Happy Ostara

[cornerofmadness]

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And what a first day of spring it's been. It's 75 degrees. I went to my first book club meeting at the new bookstore (run by one of my former students) where I got them interested in my book, These Haunted Hills and it was a fun book club where we only had to read 'a green book' and talk about it. Next month is an assigned book. To be honest I don't really go to book groups because I rarely like the genres we read. We'll see how this goes. I did find out a major mystery writer I like will be there in May. Yay.

And I really really need to read the specs on fan merch I buy. I always don't do that and I always get surprised often in a bad way (like my itty bitty husk/angel things) However this time the surprise is in a good way. I got the Valentine's day cards for Hazbin because I liked the art. I thought I was getting a few art cards. I got a damn box of stationary. Wow.


And holy hell episode 8 of The Amazing Digital Circus dropped tonight. It was amazing. It's up there in second place for me. I'll have to watch it again and I'll have more thoughts about it later.

Today also saw the passing of Chuck Norris and Nicholas Brendan who played Xander on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In watching Buffy recently I realize I dislike Xander even more now than I did back then. That said, I am sorry that Nicholas passed so relatively young.

And I got some writing done plus I have a new open call for you this weekend, another one with big name anchors and pro pay about were creatures. I was spitballing ideas with evil little dog tonight. We'll see what happens.

I went back to Prodigal Son this week for my story




Title: Numb Little Bug

Summary: In the aftermath of what happened in the woods, Malcolm is recovering somewhere far from the green growing things that might remind him of that day. But all he really wants is to come home.

Rating: teen

Notes:Written for the allbingo prompt of drawing and for spikesgirl58’s 6 word challenge. The six words were Convict, Profuse, Imbibe, Blow, Support, & Fish



Malcolm set his drawing aside and stretched. He missed having his mother doing art therapy next to him. He’d gotten accustomed to it, even as he fussed about doing it and her wondering why half the things he drew looked like murder scenes. There wasn’t much for him to draw outside his room’s window anyhow. Malcolm desperately wanted to go home.


He missed the support he found in JT, Dani, and Edrisa. He wanted to be in the city, to see JT’s son, to listen to Edrisa’s nerdy ramblings, to have tea with Dani provided she still wanted to imbibe with him. Malcolm wouldn’t bet on it, though she, and the others, all showed up for their twice a week zoom meetings. That’s all his psychiatrist here, outside of Santa Fe, would allow. His mother, Ainsley and Gil had the ability to text him daily as well. He didn’t want to know what his mother had paid the clinic to arrange for Gil’s privileges.


As much as he understood why he’d been banished to the desert, Malcolm wished to be home in the city. Mother had insisted he should be nowhere near anything green and growing lest it reminded him of the forest, of the knife in his hand and his father’s blood pumping out into the underbrush. It wasn’t as if he could forget it, even here, but Malcolm kept that from her. His mother had suffered more than enough. She knew what her husband had been, what her daughter had done and now, what Malcolm had been forced to do. He didn’t think she could handle another blow. Could he?



Even when he went for walks inside the high-walled desert garden that the clinic promoted as peaceful for their clients, Malcolm swore he could smell pine and loam. If he shut his eyes, he’d be back there, in the forest, listening to his father’s final breaths. He could hear Martin saying ‘You were never a good son’ whispering in the wind, dropping from the beaks of the roadrunners that often showed up looking for grubs and worms. He knew it to be a lie but the words hurt just the same.


He wanted to go home to the pigeons and hawks of the city. New Mexico was too hot but his lawyers wanted him out of sight while the DA wondered about what to do with him. It looked more and more like he’d be let off with self-defense. Yes, maybe with all his FBI training, he could have deflected his father’s knife instead of using it against him. Malcolm wished he had, sometimes. Not always though. Not when the night terrors took him. His entire life had been shattered by that man and now he might lose his freedom as a result. Some days he was glad he had killed his father, not that he’d tell the psychiatrist, his lawyers or his family that.


He had spent months worrying about whether or not he’d be found out after helping with Ainsley’s crime. Would they convict him of accessory after the fact? They certainly should. Would they convict him now of second degree murder? Manslaughter? Let him go free. It would probably burn his father’s backside if he got away with it.


Whatever twisted relationship Martin thought they were going to have on the run, Malcolm was content to never know about it, not fully at least. He was already going to have to live with the knowledge that Martin was both hateful in those last moments and proud, so damn very proud of him. Martin finally had what he wanted: a son that could kill. But Malcolm took no joy in it. He wasn’t his father’s son. That mantle fell to Ainsley which would be a new lifelong anxiety for him.


Provided, of course, he ever got out of the desert. He was here to prove that yes, he had been under severe mental distress – who wouldn’t be after being nearly killed by one serial killer and then kidnapped by two others in the space of a few days. His lawyers were making the most out of that fact and were playing the long game. They had set pieces into motion. Malcolm’s mental health recovery was just once piece of it and frankly, he needed it. He wasn’t arguing that. He needed help. He wanted to recover. And he didn’t want to go to jail. Maybe he deserved it for killing his father but he deserved it more for weaponizing The Surgeon against The Woodsman, something no one, not even Gil, knew.



It was a secret Malcolm could easily take to his grave. That was his plan. He had shown the police, and later his doctors, the bruised and battered skin of his wrists to prove he’d been restrained. Edrisa had the evidence of the air embolism and the extraction that nearly killed him. Malcolm had truly suffered trauma and his killing Martin had been, in part, a trauma response but deep down, he wondered had he done it because he had always thought about it. He and his father had made a game of how they’d kill each other. Somehow stab him in the woods had never made the list.


Malcolm picked up his pencil and started to draw a stereotypical 1950s UFO in the sky of his artwork. He planned to give this to Edrisa. When Gil and Mother had come out to visit him, Edrisa had tagged along under the pretense of going to a forensic conference in Albuquerque. He didn’t know if she had suggested going to Roswell or if Gil had but all three of them went.


Malcolm had been treated to profuse babblings about aliens and UFOs and they had left him an alien plushie which was sitting on his bed behind him. Even his mother had been taken with the alien head shaped streetlamps of Roswell. His mother! He wished he could have gone with them. Maybe when he got out of here, they’d go. The doctors thought he was about ready. The lawyers suggested that maybe they’d like to keep him a little longer, make it look even more like he needed the help. Malcolm didn’t want to play the game anymore. He wanted to go back to work but that wasn’t likely to happen. Gil might not be able to convince anyone to have him back provided he wasn’t convicted.


Maybe he could freelance for the Killabustas. Edrisa would soar high enough to snag a UFO with her bare hands.


A knock at the door made him jump and nearly lose his pencil. Malcolm twisted on his seat and Hailey, one of his aides, smiled at him.


“Sorry to bother you, Malcolm but you forgot to circle what you wanted for dinner tonight.” She brandished the meal selection paper that appeared with breakfast every day.


“Oh, sorry. What’s the main course tonight?”


“Teriyaki salmon.”


He made a face. “I don’t feel like fish. I guess it’s the ‘offered everyday’ list again for me.” As it often was. How many times could he eat chicken nuggets, a grilled cheese, a hamburger, or a slice of pizza? Especially since he didn’t really like any of that. “You can’t even fold that pizza properly.”


“How about the grilled cheese? We have a nice fruit cup and sopapillas, too, to go with it,” Hailey offered. “And some hibiscus iced tea.”


“That sounds good. Thanks, Hailey.”


“Not a problem.” She pointed to his drawing with a grin. “Have you caught UFO fever?”


“Probably not the thing to admit to in a mental hospital.” He laughed softly. “It’s for a friend who absolutely believes in aliens and ghosts and is the best medical examiner I’ve ever met.”


“They’ll love it,” Hailey said, circling things on his meal paperwork for him. “See you at lunch.”


“I’ll be here.”


It felt like he’d be there forever but now Hailey treated him like a friend versus like he’d shatter at any second. That was progress, right? He’d get home some day and hopefully his return to the east coast didn’t include a prolonged stay in a prison. Malcolm held out hope he’d be let off as self-defense. Where he went from there, he couldn’t guess. He had time and he had friends and for now, that was more than enough.





And I did another meta post for Hazbin Hotel for the marchmetamatterschallenge


Lute's gun

You can find it on AO3 at that link or

Lute’s Gun

So the second episode also gave me strong feelings about Heaven in general and Lute in particular. Without a doubt, Gravity is one of my favorite songs of the entire series and tops the list for season two. On the other hand, it is the largest breach of Chekov’s Gun I’ve seen in forever. If you’re not familiar with that literary device reference, here’s a wiki on it for you but, in general, it means if you have a gun in the room, you need to fire it by the end of the story.


Lute’s gun was never fired and that is a big issue. I know Vivziepop received a tons of flak for this and I’ve seen interviews with her expressing her exasperation and saying ‘just wait, it’s coming.’ Fair. Again the incredibly short run time is working against her but you don’t drop something as big as Gravity and do almost nothing with it. And let’s be honest, very little is done with it. It sits there like the elephant in the room for the remaining six episodes.


Lute is reduced to bitching when they go to Hell with those gift baskets (Don’t get me started on those. I really disliked that but it did illustrate what it was meant to. Heaven has no idea the damage they’ve dealt the sinners) and then, finally, at the end she starts acting out instead of helping to save Heaven. Her need for revenge was greater than her need to save her home. But that fizzles out in order to finally give Abel some agency. I was disappointed Lute gave in so quickly. It might have been interesting to see her swat Abel out of her way but that would probably have led to Lute Falling.


In fact, I expected Lute to fall all season. I expected her to sneak out of Heaven to try and kill Vaggie. Hell, I expected her to try to use her weapon on Pentious and end all proof that redemption was possible. Gravity sets up all of this and the show delivered on none of it…yet.


What would have worked better for me is if Gravity had come after Hear My Hope. Hear me out. Seeing that Heaven and Hell working together, seeing Pentious is afterlife proof of redemption, that both Heaven and Hell now know what is possible (which is a seismic shift in ideology), Lute could have gone off then. This way we would have seen her building rage from Pentious’ ‘trial,’ her being shut down by the Speaker of God and Sera, by her dealing with Abel’s inability to pull his shit together, by having her own ideals crushed by Emily, Charlie and the Overlords saving Heaven, this could have given us Lute breaking and crumbling over the course of season two and Gravity could be the freaking cliffhanger along with Lillith’s phone call.


Imagine the tension of having to wait a year or so to see not only what Lilith might do but what will Lute do. That would have been better than basically sidelining her all season and giving us five minutes of fight time at the end that really is for naught. Imagine Lute being stripped of her identity as the exorcist angels are disbanded for real after Hear My Hope and her emotional spin out. That would have been the perfect catalyst for Gravity and would have the fans holding their breath even more for season three. Imagine the three prong anxiety of what is Lilith going to do, will Lute murder Vaggi and what about poor Angel? Ah well, what could have been. Lute absolutely needed to shoot her gun. We feel robbed that she didn’t (hence Chekov’s writing rule about that sort of thing in the first place).


Regardless, Gravity is an amazing song and I wish Lute had been better used but I’ll put a lot of that blame on Amazon for not greenlighting more (or longer) episodes. (And as I write this the poster for the Level Up con in Vegas has just dropped and it’s cool AF but also I’m hoping at that con they’re going to announce that S3 will give them more episodes which will help alleviate some of the pacing issues in the show).



Here's the fannish recs for Friday's fannish 50


Cross My Heart Hazbin Hotel

Too Much Blood Torchwood

Looking On The Bright Side FAKE

Witches and Grimwalkers and Zombies, Oh My! The Owl House

Sensible Precaution Torchwood

Gone Fishing The Fantastic Journey

you are the hill I will live for and die on
Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses

High Above The City. Torchwood

Reclaimed エクソシストを堕とせない | Exorcist wo Otosenai | Make the Exorcist Fall in Love

Feeding the Masses Stargate Atlantis

The First (and Last) Emerald City Costume Contest
Oz (TV)

Sinful Touch Oz (TV)

Frosted Flakes & Snickerdoodles Oz (TV)

Mistletoe Matchmaking Oz (TV)

Musical Santas Oz (TV)

Seeing the Doctor Oz (TV)

Sunshine, Fresh Air, and a Boring as Hell Book Oz (TV)

Ornaments Oz (TV)

Comments

[kitarella_imagines]

Happy Ostara to you! Do you know Pushkin666? She wrote a brilliant summary of Ostara traditions all round the world, lovely to read.

[barbaratp]

Esses dois falecimentos me deixaram um pouco perplexa. Chuck porque inevitavelmente o achava perpétuo e Nicholas por estar sem saber de seus problemas de saúde, então foi uma surpresa triste.

Feliz que você esteve em uma livraria, com gente bacana. Que seu autor estará lá em breve e que vocês terão clube do livro. Espero que dê tudo certo.