Jamie Tartt With All The Braincells In This Episode

America has a weird relationship with cults where they’re terrified of small cults (or organizations they think are cults) but completely normalized massive cults that hurt many more people (eg: LDS Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Amish, Scientology, most Megachurches)

Random things I love about the show Bones:

- all the times they take stuff from the museum to use in the investigation ("I got this from the x exhibit")

- Brennan following some birds, bugs etc and finding a body ("Booth, you might want to see this")

- "Bones, stay behind me!" Brennan immediately wanders off

- the banter between Booth and Caroline Julian

- how well TJ Thyne plays exhausted Hodgins

- how immaculate Cam's outfits are (and how they are ruined by Hodgins and co's experiments)

- the guitar riffs that play every time Angela's dad is on screen

A gothic horror story where a gentleman from a good family gets haunted by something monstrous, which follows him around and keeps killing people around him at utter random, in cruel and horrifying ways. Specifically within circumstances where the protagonist has no alibi, and everything indicates that he committed the murders.

But the real horror is not that he would find himself accused of the murders, but that the people around him naturally assume that he did do it, but genuinely do not care, because the victims are never people that the society around him considers "important". The scullery maid of his household is found brutalised beyond recognition in a room where even the ceiling has been splattered with blood, and a constable of the local police brushes it off as a case of household discipline gone wrong, being horrifyingly casual with the assumption that the protagonist severely beat a girl in his service to death, and will dismiss it as an accident. The street urchin that the protagonist was seen talking with - wanting to help this poor little orphan - is found decapitated, severed head in the protagonist's fireplace. This, too, is calmly swept under the rug.

After every horrifying murder, the protagonist tries to seek help, to present the crime to authorities in hopes of getting some semblance of help, or at least clearing his own name of this, but every time it's brushed off. "These things do happen", he is reassured, like it's perfectly normal that a mansion of that size has a secret garden of unmarked graves in one shady corner.

The real horror is the ever-encompassing implication that this is perfectly normal.

"Buck, wake up."

Gale whines softly and buries his face deeper into the pillow that he hugs with his arms.

"No, I don't want to."

It's such a perfect morning.

The sun gently warms his ankle, sticking out from the cocoon of the blanket, with its gentle morning rays and Gale is already on the verge of waking up, his feelings are gradually starting to return him to reality, but the veil of sleep has not yet fallen, his breathing is even and calm, as is his heartbeat, and he does not want to open his eyes and completely destroy the sleepy serenity.

He feels John's hand gently stroking his back. It is so big and warm, not heavy, but just a little bit weighty, giving a feeling of anchor, it gives him a feeling of calm, safety and home.

John's touches in the morning are usually not like this. They are persistent and greedy, he pokes his morning hard-on into his buttocks, and his hands shamelessly slip either into his underwear or under his T-shirt, persistently caressing his nipples, his lips kissing everything that gets in their way, be it Gale's face, his neck, hair, at the same time hotly whispering all sorts of lustful nonsense in his ears, just to quickly warm up sleepy Gale to a state where he will be ready to have sex.

But this morning John is not horny, he is gentle. "Well," Gale thinks, "and such mornings are supposed to be too." He feels so good now, he likes the way John's hand slowly strokes his shoulder blades, moves up and down his spine and gently rubs his ribs through his T-shirt.

"Wake up, sleeping beauty," John presses himself closer to him.

"Nooo, it's too early for sex, I need another hour of sleep," Gale grumbles into the pillow and his words can hardly be heard. For some reason, he wiggles his butt from side to side like a big NO, as if he thinks that words are not enough and it needs to be clearly shown to John, that he does not want to leave the embrace of sleep.

He feels more than hears how John quietly laughs next to him, "You'll be late for work."

Gale growls in annoyance, "Then I will certainly not get up if it is for work and not for sex!"

He hugs the pillow even tighter and thinks how did they manage to achieve all this - a house, a shared bed and gentle caresses awakening you from sleep on a perfect morning? How did they overcome all the taboos and barriers on their way to be here and now? It was hellish work, almost harder than both returning alive from the war. From the realization of how much they overcame to have their tiny piece of happiness, his chest begins to hurt and as if feeling it, John hugs him and presses him to himself.

"Baby, you have to get up."

"No."

"You have so much work to do."

"That's not the right motivation at all, Bucky!" Gale chuckles.

"You have a lot of things to do," John's tone becomes more insistent.

Gale groans.

"Buck!" There's a strange, tense ringing in John's voice and Gale doesn't like it.

"Oh, God, dear, why are you yelling like that, I'm getting up..."

Gale opens his eyes and looks out the window. It's gloomy and cloudy outside and it's probably going to rain soon. He looks at the gray, heavy sky for a moment and blinks in confusion. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong. How is this possible when just a few minutes ago he felt the warm rays of the sun on his skin?

Gale raises himself on his elbow, frowning. He no longer feels John's warm touch and he doesn't need to turn around to know that he is completely alone in this bed, like in this whole house.

John died many years ago.

===================

The ghosts of the past haunt Gale.

Inspired by these words

My favorite new bit in ghost files is when one of them describes what the other is probably doing in that moment then it cuts to them doing exactly that.

Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

Book Jessica x Leto <3

I think one of my favourite things about Jessica x Leto in the Dune book is the fact that they are so secure in their love for each other:

You have Jessica; who is a very well trained Bene Gesserit, who can control every cell in her body, that when it comes to Leto instinctually let's herself feel and emote naturally. (Conceives Alia out of "instinct", cries/breaks down when Leto is in danger/dies, visibly gets upset when people ask her about them getting married etc.)

But Jessica is also very secure in her knowledge that Leto loves her and only her, she says to Hawat that "he'll not marry anyone else, not as long as I live." And she is very confident in that which suggests through words/actions that Leto has assured her of this before.

Similarly with Leto, he's very secure in knowing Jessica loves him and he doesn't consider even for a minute that she is the actual traitor. He says "she's opened/showed her heart to me" and that he "knows her", he also tells Paul himself that he'd sooner distrust himself than Jessica.

And so I think that while we didn't get a lot of them speaking directly to each other in the book, the conversations they have with other characters about their relationship is very telling. There is a sense of communication and deep understanding between them, whether it's verbal/non verbal/physical, that they love each other very much and that they are it for each other.

Then there's an aspect of their relationship that is a bit more tragic to me;

From the start of the book through to the end, even after Leto has died, there is this sense of defence that is constantly surrounding their relationship.

It starts with the Reverend Mother accusing Jessica of having a son purely because of Leto and Jessica has to defend that decision.

Then it's everyone thinking Jessica is the traitor and Leto has to defend her (obvi he gives into the plan for his own schemes but anyway).

Jessica has to defend her love for Leto to Yueh, Hawat, and eventually Gurney later on in the novel. She has to fight off all these accusations and questions about why she hasn't married him or why he didn't marry her.

Paul has to defend his parents' love as well to Gurney when Jessica can't convince him she's not the traitor. (Gurney was a real one for wanting to die for doing that lol.)

And it's really sad that that was something that consistently happened, like after 15/16/17 years they were still having to defend what they had. They were probably very private people and while they did have their own love and understanding of each other, other people just didn't get to see that and so there's this constant sense of protection for both of them for who they love and their family.

And especially for Jessica, who at that point had betrayed the Bene Gesserit more than once, being accused and having to defend her loyalty when everything she had done was out of love for Leto.

There's something so visceral about their story and the way they love each other that really resonates with me idk