Curiosity

~ mariasjostrand ~ Leave a comment

And here’s the original work that I promised you guys! A bit different than what I usually write, but I hope you enjoy it just the same. Please like or comment if you do 😉

In Elena’s opinion there were few better jobs than being a babysitter. Of course then it obviously wasn’t what she was going to do with the rest of her life. After graduation she was going to be a model. But for now, as she was about to finish her third year of high school, babysitting was an acceptable substitute.

For one thing she could already put the children to bed around eight, and the parents usually didn‘t come home until ten or eleven at night. Which meant two-three hours of being paid for watching television, eating whatever delicious thing she could find in the refrigerator and chatting with her friends over the phone. But her favourite part of babysitting, her absolute favourite, had to be the snooping.

Elena had always been a curious child. A curious child who had eventually grown up into an even more curious teenager. She loved knowing everything there was to knows about other people’s personal lives. She lived for gossip and dirty little secrets. And boy, could you find many dirty little secrets as a babysitter.

She went through medicine cabinets, jewel boxes, night stand tables. The juicier the better. And did she find some juicy stuff.

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Round 2: Twilight in the Garden of Good and Evil

~ mariasjostrand ~ Leave a comment

Round three! Again by IfByYes.
Will post an original work later tonight as well.

IfByYes's avatarIf By Yes

Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity… Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend .

The above quote has been mis-attributed to many, including Stephen King and Andrew Futral (who re-blogged it) but was actually written by someone named Robin Browne. Whoever she is, she hit the nail on the head.

(A note about spoilers: I will keep Harry Potter spoilers to a minimum, only letting go the kind of information that you could pick up from your standard movie trailer and have probably picked up on already, unless you live in a world without other people. Twilight spoilers, on the other hand, abound, because I can’t “spoil” Twilight any more than I can “spoil” a compost heap.)

Harry Potter is an epic tale of good vs evil.

One of the things I most appreciate…

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Round 1: In Which Stephenie Meyer Confuses Feminism With Kung Fu.

~ mariasjostrand ~ Leave a comment

Here’s the second part of Harry Potter vs. Twilight by IfByYes. This time the battle concerns feminism. Please let me know what you think!

IfByYes's avatarIf By Yes

(A note about spoilers: I will keep Harry Potter spoilers to a minimum, only letting go the kind of information that you could pick up from your standard movie trailer and have probably picked up on already, unless you live in a world without other people. Twilight spoilers, on the other hand, abound, because I can’t “spoil” Twilight any more than I can “spoil” a compost heap.)

The main protagonist of Harry Potter is a boy, while the protagonist of Twilight is a girl, so you’d think that Twilight would be more feminist in its message.

But anyone who has read that series would laugh hysterically at the suggestion that it was anything other than unempowering anti-feminist sludge. Well, anyone except the author.

Can you FEEL the girl power?

Stephanie Meyer doesn’t agree with the rest of the Western World that Twilight is sexist codswallop.

Sure, Bella is pretty…

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Rowling vs Meyer: As Requested

~ mariasjostrand ~ Leave a comment

Hi, everyone! As you can see this isn’t my own writing, but I think a lot of you guys might enjoy it all the same!
Harry Potter vs Twilight!
Personally I think Harry Potter is a classic, and I did enjoy twilight when I first read it at fourteen (not so much when I tried again at eighteen though).
The post is originally written by the blogger IfByYes.

IfByYes's avatarIf By Yes

   VS   

Much like the Bella Swan vs Jane Eyre post, this is one of those posts that seems (on the surface) to be completely unnecessary.

I might as well make a post about why Saturday is better than Monday, or why music is better than construction noises.

And yet, there IS a need (not the least because people seem interested in it).

Harry Potter and Twilight are often lumped into the same category by two groups of people: People Who Haven’t Read Harry Potter and Idiots.

The reasoning?

  1. JK Rowling and Stephenie Meyer are both thirty-something mothers who wrote a story and hit the jackpot.
  2. Neither of them was a professional writer before they hit it big, unlike authors like Stephen King, who carefully carved their way into the writing business short story by short story, edited paper by edited paper.
  3. Both of them got the idea for…

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A Deal With Death

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A/N: I really should stop writing these an hour before I’m supposed to post them… Anyway, everybody says that it is impossible to change Death’s mind, but is it really? Please like or comment… or both. Both is good. 

Georgiana Evans had been born in 1913 and had grown up in Britain during the war. Since then she had travelled the world, buried two husbands, moved to the states, become a more than locally known photographer, as well as a mother, a grandmother and a great grandmother.

She was now over a hundred years old, and though her mind was as sharp as ever, her body wasn’t keeping up with it. The doctors had told her that she had a year left, tops. Georgiana, however, had stopped listening to what the doctors told her. This was her third promise of Death, and Death had yet to deliver. During her lifetime Georgiana had not only had a hip replaced, she had also gone through two heart surgeries, and had a breast as well as a lung removed on two different occasions.

Though she’d been told her time was up, Georgiana wasn’t ready to die, so she had simply decided not to. She knew her family expected her to do so soon, but there was simply so much she hadn’t done yet. Georgiana Evans wanted to live forever, and damn it if she wasn’t going to!

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The Perfect Recipe

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A/N: Yet another week, yet another story…

If there was one thing Jonas Svensson had always wanted then it had to be the perfect ham and cheese sandwich. His favourite moment from when he was a child had been when his mother made him one. Playing soccer with his friends, rescuing damsels in distress on his computer, eating candy, had all been less important than that first bite of a really good ham and cheese sandwich. But somehow, no matter how good his mother’s had been, there had never been quite the perfect balance between the bread, the cheese and the ham. It was, in Jonas humble opinion, the most important thing to consider when making a ham and cheese sandwich.

He grew up to be a web developer, because it had seemed like as good a job as any, and lived in an age of twenty-eight in a beautiful apartment, which had been equally beautifully furnished by his two sisters.

It wasn’t like he was obsessed or anything. He liked his job, and had quite a few hobbies. He liked building miniature airplanes and he was still a member of a soccer club. But his favourite hobby was still to experience in order to create the perfect ham and cheese sandwich.

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Happiness

~ mariasjostrand ~ Leave a comment

A/N: Okay, my brain has basically been fried for the last couple of days. (I just finished my exams.) But now it’s working again, and it produced this little thing. Like or comment at the bottom of the text. Enjoy!

If there was one thing Marcie had always known it was that she wanted to be happy. Her mother wasn’t, she knew. Her father wasn’t either, though he liked to pretend to. Not that she saw much of him. He always seemed to be working. But sometimes he would be home and he would buy something shiny and new and expensive, and his eyes would shine with happiness, but after an hour or so they would dim once again, and the happy look in them would be gone.

Marcie’s mother, on the other hand, found her happiness at the bottom of a bottle. Her kind of happiness was even worse in Marcie‘s opinion. It would stay for about as long as her father’s, but afterwards her mother would moan and throw up and look miserable, and Marcie decided she didn’t want that kind of happiness either.

Sadly enough those two were the only ones she knew, so she would have to figure out her own kind of happiness first.

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The Sisters

~ mariasjostrand ~ 2 Comments

A/N: Okay, so this week was crazy busy with the exam and what not, so… well, this is what I got to give you guys for this week. Please comment if you have any thoughts… about this story or just in general. 

Of course the oldest one was the prettiest. That almost went without saying. Diane was a cute child, who turned into a pretty girl, who, in time, turned into a beautiful woman. And she knew it. She was the type of girl, who knew very well the effect she had on men and she always had at least a dozen or so chasing after her. In time she grew up to be an actress, and suddenly the whole world was in love with her.

Annabelle was the second-oldest by eleven months. She was the genius of the family. Graduated with honours from Harvard University and went on to Yale. At the age of thirty she had several published books, was a renowned scientist, and there was talk of her winning the Nobel Prize for physics.

Kathy, born a year and a half later, was the second-youngest and the medal-winner in the family. She was simply just the best at everything there had anything to do with sport. She ended up as a swimmer for the Olympic team, and no one was really surprised there. After all; then success like that could only be expected from any sister of Diane and Annabelle.

That left me then. The baby sister. The youngest. The problem was that after Diane got the looks, Annabelle got the brain, and Kathy got the talent… well, there really wasn’t anything left for me. An average girl in every sense of the world, which really isn’t as bad if it hadn’t been because people expected so much more of me. They expected me to be prettier, smarter, better. Every aspect of me disappointed my family. The way I looked, my grades, my clumsy nature. How could I possibly be blood-related to my sisters?

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Scotch, Straight Up

~ mariasjostrand ~ Leave a comment

A/N: Another OUAT fanfic, which really became thrice as long as originally planned. Oh well. Belle is a bartender, Gold her costumer, and I have no regrets. Enjoy! 

“Scotch, straight up,” the brusque voice ordered and Belle willingly turned around with a cheery smile. She was used to rude costumers, and truth be told they didn’t bother her much. It was the insistent ones that meant trouble. The ones that had trouble understanding a no.

“Here you go, sir,” she said handing over the drink with another smile. The man merely grunted and handed her a fifty.

“I want the change back,” he told her. “All of it.”

“Of course, sir.” Belle watched the man with interest. A slight man, who somehow seemed bigger than he really was, somewhere in his early fifties. To her own surprise she felt herself physically attracted to him despite the fact that he was nothing like the men she usually took notice of. Not that she would go after this one. Not only had it been so long that Belle was half convinced that she’d forgotten how to flirt, but the man himself had showed no sign of a personality she would like to get to know. Still, she was a bartender, the man was her only costumer on a Tuesday night, and her job was as much to listen as it was to serve drinks.

“You look like you need an ear,” she said symphathetically with another easy smile.

The man merely grunted. “I don’t.”

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Isabella

~ mariasjostrand ~ 1 Comment

A/N: Another short story! Yeah!

I wonder, who do you guys think are the real you? The one you’re acting like, or the one you feel you have hidden away inside of you? 

Jessie Pitcher had never had a particularly daring life. She had gone directly from high school to college, where she had studied economics. Sure, in college she had gone to a party or two, but she had kind of just been standing at the edge of the party looking in, rather than really being a part of it. She had tried alcohol, but the only time she’d been really pissed a friend of hers had walked her to her dorm and put her to bed. Nothing had happened. She had been too scared, too smart, to try any kind of drugs or even just cigarettes, and when she left college four years later she’d been drunk once, missed a class twice and gone to a party eight times. None of it – the alcohol, the skipping classes, the parties – had been particularly thrilling experiences.

After college she had landed a job as an accountant. The money was good, and she was able to put a bit aside every month despite having to pay off her student’s loan. She got a pleasant two-bedroom apartment in the nicer part of the city, and was able to live of something besides pasta for a change. She never travelled. She never took any of the courses at the local night school she always wanted to try. She never… well, she never really did anything. Until the day she decided that she had to.

Continue reading “Isabella” →