“How good are they?” Diana asks them. No Man’s Land, hah, the things some people will name their bands to make them stand out in the crowd.
“Watch and see,” says Gail, head tilting towards the stage. Diana turns, and sees—
—Steve.
He’s grown a beard, and his hair is longer and more artfully disheveled than it was when she knew him, but she would know him anywhere. She would know his eyes anywhere, that striking shade of blue that she hasn’t been able to find since.
“Look who just came in,” says Gail fondly, unmindful of Diana’s internal crisis. “Steve Howard, late as hell, again.”
Diana’s tongue is suddenly too heavy in her mouth for her to respond. She lifts her glass of red wine to her lips, takes a sip, and watches this ghost of Steve Trevor tap the microphone, wincing at the feedback.
“Hey, folks,” he says. He sounds exactly the same. “Sorry I’m late, my watch broke and I haven’t gotten it fixed yet.” He coughs, and says, “Anyway—I’m Steve, we’re No Man’s Land, and we’ll be your entertainment for tonight.”
I’ve been contemplating for several days something, and I’ve been trying to distill it into meaning, and put nice little bullet points on how this relates to things that have been bugging me about some common Discourses I’ve been seeing, but at the end, I only really have a story. So here, have a story.
About ten years ago, sometime in the eventful 2006-2007 George W. Bush-ruled hellscape of my identity development, I was just starting to figure out how I felt about my conservative upbringing (not great) and whether I was some brand of queer (probably, but too scared to think about what brand for too long). I was working as a server at a popular Italian-inspired sit-down restaurant that was the closest thing my tiny South Carolinian town had to “fancy” at the time but isn’t really fancy at all.
The host brought a party of four men to one of my tables. It was hard to tell their ages, but my guess is they were teenagers or in their early 20s in the 1980s. Mid-40s, at the time. It was standard to ask if anyone at the table was celebrating anything, so I did. They said they were business partners celebrating a great business deal and would like a bottle of wine.
It was a fairly busy night so I didn’t have a LOT of time to spend at their table, but they were nice guys. They were polite and friendly to me, they didn’t hit on me (as most men were prone to do – sometimes even in front of their girlfriends, a story I’ll tell later if anyone wants me to), and they were racking up a hell of a tab that was going to make my managers happy, so I checked on them as often as I could.
Toward the end of their second bottle of wine, as they were finishing their entrees, I stopped at the table and asked if they wanted any more drinks or dessert or coffee. They were well and truly tipsy by now, giggling, leaning back in their chairs – but so, so careful not to touch each other when anyone was near the table.
They’re all on the fence about dessert, so being a good server, I offered to bring out the dessert menu so they could glance it over and make a decision, “Since you’re celebrating.”
“She’s right!” one of the men said, far too emphatically for a conversation on dessert. “It’s your anniversary! You should get dessert!”
It was like a movie. The whole table went absolutely silent. The clank of silverware at the next table sounded supernaturally loud. Dean Martin warbled “That’s Amore” in some distorted alternate universe where the rest of the restaurant went on acting like this one tipsy man hadn’t just shattered their carefully crafted cover story and blurted out in the middle of a tiny, South Carolina town, surrounded by conservatives and rednecks, that they were gay men celebrating a relationship milestone.
And I didn’t know what I was yet, but I knew I wasn’t an asshole, and I knew these men were family, and I felt their panic like a monster breathing down all our necks. It’s impossible to emphasize how palpably terrified they were, and how justified their terror was, and how much I wanted them to be happy.
So I did the only thing I knew to do. I said, “Congratulations! How many years?”
The man who’d spoken up burst into tears. His partner stood up and wrapped me in the tightest, warmest hug I’ve ever had – and I’ve never liked being touched by strangers, but this was different, and I hugged him back.
“Thank you,” he whispered, halfway to crying himself. “Thank you so much.”
When he finally let go of me and sat back down, they finally got around to telling me they were, in fact, two couples on a double date, and both celebrating anniversaries. Fifteen years for one of them, I think, and a few years off for the other. It’s hard to remember. It was a jumble of tears and laughter and trembling relief for all of us. They got more relaxed. They started holding hands – under the table, out of sight of anyone but me, but happy.
They did get dessert, and I spent more time at their table, letting them tell me stories about how they met and how they started dating and their lives together, and feeling this odd sense of belonging, like I’d just discovered a missing branch of my family.
When they finally left, all four of them took turns standing up and hugging me, and all four of them reached into their wallets to tip me. I tried to wave them off but they insisted, and the first man who’d hugged me handed me forty dollars and said, “Please. You are an angel. Please take this.”
After they left I hid in the bathroom and cried because I couldn’t process all my thoughts and feelings.
Fast forward to three days ago, when my own partner and I showed up to a dinner reservation at a fancy-casual restaurant to celebrate our fifth anniversary. The whole time I was getting ready to leave, there was a worry in the back of my mind. The internet web form had asked if the reservation was celebrating anything in particular, and I’d selected “Anniversary.” I stood in the bathroom blow-drying my hair, wondering what I would do if we showed up, two women, and the host or the server took one look at us and the “Anniversary” designation on our reservation and refused to serve us. It’s not as ubiquitous anymore, but we’re still in the south, and these things still happen. Eight years of progressive leadership is over, and we’ve got another conservative despot in office who’s emboldening assholes everywhere.
It was on my mind the whole fifteen minutes it took to drive there. I didn’t mention it to my partner because I didn’t want to cast a shadow over the occasion. More than that, I didn’t want to jinx us, superstitious bastard that I am.
We walked into the restaurant. I told the hostess we had a reservation, gave her my last name.
She looked at her screen, then looked back at us. She smiled, broadly and genuinely, and said, “Happy anniversary! Your table is right this way.”
Our server greeted us, said, “I heard you were celebrating!”
“It’s our anniversary,” Kellie said, and our server gasped, beaming.
“That’s great! Congratulations! How many years?”
And I finally breathed a sigh of relief, and I thought about those men at that restaurant ten years ago. I hope they’re still safe and happy, and I hope we all get the satisfaction of helping the world keep blooming into something that’s not so unrelentingly terrible all the time.
what’s the betting that potterwatch was just a radio project lee jordan was doing in his spare time and never actually stopped after the war
“Harry Potter was spotted at the local farmers market today, good choices in produce Harry! Gotta love the organics”
he’s the only reporter harry will talk to other than giving official statements when he has to as an auror
“I’m speaking to Harry Potter today after the long-awaited conclusion of the trial of quadruple murderer Waldorfus Grenoble. Harry, may I ask you a question regarding the trial?”
“Sure, Lee, I have to be back at work in ten but give it a go.”
“What is in the curry you had for lunch yesterday during the recess? It smelled fantastic and I have to know.”
“Thanks for asking, Lee. I’ve recently come across a book of my great-grandmother Priyanka’s notes on her Punjabi cooking and I’ve been trying to recreate her food. I liked that one but Ginny said it was too sweet so I’m making adjustments.”
“Fantastic. Great stuff. Next up we have an update on You-Know-Who’s whereabouts. Not Voldemort obviously– he’s six feet under, it’s been around 2500 days now and he’s still going strong, no sign of him being not dead any time soon.”
“You’re correct, Lee, he’s dead as a doornail and he’s going to stay that way. You do realize you don’t need to refer to your infant daughter as ‘You-Know-Who,’ right?”
“Sophie starts screaming if either of her dads talks about her and we don’t know why. Any suggestions, and any idea where she is now?”
“Oliver was walking her up and down the hallway outside the World Cup Regulatory Office last I saw her. As for the screaming, with James we gave him the miniature dragon from the Triwizard in ‘94 and that entertained him pretty well.”
“You heard it here first folks, Harry Potter thinks dragons are an appropriate substitute for pacifiers! Thanks for your time, Harry.”
“Any time, Lee.”
“Next week’s password is anything that will make our six-month-old go to sleep for longer than four hours. Signing off, this has been Potterwatch with River and the man himself, Harry Potter.”
pour one out for all the people who’s messages went unanswered because i told myself i’d answer them later but when later came around i decided it was Too Late
I’m curious– What style of clothing would y'all wear if public ridicule, financial limitations, and general inconvenience weren’t a thing?
I’d wear ball gowns; I’m talmbout big, flowy, fluffy chiffon and taffeta 1980s prom night sequined nightmares. Catch me buying Hot Pockets at the Wal*Mart looking like Jennifer Connelly’s hallucination in Labyrinth.
People:
*Fall completely in love with live action 'Beauty and The Beast*
Guillermo Del Toro:
I see your monster movie and raise you one (1) Creature From The Black Lagoon, one (1) mute Belle, one (1) Agent Van Alden, and many (many) uncomfortable sexual feelings about fish because fuck you, that's why
@c-foley tagged me in this meme - share a line/paragraph/excerpt from your current WIP (fic or otherwise), so here’s a chunk of stuff from Alleirat out of context.
One
was a girl, younger than I’d been when I first came to Alleirat, and she caught
my hand fearlessly as I passed.
“Sena,” she said in a clear voice, and I
looked down in surprise, meeting her dark eyes.
She stared back, her skin darkening with a flush, until finally sweat
broke out on her forehead beneath her curls and I shifted my gaze to her cheek.
“What
can I do for you, meilali?” I asked, crouching
down to be on a level with her.
“Is
it true? My mama says that the Fireheart
died in battle against the White Wolf,” she said with all the self-import of a
young child assured of her own knowledge, “but Merra’s mama says that she heard
from her wife’s amiasa that you’re
really her.”
“I,
ah.” I looked up at Krei, helpless, and
she held out a hand, as if to say it was up to me. I turned back to the little girl, who reached
out to touch a lock of my hair where it had tumbled over my shoulder. “Yeah, meimare,”
I said quietly. I hoped that meimare was still an endearment people
used—little fish, uncommon in inland
areas but popular in Dase in my time. “It’s
true.”
“Wow,”
she said, eyes wide, and she looked up into my eyes again, the flush rising on
her beaming cheeks again. “I’m Lillet, sena.”
I grinned a little. “Ilna
nai, Lillet,” I said, offering a hand, and she bounced on her toes as she
clasped my wrist, excited to be treated like a grown up. “I’m Brenneth.”
I just saw your tags concerning Shape of Water, completely agree with every beautiful word you say. <33 But I wanted to ask, since you're far cleverer than me (and since you are my writing role model), what would you say separates female desire from male desire? Essentially, what seperates a female fantasy from male fantasy? Just curious and keep being brilliant! :D
Well, obviously there are lots of different female fantasies, even if we’re just/primarily talking about straight women. (People get weird about different stuff, news at eleven.) But I do think there’s a certain specifically female bent for monster romance that can be differentiated from men’s.
I mean, look at the ur-monster romance, the fairytale of Beauty and the Beast. One of the major issues BatB struggles with no matter which adaptation, variation, or retelling you’re talking about is that there is something almost disappointing when the Beast transforms back into a human. In fact, in French playwright Fernand Nozier’s 1909 version, Beauty complains: “You should have warned me! Here I was smitten by an exceptional being, and all of a sudden my fiancé becomes an ordinary distinguished young man!”
The monstrosity of the Beast is the point, not a bug but a feature of the monster romance genre. And I hardly think it’s accidental that women keep being drawn to these stories—even going a step beyond, into monster romances where there isno transformation, like the Creature from the Black Lagoon (which del Toro is obviously drawing from), or the Phantom of the Opera; some adaptations of Dracula.
(Not that the modern craze for werewolves and vampire isn’t inspired by the same weird, fervid longing, but it’s been largely watered down. A proper monster romance requires an unequivocal monster, not a human-plus-fangs.)
Pick a cryptid, pick an eldritch abomination, pick an anthropomorphized concept or an elemental or a weird non-humanoid thing, pick a fantastical fictional creature and I promise you there is a woman who has thought about it. We all, in our hearts, want to fuck the fishman, or if not, then one of his monstrous cousins. Even if we’re not quite sure how that’s going to work—we kind of want to find out.
…contrast this with the narrative that dominates male-gaze monster romance stories. Here, the monstrosity is a thing to overcome, an obstacle to the romance itself, and if/when the female beast transforms, it is unequivocally positive. Sir Gawain is always delightedwhen he finds out his loathly bride is beautiful at night. The little mermaid’s tail is a hindrance to her becoming properly human, not an illicit draw. Despite a wealth of imagination, video games and feature films seem to be unable to move beyond female aliens as essentially a beautiful actress with green skin.
(It is genuinely hard to find monster romances where the monster is female! All searches keep straying into “beautiful woman is revealed to be a secret monster, how dare she be beautiful and a monster!” which is…the exact opposite of monster romance, tonally.)
But that, I think, is the main difference between the female fantasy of monster romance and the male fantasy of monster romance. For women, the strangeness of the monster is the point, and the deviance of the romance and the object itself is why we’re drawn to these stories. For men, the romance dies in the face of too much monstrosity, and the strangeness of the beast must be transformed before it can be loved.
…………………reblog this and say something nice about the person u reblogged it from because there’s too much hate on my dashboard right now and its making me upset so lets start a chain of love
Anything about the line 'sext: people died for you. i bet you liked it.' from How to Make Love to the God of War for Leia Organa pretty please, your writing is so gorgeous and it would fit Ashe Vernon's poetry so beautifully. ILY thank you so much I hope this promptathon is fun for you.
War—what is it good for?
….well, you.
Mostly you.
Almost exclusively you.
(This is not an apology. It is maybe an explanation.)
.
Something you don’t realize until you’re standing in the control room, watching the battle for the Death Star: there’s very little screaming.
You’re intel, not military; the only experience you have of a warfront is battle sims and holos. The stories you’ve read have all been infantry battles—sentients dodging blaster fire and scattering their blood on the earth, calling for a meddroid even as the concussive missile shakes the air. The sound of AT-ATs, all creaking joints and thunder; clone troopers calling out commands. Droids, screaming. War was loud, full of mud and blood, you knew.
But here, from the control room on Yavin, there’s just the quiet whir of the servers, orders given and received. You can’t hear the chatter of the squadrons—they’re talking to the controllers, who are bent over consoles furiously reading out data. Sometimes one of the sensors beeps—but quietly, as if it’s worried about making a fuss in the huge, heavy silence. Blue Squadron goes down in a rain of fire, their ships immolated against the vast shell of the Death Star, but all you know of it is Lieutenant Rula’s announcement in a cool, flat voice.
It’s all very civilized.
Somehow, even in victory, you feel a little—cheated.
.
(This is not true. It is not all battle sims and holos; you remember war.
You are eight when you dream of your father on the battlefield. He is holding a sword of fire, and he breathes too loudly, harsh in your ears—you are scared, and so you reach for him, seeking comfort. He turns on you, and he is shadow and death and that awful sword of fire, not your father at all.
He says in a breath of smoke, who—?
You wake up to your father’s arms, real and warm, cradling you to his chest. It was only a nightmare, Bail says, as you cry wracking sobs. Shh, it wasn’t real.
You can still taste it on the inside of your mouth sometimes, ash and fear. Later—after you kiss your brother and find blood in your teeth; after you watch Darth Vader’s corpse burn from the safety of the treeline—you will learn this is your inheritance.)
i wasn’t cool in high school. i’m sure that’s not surprising to any of you. i mean, i was okay? i had friends. people liked me. but i was, by no stretch of the imagination, “cool.” my mom was significantly cooler than i was, and i know that to be true because of all the times people asked if we could go to my house for the weekend so that they could hang out with my mom.
honestly, the fact that social anxiety is not one of my numerous neuroses is a small miracle.
JUST DAMNED AND DETERMINED 2 THINK I’M GREAT, I GUESS!!
anyway, i have the problem that all chronically uncool people have, which is that i can never seem to navigate myself into situations where being cool is an option. you know? like i never just “wind up” at a party or the cool kids table or in the Fun Group on school projects. that just never happens. guaranteed, in high school, if the whole group was splitting up into two cars, i would end up in the car with mostly parents.
i have made my peace with this. me and all ur moms are best friends. i’ve seen ur baby pictures, SHARON.
anyway, as a result of this, i didn’t go to a lot of parties in high school. i went to some, but really not a lot. it was more like, sometimes i went to a friend’s house, and then a party would break out, and i would happen to be there.
once, our star football guy and i got drunk at the same party, and he said, “i feel like we have a lot of the same thoughts, we’re going to be friends now,” and then we never spoke again.
actually, i thought his name was “future” for almost an entire year before finding out that’s just what they called him because he was good at football. he was just named evan.
so.
that’s pretty generally what high school was like, for me.
i threw a grand total of three parties during my high school career: my 18th birthday, a random new year’s shindig, and a homecoming party. i’m calling it homecoming, but it wasn’t actually homecoming. actually, it might have been nothing like homecoming, because i am realizing as i write this sentence that i don’t … actually know … what homecoming is.
so GET OFF MY BACK ABOUT IT, TODD.
anyway the thing about my high school was we had this big football game every year, and afterwards everyone would go to local hotels for the weekend and party. i … didn’t do that, because i wasn’t cool enough to get invited to the hotel parties when the game was held at my school and i stayed with my parents when they were held at our rival school.
my freshman year of high school, the game was held at our rival school, so i stayed at home. my best friend at the time, who we are going to call linda was spending the night with me. we asked if we could go to one of the parties, and my mom was basically like, “lmao u tried :(.”
as it so happened, a couple of boys that i had been friends with since middle school were also coming over, because our parents were friends.
i mean, we were also friends, but i am 100% sure that if they’d been given the choice they’d have gone elsewhere. i know this because one of them, who we are going to call napoleon, told me so.
the other two, a pair of brothers, casper and teriyaki, were at least a little more subtle. there was also some other kid there, whose name i forget but i remember very clearly that he did a really, really bad scooby doo impression where he just kept saying, “ruh roh!!!” over and over. he didn’t even do it in the scooby doo voice. BUDDY, THE WHOLE POINT IS THE VOICE. anyway, forget about him, i’m never going to mention him again because who even was that guy?
on the one hand, i was offended that merely being in my presence was not considered the epitome of a good time, but on the other hand, like, i’d met me. i got where they were coming from.
however, i was presented with the opportunity to know, very clearly, what was Cool. the boys wanted to go to a house party. we were in a house! i could have a party! what’s Cooler than having a party?
oh my god, so many things. i can name like fifteen right now without any cognitive stress at all.
“we can have a party here,” i said, without considering that if they said yes i’d have to figure out a way to, you know, have a party. i mean, the dangers of teenage drinking aside, there were just a lot of logistical hurdles, here. to name a few:
my parents were downstairs.
i had no alcohol.
i had, at that point, never been to a High School Party™ and had no idea what it was supposed to be like, which was a bad position for the party planner to be in.
“cool,” said napoleon, and because my entire opinion of him was a rapid and exhausting vacillation between “let’s make out” and “i would bring balloons to your funeral,” just like that i was like, WELP!! OKAY!! GONNA THROW A PARTY. i’m sure this will be fine!!!
spoiler: none of my plans are ever fine.
“i’ll go get us something to drink,” i said, very boldly for someone who did not know how to make a mixed drink and had not yet worked out how i was going to get anything passed my parents.
“want me to come with you?” asked linda.
“no no, i’ll be fine,” i said, because i still had not come up with a plan and didn’t want linda to realize when we got to the kitchen that i was flying by the seat of my pantaloons. linda was my best friend, but as a high school freshman my entire personality was just jenga tower of insecurity whose structural integrity depended on my never showing doubt or vulnerability ever, at any time.
gone were the heady days of wearing my billabong t-shirt with the orange butterfly on it, here were the days of j crew and plucking my eyebrows.
i went down to the kitchen, passed the living room where my parents were unabashedly playing a rousing game of Drunk Scrabble.
Drunk Scrabble is a lot like Sober Scrabble except spelling doesn’t matter and all words are real, even the made up ones, as long as you can define them.
though most of the adults were ensconced in their game, my stepdad had snuck into the kitchen, presumably to escape the madness. in an attempt to look both Casual and Unruffled, i went to the fridge and rooted around like i wasn’t in the kitchen to commit a crime.
“hey, is wine good?” i asked, super-casually.
my stepdad blinked at me. “it’s okay,” he said.
“cool. cooooooool. anyway, just here for some, uh,” i glanced at the fridge, “milk, just had a sudden…..craving………for some milk….i see we have some, so that’s, uh, good, i’ll just pour a glass of, of–”
“milk?”
“that’s the stuff!!! haha. yeah. gotta get that …. cream…y……….”
i am the reason i don’t want kids.
[youplayedyourself.gif]
“okay.”
we stood in silence for a little while, me miserably drinking a huge glass of milk and skip patiently sitting at the table enjoying his cocktail. a small eternity crept by. i tried to drink my milk as slowly as possible so as to have an excuse to stay in the kitchen, but without anything else to do it didn’t take long before i was facing the bottom of the glass.
my stepdad smiled at me. i smiled back.
i poured another glass.
“yum,” i said, wretched.
he lifted his cocktail in a little cheers and we went back to drinking. i watched the clock. how long does it take one grown ass man to drink a diet coke with kahlua and tequila? i mean, god, it’s not like i was throwing this milk down like a frat brother drinking during rush week. we were at “tea with the queen” speeds and i was still totally crushing him.
i started to panic. how many milks was i going to have to drink? how would the milk mix with alcohol? how much calcium is too much calcium????
i couldn’t go back upstairs without booze. my pride was on the line, and also, even if it wasn’t, if i gave up now i’d have choked down like half a pint of milk for nothing and i know that sunk cost is a fallacy but at a certain point there’s no way out but through, you know what i’m saying?
i poured myself a third glass of milk. i looked down at it and it felt like it was looking up at me. i imagined myself as a fat-faced oreo, slowly sinking to the bottom of the glass. was it possible to drown from drinking too much milk? is that how drowning worked? i could hear all those terrible milk lobby ads in my head, mocking me with increasing malignancy. got milk? got more milk? got three glasses of milk? mmmm. creamy. drink up, idiot!!!! you’re a milkwoman now!!!!
finally, finally, just when it looked like i was going to have to go back for more, skip stood up. he set his empty glass in the sink, kissed the side of my head, and went back into the living room.
It Happened To Me: I Drank 2 And A Half Glasses Of Milk I Didn’t Want And I’m Not Sure I’ll Ever Look At Dairy The Same Way Ever Again, Unless It’s Cheese, If It’s Cheese We’re Still Cool
in our kitchen we had this one counter that was the Booze Counter, which had on it the booze that my parents regularly drank–rum for my mom’s rum & pineapple juice, tequila and kahlua for my stepdad’s diet-coke-and-tequila-and-kahlua*, whatever wine we happened to have, and vodka, but i think that was just for the aesthetic than anything else because i’ve literally never seen either of my parents drink vodka in their lives.
*i know!!! it’s so gross!!! it’s so gross. don’t talk to me about it, i don’t understand either.
below the Booze Counter was the Booze Cupboard, which had a whole slew of alcohol that my parents, as far as i knew, never touched. there were all kinds of magical things in it that, as i understood it, my parents did not like. i assumed the booze cupboard was for the reject booze that they did not like and were hoping would disappear if they left it alone long enough.
that made sense, right? right.
wrong!!
*jazz hands*
i grabbed the first bottle i could get my hands on from the booze cupboard. it had a blue label and an umber liquid. whisky. cool kids drank whisky, right? was there a hierarchy of Cool Alcohols To Drink At Illicit Teen Parties?
whatever. i grabbed the bottle and a bunch of diet cokes and shoved them casually into my shirt like a woman pregnant by a very square alien.
“what are you kids doing?” asked my mom as i passed by, and, in a blind panic, i said, “i DON’T KNOW, NOTHING, I WAS JUST GETTING SOME MILK.”
it turns out that a bunch of mostly drunk adults don’t really care why their teenager suddenly grew a Space Baby, so my mom was like, “….ok, weirdo,” and went back to drunk scrabble while i sprinted up the stairs.
the party went pretty well, if by “pretty well” you mean that napoleon threw up all over my mom’s flower bushes, linda asked casper and teriyaki’s mom if she was going to murder us in the woods, and six months later my mom found an empty $400 bottle of johnny walker blue hidden in my sleeping bag (why did drunk molly put it there? sober molly doesn’t know).
i tried to blame it on one of my brother’s college friends, which absolutely did not work. it didn’t work even a little. my mom gave me the mom face and i caved immediately and told her the truth, which was that we mixed her $400 whisky with diet coke and napoleon didn’t throw up because he was suffering from laryngitis, like we’d said.
“yeah,” my mom said in that voice that moms have that’s like why didn’t i follow my dream of being a whitesnake groupie instead of having children? “yeah. nobody thought he had laryngitis. next time you want to have a party just be a normal teenager and steal beer out of the back fridge so you don’t drink my nice shit.”
“that’s what you keep in the back fridge?” i said.
stop telling ppl to write like hemingway i promise u adverbs are not another face of the dark lord satan its ok
If writers took every bit of writing advice that was in the format ‘Don’t use X part of the English language’, all English fiction would read like Spot the dog
IMO Adverbs can be pretty nasty sometimes (”’I can’t wait!’ said Tom excitedly” is still a pretty bad sentence) but it all comes down to how you use them, and what words you put them together with.
Generally, you should try to avoid using adverbs in phrases like ‘she said happily’ or ‘he screamed loudly’. Aside from that, adverbs aren’t inheritly bad.
And ‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past’ isn’t a bad sentence at all.
thats not really anything inherent to adverbs, it’s just redundancy. the dialogue is speaking for itself. ’“i can’t wait,” said tom excitedly’ is a bad sentence, but ’“i cant wait,” said tom flatly’ is chill. id probably throw a comma in there before ‘flatly’ for pacing but u do u
“dont use adverbs” is basically a really shitty way to verbalize “redundancy is often awkward and makes your audience feel condescended to if it’s not done well”–because lgr there are times when redundancy is okay, there are times when literally everything is okay
break the rules of literature. theyre shitty rules anyway
First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing, because verbing weirds language
Then they arrival for the nouns, and I speech nothing, because no verbs
Then they for the descriptive, and I silent because verbless and nounless
(L O O K i know this is not even remotely a response to the prompt of ‘bruce wayne gets railed by huge demon dicks’ but also you are all terrible sinners and this is quite frankly a best-case scenario)
It was easy to follow the path of the ratty brown trenchcoat traveling through tuxedos and gowns.
“Wayne! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Bruce had been watching him stomp his way up the stairs, and had made no effort to meet him, standing and sipping at his champagne. “John!” he greeted, too cheerful to ever be genuine. “Glad to see you got your invitation.”
“Yes, I know I wasn’t — what?” Constantine stopped in his tracks with a frown. “What invitation?”
“Your invitation,” Bruce said, gesturing to all assembled. “To the party. Which I assume you accepted, since you’re here. I knew you’d have to show up to one of them, eventually.”
“I don’t…”
The facts were these:
Bruce Wayne had apparently invited John Constantine to a party despite having no reason to believe it was necessary or desired.
‘One of them, eventually’ suggested that he had invited John to many such parties.
A party was often the easiest time to find and corner Bruce Wayne, when he couldn’t go handcuffing anyone to anything with ridiculous bat-shaped handcuffs.
John never expected or waited for invitations to parties.
Bruce could not possibly have been monitoring John’s activities closely enough to know when he ought to invite him to a party.
Therefore:
Bruce Wayne had been sending John Constantine invitations to every party he had thrown in the last six years, for the express purpose of ensuring that John could never have the satisfaction of crashing a posh party uninvited.
The pull at the corner of Bruce’s mouth suggested that he knew that John knew what Bruce had done, and this knowledge of his knowledge pleased him inordinately. He sipped at his champagne.
“Do you know who it is that you were just flirting with?” Constantine asked, returning to his original reason for talking to the man at all.
Bruce’s eyebrow only barely moved higher than the other. “I don’t know that I would say that I was flirting, necessarily,” Bruce said.
“Oh, I know what you look like when you’re flirting,” John reminded him, and Bruce’s eyes flitted away back over the crowd. “You were flirting.” Bruce shrugged. “Did you even catch his name?”
The corners of Bruce’s mouth turned ever-so-slightly downward, a twitch in his brow that wasn’t a furrow. His champagne flute drifted away from his mouth. “I don’t think I did,” he said, and this admission of his oversight was said with the awestruck manner that most people reserved for a glimpse of the divine.
Appropriately enough.
“You’ve been flirting with the Devil,” Constantine informed him, in as blunt of terms as he could manage.
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” Bruce said. “I haven’t seen Talia in months.”
John huffed, grabbing Bruce by the arm and pulling him toward the railing overlooking the ballroom. “Not the metaphorical devil,” he said. “I mean Lucifer, the Fallen, Prince of Lies, the Dark Lord Satan. You have been flirting with the King of Hell.” He gestured with both arms toward the circle of besotted partygoers surrounding the man to whom Bruce had been speaking.
Bruce scoffed. The man in question looked up from the dance floor. His eyes were all the colors of a sunset, and cherubic golden curls formed a halo around his head. He saw Bruce, and he smiled.
Bruce almost smiled back. It was the beginnings of a smile, a beginning that spoke of an ignoble end, asymmetrical and soft and small.
He stopped. He turned his head away, and his face went a familiar blank shape. He glanced back toward the angelic figure out of the corner of his eye, as if to confirm the effect, before looking away again. He set his empty champagne flute down on the rail.
“That is the Devil,” he repeated for confirmation.
“Yes.”
“King of Hell.”
“Technically retired.”
“What?”
“He just sort of putters around these days,” Constantine admitted.
“He seemed nice,” said Bruce, who now seemed wary of looking toward the party.
“He does tend to.”
Bruce’s gaze drifted back toward Lucifer.
“Wayne. No.”
“Hm?”
“You’re thinking about it. I can tell you’re thinking about it. Theology or philosophy or Stones lyrics. Stop it.”
“I just wish I’d known sooner,” Bruce said. He was watching those blonde curls intently. “I might have had some questions.”
“No. No.” John took Bruce by the shoulders. “That’s how it starts, just an innocent conversation, and then what? Look. I know we’ve had this little rivalry, you and me, over who can stick their dick in the least advisable place, but that is literally, actually Satan. You cannot fuck him. I don’t just mean you shouldn’t, I mean physically, it’s not possible. And even if you could — God knows, if anyone could find a way — it’s still literal, actual Satan we’re talking about here. There are very few things in this world I’m willing to state are absolutely and categorically bad, and one of them is fucking literal, actual Satan.”
Bruce grabbed a champagne flute off the tray of a passing waiter. “Despite what you seem to think, Mr. Constantine,” he said, “I have not yet sunk so far as to need lectures on ethics from you of all people.”
“So that’s the literal, actual, Biblical Devil,” Flash asked.
“You know, I didn’t have you pegged for the slow one,” Constantine said, “but way to buck stereotypes.” He took another drag on his cigarette.
“I just mean, shouldn’t we… be fighting him?”
“You want to try fighting the Devil, you be my guest,” John said, “but I’ve met people who make that their full-time job, and I can’t say I usually get along with them.” He exhaled smoke out his nose. “‘Course, they usually aren’t real good at their jobs, either.”
“We fight bad guys,” Flash said, looking to Wonder Woman for support. “He’s the ultimate, baddest guy, right?”
“Within the Christian faith,” Wonder Woman said, “Satan is considered a personified shorthand for the philosophical concept of evil, yes?” She had a thoughtful hand on her chin.
“Yes,” Flash said.
“If you’re simple, sure,” Constantine said. Wonder Woman looked down at him. “Not that I’m saying you are,” he added. She looked pointedly at his cigarette. He put it out on the sole of his shoe.
“He seems… masculine,” Wonder Woman said.
“I’ve seen worse,” Constantine said.
“And pale.”
“Don’t tell me you’re surprised, love.”
She smiled. John smiled back. She didn’t rebuke him for the term of endearment. “I’m not,” she said. “I just wanted to be sure that everyone noticed.”
Lucifer Morningstar descended from the sky on wings of light. His suit wasn’t even rumpled. It was difficult to look directly at him; he smelled not of smoke but of heat, of lightning, of ozone.
“Consider the matter settled,” he said, his voice soft because he did not need to raise it. It was addressed to everyone, but his eyes were on Batman.
Even the Lightbringer couldn’t touch the impossible black of his cape. He was a figure of void in the light of a sun.
“Do not be so foolish as to think that you can depend on me in the future,” Lucifer added, stepping closer to the Dark Knight with feet that never touched the ground. “Your affairs are your own, and I prefer not to meddle — whatever else you may have been told.” His wings folded, dissipated. They remained as echoes, burnt into mortal vision. “This,” he said, standing too close to an unmoving and silent Batman, “was a rare exception.”
The Flash was by Superman’s side, where he had not been a half-second earlier. “Supes,” he said, speaking faster than ordinary ears could hear, “I need you to be totally honest with me right now.”
Superman had a very good poker face.
“Has Batman been a demon this whole time?”
“Thank you,” Batman said. “We appreciate it.”
“Hmm.” Lucifer cocked his head to the side, looked Batman over, as if there was anything to see through the impenetrable cape draped over the whole of him. “You know how to reach me,” he said finally, before turning on his heel. He didn’t fly away, or disappear; just walked away, hands in his pockets, whistling.
“Supes,” Flash said, “you’re not saying he’s not a demon.”
“I told you not to ask me about his secret identity,” Superman said.
“I feel like you could tell me he wasn’t a demon without it narrowing things down that much,” Flash said.
Zatanna sidled up to Batman. “Spoops.”
“Don’t call me that.”
She rested her elbow on his arm, leaning on him. “I have to ask.”
“No you don’t.”
“I need you to be completely honest with me.”
“No you don’t.”
“Did you lay down such high-quality pipe that the Devil himself felt like he owed you one?”
“I’m not dignifying that with a response.” At the edge of where his mask ended, he was turning faintly pink.
“Did he call you daddy? Did he say ‘oh my god’? Are those like the same thing for him?”
“Why would I answer that.”
“I get that a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, so if you’ve had infernal dick in your mouth in the last twenty-four hours, just stand there and look stoic.”
“I’m leaving now.”
“That’s not a no!” she called after him.
“Superman,” Flash said, trying to shake him by the shoulder. “Kal. Please. If Batman has been Zee’s demonic familiar this whole time, you have to tell me.”
“Batman,” Superman said, addressing the man in question, “Flash wants to know if you’re a demon.”
Flash squeaked as Batman glowered at him, stopping in the process of storming by to lean closer. “What do you think?”
Constantine shook his head. “And that works?” he asked Wonder Woman, gesturing to the scene.
“Usually,” she said.
“What a bunch of morons. Present company excluded.”
What if a lot of alien species didn’t actually evolve as pack species, and just adapted to living in communities out of necessity? So they can still work and live together, but they don’t have all the little instincts humans have that help them work in a group.
And they are freaked out by us.
We all wear the same clothes. It’s not a uniform— we just somehow all seem to like roughly the same outfits. We fit in so naturally with the people around us that you can use a human’s clothing to tell what country and what time period they are from. Aliens have no idea how we know what clothes are appropriate— they end up having to hire humans to act as fashion consultants after several incidents where diplomats showed up wearing mismatched clothes from various time periods and countries and looking totally ridiculous.
And what about yawning? Aliens who work on human ships say they never fully get used to hearing one human yawn and then having the whole room start yawning along with them. Or telling a joke to one human and seeing humans who say they don’t find the joke that funny cracking up anyway because “their laugh is so infectious!” It’s a common practical joke to tell new nonhuman crew members about this horrible disease humans get, where they feel tired and have an uncontrollable urge to open their mouths. It’s deadly, they say, and very contagious.
New safety procedures have to be worked out for the humans because, on the one hand, you don’t have to go around telling each individual to leave. Humans will just follow the mob. On the other hand, though, you have to be careful not to spread panic, because if one human runs, they all will, and they’ll trample anyone who isn’t fast enough to stay ahead.
Aliens hear humans tell their kids not to give into peer pressure and just get really confused. “Why would they do it if they don’t want to?”
“Because their friends are telling them to do it!”
“But why do it just because they’re telling them to do it?”
“Because they’re their friends!”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
When aliens see earth movies about people being indoctrinated or turned into zombies, it takes them a while to realise that these are horror movies because, from their perspective, that’s just what humans are like.
Captain America would kick Wonder Woman's ass just sayin
As someone who loves my son Steve Rogers, I have to say that he could never kick Diana’s ass, like literally, and also he would never do that, because Steve Rogers would grow up idolising the mysterious hero from WW1, and would probably swoon if he got to meet her, would call her “ Your Majesty” unironically, until Diana has to literally punch him to make him stop, and even then, he’d call her “Ma'am” with the utmost respect, and also he’d follow her to Hell and back without blinking.
This is just an idle thought brought up by what will doubtless be obvious circumstances, but: trauma recovery isn’t linear and that’s hard.
Like, you can have whole years of relatively good success and then just bottom out for no particular reason, and it sucks, because it feels like… It feels like, on the one hand, maybe you conned yourself into thinking you could ever be improving and therefore you’re terrible, or, alternatively, maybe you conned everyone into thinking you had problems to begin with and now you’re just acting the part for sympathy. And on top of that elaborately pointless circle of self-loathing, the part of you that knows you aren’t lying about any of it is just screaming in rage because look at all that progress down the drain.
Like, for various reasons I have some pretty hardcore PTSD wrt dentists, and I improved a lot over the last few years. Dentists and I will never be on good terms and exam chairs will almost invariably set me off, but I could sit still through a whole appointment and keep my breathing mostly regular, which is honestly as good as it might ever get. And I had years of that, of ‘as good as it’ll get.’
And then with no warning my latest appointment was a train wreck. I spent two days almost totally useless before the appointment even started. At the appointment, I almost threw up when something was placed in my mouth, and I almost started crying about halfway through, and I was hyperventilating so badly I genuinely thought I was going to pass out in the chair. Nothing I could do had any effect. And like…that’s still a lot better than what used to go down when I went to the dentist (I don’t remember almost six years of dental appointments because I was so out of it, but I know there was one time where I physically attacked someone when they tried to bring instruments near my teeth, and another where I ran away), but God, I felt like a fucking failure. Like I said: all that fucking work for all that fucking progress, and it was like I’d NEVER EVEN TRIED.
Now, I’ve hit this sort of badness before, where the bottom just kind of drops out of all my hard work (um…one time a dentist put me on laughing gas to try to calm me down, and we all learned that it’s possible to OD on nitrous oxide, needless to say that Did Not Help and instilled an even more virulent hatred of Spongebob than I had before). So I was able to kind of nip that one in the bud and point out to myself that, hey, I was able to speak during the appointment and neither I nor the dentist was injured, so it’s a net win. But…like…I feel like no one talks about the way that you can be doing better, you can be doing a lot better, and then you can still just…lose it.
And it doesn’t mean you’ve lost progress on your recovery, or that you have to repeat all the same work as before. It’s just that piecing yourself back together is hard, it’s exhausting, and sometimes your brain just gives out at the worst possible moment, like a muscle that’s been overworked, and it sucks, but it’s not the end of the line. Do what you have to do to take care of yourself (if you’re me, drink some gin and watch some movies) and get some sleep if you can, and then take a deep breath and look at the situation again. Have some compassion for the younger self who was subjected to that trauma, instead of beating up on them for being affected by it. People have emotions, it’s what makes us people, so try not to crucify yourself for feeling deeply and being scarred by the experience.
WHENEVER YOU SEE THIS POST ON YOUR DASH, STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND WRITE ONE SENTENCE FOR YOUR CURRENT PROJECT.
Just one sentence. Stop blogging for one minute and write a single sentence. It could be dialogue, it could be a nice description of scenery, it could be a metaphor, I don’t care. The point is, do it. Then, when you finish, you can get back to blogging.
If this gets viral, you might just have your novel finished by next Tuesday.
In the movie, unlike the comic, the masquerade is still intact, the general public doesn’t know about the supernatural, and Hellboy is a cryptid on a level with Bigfoot (but, like, in cities and wearing a coat).
BUT he’s not just a cryptid, he’s a a cryptid that everyone refers to by the correct name, to the extent that there’s a comic series about him.
Basically what I’m saying is that at some point early in his career Hellboy was presumably stopped by a bystander with a question like “who the fuck are you” and he took a second out of his busy monster-huntin’ schedule to introduce himself.
I was talking to a friend about Etta Candy, and various ways fic could explore her awesomeness, whether as The Best of Secretaries or adventures in other professions, or, hell, Etta Goes to Themyscira…
And then I was seized with the vision of Etta turning up on Themyscira and meeting a thousand Amazons who have had ALLLLL ETERNITY surrounded by other Amazons with hard, scarred, warrior bodies, and having… quite a large number of them… react all like…
WHO IS THIS UTTERLY NOVEL VISION OF FEMININE LOVELINESS AND HOW CAN I PERSUADE HER THAT I (AND PERHAPS MY WIFE) SHOULD BE RESPONSIBLE FOR INTRODUCING HER TO ALL TWELVE VOLUMES OF CLIO’S TREATISE ON SEXUAL PLEASURE IN THE FORM OF AN EXTENDED SERIES OF PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATIONS.
…So, you know, do with that thought what you will?
Washington State (not DC) is the only state in the union where you can legally have a fistfight with somebody (with police as referees) to settle your differences
This is tied to an archaic law that isn’t enforced anymore.
So if you beat the shit out of someone they won’t do anything?
Oh no this is still enforced, and in fact we actually Have a few vigilante superheroes
Like Phoenix Jones who actually patrol the streets and challenge criminals, the police usually get called, and they watch as Phoenix Jones pummels them because Phoenix Jones is actually an MMA fighter.
I gasped and my eyes got so wide after reading this
That man is AWESOME
Apparently for about three years he had an actual superhero team of people with military, medical and martial artist backgrounds he personally trained and equipped, but eventually disbanded. He didn’t give specifics, but said that some of them were “the wrong kind of people” and were too dangerous. There are really for real things that happened.
Also someone tried to be an “arch nemesis” to him named Rex Velvet, some nerd wearing an eyepatch and a fake mustache who didn’t hurt anybody but made surprisingly polished, melodramatic and goofy callout videos from an abandoned warehouse and presumably pulled some annoying pranks.
Did some research about Phoenix Jones: guy is legit. Ex-MMA fighter like the post says, but what the post FAILED to mention is this guy has legit superhero-grade equipment. His suit’s actually made of armor-plated and bulletproof materials, and it has a functional utility belt with lined with stuff like handcuffs, a stun gun, pepper spray, and the like for performing citizens arrests and non-lethally detaining actually armed and violent criminals.
please, tell me more about death and the gay barista. where does death get her hair done? why does death like iced chocolate? has death ever considered a netflix subscription?
oh, and one more: has death read the princess bride? does death like the princess bride?
Sephie has never seen someone with hair like Death’s. It’s as thick as sheep’s wool, but perfectly obedient, sleek curls that pile up around her shoulders like snowfall. Hours of styling, even in a salon, could never reproduce it. They’re sitting in one of Death’s gardens–phosphorestent blossoms cast an eerie blue-white light over the sleek black walls and the cataract of precious gems pouring into a false river of opal and lapis lazuli and sapphire–and Death’s head is in Sephie’s lap as she plays with the curls. Sephie stretches one white lock out and it springs back, and Death opens an eye, smiling when she sees Sephie grinning.
“Is it so amusing?”
“Yes,” Sephie says, delighted. She pulls out another curl and cocks her head as Death opens her other eye. “Why don’t you dye it anymore?”
“Dye it?” Death repeats, blinking. Sephie nods, and it takes a moment before her question seems to click in Death’s mind. “Oh!” Death laughs a little. “No, I didn’t dye it. What color did you like best?”
“The red was nice,” Sephie says, bemused. Death smiles at her and closes her eyes, and Sephie watches as each hair begins to change, deep venous scarlet seeping through each strand from the scalp until her lap is full of riotous red. Death opens her eyes again as Sephie huffs out a breath of surprise and rakes her fingers through the newly colored mass.
“Do you like it better like this? I can appear however I choose, this is simply,” Death gestures down at herself, “my preference.”
“I love it,” Sephie says, bending down to kiss Death’s hairline and reveling in the electrical shock of the contact. “However you want to wear it. Surprise me.”
TWO
“Where does the food come from?” Sephie asks, evaluating an apple. It’s crisp and red and perfect, and she knows that when she bites into it, it will be sweet and delicious. “Why do you even keep food here?”
“The fruit comes from my orchard,” Death says from her throne. A bowl of pomegranate seeds like drops of blood frozen in crystal rests in her lap, and her fingertips are stained with their juice as she pops one at a time into her mouth. “And I keep food here because I like it. And because you like it.”
“You mean those trees actually grow fruit?” Sephie asks, startled.
“Of course. The rest of the food, I do what I can. My sister brings me gifts sometimes. She knows I love Earth food.”
“You mean she knows you have a terrible sweet tooth,” Sephie says, pointing at Death with her apple, and Death smiles, holding out the shallow bowl of pomegranate seeds toward her. Sephie returns the apple to a dish that she suspects might be solid diamond and walks forward, until Death can neatly pull her into her lap in place of the bowl. “You can’t fool me,” Sephie says, reeling in the pomegranate seeds to pop a few into her mouth. They burst cool and sparkling over her tongue. “I served you iced chocolate every day for years.”
“I do love chocolate,” Death confirms, and stretches up to peck a kiss on Sephie’s lips. It tastes like pomegranates.
THREE
Sephie doesn’t actually know how many rooms are in Death’s citadel, but then again, Sephie is dead, and has thus reached a state of Zen acceptance about all things. So when she opens a door one morning and finds a library with shelves twenty feet high, she doesn’t ask a lot of questions.
Death finds her quite some time later, comfortably stretched on a reclining couch upholstered in emerald green with a small tower of books climbing beside her. Slinking onto the couch beside her, Death coils catlike into the empty spaces left on the surface and insinuates her head onto Sephie’s belly, curls–amber gold today–spilling over them both. Sephie giggles and laces one hand into Death’s curls, lowering her book.
“What are you reading?”
“I have no idea. It’s called Resenting the Hero, it’s great.” Sephie gestures around her at the library. “What is this place?”
“My library,” Death says. “I’ve only just added it.”
“Only just?”
Death shrugs against Sephie’s side. “I never thought to add something purely for the sake of leisure before. Sometimes spirits spend time in my gardens, or my orchards, but this…” She looks up at Sephie through her lashes, almost shy. “This is my own space. And yours, of course.”
Sephie spends a few moments working very hard not to melt through the couch at that, then clears her throat and says, “Have you ever considered a theater room?”
“A…theater room?” Death says musingly. “Would you like one?”
Sephie laughs. “Well, it might be nice to watch a movie together. You would like The Princess Bride–it’s a classic.”
“I shall look into it at once.”
FOUR
Sephie’s favorite room in the citadel is a cave–or rather, it seems like a cave. The walls drip with rubies and topaz, garnet and carnelian and amber, the ceiling laden with stalactites, and the floor stacked with pillows in a deep bowl shape. Bringing a light inside turns the jewels into leaping, frozen fire, and casts fractured glints and glitters across the pillows.
Death doesn’t begrudge her a thing, is more than willing to give Sephie anything she asks for, and when she learns of Sephie’s affection for the place, it begins to mysteriously fill itself with gifts. Bouquets of glowing flowers from the gardens, blankets and cushions of a fineness that Sephie never saw in life, sweets and books and bowls of pomegranate seeds and apples and cherries. Death is always shy, when she comes to the fire-crystal room, and insists firmly that it is vital that Sephie have her own space.
Death shouldn’t be so endearing.
But stretched on the floor of Sephie’s fire-crystal room, turning her hair different colors as Sephie feeds her pomegranate seeds, it’s quite undeniable.
FIVE
Death doesn’t sleep. Sephie doesn’t need sleep, anymore, but Death doesn’t seem to be capable of it. So Sephie is a little startled to find that Death keeps a bed chamber, well, if palely, lit and ornamented with the same pristine jewels as the rest of the citadel. The bed is soft and comfortable, a canopied thing with blue and green jewels inlaid in the black stone corner posts, and piled deep with pillows, and the bedside table is stacked with books and one of the shallow bowls of fruit. Sephie doesn’t need sleep anymore, but more than once she has taken a nap in Death’s bed, purely because it’s so pleasant, and she often wakes up to find Death curled up beside her, eyes open but breath steady and calm.
This is not one of those times. Death, after a long series of hearings and judgments in her audience chamber, comes to find Sephie in a garden with her usual unerring efficiency.
“Come with me,” Death says, and Sephie–oh, of course Sephie does.
Curled up with her head on Death’s chest, Sephie feels the low crackle of lightning through her nerves, the unmistakable feeling of power from being close to Death. Death’s hand is tracing Sephie’s jaw as she sorts through the books on the table with the other, and Sephie hums, a pleasant sound vibrating deep through her chest.
“Read to me,” Sephie commands, and Death laughs, the sound even more inhuman at close range, before pulling her hand back with a book. It’s a plain paperback, with a black and red cover embossed with gold lettering.
“Have you read Sunshine yet?” Death asks, amused, and Sephie smiles. “I did recommend it to you.”
“You did,” Sephie agrees, and nestles deeper into the pile of cushions as she tucks an arm around Death’s waist. Even skin-to-skin, Death has no heartbeat, and her chest only rises and falls so that she can speak, but Sephie has gotten past finding it strange–it is calm, soothing, a level of peace that Earth never offered.
Death kisses Sephie’s hair and opens the book. “Part One,” she begins. “It was a dumb thing to do, but it wasn’t that dumb. There hadn’t been any trouble out at the lake in years…”
