Photo Five Challenge

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Eviinsanemonkey on the Dash/Simon pairing in Land to Sea

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Q: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?
fic questions

A: I’m assuming you’re asking about Dash/Simon. And honestly it’s always intrigued me. I always headcanoned that Mars would eventually go off to college somewhere but I figured Simon would stay in Eerie and Dash doesn’t even have a way to get a high school education and he thinks the answers to his questions about himself are in Eerie, so he’ll stay.

So what happens without Mars, as they get older?

I imagine Simon has a pacifying effect on Dash. Dash wants what’s good for Simon and while he doesn’t believe he is what’s good for some reason being with him makes Simon happy. And Dash knows Simon’s history well enough to know Simon deserves some happiness.

You can read Land to Sea here.

José Rivera's The Untranslatable Secrets of Nikki Corona

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Goodman Theatre announced the lineup for the 14th annual New Stages Festival, a three-week celebration of new work by some of the country's finest established and emerging playwrights. This year, the festival will run September 20-October 8.

Eight new works will be presented in this year's festival, all in free performances. Three of them will be fully staged developmental productions: Ike Holter's Lottery Day, a new work that weaves together characters from Holter's acclaimed previous plays Exit Strategy, Sender, and more; Bess Wohl's Continuity, a comic look at a female director's attempts to bring climate change to the forefront of a Hollywood blockbuster; and Rebecca Gilman's Twilight Bowl, a look at two young women facing very different futures.

Four others will be presented as staged readings during the final week of the festival: Mat Smart's Eden Prairie, 1971, the story of a young draft dodger returning home; Christina Anderson's How to Catch Creation, an ode to the art of creating; José Rivera's The Untranslatable Secrets of Nikki Corona, a supernatural tale of a woman's attempt to communicate with her deceased twin; and David Cale's We're Only Alive for a Short Amount of Time, a musical reflection of Cale's own childhood.

In addition, the festival will offer a sneak peek at an immersive work in progress, Mikhael Tara Garver's Postnation, an exploration of immigrants' roles in the creation of the U.S. Postal Service.

Consequence of Sound ranks every episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark

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27. “THE TALE OF THE FULL MOON”

Season: 02

Series #: 22

Villain/Monster: Gordon

Storyteller: Frank

Always the pet detective, never the pet owner. Sigh. Jed (code name: Rin Tin Tin) just needs to break one more big case before he’ll have enough money to purchase a puppy of his very own. Catching a cat-eating werewolf living next door should just about cover the down payment on that pooch. Are You Afraid of the Dark? is predicated upon normal children or teens reacting as you’d expect (or more heroically) to incredibly bizarre or frightening situations. Here, Frank turns that formula on its mushy head with campy laughs replacing the screams and Jed finally getting his pet in the least predictable way possible. It doesn’t fit the vibe of the series, but it’s a lot of fun.

Moment We First Reached for the Lights: When we see the neighbor’s beastly transformation from Jed’s bedroom.

Drinking Cue: Whenever you think you accidentally switched channels to an episode of Eerie Indiana.

State of the Midnight Society: It’s the one-year anniversary of Frank’s initiation into the Midnight Society. As tradition (aka Gary) dictates, Frank must tell the night’s tale. If someone else’s anniversary happened to also fall on this night, the storyteller would be determined by Frank and that member facing off in a best of 37 head-to-head storytelling competition, with the other members voting on the winner of each round — with said votes being weighted according to both seniority and cuteness (as determined by Gary). Thank goodness nobody but Frank was celebrating an anniversary this night.

LeoWeekly reviews PaperGirls

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If you say Brian K. Vaughn, most people are going to think of the book “Saga.” Now when people mention him, I think of “Paper Girls.” With Cliff Chiang on art (a shout out to Matt Wilson for the gorgeous colors of the book!), this book has been nothing short of a masterpiece.

The thing is, if someone asked me what “Paper Girls” is about, I would tell them I had no clue. It starts out with our main characters, four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls in the ‘80s, doing their normal paper route early one Halloween morning. Queue the madness. Immediately by the first issue’s end, it gets insane. Mysterious forces from the future attack their Cleveland suburb (Volume 1, collecting issues 1-5), they’re transported to 2016 (Volume 2, collecting issues 6-10) and eventually end up on what seems to be a different world (Volume 3, collecting issues 11-15).

If you’re looking for some offbeat humor and fantastic adventure, this is your book. Will you be confused? You absolutely will. Will you accept that and move on, trying to untangle the many mysteries of this book? You absolutely will. Will you love these four foulmouthed, 12-year-old girls with your whole life? If you don’t, there’s something wrong with you.

Admittedly, I have no idea where the story is going. It seems that once the girls get one problem solved, 20 more pop up for them. But that just keeps you diving back in to what, in my opinion, might be the best book on the stands right now. Volume 3 comes out Aug. 2, be sure to pick it up! If you just can’t wait, the single issues it collects (No. 11-15) are already out and you can get them individually along with all the issues before!