vaudevillian repartee of The Marvelous Land, and a more focused plot than either previous title. There is a degree of mystery and suspense as Dorothy and Billina figure out where they are and what has happened, even if this takes the form of an exposition dump from Tiktok. When Ozma does appear, she is on a mission closely related to the backstory Dorothy and Billina have already discovered. Then Dorothy, Ozma, and their various friends march directly for the Nome King’s lair and complete their mission. Then, after a happy ending, Dorothy teleports to Australia, and the novel closes—no slogging on after the climax. The earlier novels are also weak on plot. Baum’s main interest is not plot but providing a gallery of strange ideas. These are also present in Ozma of Oz, but in a context of constant forward narrative momentum building to a climax. Baum’s previous style is not bad, but just a different approach. However, modern readers would likely find it duller than the more involved, and more perilous, adventures in Ozma of Oz.

Some of these changes must be attributable to Baum’s skill improving with practice. Some of it also may reflect that Baum wrote The Marvelous Land as the basis for a stage production, whereas he wrote Ozma of Oz just to be a good book. A novel can only benefit if the author values words for their own sake, instead of imagining a play or, nowadays, movie they would prefer to be creating.

This is not the only time John R. Neill draws Dorothy with a halo.

Neill’s illustrations are less extensive, no longer appearing on almost every page, but are much more impressive. The book has a colorful inside-cover artwork showing the major characters as spectators and performers in a circus. Chapters open with text bleeding into color illustrations, and the reader is spoiled with forty-one full-page, full-color pieces that bring the world to life, or cartoon life. The linework is solid and the colors often limited, and partially falling outside their outlines, in an alluring way that recalls the look of contemporary newspaper comics.

Each chapter opens with an illustration that partially overlaps with the text. The writing and the pictures are almost literally intertwined.

Dorothy wound up number one.

Dorothy chatting with the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow. Neill has learned how to draw them cute instead of scary.

For better or for worse, Neill’s artwork has lost much of the creepiness suffusing The Marvelous Land. Though the Wheelers are still pretty damn creepy. The Scarecrow now appears genuinely cute, and the relatively realistic Art Nouveau character designs feel less stiff and more approachable.

The Scarecrow.

Dorothy pleading for entrance into the Nome King’s lair. On the right are the Scarecrow, Ozma, and the Tin Woodman.

The only misstep, which would color the rest of the Oz series, is that Neill’s interpretation of Dorothy radically departs from Denslow’s. Denslow draws Dorothy as a little, almost toddler-like girl, with two brown pigtails and a modest calico dress. This original Dorothy exudes the innocence of childhood and a sweet simplicity. Here is the Denslow version of Dorothy chatting with the Scarecrow:

Neill’s Dorothy looks several years older, and given the time between the books’ publications might well be. This Dorothy is an almost ridiculously beautiful girl with short blonde hair, seemingly wearing full makeup in addition to her pearl necklace.

Look at that illustration. Dorothy is clearly highly distressed over the mortal peril she is facing.

The character design is quite a departure, and not for the better. As a protagonist, Dorothy is more appealing as a relatable anchor to the real world no matter how strange her environs. Instead of a normal kid, the heroine has herself become an idealized fantasy. A much more modest kid would also be an interesting contrast to Ozma, who is supposed to be an idealized fairyland princess. Also odd is that Neill has decided Ozma is brunette, when she was blonde in The Marvelous Land. If, for aesthetic reasons, he wanted one girl to be brunette and one girl to be blonde, why did he not just keep Dorothy brunette and Ozma blonde?

Rarely, the illustrations fall short of the visuals Baum’s writing suggests. In particular, Neill does not realize the jeering Nomes as interestingly as Baum describes them: “Whatever the creations [the Nomes] might be they seemed very like the rock itself, for they were the color of rocks and their shapes were as rough and rugged as if they had been broken away from the side of the mountain. They kept close to the steep cliff facing our friends, and glided up and down, and this way and that, with a lack of regularity that was quite confusing” (157). The writing suggests a gloomy cliff face squirming, as though alive, with a swarm of jagged stone-like beings. But Neill draws the Nomes as rather banal, furry elves, curved and round rather than jagged like rock.

Walter Murch and crew lifted most of the material for the (awesome) 1985 almost-horror movie Return to Oz from Ozma of Oz, also incorporating scenes and concepts from The Marvelous Land of Oz. The film’s premise of the Nome King attacking the Emerald City originates in the sixth Oz novel, The Emerald City of Oz. The Nomes in this film are literally stone, moving freely in the rocks throughout Oz, certainly a more striking visual than Neill’s illustrations and closer to Baum’s description. A few of the features Return to Oz takes from Ozma of Oz include Dorothy and Billina riding a chicken coop in a storm and washing up in a desert; the Wheelers and their threats over an allegedly stolen lunch pail; Dorothy escaping the Wheelers with a key to find a long deactivated Tiktok, who bears a plaque on his back that says “Thinks, Speaks, Acts, and Does Everything but Live” (55); Tiktok fighting the Wheelers with the lunch pail and taking one prisoner; the prisoner leading them to a princess of a desolate country; and the princess sitting around a hall of mirrors strumming a mandolin and changing her head instead of her clothes, keeping dozens of severed human heads in cabinets locked with a ruby key that she wears on her person. It’s disturbing. Of course, Return to Oz also features the Nome King, who, like in Ozma of Oz, puffs a pipe he lights with a hot coal while forcing Dorothy and her friends to play an unfair game to (in an abstract magical way) end their lives, one by one.

Baum’s version is both softer and darker, in different ways. In Return to Oz, for example, the head-swapping princess is named Mombi. She closely resembles Langwidere from Ozma of Oz but has a similar role to the Mombi of The Marvelous Land of Oz insofar as she hides Ozma away. In the end, all the women this version of Mombi beheaded are restored to life, while she is allowed to live but without her magic powers.

In Ozma of Oz, Langwidere is a “dangerous lady,” as the Scarecrow puts it (111), a surviving relative of Evoldo who has become a despot whose incompetence is matched only by her decadence. Like the film’s Mombi, Langwidere announces she will eat Billina and locks Dorothy in a tower, intending to keep her there until she can take her head for her collection.

However, Langwidere is too selfish and lazy to be a genuine threat to Dorothy. Langwidere immediately supports Ozma’s bid to free her relatives from the Nome King, “For if they were restored to their proper forms and station they could rule the Kingdom of Ev themselves, and that would save me a lot of worry and trouble. At present there are at least ten minutes every day that I must devote to affairs of state, and I would like to be able to spend my whole time in admiring my beautiful heads” (112). Baum does not directly address where Langwidere attains her dozens of heads. Considering that she tries to take Dorothy’s head, albeit in a trade, one would assume Langwidere has gathered them from large number of women and, apparently, children, a nightmarish idea with nightmarish implications. Unlike the film’s Mombi, this Langwidere faces no comeuppance. Her misdeeds are largely left to the reader’s imagination.

In contrast to Baum (perhaps) taking a darker approach, consider the Wheelers, a tribe of beings with wheels for hands and feet. The wheels are “of the same hard substance that our finger-nails and toe-nails are composed of” (44), pretty freaky. After Dorothy and Billina find an ominous message reading “BEWARE THE WHEELERS,” the Wheelers attack. Return to Oz faithfully depicts the Wheelers’ terrifying behavior: “Looking over her shoulder as she ran, the girl now saw a great procession of Wheelers emerging from the forest—dozens and dozens of them—all clad in splendid, tight-fitting garments and all rolling swiftly toward her and uttering their wild, strange cries” (46). The film even mirrors Dorothy’s dialogue with the Wheelers.

“We’ll get you in time, never fear! And when we do get you, we’ll tear you into little bits!” “Why are you so cruel to me?” asked Dorothy. “I’m a stranger in your country, and have done you no harm” (47).

Dorothy’s reply is so innocent it is almost heartbreaking. I had assumed Return to Oz was being darker than the source material with these lines:

WHEELER: You have to come out sooner or later! And when you do, we’ll tear you into little pieces and throw you in the Deadly Desert!

DOROTHY: I haven’t done anything to you.

But no, it’s all there in the book.

However, unlike in the film, Dorothy later learns that there is more to the Wheelers. Tiktok claims, “They try to make folks be-lieve that they are ver-y ter-ri-ble, but as a mat-ter of fact the Wheel-ers are harm-less e-nough to an-y one that dares to fight them. They might try to hurt a lit-tle girl like you, per-haps, be-cause they are ver-y mis-chiev-ous” (66–67). (Baum writes all of Tiktok’s dialogue in this way to convey his robotic voice.) A Wheeler later admits his people have assumed cruel personas as a form of self-defense: “I’m not really bad, you know; but we have to pretend to be terrible in order to prevent others from attacking us” (80). Given that their neighbor was the wicked Evoldo, this seems like a reasonable precaution. The Wheelers themselves wrote “BEWARE THE WHEELERS” to scare off possible invaders.

Reprimanded for being “im-pu-dent and dis-a-gree-a-ble” (82), the Wheeler promises his people will reform. Some of them do, as in the ending, Wheelers also celebrate the return of the Royal Family: “The people shouted their approval fifteen times, and even the Wheelers, some of whom were present, loudly promised to obey the new King” (253). In the novel, when the captive Wheeler promises to behave, he means it, but in the film, as the Wheeler rolls away, he cackles, repeating “behave.” The audience understands this guy is going to do anything but. In Return to Oz, the Wheelers are cruel monster-people who serve Mombi and, in turn, the Nome King. The Wheelers remain malevolent, if pitiful, and seemingly vanish when Oz is restored. In comparison, Baum shows the Wheelers humanizing nuance.

Of course I have to talk about the Nome King. While Mombi and Jinjur do not seem evil per se, the Nome King is the single most malevolent force in Baum’s Oz novels.

The Nome King is the central antagonist of Ozma of Oz, which should really probably be entitled The Nome King. Baum devotes eight of the book’s twenty-one chapters, a little under a third of the total pages, to the battle against him. Not obviously menacing, the Nome King is a short, fat, bearded man whom Dorothy identifies with Santa Claus. The Nome King’s first lines of dialogue quote The Night Before Christmas (suggesting the Nomes are aware of Christianity). However, the Nome King’s jovial demeanor is a front for his greed and cruelty. The tone is set when, right after welcoming the comparison between himself and Santa, the Nome King has this interaction with Ozma:

“Your Majesty,” said she [Ozma], “I am the ruler of the Land of Oz, and I have come here to ask you to release the good Queen of Ev and her ten children, whom you have enchanted and hold as your prisoners.”

“Oh, no; you are mistaken about that,” replied the King. “They are not my prisoners, but my slaves, whom I purchased from the King of Ev” (165).

Dorothy and Ozma attempting to negotiate with the Nome King.

The Nome King, totally amicable, proceeds to counter Ozma and Dorothy’s arguments that what he did was wrong. “Cruelty,” the Nome King says, “is a thing I can’t abide. So, as slaves must work hard, and the Queen of Ev and her children were delicate and tender, I transformed them all into articles of ornament and bric-a-brac and scattered them around the various rooms of my palace” (168). Afterward, the Nome King shows off his enormous, well-armed military and industrial operations, which notably use electricity, and demonstrates that his magic is so powerful that Ozma, Dorothy, and their friends are literally incapable of hurting him. Chillingly cheerful, “his eyes twinkling merrily” (173), the Nome King challenges Ozma, Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and their twenty-seven-man army to a game. He hates Billina, ignores the Saw-Horse, and wants the Cowardly Lion and Hungry Tiger to just leave lest they break his various treasures, so they are not included in the challenge:

“You shall go alone and unattended into my palace and examine carefully all that the rooms contain. Then you shall have permission to touch eleven different objects, pronouncing at the time the word ‘Ev,’ and if any one of them, or more than one, proves to be the transformation of the Queen of Ev or any of her ten children, then they will instantly be restored to their true forms and may leave my palace and my kingdom in your company, without any objection whatever. It is possible for you, in this way, to free the entire eleven; but if you do not guess all the objects correctly, and some of the slaves remain transformed, then each one of your friends and followers may, in turn, enter the palace and have the same privileges I grant you. […] If none of the eleven objects you touch proves to be the transformation of any of the royal family of Ev, then, instead of freeing them, you will yourself become enchanted, and transformed into an article of bric-a-brac or an ornament” (173–174).

Ozma agrees, against Dorothy’s advice, because she refuses to surrender and because she underestimates the difficulty of the task—the Nome King’s palace is enormous, and every room is packed with bric-a-brac. There follows more than a day of suspense as Dorothy and the others’ numbers are winnowed down one by one, all the while the Nome King merrily puffs on his pipe and laughs at them and Dorothy realizes they are all his prisoners. The sequence is effective mostly because of the Nome King, who is scary in that he seems to just be a rich sadistic sociopath. When his steward is angry that he is doing this instead of enchanting Ozma’s party all at once, the Nome King tells him outright that he is playing the game because it is “more fun this way” (192). The Nome King also becomes explosively angry the second he encounters adversity, eventually ditching his friendly act and “roaring” at Dorothy “like a savage beast” (227). And when he loses the game to Billina, the Nome King simply summons his army because he never really meant to let them leave. After all, each captive is another treasure for him. It teaches kids the valuable lesson that politeness and virtue are not the same.

After a battle against the Nome army, Ozma, Dorothy, Billina, and the rest of the crew, including all twenty-seven soldiers, escape by exploiting the Nomes’ weakness: eggs. “Don’t you know that eggs are poison?” (207). More specifically, the Scarecrow chucks an egg into both of the Nome King’s eyes, which would also work on me even though eggs are not poison to humans. With features like this, Baum maintains a sense of humor despite how frightening the situation becomes, as well as just his typical gags: “When the bell rang a second time the King shouted angrily, ‘Smudge and blazes!’ and at a third ring he screamed in fury, ‘Hippikaloric!’ which must be a dreadful word because we don’t know what it means” (226–227).

The Nome King is not, however, as scary as he is in Return to Oz. A single egg also has a rather more dramatic effect on him there than multiple do in the novel.

Ozma of Oz concludes with Dorothy returning to Oz with all her friends, including Tiktok and Billina, where she spends “several very happy weeks” (263). The Nome King is last seen on page 254, waving his fist at Ozma’s entourage as they cross the Deadly Desert back to their homeland. Dorothy catches up with all the characters—except Mombi, since who cares about her. The Woggle-Bug is apparently the president of the new College of Art and Athletic Perfection, and Jinjur is happily married to a man she abuses.

Neill shows Jinjur’s military hat hanging up behind her.

At last, learning that Uncle Henry is alone in Australia, grieving his niece, Dorothy returns home using the power of the magic belt she stole from the Nome King. However, she does not repeat her mistake with the silver slippers from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This time, so that the belt can retain magical potency, Dorothy leaves it with Ozma, who will use the belt’s power to check on Dorothy every Saturday and instantly warp her back to Oz in response to “a certain signal” (267).

While it is an enjoyable read, Ozma of Oz is less effective emotionally than Return to Oz. There are two reasons for this.

The first is that the Oz novels, at least thus far, are just not very emotional. The characters rarely seem to particularly care about what is going on or the peril that they are in. This may make the stories less distressing to children, but this also renders allegedly happy or triumphant moments underwhelming, because there was no sense of adversity or sadness to compare them with. Baum does emphasize that Dorothy is “trying to be brave in spite of her fears” (199), but this only occasionally comes through. Rather than saddened or distressed over her plight when facing the Nome King, Dorothy seems how almost all Baum’s characters usually seem, lackadaisical or even slow-witted: “Dear me! I wonder if Uncle Henry or Aunt Em will ever know I have become an orn’ment in the Nome King’s palace, and must stand forever and ever in one place and look pretty—’cept when I’m moved to be dusted. It isn’t the way I thought I’d turn out, at all; but I s’pose it can’t be helped” (200–201). It is difficult for a reader to care about characters who do not seem to care much about themselves or each other.

Compare Dorothy and Tiktok’s relationship in Ozma of Oz to their relationship in Return to Oz. In Ozma of Oz, Tiktok considers himself Dorothy’s slave: “I am the slave of the girl Dor-oth-y, who rescued me from pris-on” (132). Later, in the Nome King’s palace itself, Tiktok insists he has to make his guesses before Dorothy because “the slave should face danger before the mistress” (196). Dorothy never seems to particularly care about Tiktok one way or another. The climactic scene for their relationship occurs when Tiktok stops functioning before making his final guess inside the Nome King’s palace, so the Nome King sends Dorothy in to wind him up (Tiktok is a clockwork robot and hence relies on three keys being fully wound to think, move, and talk). When she finds him, Dorothy winds up Tiktok, who wishes he was better at guessing. Both seem rather sad, according to the narration (Dorothy speaks “sadly”), but Dorothy tells him, “if you fail I will watch and see what shape you are changed into” (200). Tiktok then touches a yellow glass vase, says “Ev,” and vanishes, Dorothy unable to see what the Nome King turned him into. Instead of hopeless, though, she barely seems to care, like she is on sedatives and cannot think properly.

In Return to Oz, meanwhile, Tiktok is Dorothy’s friend, not slave, whom the Scarecrow left to protect her if she returned. It helps that Dorothy is still a simple country girl, instead of the Neill Dorothy who appears to be an aspiring model. Their mutual concern for each other seems more believable in part because Tiktok and Dorothy are allowed more interactions, and in part because Tiktok seems essential to protect her in the dangerous Oz of the film. In Ozma of Oz, the titular princess/queen turns up with many other whimsical characters so that instead Tiktok rapidly recedes into the background. And consider Tiktok’s scene in the Nome King’s palace. In Return to Oz, this is Dorothy’s final temptation by the Nome King, who offers to spare her and send her back to Kansas. Going in after Tiktok is a selfless, courageous deed. Then Dorothy discovers that Tiktok is already wound up.

“It was my way of getting you in here,” says the movie’s Tiktok. “Pretend that you are winding me up anyway. I have an idea that may save us. I have one guess left, and if I guess incorrectly, you can watch and see what I am changed into. That may give you a clue.” This is much more interesting: Tiktok is being clever, tricking the Nome King, and trying to help his friend, knowing that he himself will likely fail to guess correctly. Dorothy and Tiktok seem to genuinely care for each other here: Dorothy hugs Tiktok goodbye, and Tiktok, in a moment that might be a bit overboard but I love anyway, cries what looks like windshield wiper fluid. In comparison, in Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and Tiktok seem like clueless doofuses (Dorothy survives literally by a lucky guess, though unfortunately that also happens in the movie), and Dorothy does not seem to waste time feeling sorry for her self-identified slave.

Watching Tiktok’s crying scene in the film, I considered the only crying scene in Ozma of Oz. The Scarecrow scolds one of his soldiers for weeping over the loss of the Tin Woodman:

One of the generals began to weep dolefully. “What are you crying for?” asked the Scarecrow, indignant at such a display of weakness. “He owed me six weeks back pay,” said the general, “and I hate to lose him.” “Then you shall go and find him,” declared the Scarecrow. “Me!” cried the general, greatly alarmed. “Certainly. It is your duty to follow your commander. March!” (183)

Instead of affection, Baum has military hierarchy, a rejection of vulnerability, and a joke about the characters’ financial pettiness. The Scarecrow doesn’t seem to care that his beloved friend the Tin Woodman might be gone forever! Why does Baum value a joke about bureaucracy over, say, the Scarecrow expressing sadness over his friend? There would be room for both. A display of sadness or compassion would make the reader happier when the Tin Woodman is later recovered, as well, because it would have felt like a genuine loss being recovered. It would have felt, in other words, like what happens to Tiktok in Return to Oz. Instead, this is all the Scarecrow says of the matter: “Poor Nick! I wonder what has become of him” (243). Did Baum forget that the Scarecrow loves the Tin Woodman? Apparently not, since Baum is convincing in showing the Scarecrow’s joy upon the Tin Woodman’s recovery: “The Scarecrow had fairly thrown himself upon the bosom of his old comrade, so surprised and delighted was he to see him again” (250).

The second reason that Ozma of Oz is a less affecting story is that it demonstrates a rather medieval hierarchical morality that is difficult to empathize with. To begin, Dorothy, Ozma, and the others are on a quest to free Evoldo’s family from slavery to the Nome King. Baum seems to assume that the ascension of Evardo Fifteenth to the throne of Ev is a happy ending. But is it? Langwidere is completely horrible, Evoldo was explicitly a serial murderer, and aside from giving these two power, the system of laws they uphold is obviously unjust, including, as the Nome King mentions, that the monarch can never be wrong, so whatever he does is right (165). They are no better than the Nome King. The problem is the very form of government, not which prince is in charge. We can’t all be so lucky as to have benevolent child dictators like Ozma. Yet Ozma restores the Ev monarchy without any further concern. What, does Ozma not want to set a precedent that would see her relinquish power to the people? This might obviously be reading too much into a fairy tale, yes, but let’s do it anyway.

Tiktok maintains that the Nome King’s actions are not immoral, given that he bought the slaves fair and square from Evoldo so that it was Evoldo alone who did wrong (129). Furthermore, as mentioned above, Tiktok makes a point that he is Dorothy’s slave. While this likely reflects Tiktok’s previous life under Evoldo, Dorothy never objects or seems to particularly care. And reconsider the Wheelers. Scary enemies when they do not obey the Ev monarchy, they gain sympathy in the ending specifically as, in a celebratory scene, they “loudly promised to obey the new King” (253, emphasis mine). Obey the king! Obey! Even though the last few were so awful no ethical person should have obeyed them.

It is as if the Nome King’s real crime is that he enslaves royalty, as opposed to non-royal beings, like Glinda the Good does the Flying Monkeys (it’s only evil when the Wicked Witch of the West does it). The rightness and wrongness of an action, except for the reckless disobedience that gets Dorothy to Ev instead of killed in the opening chapter, depends on whether that action supports or disrupts a monarchist hierarchy.

Despite all this, Baum also shows disrespect for monarchy, having Dorothy refuse to show the very unsympathetic Princess Langwidere any deference:

“I thought some one of importance had called.” “Then you were right,” declared Dorothy. […] “Stop—stop!” commanded the Princess, with an angry flash of her splendid eyes. “How dare you annoy me with your senseless chatter?” “Why, you horrid thing!” said Dorothy, who was not accustomed to being treated so rudely. […] “Tell me,” she [Langwidere] resumed, “are you of royal blood?” “Better than that, ma’am,” said Dorothy. “I am from Kansas” (95–96).

The struggle with the Nome King is exciting, but, under the hood, we have a royal rescuing unsympathetic royals from another unsympathetic royal. Even this could be engaging, say if Dorothy was in a sort of Escape from New York scenario (save the president, even though he sucks). Perhaps Dorothy is simply too childish to realize the politics of the situation she finds herself in. That could be interesting. But the idealized fairy tale dictator, Ozma, suggests that Baum intends the scenario to be taken at face value. The issue is that Baum buys into his monarchy fantasy. He assumes the reader will feel particularly bad for the Royal Family of Ev, despite clearly showing why the monarchy should end, even if it is also heroic to liberate slaves from the Nome King regardless of the moral character of the enslaved people. Maybe my politics are just screaming, “HAVE THEM FREE JUST NORMAL PEOPLE WHO ARE ENSLAVED, WHY A BRUTAL ROYAL FAMILY, AAGGHH” too loudly for me to focus. Having Dorothy instead rescue her beloved friends in Return to Oz was a wise move. Like The Marvelous Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz is full of tensions as interesting as the story itself. Unlike in The Marvelous Land, however, they are definitely not more interesting than the story.

The fourth Oz novel is Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, probably the strangest one so far and certainly the most violent. Please read my post about it too. Thank you for reading.

An illustration of Dorothy returning to Uncle Henry ends the story.

#ozma of oz #wizard of oz #return to oz #dorothy #nome king

41 notes · View notes