#‘saving the world sometimes gets in the way of watching my wife masturbate. so that’s that’

[gojoest]

i want to drive satoru crazy actually. i want to make him lose it completely when i straddle him after he comes back home and rub myself (naked) on his leg, letting him know i took care of myself by wiping my cunt on his clothes for him to regret being a sorcerer and having to go take care of that mission instead of staying home and watching me

[themalhambird]

Growing Up Broken: I Talk About My (A)sexuality For 4 ¼ Pages.

I am asexual.

No, this doesn’t mean that I’m some form of plant budding off copies of myself if I get enough water and sunlight. It’s a shame. I could do a lot with multiple copies of myself- get someone else to do the dishes, the cleaning, my schoolwork…

I am asexual.

Asexuality is the absence of sexual desires or feelings for other people. I say absence deliberately: sexual attraction is not something that I lack or am missing. I am not going without. I’m just a 23 year old who has never once felt the desire to have sex with another person, who couldn’t describe how it feels to “fancy” someone if there was a gun to their head, who thinks women and men and anyone in between can sometimes be stunningly beautiful, would possibly be nice to cuddle- but kissing on the mouth seems like it would be a really weird thing to do.

I am asexual, and it’s almost Pride Month, and so I want to untangle some of the thoughts in my head and spin them out on to paper, to try and lay out my feelings about my sexuality, or lack thereof, and what it’s like growing up when no one bothers to tell you that not experiencing sexual desire like, ever, is a thing. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

It’s 2014. Puberty has doing stuff to me for the last two years or so: periods (urgh), breasts (neat!), underarm hair (why do I have to shave this? no one’s gonna see it), growth spurts (I’m getting taller than my older sister. I want to keep going till I’m taller than mum). The only thing not happening is wanting to have sex, something the nurse who came to Talk To Us All About Growing Up back in 2009 assured us Year Sixes would definitely happen as soon as puberty hit.

Still. It’ll happen soon, probably. Sixteen is still a bit too young to be having sexual feelings, right? The boys…really not interesting at all, but the other girls are pretty. I like their hair. I like the shape of their bodies. I just don’t fancy any of them. When we’re told to imagine our future husbands or wives in class (don’t ask my why, I’ve long forgotten the point of the exercise, I just remember that) I picture a wife.

(Lesbian is the first label I apply to myself. I stick it on tentatively- keep peeling it off my shirt and putting it back somewhere different like I’m not quite sure where it fits. It’s not wrong, necessarily. I’m just not certain it’s right. I like girls a whole lot better but I’m not saying I could never love a guy. I’m just not attracted to them. I’m not attracted to women, either- but I feel like I will be. When I’m old enough to feel that kind of thing. )

Sex Ed lessons are mortifying. We’re asked to list all the sexual terms we know on an A3 sheet of paper. I don’t know what half the things other people say mean- blowjob, 69, masturbate, porn . I don’t know how other people know these things either. We’re sixteen. It’s too young.

That summer I play Sebastian in an abridged version of Twelfth Night and it convinces me to take Drama at A-level, although I didn’t at GCSE. The drama classes teach me two things. First of all, I don’t like acting women. I prefer breeches rolls. I don’t know why. We’re talking about my asexuality, not my gender confusion, so let’s put a pin in that and move on to point two. My drama class teaches me that everyone my age is having sex, or wants to have sex, or is planning on having sex soon; sex is a constant, every class, every conversation. Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. So apparently sixteen (seventeen) isn’t too young after all.

It’s like this. One day you wake up and you realise that everyone else is speaking a language you don’t understand. Suddenly, sexual feelings aren’t something that no one your age is having but you’ll all develop soon- it’s that sexual feelings are something that everybody your age is having apart from you. People your age are dating, kissing, fucking, and it’s not something you’re interested in doing, necessarily, but you still feel so horribly left out. Like you’re missing some kind of major milestone. You try not to let it bother you- you watch Buffy every Monday you get to see your dad. (You watch loss of virginity be portrayed as growing up). You read. (The books you pick up all involve love and love always seems to at least imply sex). You- google things. You google the words you didn’t understand in that sex ed class. You google “how to tell if you’re attracted to someone” in case there’s some secret signal your body sent you that you missed. You feel like you should know if you’ve ever felt sexual attraction but then maybe you’re just really, really dumb. Maybe there’s something wrong with you. The NHS website reckons that if you’ve got a low sex drive you ought to see a doctor. The girls in your drama class keep talking about boys and sex and sex and boys and you aren’t really interested in either of those things. You cling to the thought, lesbian and hope that when you get to university, you’ll stop being so repressed. Girls are pretty- but the ones at school are either your friends or kind of mean. Of course you don’t fancy anyone there. University. University will save you. (Boys are sometimes pretty too. There are boys at school whose personalities are nice enough- who are the type of man you wouldn’t mind dating one day maybe- but you can’t ever picture yourself having sex with one. Dicks seem weird and really not the kind of thing you’d want inside you. I mean for fuck’s sake- why? You can’t even get a tampon in.)

I don’t like looking back on this. Sixteen, seventeen year old me was starting to get pretty freaked out. I like looking back at the first year of uni even less, because if seventeen year old me was freaking out, eighteen year old me was buying alcohol. That’s how it goes, right? Sex and alcohol. You see it all the time on T.V. Fictional people get fictional drunk and fictional cheat while they’re on fictional breaks with their fictional partners. David Tennant is pretty. A man at work is handsome and more importantly intelligent, into Shakespeare, into good conversation. The label switches from lesbian to ‘bisexual but heavily skewed toward women’ and I cling to that as tightly as possible because after that, I’m out of options. It is impossible that I’m not feeling sexual attraction: the whole world screams about sexual fucking attraction all the fucking time, I’m obviously just too uptight, I obviously just need to relax-

I once drank a whole bottle of wine in what was essentially one go. I paused for breath, but that was about it- I don’t think I even bothered with a glass. My goal was to get myself drunk enough that I could feel sexual attraction. I thought that the best way to go about things- to finally ‘grow up’- would be to get super drunk, and then leave the flat and find someone who would screw me. I reasoned that I would enjoy it once I was doing it- after all, the whole world pushes sex as this wholly desirable thing for any normal adult to want, even need- so I would like it once I was doing it and then I would be fixed. Fortunately, drinking a whole bottle of wine when you’ve never had more than a single glass of champagne or a couple of glasses of rum and apple juice before in your life gets you past “lowered inhibitions” to “can’t walk straight or upright” very quickly. I got as far as the bathroom, threw up, a lot, and staggered back to my room. I woke up at 3 pm the next afternoon feeling stupid for drinking, and mad at myself for still being a virgin.

I had a lot of problems in my first year of university and not all of them were about my sexuality crisis. I was isolated, fairly friendless, and not really cut out for socialising with my housemates who were probably all lovely people, but I find new people painfully difficult and hiding away seemed easier. But the feeling that there was something broken inside me because I wasn’t experiencing what everything seemed to be telling me was one of the most vital parts of the human experience- sexual attraction to other people- contributed to my general feelings of self-loathing and disgust. I attempted to induce sexual desire in myself by drinking on several further occasions, although never quite to the same extent as the first time. I’m not sure whether this counts as self-harm, but it certainly wasn’t healthy.

I didn’t know asexuality was a thing.

I knew I wasn’t straight- I’d known that for a while. I learnt that I enjoyed reading, talking, even writing about sex, as long as it was sex between people who weren’t real, but fantasising about fictional characters having sex and fantasying about myself having sex are two very different things. The former happened fairly frequently. The latter didn’t happen once, and still never has. My second year at university was better than my first: I was living with friends, I was further away from campus which meant I had to walk more, which probably helped, I had also started to make several friends online with whom I could happily chat even when I wasn’t in the mood for ‘actual’ people. I used bisexual to describe myself because on the rare occasions I thought about romance, I couldn’t really see myself ruling out anyone who was willing to put up with me.

I’m not quite clear when I first heard the term ‘asexuality’. I became aware of it gradually. Someone I followed on Tumblr identified as ‘grey-ace’. Characters from my favourite fantasy series were being headcanoned as ‘asexual’. At some point I must have learnt properly what that meant.

It sometimes feels like there ought to have been a lightbulb moment- like I should have seen the word, seen the definition, and instantly seen myself. But it is very, very hard to delete the message- ‘sex is important- sex is what grown-ups do- sex is what you should want to do’ – that the world constantly sends to us: in advertising, in entertainment, in the conversations of a drama class that always circled back to that topic, to the detriment of the sole seventeen year old who wasn’t really bothered. To embrace asexuality seemed like I was giving up on trying to fix myself, on waiting for the right person to come and make everything better. On the potential of their being a right person. I can wrap my head around people having casual sex very easily. It’s romantic love without sexual desire that I’m scared won’t work- how am I supposed to know if it’s love without there also being physical attraction? No romance arc that I had ever seen was without an element of sexual tension. So, no lightbulb moment for me. No switch going off- “aha, at last, that’s what I am!”. Just a gradual thought washing across my mind every now and then, like the tide rushing up a patch of sand and drawing straight back, leaving only dampness to show where there had been a good half-inch of water only a moment ago.

I might be asexual?

And ‘I might’ becomes ‘I think I am’, and the tide starts coming in. ‘I think I am’ became ‘I am’ at some point or other.

I am asexual.

I find reassurance in knowing that there’s a word for what I am, for how I (do not) feel. I am asexual. Not broken, or damaged, or too uptight to properly feel, or too dumb to recognise what I do feel. I am asexual- I have an absence of any sexual desire for others and that’s perfectly okay. I might fall in love one day. I might not. I don’t know how you’re supposed to know if you have the capacity to fall in love before you find yourself doing it. It might be nice to have a wife. It would also be nice to have a cat. I could cope with it just being me, a cat, and good friends for the rest of my life. If I fall in love- if I am capable of falling in love- it will just mean I am asexual, but romantic, and I will have learnt something new about myself. The point is-

The point is, I am incredibly lucky that I stumbled across Asexuality before I got myself hurt trying to force something that wasn’t there. The point is, this world assumes that sexual desires are the norm, and maybe they are, but that just makes it all the more important that people know that they aren’t abnormal for not experiencing sexual desire. To all the people who need to hear it: You are not broken. You are not alone.

I’m not sure how to wrap this up. I feel like I should say something profound or something. But I think I’m just gonna leave it like this:

I am asexual. Asexuality is the absence of sexual desires or feelings for other people. I say absence deliberately: sexual attraction is not something that I lack or am missing. I am not going without. I’m just a 23 year old who has never once felt the desire to have sex with another person, who couldn’t describe how it feels to “fancy” someone if there was a gun to their head, who thinks women and men and anyone in between can sometimes be stunningly beautiful, and possibly be nice to cuddle- but kissing on the mouth seems like it would be a really weird thing to do. I am not broken. I am not ‘going through a phase’ or ‘looking for attention’ or ‘trying to be special’. Everyone’s special, fuck you. Knowing that I am not the only person to feel how I feel makes me feel like I’m standing on solid ground. May all people experiencing the same confusion and distress over their sexual orientation that I felt growing up find their way safely to the same solid ground: you are not broken. We’re not broken.

[revolution-john]

My Childhood Trauma PTSD as Triggered by the Following Movie Montage

by BENJAMIN DREVLOW

That scene in American History X. You know the one. Or maybe it was Higher Learning, I always get those confused. That curb stomp scene always reminding me of the time I tripped and face-planted in the barn while corralling bull calves, to get castrated, my two front teeth chomping down on all that jagged concrete and manure, it adds a different flavor to the recurring nightmare I have, though in my case, usually nothing to do with race relations. I wonder if everybody else who watched that movie also missed the whole point of it. Except the Curb Stomp. Everybody remembers where they were when their stoner friend with big ideas about ending racism across the world made them watch the movie with the Curb Stomp.

~

Mel Gibson getting drawn and quartered in Braveheart. You may take our lives, but you will never take… our… FREE-DOM!

~

Mel Gibson ripping his shoulder out of its socket in Lethal Weapon.

~

Mel Gibson torturing the shit out of Jesus, then blaming the women and Jews for everything, including his drunk-driving and plummeting career options.

~

Fuck pretty much any Mel Gibson movie. Except maybe that one with him and James Gardner and Jody Foster and all their comedy hijinks. It’s the gambler one but not The Gambler. But now that I think about it, isn’t Jody Foster a big Mel Gibson apologist? So I guess fuck that movie too.

~

Any movie where somebody gets shot or stabbed or thumbed in the eyeball or has one or both of their eyeballs squeezed or ripped out, which always reminds me of that time I got elbowed right below my eye but also on the eyeball and it literally pushed in my eyeball a millimeter and I still get double vision to this day whenever I line up a shot playing pool or line up a screw to hang a photo on the wall or sometimes re-hang the toilet paper dispenser next to the toilet. I’d been playing pickup basketball and my buddy who was like four inches taller than me elbowed me on a rebound and like I say I went down and lay there on my back and then all the blood started pooling in my eye socket and I couldn’t see anything and my friend couldn’t see my eyeball and he kept hissing through his teeth grossed out by it but then telling me it would okay and the whole time lying there thinking I’m thinking about my eyeball I’m thinking of the scene in Any Given Sunday where the guy’s eyeball is just lying there on the football field. I’m thinking of that closeup all the way to the hospital when they unwrap the mummy gauze from around my head and the ER doctor breathes a sigh of relief after peeling off all the dried blood to reveal that I needed fifteen stitches and I’d broken my orbital bone, but I still had my eye.

~

Any movie where somebody’s sitting there reading a book before bed, watching TV, gossiping with girlfriends, when the camera pulls back only to zoom back in on the dark night window behind them—cue the string section.

~

If I had to choose one, I’m thinking of that one zombie movie, something 28 Days something but not the one about Sandra Bullock finding love with Viggo in rehab. It’s not even about the zombies. It’s about the dark night window, not to be confused with the Dark Knight window, sorry that was a shitty pun for no good reason whatsoever, but also maybe not completely random with the guy from 28 Days also having played the scarecrow in Batman Begins where he sprays people with a drug and makes them see their worst fears, which never really did it for me, at least not like the secluded house with the zombies lurking around. I grew up in a big old farmhouse out in the barrens of northern Wisconsin. Lots of windows, no shades. In so many ways I grew up in the dark. It wasn’t the zombies I worried about. It was the methheads. Which, sure, I guess if you’re getting technical about it, same thing, fine, you win, I’m scared of zombies.

~

The Zapruder film, but as replayed by Kevin Costner in Oliver Stone’s fever dream of a conspiracy theory. The magic bullet, back and to the left, back and to the left, back and to the left. How it gets stuck in my head, JFK’s exploding head replaced with my brother’s exploding head, sometimes my own, except unlike my brother and JFK, my head’s still mostly intact. Back and to the left, back and to the left. Sometimes I think about that too with that one Seinfeld episode with Keith Hernandez and the magic loogie, but usually the loogie gets replaced with a bullet and Kramer’s head gets replaced with my brother, mine, back and to the left.

~

The sound of the gun shots in the final scene of that Tom Hanks movie where he plays himself again, a good guy, a family guy, a sly sense of humor, but this time a mob hitman with a strained relationship with his oldest son. The look on Tom Hanks’ face walking back to the house from the ocean—having survived it all, the hit that his old mob boss Paul Newman had put out on him for putting a hit on his old mob boss’s son as played by James Bond who also played Ted Hughes in that movie about Sylvia Plath killing herself. But this is past all that, it’s the happy ending. They’re on beach somewhere, white sand, somebody’s house that Tom Hanks and his kid are going to live in now. The silence before and after. Jude Law! It’s Jude Law’s face, his eye all fucked up, how did it happen, I don’t really remember the specifics but I remember the specifics. Bang, bang, bang. I think it might’ve had something to do with Jude Law being a photographer, like one of those where you pose with your kid or something or say you get promoted to head CEO or godfather of the family. Smile. Click, click, except in this case with a gun.

~

The gunshot at the end of American Beauty, pretty much the same thing, different movie. Chris Cooper confusing Kevin Spacey as gay but before Kevin Spacey actually came out as gay and a sexual predator. Not that the latter necessarily had anything to do with the former. Neither in the movie nor real life, well not really, but sorta. You get the point.

~

Jared Leto as Angel Face getting his face smashed in by Ed Norton as Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden’s split personality in Fight Club. Not so much Jared Leto, but the wet mushy sounds of it. That part on the audio commentary where Chuck Palahniuk and David Fincher defend the violence of the movie, Fincher pointing out that he was not glorifying violence, he was making it realistic. That’s what it sounds like to punch your opponent into the concrete, Fincher says and Palahniuk laughs and agrees. Don’t worry I’m not going to make any puns about the first rule of fight club.

~

That part of that one weird depressing Robin Williams’s movie where Robin Williams’s kids get killed in a car accident while backing out of the driveway on the way to school. The one where Robin Williams later on gets plowed over by a truck going the wrong way while Robin Williams is out trying to help another couple who’d been injured in a different car accident, but before all that his wife kills herself because she can’t take it and then Robin Williams goes to the suicide afterlife to save her. But then there’s fucking Cuba Gooding Jr. who—spoiler alert—turns out to be the ghost/angel of his dead son who then explains to Robin Williams that his wife/Cuba’s mother can’t be saved because she killed herself. It doesn’t matter that she had a pretty fucking good reason too, she’s still stuck face down floating around in that black swamp of bodies of everybody else’s killed themselves and nobody’s getting to heaven. That shit really messed me up—not the car accidents, but the afterlife for selfish losers like me who kill themselves. And/or my brother.

~

The bulging vein in Tom Cruise’s head from Magnolia. Respect the Cock and Tame the Pussy, Respect the Cock and Tame the Pussy. I think probably my therapist would have some thoughts about all this, and some questions. Questions and thoughts.

~

That one version of A Christmas Carol where the Ghost of Christmas Past undoes his robe to show off the alien children living under his robe.

~

I got the worst set of blue balls you could imagine while taking my best friend’s girlfriend to Baz Lurman’s remake of Romeo and Juliet. That Romeo and Juliet. I missed most of it, I kept having to go to the bathroom to masturbate in agony and to no avail. Leo and Claire Danes are hot and heavy on an acid trip, and every time my best friend’s girlfriend reaches for a handful of popcorn she makes sure to wipe the butter off on the inside of my upper thigh. This is what I get for being the good guy of falling on the grenade for my best friend, the grenade in this case being Shakespeare and my best friend’s hatred of literature.

~

Mark Wahlberg’s flaccid rotten dick in Boogie Nights.

~

The Secret of the Crying Game but not in a transphobic way. No, it’s the smallness of it what got me back when I watched it as a teenager. The tenderness. The growing tent in my pants at its sudden appearance on the screen. Maybe you don’t believe me but I was a naïve podunk kid from off the farm. I didn’t have cable. I didn’t have access to the internet. His/her (now their) secret opened up a lot of questions for me. I often dream of dressing up in drag and someone sucking my little bitty dick and if that makes me a little bit gay or maybe bi or what’s it called, body dysmorphic. I mean I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, it’s the new millennium, we’re all a bit sexually confused aren’t we?

~

This one porno my friends and I watched at somebody’s uncle’s cabin up in the U.P. for a three-on-three basketball tournament. The Snapping Pussy. The sound her vagina made, like somebody really dramatic at clicking their tongue and slurping a half-empty malt the same time. The scene of us boys all sitting there with our boners watching a porn and wanting to masturbate but not because we were all boys and we were afraid we’d be gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a little bit gay.

~

There was this made-for-TV movie, me six years old and home alone while my big brother, supposed who’d to’ve been baby-sitting me, the only time he ever babysat me that I can remember, maybe because his one time—that time—he didn’t actually babysit me. He went out to a party, while I watched the made-for-tv movie about some kid who’d watched his mother get murdered, and then goes mute, keeps drawing these pictures of Peter Pan and Captain Hook. The kid’s grandfather, one of those big hooks, like the one in I Know What You Did Last Summer, but this was long before that, though I’m not sure it was before the book. Did you know that there was a book I Know What You Did Last Summer? I mean this isn’t about the book or the movie, this is about that kid whose grandfather had molested his daughter for years and then as an adult gutted her with a fishhook and then how he’d then come back to finish the job with his mute grandkid, I don’t know how this movie ever got green-lighted (green-lit?) for TV, but then it’s weird to even think about those made-for-tv movies and if they actually existed or if I’m just making this whole thing up, but then my brother, we had a walk-in basement at the time, this being before I’d accidently burned that house down with two space heaters stolen from the barn, before my brother’d killed himself, he’d come back late, or probably it was only eight or nine, but I was young and alone out in the woods where we lived, and he’d come back through the basement, which was attached to the family room, where I’d been watching and then all of a sudden that kid on TV was being stocked by his granddad with a fish hook and the door to the basement was opening, and for god knows why I’d turned off all the lights to watch the scary movie by myself, and it turns out it was just my brother who’d go on to kill himself in like a year, maybe six months, and he was just playing a little prank on me, or maybe he’d just come through the basement for some reason, he was always hanging out down there and tinkering around with things, but in my mind, I can remember that exact look on his face, that smirk, even in the dark, the light from the television in a blacked-out room, a blacked out house, reflecting off those pop-bottle glasses of his, the shiny too-big-for-his-face silver frames. My mother always tells me I should try to remember the happy times I had with my brother, and honestly, I can’t, I can only remember that smirk, those glasses, the handle turning a moment before he appeared.

~

Any and all sequels where it turns out that the dead character didn’t actually die at all, or maybe it’s magic, or maybe there’s time travel.

~

Any happy ending ever.

~

Every ending in my worst nightmares involves everyone I’ve ever loved or hated, their faces turning to snake faces. Snakeheads, snake arms, snake butts. Snakes snakes snakes. They slip out of their clothes and come up from under my bed, slither under my covers. They bite me, they kiss me, poison me, they consume me whole and regurgitate my bones. That’s how they always end. Me dead and abandoned.

~

That scene in the first Indiana Jones with Indiana Jones and getting trapped in the cave with all the snakes. I hate snakes. All my worst nightmares turn to snakes. Fuck snakes. This all might have something to do with my undersized penis. If you want to go down that path. The Secret of My Crying Game.

~

Has Mel Gibson ever made a movie with snakes? I don’t know, you tell me, but fuck that movie if he did. Mel Gibson is snakey enough on his own.

~

BENJAMIN DREVLOW is the author of Bend With the Knees and Other Love Advice from My Father, which won the 2006 Many Voices Project, and the author of Ina-Baby: A Love Story in Reverse, which was  released by Cowboy Jamboree Books in 2019.  Buy his books here. He is currently at work on a novel, a novella, and a collection of story-poems. He serves as the Managing Editor of BULL Magazine (@BULL_magazine_) and is a lecturer at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia.

[trashunlimited]

finally i am posting a complete ref for my oc julie, who was mentioned here:http://trashunlimited.tumblr.com/post/174314389519/do-five-facts-about-your-favorite-oc

this is a pic of her i made, i used a base for it made by the-panda-lover on deviantart, and got their permission to post this here(i can’t draw well sorry).

(this stuff here is copied from my deviantart account):

Here is Julie, my favourite OC and precious baby. She's my version of Rick Sanchez(from Rick and Morty)'s wife. I made her 4 years ago when I first started watching Rick and Morty, and I just can't let go of her, I've put so much hard work and effort into making her. I know Diane exists but she may not even be the real Mrs.Sanchez, even if she was, I wouldn't care, Julie is my baby and I can't abandon her, what kind of mother would I be? To explain, her hair is red because it's meant to explain where Summer's red hair comes from, and since both parents need to carry the red hair gene, Jerry has a direct relative with red hair too. To explain where Beth's blonde hair comes from, I picture Rick as a natural blond(his clones from "Big Trouble in Little Sanchez" are all blue haired because THEY'RE CLONES, and he dyed it blue probably). Beth's nose is also meant to be a mix of Rick's and Julie's noses(rounded like Julie's, slants down like Rick's), also explains where Morty's nose shape comes from. Julie's personality is meant to be the opposite of Rick's, I love opposites attract, beauty and the beast and villains x heroes ships(Rick's not a villain, but he is villainous in nature in a way-STILL COUNTS) and incorporated that into the Rick/Julie pairing. Julie is meant to be similar to Morty in some aspects, while being what I think Rick would need in a partner. Her outfit is also meant to be 70s looking, since that's the decade she and Rick meet, it was inspired by this picture I found when looking up 70s fashion: c8.alamy.com/comp/EXPEM7/1970s… I only found out very recently Mrs.Sanchez was actually unremarkable and mundane, so....oops...the most remarkable thing about her is her being a nurse, but she still seems to be nothing compared to Rick so..I think I'm good? Whatever, IDC bitch.

Full Name:Juliana Lillian Sanchez(nee Kenyon)

Nicknames:Julie, Jubilee, Jules, Red

Birthday:May 16th 1951

Death Date:March 9th 1998

Age:27 years old(main story/midquel), 46 years old(at death), 67 years old(if alive today)

Intelligence Type:Interpersonal(understands people)

Religion:-none-

Occupation:Nurse

Family:Rick Sanchez(husband), Beth Smith(daughter), Jerry Smith(son-in-law), Summer Smith(granddaughter), Morty Smith(grandson)

Romantic Partner:Rick Sanchez

General Description

Juliana “Julie” Kenyon, is the sweetest person you'll ever meet. She has a big caring heart, and loves helping those who need it. Julie has an unconditional love for others, and sees the good in all, believing nobody is a completely bad person.

She’s also a very shy, smart bright woman with a love for reading, cooking, space, science and is feminine and girly.

Personality

Julie has a kind and gentle heart. She loves helping others and is nice to everyone. She is warm, friendly and is optimistic and positive. Even when things look bleak, she tries to be uplifting and to look on the bright side of things. She is soft, gentle and very sweet to other people. Julie also believes that there is good in everyone, and doesn't believe even the worst don't have any good in them. So she does her best to find this in others. Julie cares for other people deeply and always wants to help them.

Julie is very shy, and tends to be timid and nervous at times. She can also be a bit awkward as well and gets easily embarrassed at times. She isn't good with crowds and doesn't like doing things like public speaking. That's not to say she doesn't like spending time with others, because she does. Julie just gets nervous when it comes to new people or a group of people.

Julie is also an intelligent character in her own right. She loves reading books, particularly romance novels, and is very good with things like math, science and English. These skills allowed her to excel in nursing school. She is also fairly logical and resourceful too, and good at memorizing and remembering things. However, due to the fact Julie becomes foolish when it comes to love, her intelligence is often underestimated and even questioned. She is very curious about the world around her, and loves learning new things.

Julie is a hopeless romantic, having wanted love since she was a little girl. She loves romance novels and movies as well. Love makes her act foolish, and sometimes she may make bad decisions, but she never means to.

Underneath this, Julie has poor self-confidence issues. She doesn't think highly of herself at times, and blames her previous romantic failures on herself. While everyone seems to find her beautiful, Julie only thinks she is average looking. She is passive and tends to go along with things, even if she doesn't want to. Her desire not to upset people prevents her from standing up for herself and being assertive and brave.

Due to Rick's influence, as time passed, Julie slowly grew more brave and confident. She became more assertive and sure of herself. Slowly but surely, she became less timid and shy because of him. But sometimes her old insecurities would still rise to the surface.

After Rick leaves, everything goes down the gutter. Julie became more withdrawn, quiet and asocial as a result. She also developed depression.

History

Julie was born on May 16th 1951, to her parents Agnes and Gordon Kenyon. Her full birth name is actually Juliana Lillian Kenyon, but she always has preferred to go by Julie, finding Juliana sounds too formal.

From a young age, Julie’s personality was very evident. She was always a happy and innocent girl that liked reading books and always had a smile on her face. But even then, she was a very shy child and found it hard to make friends. Her closest friend growing up was Vivian Curtis, who she had known since she was a baby due to their mothers being best friends. Her love of romance was also very clear, she liked love stories and her favorite Disney movies were the princess ones that existed at the time like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella and later Sleeping Beauty. Her parents had a very clear and strong love for each other, something Julie witnessed. She also once asked her parents how they met and fell in love, which they told her about.

Julie was also bullied a bit as a child for her shy personality, and this is something possibly contributing to her later self-confidence issues as an adult. Boys would also mockingly call her ugly.

As Julie grew up, her kind and gentle personality always remained. When she entered high school in 1965, she attempted dating for the first time. It didn’t go over the smoothest however, leaving her very upset. But her friends assured her she would find “the one” eventually. In regards to the bullying, it stopped. But this is only because everyone suddenly saw her as pretty and the guys wanted to go out with her. Julie met Mark a few years later in 1968, and he moved in with her and her family, and the two developed a brother-sister relationship.

When Julie became an adult in 1971, she began dating again, and later from 1971-1975 would attend nursing school. In 1975, her parents bought her her own house in celebration of her graduation, and she soon moved in. On the way to visit her in her new house for the first time, her parents died in a car crash on the way there. For a while, this was something Julie blamed herself for it and felt a lot of internal guilt about it. After their deaths, Julie continued to remain in the house.

In 1978, Julie felt hopeless and was starting to think she would never find “the one” and was starting to blame herself for it. But in about June, when Julie was coming home from a friend’s house. Rick was running away from the Fyralogin Empire when he stumbled into Julie after coming out of his portal gun. He had been shot in the leg, so Julie offered to help him, which he accepted and stayed at her house for a few days until the wound healed. After his leg was better, they still kept in contact and were now friends.

One day, Cyn, a general from the Fyralogian Empire, arrived on Earth to take back the fuel source Rick had stolen. A fight ensued, and after it, Rick had angrily told Julie to leave, and instantly regretted it. He apologized the next day, and took her a gemstone planet where he got her a crystal rose. Rick also helped Julie’s confidence boost by assuring her there was nothing wrong with sticking to the gender roles. This burst of confidence helped Julie to stand up to Cyn after he shot Rick, the next time Cyn came to Earth.

After that incident, Rick and Julie left Earth to hide away somewhere, arriving on Glorf and being taken in by two alien siblings named Oran and Tyla. They remained on the planet for a few weeks, bonding and growing closer. Julie found herself becoming more confident, but after Oran insulted and slapped her, Julie’s confidence fell down a bit. Rick managed to comfort her, making Julie feel better. During this time, they also went to a nightclub together, where they sang and danced together, increasing Julie’s confidence again.

Julie asked to return to Earth after feeling homesick, so Rick allowed her to go. They both missed each other dearly while they were separated. Julie ended up masturbating while thinking about Rick, while he killed Tyla and Oran for Julie's sake. When she returned, they snuggled and watched the stars together, before Rick kissed her.

They stayed on Glorf a little bit longer, where Rick revealed his past, and the two grew closer. Julie ended up kidnapped by Cyn, so Rick saved her in sacrifice of his own freedom and life. Julie confessed her feelings and begged Rick not to do it, insisting she wasn't worth it. Rick went ahead anyways, and Julie was taken back to Earth. He escaped anyways, and returned to Earth, where he reunited with Julie, and they made love together, officially ending up as a couple.

Julie and Rick continued to spend time together, having their first date and bonding even further, until Cyn returned, intent on killing Rick. The two fought, and it ended with Rick thinking Cyn had killed Julie, so he killed him in return. After learning she was still alive, Rick was more than grateful and cried tears of joy. When Julie awoke from consciousness, she and Rick talked together, where Julie learned what happened.

He ended up moving in with her, where she began doing her best to improve his mental and physical health, as well as better him as a person.

As a mother, Julie was very loving and caring towards her daughter despite her growing sociopathic tendencies. In fact, Julie wasn’t the least bit scared of Beth, even Rick was scared of her to some extent, and many of the neighborhood kids. At the most, she was just a bit weary. She always looked after her daughter and they were very close. She knew Beth admired her and wanted to be like her, and Julie helped and supported her daughter all the way through.

After Rick left in 1994, Julie grew depressed and lonely, only staying around for her daughter’s sake. When Beth became pregnant in 1997, Julie was disappointed, but still supported and cared for her during her pregnancy. She lived to see the birth of her granddaughter Summer, and even helped Beth take care of her. Early the next year, Julie died, when she was only 46 years old, of heart problems. Tropes

Damsel in Distress-Julie is kidnapped, and rescued by Rick

Pacifist-Julie hates violence

World’s Most Beautiful Woman-She is constantly described as being beautiful by most characters

Fool for Love-Julie is usually smart, but love can make her act foolish

In Love With Love-Julie is a hopeless romantic

Cute Bookworm-She’s cute, and she likes reading

Shrinking Violet-Julie is very shy and quiet

The Quiet One-Speaks for itself

Purity Personified-You can’t get more pure than Julie

All-Loving Hero-She loves everyone

I Am Not Pretty-Julie’s self-confidence issues make her doubt her beauty

Obliviously Beautiful-Everyone thinks Julie is beautiful...except for Julie herself

Nice Girl- Speaks for itself

Adorkable-She's an adorable dork

Heart Trauma-Cause of death is heart problems

Cuddle Bug-She loves hugging people, at least those she is close to

Age Progression

Child

As a child, Julie was very shy, timid, quiet and sensitive. She was still a sweet, kind girl, even back then and liked helping others if she could. Julie was a happy, innocent child that liked reading books and looking at the stars with her parents. Regardless, she was also bullied in her childhood, cementing her poor self-image and self-confidence issues later on in life.

Her love of romance and her hopeless romantic personality, stems from her childhood. She adored the love her parents shared, and liked to hear the story of how they fell in love all the time. Her mother would also read her stories featuring romance.

Julie grew up in a time were girls were expected to be housewives and mothers when they grew up, and Julie accepted this. She had her own dolls that she would pretend to be the mother of, and would do things like feeding them, rocking them or tucking them into bed. She dreamed of what her future husband would be like, imagining a dashing handsome man who would sweep her off her feet and kiss her.

Preteen

This is when Julie went through her “boys crazy” phase. She was even more interested in boys than in the past, but found herself too shy to talk to any.

She also loved listening to popular singers at the time like “The Beach Boys”, Elvis Presley and “The Rolling Stones”.

Teenager

Even with all the changes that come with the teenage years, Julie remained as sweet and kind as ever. The most that changed in her personality was her desire for her more independence, her parents were a bit hesitant but eventually accepted. Also being a teenage girl in the 1960s, she was a big of “The Beatles”, but also liked other groups too like “The Rolling Stones”, Bob Dylan and “The Jimi Hendrix Experience”.

This is the point when Julie saw that maybe she didn’t need to be a housewife and mother, as women were gaining more rights and freedoms. Julie decided she wanted to be a mother, but also gained an interest in becoming a nurse, and wondered if she could keep that career up and not have to stay as a housewife. In school, she was still expected to take courses about cooking, domestic work and home finances, she had no issue with this and she saw it as useful.

Young Adult

Upon reaching her young adult years, Julie headed off to university and got her degree in nursing. She also dated here and there. When she returned home, she found out her parents had bought her a new house, which Julie moved into. But on her parents visit, they got into a severe car accident on the way there, killing them both. This spiraled Julie, who was only 24 years old, to have her problems of self-confidence and self-image worsen.

Eventually, at 27, Julie met Rick, and found herself becoming immensely happier. He brought out the best in her, genuinely made her happy and she fell in love. They ended up marrying and she gave birth to their first and only child, Beth.

In terms of personality, this is when Julie's problems bubbled to the surface and just became worse, only alleviated when she got with Rick. Despite her initial woes, she did become happy with her life.

Middle-Aged

The first few years were happy, but after Rick left mysteriously, Julie was never the same. She became depressed, lonely and withdrawn, spending a long time sulking alone in her and Rick’s room.

Despite this, Julie still remained a good, caring and involved mother. She helped Beth and supported her as best as she could (despite Beth hating her and blaming her for Rick leaving) until her death at 46.

Elderly

Julie doesn't always make it here, but in the realities where she does, she’s very happy and content with her life. She’s still happily married and embraces her role as a grandma, she helps give Morty and Summer advice, remains an involved mom with her daughter Beth, who she has reconciled with, and a loving wife to Rick. She’s also the only one that doesn’t keep putting down Jerry. Relationships

Rick Sanchez

Rick and Julie share a very close and intimate relationship. They bond they share is strong and unbreakable.

These two bring out the best in each other, and Rick believes that Julie is the only person who truly understands him. So he tends to be possessive of Julie, and worries someone will try to take her from him. He isn’t controlling, and doesn’t care about Julie having male friends, but he makes it clear Julie is his and his only. They know each other better than anyone. Rick has made Julie more confident in herself, and Julie has made Rick softer/gentler/kinder and more calm and easygoing.

Julie and Rick also help each other with their problems, and in a natural way as well. They don't force each other to change, they let things happen slowly. Julie makes sure Rick takes care of himself properly and makes him brush his teeth, or makes sure he sleeps long enough or is eating enough as well. Rick in turn helps Julie grow more confident in herself and become more assertive and stronger.

The two met in mid-1978(this is copied from the history part, sorry) when Julie was coming home from a friend’s house. Rick was running away from the Fyralogin Empire when he stumbled into Julie after coming out of his portal gun. He had been shot in the leg, so Julie offered to help him, which he accepted and stayed at her house for a few days until the wound healed. After his leg was better, they still kept in contact and were now friends.

One day, Cyn, a general from the Fyralogian Empire, arrived on Earth to take back the fuel source Rick had stolen. A fight ensued, and after it, Rick had angrily told Julie to leave, and instantly regretted it. He apologized the next day, and took her a gemstone planet where he got her a crystal rose. Rick also helped Julie’s confidence boost by assuring her there was nothing wrong with sticking to the gender roles. This burst of confidence helped Julie to stand up to Cyn after he shot Rick, the next time Cyn came to Earth.

After that incident, Rick and Julie left Earth to hide away somewhere, arriving on Glorf and being taken in by two alien siblings named Oran and Tyla. They remained on the planet for a few weeks, bonding and growing closer. Julie found herself becoming more confident, but after Oran insulted and slapped her, Julie’s confidence fell down a bit. Rick managed to comfort her, making Julie feel better. During this time, they also went to a nightclub together, where they sang and danced together, increasing Julie’s confidence again.

Julie asked to return to Earth after feeling homesick, so Rick allowed her to go. They both missed each other dearly while they were separated. Julie ended up masturbating while thinking about Rick, while he killed Tyla and Oran for Julie's sake. When she returned, they snuggled and watched the stars together, before Rick kissed her.

They stayed on Glorf a little bit longer, where Rick revealed his past, and the two grew closer. Julie ended up kidnapped by Cyn, so Rick saved her in sacrifice of his own freedom and life. Julie confessed her feelings and begged Rick not to do it, insisting she wasn't worth it. Rick went ahead anyways, and Julie was taken back to Earth. He escaped anyways, and returned to Earth, where he reunited with Julie, and they made love together, officially ending up as a couple.

Julie and Rick continued to spend time together, having their first date and bonding even further, until Cyn returned, intent on killing Rick. The two fought, and it ended with Rick thinking Cyn had killed Julie, so he killed him in return. After learning she was still alive, Rick was more than grateful and cried tears of joy. When Julie awoke from consciousness, she and Rick talked together, where Julie learned what happened.

He ended up moving in with her, where she began doing her best to improve his mental and physical health, as well as better him as a person.

After getting married in 1979, they still remained close, and had their daughter Beth in 1980. When Julie began working that same year, they couldn’t see each other as much as they wished, so they were always happy to be together. Julie helped Rick look after Beth as the years passed, and was unaware of the existence of “Froopyland”. Through all these years, they still remained deeply in love with each other.

When Rick left in 1994, Julie still loved him and missed him deeply. She waited for him until her death. On her deathbed, she proclaimed her love for him. Even now after her death, Rick still secretly is in love with her and misses her all the time. He continues to remain sexually active and had that brief relationship with Unity, twice, to try and get over her....hasn't worked so well.

Tropes

Opposites Attract-Julie is kind, loving and pure. Rick is an asshole who hates others and has seen too much. Despite their differences, they’re meant for each other.

All Girls Want Bad Boys-Rick is not a nice guy, far from it, and is a criminal. Julie loves him anyways

Love Redeems-Julie’s kindness has managed to soften Rick’s cold and hard heart.

Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl-Rick is pretty brooding, Julie is gentle. She gives him space and allows his growth to be natural and slow

Inconvenient Attraction-Rick is annoyed by his own feelings.

Operation:Jealousy-Rick can’t help but be jealous, even when they weren’t together

You Are Worth Hell-Rick will go through all odds just for Julie’s sake

Flowers of Romance-Rick gives Julie a crystal rose, which is a symbol for their love.

Beth Smith

Julie was always a loving, caring mother figure to her daughter, and only child, Beth.

Ever since she was a teenager, Julie knew she wanted to be a mother. But she decided to wait until she was married, which she did in 1979. A year after in 1980, she became pregnant and gave birth to her and Rick’s daughter Beth at age 29.

Because of the laws at the time, Julie was only able to take 6 weeks off from work, but she made those 6 weeks count. Julie looked after Beth the best she could, and even taught Rick how to properly look after their baby. As Beth grew older, Julie always remained a kind and loving mother. She helped her daughter with her dreams, and was always supportive and understanding. However, Beth didn’t appreciate her, she saw Julie as mundane, boring and unremarkable compared to Rick. This broke Julie’s heart, and despite her attempts to bond with Beth, it never worked.

After Rick left, Beth blamed it on Julie, saying her mother’s “boringness’ caused Rick to leave her. She fought with her mom, hated her and blamed her for all her problems. When Julie died, Beth was sad and did mourn her, but still held resentment towards her. Because Jerry was also similar to Julie, this furthered her dislike for Jerry. She never truly appreciated her.

Jerry Smith

Julie was upset that Jerry had gotten Beth pregnant, but never harbored any resentment towards him. She wanted Beth to be happy, and hoped she and Jerry would have a good life together. Jerry had been a bit weary of Julie at first because he was scared of her possible reaction, but was relieved to see she was kind and gentle.

He was happy to have her as his mother-in-law, and thought she would be a good role model for Summer. After her death, Jerry was saddened, and tried to comfort Beth as much as he could.

Summer Smith

Summer doesn't remember her grandmother, as Julie died when she was still a baby. But in the short time they knew each other, Julie adored her granddaughter and would help Beth take care of her at times.

Vivian Curtis

Vivian and Julie have known each since they were babies, with their mothers even be best friends for years. They have always been close with each other, and have always been supportive of the other as well.

Vivian has always tended to be a bit critical of Julie, usually regarding her choices and boyfriends. She was particularly unhappy with Rick and Julie’s relationship, thinking of Rick as nothing more than a dangerous criminal. But eventually, she got over it as always.

Mark Norris

Julie was introduced to Mark when they were teenagers. She and him instantly became friends from then on. After Mark was rescued, he began living with Julie and her parents. It was from there that they developed a brother-sister relationship that remains strong.

Mark is the most supportive towards Julie of all her friends. He gets angry when someone demeans her, and always jumps her defence. She goes to him for advice, and he always tries to help as best he can

Tropes

Like Brother and Sister-Mark and Julie are very close. They love each other, but not in the romantic sense. They love each other as the siblings they never had instead.

Platonic Life Partners-They are best friends. It's better that way.

Extras

MBTI:ISFP

Alliance:Neutral Good

Astrological Sign:Taurus(May 16th)

Temperament: Phlegmatic

Enneagram Type:The Helper

Character Archetypes:Caretaker, Introvert, Samaritan

Introvert/Extrovert/Ambivert: Introverted

Optimistic or Pessimistic: Optimistic

Daredevil or Cautious:Cautious

Logical or Emotional:Emotional

Working or Relaxing:Relaxing

Night owl or Early bird:Early bird

Disorderly and messy or methodical and neat:Methodical and neat

Symbol:Heart

Native Language:English

Spoken Languages: Other than English, Julie knows a bit of Spanish from Rick and various alien languages

Julie has very neat handwriting, and can easily write in cursive if need be. When out in public, Julie walks around a bit nervously but otherwise, her movement is normal and upright. Occasionally, she does cover her face a bit. She also tends to clap when excited, and twirls her hair with her fingers when being shy, or thinking about someone she's in love with.

Interests/Hobbies

Julie loves reading, it's her favourite pastime and she's been reading since she was able to. Her room has a shelf filled with books, and she has a few more books in her living room. Her favourite genre is romance, but she also likes adventure, sci-fi and fantasy stories. She likes classic romance novels such as Pride and Prejudice and A Room With A View, but also more modern love stories(for the 70s..) and likes reading books that have hot muscular guys on the cover. She also doesn’t mind erotica either..

Julie strangely also has a fondness for video games. Since she first played Pong back when it was released into arcades, she thought it was the coolest thing ever and has been hooked since. She owns an Atari 2600 console and has a Pong console too.

She also likes space, and loves looking up at the stars. Living more in the city outskirts, Julie gets a better view of the stars. Her love for it stemmed back into her childhood, when she would sit on a blanket at night and watch the stars with her parents.  She loves learning new things from Rick, and learning in general, and their adventures together. She is fascinated by the things they come across, like a crystal/gemstone planet or a planet with two moons. She has a big curiosity for the multiverse after all.

Being a nurse, Julie also has an interest in biology and medical stuff. She has no aversion to things like blood or needles/syringes either, and is excellent at properly looking after people, including herself. She keeps a first-aid kit in her home.

Julie is also a girly girl and so she likes dressing in pretty, feminine outfits. She also loves shopping, especially for clothes. Despite being very feminine and girly, she still doesn't mind getting dirty, and loves adventures and exploring.

She also loves to cook and bake food. She learned from her mother how to at a young age, and has loved it ever since.

Trivia

Julie was originally named Tatiana, it was changed to be an English name(jokes on me, Julie actually I found out is French, but its been used in the English-speaking world since the early 20th century so who cares).

Julie only started out as a design for Rick’s wife, then she developed a personality and well...here we are.

She is the only OC of mine to be paired up with a canon character.

Julie was originally not supposed to die, but instead to live and run away, becoming some kind of badass bounty hunter type. This was changed because keeping her alive was more realistic.

Julie’s original birth year was 1949, then it got moved to 1950 before I finally decided on 1951.

Name Meanings and Origins

Julie/Juliana

Both Julie and Juliana are English names meaning “descendant of Jupiter”. Jupiter was the leader of the Roman gods, and the god of sky and lightning. Julie is the French form of Julia, but has been used in the English-speaking world since the 20th century. Juliana is the feminine form of Julius(Iulianus).

Julie and Juliana both have origins in Ancient Rome, when it was “Iulia” (the letter j didn't exist yet). It has been used in England since the 18th century alongside its other form Gillian.

Juliana was the name of a saint and martyr from 14th century Nicomedia, Blessed Juliana of Norwich. She was also a mystic and author. Juliana was also the name of a 20th century queen from the Netherlands.

Lillian

English name meaning “lilly”.

This name has two possible origins. Either as a diminutive of Elizabeth, or an elaborated form of Lilly. It has been in use in England since the 1500s.

Kenyon

Irish surname meaning “little wolf”.

[keramalusundeep]

‘KABALI’ PEAKED AT THE TRAILER. HERE’S WHY

First of all, I don’t do movie reviews. I am the guy who just watches a movie and then maybe talks about it during lunch at work to avoid awkward silences. So, why am I writing this review about a movie I watched a half hour ago? Because you know, how sometimes when you have a near death experience, your perspectives change and suddenly you want to do all this good in life, save lives, be a better person? Yeah, I am in that zone right now. I have been hit by something powerful. And it’s time to share it with the rest of my species.

Two months before today, I accidentally came across the trailer of Kabali on YouTube. I was immediately arrested by the killer original soundtrack for the movie. That’s where it had begun, for me.

Every time I watched the trailer at home, I’d go on and on to my wife about how I would not miss this movie. I don’t know why I had suddenly become such an aggressive fan of Rajinikanth. My mom was always a diehard fan, though. Two decades ago, I stumbled upon a large biology drawing book that had cut-out pictures and childlike hand-drawn sketches of him at my house in Bangalore. The book belonged to my mother. When I confronted her, she said that she was supposed to get rid of that book after marriage, but somehow it had come along with her. Super jealous of the superstar, my father would often mock Rajinikanth. I don’t blame him. He was just an ordinary South Indian man born in a conservative family. He is well educated and open-minded, yes, but he is still a man. I mean, when my wife used to look at Jason Momoa’s buttocks in Game of Thrones, I would run to the bedroom and do 50 squats and come out like I was all chill.

When you watch a Rajinikanth film, you better go to a local theatre. Not the multiplex ones where one is too shy to even release a silent fart. No, go to a local theatre. The kind where women best not venture. That’s the kind of place where you will know what it is like to be a Rajini fan.

In these theatres, as the lights dim, a new wave of energy crackles to life. Whistles, throat-burning screaming, firecrackers, shirtless dancing on seats. The entire room becomes a five-dimensional stimulation ride. Your seats rock. The walls vibrate. You smell smoke. It’s exhilarating to witness the madness, but deafening and annoying beyond a point as you can’t hear shit. Because from the time Rajini’s name pops up in the opening credits till the interval (where the fans begin to get a little tired), it’s a war zone. You would be lucky if you came out of the theatre entirely unbroken.

When you are watching a Rajinikanth movie, there is a 3000% chance that you will see something superhuman. Death-defying. Nonconforming to every law of nature. But you tell your mind to hush. During a Rajinikanth movie, only his fans can make a sound. If you are a non-fan and say something mocking, well, leave the address to your coffin.

Well, this time, I watched the film in a multiplex. Families and kids. So even if I had said something, I probably wouldn’t have got my ass whooped. Still, I watched quietly and saved everything for my keyboard. So now I’m going to spill my shit out. Here, I am Spartacus. Unyielding. Veracious.

Being 2016, being Kabali, being Rajini, you’d think, mafia being the spine of the story, it’d have all the beef in the universe to make Martin Scorsese take note. The opening scene, is the ending scene. When will writers learn that when you are showing Rajinikanth to be the gangster (especially when he is being released from jail), you know for sure that all his enemy gangsters will be dead, no matter what! Keep a little surprise, man! Henceforth, I want Santa Claus to write all the scripts for Rajini movies.

The story takes place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It’s a beautiful city. But they decided to show only the dark world. The Tamils. Their dark skin. Their dark labour problems. Their dark mafia. In all of this darkness, the only contrast in the colour palette was the ostentatious bling that these gangstas flaunted from start to finish.

After all these great movies in the West about drugs and gangsters, you’d go on to have this divine hope that the Tamil industry would go easy on making every hero a superhero. But nope. First of all, what kind of a gangster is comfortable with only a handful of business associates who also moonlight as security? I comprehend the fact that it is Rajinikanth and he can take care of himself, but he is old now. Besides, he carries only one gun. Not even an extra magazine!

When you are out of commission for 25 years, don’t you need money when you come back? Don’t you still need to be in business? Apparently, when Rajini is a gangster you don’t need to do gangster business to earn money. You just have it all sorted. Somehow he is able to run a free school for drop outs, drug addicts and ex-gangster kids. The funny part is, he himself is a gangster and hires kids on his team. So the point is that when you are in Kabali’s gangster squad, you don’t need to be rehabilitated, life’s all good.

P.A. Ranjith, before I forget, take this — you suck. You suck big time. Basha, for that time, had so much more swag than you have managed to squeeze out of Kabali. To a gangster, his family is very important. I mean to all of us, families are important. But to a gangster, it’s more of a prestige issue. If a gangster has let his enemy harm his family, it would convey that he is weak, incapable of protecting his own family . . . how then will he protect his business and other people who are dependent on him? But you could have involved his family saga in the movie in such a better way. There was no need for all the flashbacks. You have permanently ruined “once upon a time” for me.

I still cannot digest the fact that the director completely omitted to show us or explain Kabali’s business model. Maybe every time Kabali and his men whimsically went after the villains and delivered some soggy dialogues the producers would give them some candy money? Also, I think Indian movies should stop making the villains troll the hero and his affiliated people with dummy guns. Can’t take that shit anymore. If you want to shoot, just pull that plastic trigger and be done with it. Why do you have so many extras pointing all those useless toy guns at one old guy and still end up getting laid low by his stunt double?

Radhika Apte, who plays Rajini’s wife in the movie is a good actor. However, in this movie, she is a bad actor. When you have a bad script and a dumbass director, even a lion becomes a pig. I was happy to know that she was killed by the villains. Good riddance, I thought that’s what she must have thought. But no, she was brought back from the dead 25 years later and made to run for her life again. What torture, marrying Kabali!

Dhansika has tried to play a version of Rooney Mara in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but the result is extremely unpleasing. The director concluded, perhaps, that if she is a girl and an assassin, she’s got to sport a punk bob cut and a lot of badly done temporary tattoos (which keep drastically changing and moving places). By the way, she is Kabali’s daughter, who he reunites with. Sadly.

What’s with the suit? I thought when you wore a suit, you had the license to kill. Oh, wait a minute! That was 007. In Kabali, if you wore a suit, well, you have the license to get killed.

The villain gangsters are real pussies, I tell you. I can’t fathom why they are so scared of Kabali. He is just a vintage chap with a few old friends who masturbate on the rusted bullets in their guns. Then again, it is Rajini. He can get bin Laden to marry Gandhi if he wanted to.

Movies in the south always thrive on comedy. In Kabali, there is nothing to laugh about. Nothing to cry for. Absolutely nothing to rejoice about. The soundtrack was the only saving grace. The movie was a drab, unsexy 150-minute quest for finding his family, which he could very well have done without us having to sit and watch. I liked the free trailer on YouTube. Not the full movie I spent 200 bucks for. Kabali, no magizhchi for you.

Reminds me of the famous Bruce Lee quote: “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” With all due reverence and respect for you as a great human being, I am afraid, Rajinikanth Sir, we are no longer afraid of your 10,000th kick. You have overdone it. It’s the same kick and it doesn’t give us any kick anymore. I know it’s the directors asking you to do lame stuff, not you per se. However, you could say no to them, yes? Maybe make meaningful cinema? You have earned that. But not the right to disappoint us, after all that hype.

P.S. Watch out for Tony Stark. He makes a sensational cameo.

Photo by Soloman Soh

[a-shell-of-light]

The increasing hardship of the yogurt seller's life had turned his father into a man full of nothing but anger and hostility, but it did not affect Mevlut in the same way. Even on his lowest, loneliest days, he never lost the smile that his customers found so refrenshing. The aunties and the doormen's wives in the tall new apartment blocks with their no street vendor signs, and the old shrews who usually took so much pleasure in pointing out "Street vendors are no allowed on the elevator," always took pains to explain to Mevlut exactly how to open the elevator doors and what buttons he was supposed to press. There were many maids and doormen's daughters who admired his boyish good looks from kitchens, stairwells, and apartment doors, though he had no idea how to go about even talking to them. To hide his ignorance even from himself, he became convinced that this was the way to "be respectful." He had seen men his age in movies who had no trouble at all talking to girls, and he would have liked to be more like them. But in truth, he wasn't too fond of foreign films, in which you never quite knew who were the good guys and who where the bad guys. But whenever he touched himself, he still mostly fantasized about the foreign women from the movies and the Turkish magazines. He liked to indulge in these fantasies dispassionately as he lay in bed with the morning sun warming his half-naked body. He liked being at home all by himself. It meant he was his own master, if only until his father came back. He tried moving the wobbly table with the short leg somewhere else, he stood on a chair and fixed that end of the curtain that drooped on its rail, he put the cutlery and the pots and pans he didn't use back into the cupboard. He swept the floor and cleaned everything much more often than when his father was around. Still, he couldn't ignore the thought that this one-room house was even smellier and messier than usual. Savoring his solitude and his own ripe smell, he felt himself captive to the same urge that had always drawn his father towards a moody loneliness, the very same feeling that roiled his own blood. He was now twenty-one years old. He stopped by the coffeehouses in Kültepe and Duttepe. He felt like hanging out with the familiar faces from the neighborhood and the youths who loafed around watching TV, so he went a few times to the place where day laborers congregated in the mornings. At eight o'clock every morning, they would gather in an empty lot at the entrance to Mecifiyeköy, offering their labor. They were mostly unskilled workers who, having been put to work somewhere immediately upon arriving from the village, had then been let go to save their employers the insurance costs; now they would take any job they could get while they stayed with their relatives on one of the nearby hills. Young men living the shame of unemployment and foolish hotheads who couldn't hold any job, they all came here in the morning to smoke their cigarettes as they waited for the foremen who came with their vans from all over the city. Amoing the young men who whiled away the hours in the coffee-houses , there were some who occasionally went out to the ends of the city for day jobs and boasted about the money they made, but it took Mevlut only half a day to make as much. At the end of one of those days, when he felt particularly alone and demoralized, he left his trays, his stick, and all of his other equipment at a restaurant and went to look for Ferhat. It took Mevlut two hours, packed like a sardine in a red public-transport bus that reeked of sweat, to get to Gaziosmanpaşa on the outskirts of the city. Out of curiostity, he looked inside the fridges that served as window displays for convenience stores, and he saw that the yogurt companies had conquered these neighborhoods, too. In a grocery store in a back-street, he saw a fridge with yoghurt in a tray, ready to be sold by the kilo. He got on a minibus, and by the time he reached the Ghaazi Quarter outside the city, it was already getting dark. He walked to the mosque at the other end of the neighborhood, on a road that consisted entirely of an almost-vertical slope. The forest behind the hill was supposed to be an unspoiled, verdant marker of Istanbul's outer limits, but it seemed the city's newest migrants had been nibbling away at bits of the woodland, undeterred by all the barbed-wire fencing. The neighborhood was coverd in revolutionary slogans, hammer-and-sickle signs, and red-star stencils; the whole place seemed much poorer to Mevlut than Kültepe or Duttepe. In a daze, but with a vague fear always at the back of his mind, he wandered the streets, in and out of the most crowded coffehousese, hoping to see the familiar face of one of the Alevis who had been forced out of  Kültepe. He asked around for Ferhat but found nothing, nor did he see anyone he knew. The streets of the Ghaazi Quartet after dark, without even a lamppost to illuminate them, seemed to him more dismal than any distant Anatolian town. He got back home and masturbated all night. He would do it once and then, after he'd ejaculated and wound down, the shame and guilt would set in, and he would swear: never again. Some time would pass before he would begin to worry about breaking his oath, and therefore comitting a sin. It would seem to him only prudent to do it quickly once more, to get it out of his system at last, and then renounce the wicked habit until the end of his days. That's how he would end up mastrubating again two hours later. Sometimes his mind wend places he really wished it wouldn't. He questioned the existence of God, he thought about the most obscene words he knew, and sometimes he visualized an explosion, like something from the movies, which would shatter the whole world into pieces. Was it really him thinking all these horrifying thoughts? Ever since he'd stopped going to school, he'd been shaving only once a week. He could sense the darkness inside him looking for an excuse to manifest itself. Then he didn't shave at all for two weeks. He decided to start again when his stubbly face began to scare some of his loyal customers, who valued cleanliness as much as a layer of cream on their yogurt. Inside the house, it was no longer as dark as it used to be. (he couldn't remember why it used to be that way.) But he still went outside with his shaving mirror as his father did. Once he had shaved off his beard, he finally accepted the truth he had been dimly aware of for some time. Wiping the foam from his face and neck, he looked in the mirror: yes, he had a mustache now. Mevlut didn't like himself too much with a mustache. He didn't think he looked "nice." That baby-faced boy everyone thought was so cute had disappeared, replaced by one of the millions of men he saw out on the streets every day. All those customers who thought he was so charming, the old ladies who still asked wether he was in school, and the housemaids who gave him longing looks from under their headscarves, would they still like him now? His mustache took the shape of everyone else's, even though he hadn't touched it at all. It was heartbreaking to think that he was no longer the person his aunt used to cuddle on her lap; he realized that this was the start of something from which there could be no turning back, but at the same time he felt a greater strenght in this new self. Whenever he mastrubated, there was something at the back of his mind that he had always forbidden himself to think about but that now, sadly, he could no longer keep back there: he was twenty-one years old and he had never slept with a woman. A pretty girl with a headscarf and good morals, the kind he would like for a wife, would never sleep with him before they got married; and he would never want to marry a woman willing to have sex with him before the wedding. His priority wasn't marriage anyway, but finding a kind woman he could hold and kiss, a woman he could have sex with. In his mind, he saw all these things as being separate from marriage, but apart from marriage, he found himself unable to obtain sexual contact. He could have tried to start something with one of the girls who showed some interest (they might go to the park or to the cinema, or have a soft drink somewhere), made her believe he inteded to marry her (this would probably be the hard part), and then slept with her. But only a selfish brute would do that sort of thing, not Mevlut. Not to mention that he might end up getting shot by the tearful girl's older brothers or her father. The only girls who would sleep with a boy casually and without their families finding out were those who didn't wear head-scarves, and Mevlut knew that no girl born and bred in the city would ever be interested in him (no matter how rakish he looked with a mustache). The last resort was to go to one of the brothels in Karaköy. Mevlut never did.

Orhan Pamuk, A Strangeness in My Mind

[torinspeer-blog]

GET TO KNOW ME

1. What’s your first name? Torin 2. What are you listening to right now? 
The ambient noises of my property. OH! SHIT! Uhhh... punk rock Spotify playlist-punk pop's not dead 3. What was the last thing you ate?
Tuna fish sandwich 4. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone? 
"Attention: important seniors!" Medicare 5. Do you drink? 
🤤🤤🤤 6. Do you smoke? 
Only to give myself cancer!👍👏👏🙌💯 7. What is the first thing you noticed in someone? 
I think it depends on the individual? I mean I'm an intuition dom and have ADHD so it's not like I notice🤷‍♀️ 8. What is your hair color? 
Very dark brown 9. What is your eye color?
Hazel 10. Do you wear contacts/glasses? 
Reading glasses 11. Dogs or cats? 
dogs no shit you ever seen a kitters run around like a little glob weeaboo? Uhuh I didn't think so hun! 12. What’s your favorite animal? 
ANY ANIMAL THAT CUDDLES ME AND MAKES ME FEEL LESS ALONE!!!!! 13. What’s your favorite television show? 
Parks and rec probably (seen the ending? On the emotional level it's more like parks and rekt am I fucking right guys? YEET!) 14. What’s your favorite movie? 
Farris buellers day off what am I a hipster? 15. What’s your favorite band/singer? 
GREENDAYGREENDAYGREENDAYGREENDAYENFP4W5PIXIEPRIDESON!!!! 16. How old are you? 
19. I'm old enough to know a thing or two. Like, literally. I know one thing and maybe another but no more than that. 17. Do you have a crush on anyone? yes... don't worry. I burry my feelings deep inside my soul just like every other well adjusted adult 18. What’s your sexual orientation? 
I thought I was bi but then a bi guy said hi from behind and that thought ended 19. What’s your favorite color?
blue? Red? Purple? I'm more of a... ummm... shit 20. What was your most embarrassing moment? 
😂😂😂 ok, so there was this one time, I was born, and it got soooooyyyt awkward!!😂😂😳 21. Do you ever wish you were someone else? 
Oh god I have enough extisensial dread as is holy shit take that to someone else 22. What were you like when you were a kid? 
Lazy, stupid, and never gonna accomplish anything with a work ethic like that hahahaHAHAHAHA SOMEBODY TAKE THE PAIN AWAY 23. What would your dream house be like? 
A little house in the prairies where I can sit in the front yard with my wife in a rocking chair and watch my grandchildren play 24. What last made you laugh? 
My last joke, bitch 25. What is your favorite word? 
Romp... hehehe. It makes me think of cute little bunny rabbits hopping along in the woods 26. What is your least favorite word? 
No 27. What turns you on? IF YOU LET ME TALK FOR A WHILE AND GIGGLE AND THINK IM SMART I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER 28. What turns you off? 
ME NOT BEING ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE PEOPLE (holy shit I mean these are jokes but like god do I need therapy? Holy shit). 29. What is your star sign? 
Sometimes, when I'm lost, I like to look for a sign to know whether I'm standing in the light of the word, or its darkness (the joke is that I use the sun as a sign for if it's daytime hartyharhar). 30. What are your favorite books? 
 31. Do you have any siblings? 
two brothers and two sisters 32. Do you like to dance? Depends if you count air guitar and awkward lanky jolting as dancing cuz if yes THEN YA IM THE FUCKING MLG TRICK SHOT KING OF THAT SHIT. 33. What is your definition of cheating? 
Summoning help in dark souls 34. Have you ever cheated on someone? 
Nope 35. Do you regret anything? 
Who the hell doesn't? Regret is a natural and essential piece of the human condition. It's horrible, but it teaches us how to live. 36. Do you have any phobias? Tight spaces high spaces suffocating in spaces (pluralized by virtue of multiverse theory) standing in line waiting to talk getting cut off cutting someone off cutting myself my memes not being fresh enough you know normal people stuff 37. Ever broken any bones? Sadly, no😔 38. Ever come close to death? 
I mean I almost killed myself several time soooo... (guys before you ask I'm ok now don't worry I'm just figuring my shit out😂😂) 39. What is your religion, if any? 
I worship at the holy grail of Cthulhu ahem check your privilege 40. Have you ever been to a psychiatrist/therapist? 
Yes. I had a crush on her. Refer to question #27 41. Are looks important in a relationship? 
They aren't the most important thing but yes I like being sexually attracted to people I'll potentially fuck exclusively for the rest of my life 42. Are you more like your mom or your dad? 
I refuse to identify commonalities 43. What is your favorite season? 
Springs, or fall. I don't pay attention but I live in Arizona so whatever time my balls aren't stuck to my pants🤗 44. Do you have any tattoos? 
No but if I did it would just be "[]" because it's basically "[insert here]" brackets so I could tell people it's for or means or is about anything I want to. 45. Do you have any piercings? 
No. But I have pierced myself IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN😂😂🙌💯 46. How many boyfriends/girlfriends have you had? 
1? One lasted four days does that count? Cuz then it's 2. God... I need to get laid. OR HAVE AN ADORABLE HUNAM TO CUDDLE AND TALK TO AND DO THE DIRTY WITH AS THE CHERRY ON TOP OF HER CHERRY😂😂😂 oh god I kill myself😂 47. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character? As MBTI lore would suggest (I'm an enfp btw howdy), my soul belongs to sexy anime babes. 48. Who is your celebrity crush? ... that just made me feel lonely and I don't know why 49. Are you a virgin? 😉 50. Do you get jealous easily? Depends on the situation. I always keep it under wraps though. 51. What is your favorite type of food? 
BUFFALO WINGS!!!! THOSE BETTER EXIST IN THE HEAVEN I DONT BELIEVE IN 52. Do you ever want to get married? 
Hell ya my dude! 53. Who was your first kiss with? 
My first girlfriend. 54. Have you ever been cheated on? 
... 55. What is your idea of the perfect date? 
No idea. Just as long as we connect really well and I have the sense of finding someone who actually makes sense as a person and does that in a way complimentary to who I am. Talk about life I guess. NO HOLY SHIT TALK ABOUT LIFE FUCK YES!!!! 56. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? 
Introverted extrovert😉😉😉 57. Do you believe in aliens or life on other planets? 
I doubt it but I believe in a neighboring universe where Hitler doesn't have a mustache soooo.... 58. What talent do you wish you’d been born with? 
Self esteem 59. What is your saddest memory? 
Hahahaha... no 60. Do you believe in love at first sight? 
no but I do believe in getting your jimmies rustled on first sight😉 61. Do you believe in soul mates? 
I'm a nihilist. I believe in finding someone who fits you well enough that the tear in your soul is mostly ignorable, but not anyone who's made for you 62. Have you ever dyed your hair? 
No 63. Has someone ever spread a nasty rumor about you? 
So one of the definitions for my name in urban dictionary is "Torin: likes to masturbate with the slimy sea creatures of the sea to get that real pussy feel. Synonymous with 'squids'."... apparently that escalated from fiction to fact very quickly. 64. Would you go against your moral code for money? 
It depends. Ends justify the means. For example: I would stomp several puppies to death in an absolutely brutal fashion in order to save the lives of millions of children starving to death in Africa. 65. What are three things most people don’t know about you? 
I've struggled with depression since 8th grade. I'm fairly certain their are missing pieces of my personality, which would explain why there's a different version of me for every person and why I forget who I am after just like 2 days of being alone. I don't cry a lot but it's not for healthy reasons. 66. Who are you jealous of?
Basically everyone 67. Do you sleep with a stuffed toy? 
NO BUT NOW I WANT TO I JUST GOT ALL WARM AND FUZZY FEELING 68. How long was your longest relationship? 
About six months 69. Is the glass half empty or half full? 
It's in the eye of the beholder. It doesn't really matter which one it is though, it only matters what you do with what's left. 70. What is the sexiest thing someone could ever do for/to you? 
😳 I'll wait to tell you until the third date😉 71. Who are your closest friends?
Currently a college friend who's out of state. I tend not to stay particularly close to people for too long tho... ok well shit now I'm sad 72. Are you in a relationship? 
Nope 73. If you have a boyfriend/girlfriend, what is your favorite thing about him/her? 
I don't even have a joke wow fuck I'm lonely 74. Are you a bad person? 
STOP MAKING ME THINK ABOUT THIS SHIT IF I DO AND I DECIDE IM NOT I WILL SLIP INTO A SEVERE DEPRESSION that sounded funny in my head holy shit no it was not 75. Are you a lover or a fighter? 
I fight for love💁 76. What did you do on your last birthday? 
Some stuff my mother wouldn't be proud of 77. What is your favorite quote and why? 
“Quitting smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I've done it a thousand times." -Mark Twain. It illustrates some things I'm not in the mindset to process 78. If your best friend died, what would you do? 
NUUUUUUUUUU FUCKIN STAAAAHHHHHPPP I WILL CRY 5EVR 79. If you had to go back in time and change one thing, what would it be? 
Beat my bitch ass (holy shit I need to process stuff stop asking me these questions I thought I had a healthy-ish self esteem but clearly not #sendhalp) 80. If you only had 24 hours to live, what would you do? 
I have ADHD, so probably process everything at once and feel to panicked to do anything. That or the stimulation would be enough that I'd do everything and anything I wanted with no inhibitions. 81. What is the strangest dream you’ve ever had? 
One time I sucked on this hot chicks nipples and not only did it taste nasty but the nipple grew and stabbed my fucking throat OMG I DEEPTHROATED A NIPPLE THAT JUST CLICKED WTF 82. Are you happier single or in a relationship? 
In a relationship, if it's with the right person. 83. Who were you in a past life? 
Mark Twain Bitch! 84. What is your happiest childhood memory? 
I have no idea. None of them exist in a vacuum. They only matter in context of everything else. 85. Have you ever experienced unrequited love? 
The majority of my life since my first boner yes. 86. Have you ever had an imaginary friend? 
Oh I had like fucking 10 but they were all tv show characters except for one and I didn't like him that much. 87. If you were the president, what would you do? 
I would gather as much information as possible about the most important matters and work down from there. 88. What is your ideal career? 
Rn, comedian 89. What is your political affiliation? INDEPENDENT BITCH! 90. Are you conservative or liberal? 
I'm left leaning. I identify more with liberal values but both are important in order to balance eachother out (that's why our political atmosphere is so volatile. Used to be we'd have a democrat then a republican and they'd switch every year, but congress would have the opposite orientation as the president. Now we have a switching one party system every year.) 91. Is the male or female body closest to perfection? 
FUCKING WOMEN ARE YOU KIDDING ME WOMEN ARE HOURGLASSES MEN ARE LIKE UPSIDE DOWN TRIANGLES WITH LEGS AND A LITTLE DONGLE HOW IS THIS A QUESTION??!?!! 92. Do you like kissing in public? 
No. I'm constantly aware of everything going on around me so I need some privacy. 93. If you could change one thing in the world, what would you change? 
humans can choose super powers (I'm keeping this one from the last guy's answers fucking savage dude) 94. Where would you like to live? 
NEW YORK CITY 95. Where would you go on your dream vacation? 
NEW YORK CITY EXCEPT I STAY THERE 96. Describe yourself in one word. 
eclectic 97. Describe yourself in one sentence. 
LISTEN TO GREENDAY "walking contradiction" AND ANY SIMILAR SONG!!

[thisdayinfavrd]

October 6, 2009

I would watch a show called "So You Think You Can Dance When You're Drunk".   @sween (Jason Sweeney) – 113

That meeting went swimmingly. By that, I mean I wore Speedos. And, no, it didn't go well.   @badbanana (Tim Siedell) – 104

Looking forward to tonight's sporting event. I hold very strong feelings about who should prevail, based on factors that include geography.   @hotdogsladies (Merlin Mann) – 96

Recent studies have shown that nine out of every ten Americans need to shut the fuck up.   @thedayhascome (Josh Hopkins) – 91

Roleplaying in the bedroom doesn't work. My wife keeps making her saving throws.   @sween (Jason Sweeney) – 73

Sometimes I am so pleased with myself.  And then I get the "no masturbating in your cubicle" lecture again.   @abigvictory (Michele Catalano) – 72

I like my coffee like I like my used condoms I found in the bathroom trash three years after the vasectomy you whore.   @biorhythmist (matt) – 71

I see you noticed the life-sized photo of me pouring Midori all over my waxed, nude body. It truly is the centerpiece of my cubicle.   @fireland (Joshua Allen) – 71

If I were a clown I'd fill my ass with cake frosting before kiddie parties then fart it out because there's nothing creepier than a clown.   @SeoulBrother (SeoulBrother) – 67

In tough times, people tend to cut back on resume envelope glitter. Zig while others zag, people. Load that baby up.   @badbanana (Tim Siedell) – 66

People keep telling me that marrying for legal benefits is unromantic. I say marrying for any other reason is pointless. I also say fuck off   @CcSteff (Stephanie) – 65

The first step is admitting you're an idiot. This is the hardest step.  The second step is wallowing in it.  There are no more steps.   @sween (Jason Sweeney) – 63

When two cyclists collide after simultaneously blowing through stop signs at a busy intersection, the world briefly makes way more sense.   @hotdogsladies (Merlin Mann) – 62

As the family provider, I'm going out into the night in search of food that hides inside of drive-thru windows.   @thedayhascome (Josh Hopkins) – 54

Today I have my first physical exam since turning 45.  Really regretting not paying more attention to finger size when choosing my doctor.   @toldorknown (Arch Stanton) – 54

If I have one more snickerdoodle, I think I'll start farting cinnamon. So, for the record, I'm doing this for Science.   @joeschmitt (Joe Schmitt) – 54

Peeing on a urinal cake while sucking on an Altoid: not recommended.   @adamisacson (Adam Isacson) – 54

"I'm sorry, sir, but Walmart doesn't carry mullet wax. I doubt such a product even exists." People, I smell gold.   @EightBitsShort (Unavailable) – 53

This isn't business casual. This is business CAUSAL. Because when I wear professional yet relaxed workplace apparel I MAKE. SHIT. HAPPEN.   @tehawesome (Henry Birdseye) – 53

I think we can agree the word "phallic" is just a way for grownups to say "LOOKS LIKE A WIENER!" without losing ten points on their thesis.   @Remiel (Remiel) – 53

[ecotone99]

[SF/H] Butterfly Strike

edit: Very sorry! Realised that SP/HR would've been a better way of categorising this short. Apologies.

You know what the Butterfly Effect is, don’t you? I think nearly everyone does. It goes something like this: Everything is determined by what happened before.

What this means - in the loosest possible sense - is that a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world can trigger a series of events that, weeks later, causes a hurricane. Small triggers set increasingly larger things in motion. Just like dominoes.

A few years ago, people who watch - people who pay attention to patterns among the chaos - noticed something new. Sometimes, the steps between the butterfly and the hurricane are removed. For no reason anyone can tell, sometimes our small actions become microcosms for something much, much bigger. According to them, there's no such thing as an ‘act of God’. There’s just us.

They call these moments a Butterfly Strike.

There’s no telling who will be ‘chosen’ as the Butterfly (if there’s even any logic or great Decider), or where the effects of their actions will occur. It’s a crapshoot. You don’t know when it’s your turn. It might never be your turn. That’s how the theory goes. It’s all chaos in the end.

The story is that some nerd on a forum somewhere wrote that after an intense session with naught but a dark room, his well-lubed palm and Pornhub, he flicked on the news and saw that a catastrophic avalanche had taken the lives of half a skiing resort at the base of Mont Blanc. He said he felt responsible somehow. Everyone laughed, because obviously they did. The guy who jerked it so hard he wiped out a small town.

It should’ve died there and then, but it was funny, and funny things stick in people’s minds. After a series of probing questions (“Can you share the vid you were watching? I want to wreck a small town myself”), a few forced memes and the usual kicks of a dying thread, it wound down.

But then someone else commented. They hadn’t been masturbating they said, and it was nothing to do with the avalanche. They’d had a hot and heavy session dealing with their acne a few months before. They’d spent the better part of an hour propped up in front of a mirror squeezing pimples before working up to a juicy cluster of blackheads the size of a dime. They found out later that at exactly the same time as they got that final, disgusting release, a chain of volcanic eruptions had torn a hole in some province in the Philippines.

The laughter continued.

Then someone else commented. No bodily fluids for them. They’d made pasta for lunch, been stirring it like crazy under the advice of some Italian relative who said it encouraged the starch to make sauce stick better. Sinkholes had opened up in Mexico City swallowing an apartment complex that killed nearly 200 people.

The laughter continued.

But forums like these are filled with all sorts of people. Some of those people are the types who’ll do anything to pass the time - to find a mystery to make their lives meaningful - and they got to work. They started off by taking in more stories from their fellow forum users. There were a couple of decent leads, but the majority of the results were clearly jokers, misplaced guilt, or some sort of latent messiah complex-come-narcissism.

They spread their net more widely. Started looking at articles and trawling comments.

“How awful for all those families! I was changing my daughter’s diaper when it came on the radio! I hugged her close and thought about how lucky I was.”

They created their own forums and swapped findings. Patterns started to emerge. Everyday people doing everyday things that somehow reflected an event happening elsewhere in the world at the precise same time. Often these things were similar in nature, even in an abstract way. What a coincidence.

“To think I was playing fetch with my dog at the same time those people were suffering. We have it so easy here. Thoughts and prayers.”

Did the event cause the action, or did the action cause the event?

It started off like some flat-Earth crap to be ignored and derided. But everyday people are stupid. Everyday people are superstitious. As soon as this idea started to circulate more widely, everyone got in on it.

As soon as people decided this was real, just about every person with a social media account and too little going on in their lives became paranoid. No one wants to think they’re responsible for inflicting so much harm to others.

Before you knew it, there were channels and podcasts dedicated to ‘Butterfly Strikes’, a term many people claim credit for creating.

“Where were you when you heard the news? I was out watering my garden. As soon as I found out where it was happening, I got on the phone and called my friends and relatives out there. Everyday I thank the emergency services for their duty.”

When ‘after the fact’ was no longer useful, an appetite grew for something current. After all, what good is it hearing about these tragedies once they’ve happened when we might have the power to stop them? If nothing else, it would stop the spate of guilt-triggered suicides that began blooming across the globe like an epidemic as those everyday people began thinking that that one time when they revved their engine too hard at a red light they might’ve caused a forest fire.

“The wife and I had just pulled in for gas when we found out. We were so upset, we turned right back around and donated our vacation fund to help the aid workers. God bless!”

These days, the second something looks like it might happen, the news starts rolling.

Every stiff breeze, every rumble, every plume of smoke - it all gets relayed to people who believe in it, which is an ever-increasing number. Doesn’t matter where they are or what they’re doing. They down tools, they sit quietly, and they wait for it to pass. Because if you don’t then you’re basically a sociopath. A mass murderer.

There’s no law that says we have to, but the societal pressure has become immense. Sure the suicides have diminished now everyone who believes spends two to three hours of their day completely inert, but that hasn’t stopped vigilantes going up against someone they’ve decided might be responsible because they wiped their ass at the wrong time. And yes, okay, maybe the number of ‘Acts of God’ have decreased by a negligible amount, but smart money is on authorities changing up how they categorise such things rather than a meaningful change in the way the world functions. Who knows how far this ridiculous conspiracy has reached?

So, no, I didn’t stop working.

I have trained my whole life to do what I do, and I will not be challenged for ignoring some superstitious bullshit just because everyday people have decided we should. I have a responsibility and I intend to fulfill it. I don’t care that the rest of the team refused to help. If they chose to down tools and watch on in dumb horror because of some inane announcement while I continued, then that’s on them.

I won’t apologise for saving that man’s life. If I’d stopped he would’ve bled out into his thoracic cavity and died in five minutes. I had no choice but to operate.

Come on. Be serious for a moment. You’ve got someone you know will absolutely, certainly die right in front of you, and the possibility that maybe - just maybe - something somewhere else in the world might happen. You can’t gamble on a life because ‘maybe’. You can’t let a man die because ‘what if’.

You can’t.

… Only now I’m here alone, watching a livestream of a camera flying over what remains of Sicily, I’m suddenly not so sure.

submitted by /u/Skeleheron [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/2XJaxpi

[theliterateape]

Chris Churchill Saves the World | The Misguided Art of Defending Misguided Art

By Chris Churchill

We love to be entertained. Maybe it’s a side effect of having tamed our environment so well in the last one hundred years or so that we only have to work eight hours a day to keep a secure existence. Maybe it’s because working (as it is for most of us) is a miserable part of our lives and we need entertainment to save our brains from the repetition that puts undue stress on our bodies. So, maybe “love to be entertained” is only one way of looking at it. Maybe that’s just for those with nothing to do. Maybe many more of us need to be entertained. It’s a lifeline to our very sanity for much of human civilization.

I have my go-to sources of entertainment. I’m one of those people who you laugh at because they’re screaming along with their favorite music on their car stereo. Queens of the Stone Age makes me feel strong... or vulnerable... whichever one I need. Ween makes me embrace my own feelings of oddness and cleverness as well. Prince or The Beatles make me feel strong, clever, wise, and/or powerful on a good day. When I had a mental health crisis in 1999, Radiohead’s OK Computer gave me sufficient rest from “all the unborn chicken voices in my head” so that I didn’t completely melt under the heat and gravity of my own illness.

Comedy does it for me too. Usually comedians I’ve followed for years; the ones who feel like old friends. 

It’s the old friends thing that can really cloud your judgment, though. Not just that, but rather the idea that you have any personal connection at all to these sources of entertainment. (I mean they aren’t old friends, you know. They aren’t family, you know. But a HUGE part of their job and their success relies on making you suspend that rational understanding that they are not your friends and feel that they are, if only for the duration of their set.)

When one of them proves to be unworthy of your fandom, it’s a tough breakup, isn’t it? 

I’ll admit, I used to love both Bill Cosby and Louis C. K. I truly thought they were good guys who were simply commenting on life’s foibles and the shortcomings of the human male. I have insecurities about much of what makes me male. So their humor felt like an old friend saying, “I get it. I feel that way too.” (Cue laugh of recognition and relief.)

Implied in their onstage personas was also this thought: “But we’re not really going to do the bad thing.” But then you find out that, yes, they did want to do the bad bad things. That changes things, doesn’t it? For me anyway, that changes the whole point of their humor. Then it loses me. Not simply because I don’t want to support a sex criminal (which should be enough) but because the art they had put out there no longer means the same thing to me.

If I try to hold the Louie of his television show, with all his honest introspection about the concerns of modern sexuality and single parenting and if I try to search for emotional truth — if I try to hold that Louie in my head while also picturing the one that trapped young female comedians in a room and forced them to watch him masturbate — suddenly I don’t care about his foibles anymore. I don’t find him to be the lovable underdog anymore. And with that, the point of view and the point, in general, of the joke, vaporizes. The whole stage/screen persona changes from an honest, vulnerable guy into a guy wants you to believe he’s an honest, vulnerable guy in order to trap you in a room.

As far as Cosby goes, who can laugh at his album Spanish Fly, and as a result, any of his humor anymore, now that you know the actual point of view of Mr. Cosby? I can’t. 

“I’m a sexual predator but, God, I love my family. I’ll drug a woman but YOU should pull up your pants.” It falls apart. 

Recent revelations about other celebs have brought these same thoughts to mind as I watch the fan base of R. Kelly debate over social media about whether or not his music should be totally abandoned because of his sexual predation. Of course, the first line of defense for those who desperately need the art that R. Kelly created in their lives, is that other people did the same types of things or worse than their chosen artistic hero (one example I’ve seen is Hugh Hefner) so where’s the anger at him? (Of course, “whataboutism’s for kids”, you know.) Yes, reevaluate Hefner with modern eyes. Do that. But also reevaluate your own heroes when it comes out that they have been awful.

Notice that people who are not fans of R. Kelly have no problem believing the young ladies who are accusing him of assaulting and imprisoning them. Fans of his, the more fanatical the better, create reasons why that either the accusations are untrue (“These ladies want money.”), why it’s not so bad (“I had a kid when I was fifteen and I knew exactly what I was doing.”), or why it is a conspiracy by some outside party to discredit, destroy, or punish their celebrity hero. It’s usually a whole lot of mental karate to protect their emotions of sadness, disappointment, or shock. 

Of course now, thanks to the Michael Jackson documentary, I hear a lot of “They killed Michael Jackson. Now they’re smearing his name with all these fake allegations of child sexual abuse.” Who are they? And why would you do the mental and emotional gymnastics to believe this but not put your mind and feelings through the same ringer to protect a different celebrity? That’s a question about you, not about them. You can go ahead and answer that, if you want. (I know I was real late on accepting that Cosby and Louis C. K. had done the things they had been accused of doing for years.)

The things we do so we can keep listening to the same music, the same comedy, the same television or movies... SMH… It’s crazy how we’ll defend someone we don’t know over someone else we don’t know simply because the first one made up something we  loved or needed and the second one, as far as we know, didn’t. We overlook the fact that art isn’t the only thing that’s valuable. That other person you don’t know is valuable too. Believe me, I understand how art can treat the ailments of the soul. But you know what else does that? Doing the right thing and having a clear conscience about it. 

“Cosby would never do that. You know he was about to buy NBC? They just wanted to bring a black man down.”

“Hugh Hefner wasn’t all bad. I loved that magazine. Even though, maybe it was misogynistic and his little empire may have even promoted abuse. He seemed like my fun uncle, Hugh.”

“Billy Graham was such a man of God. Even if he was hateful to homosexuals and those who opposed him.”

“John Lennon beat his wife. But he went through intense therapy and grew up a lot. But still, he beat his wife. But he wrote ‘Imagine’. But he did beat his wife.”

“Richard Prior was a violent drug addict but he grew from it and got wiser and funnier.”

Sometimes, the facts do fall on the side of the person who did the bad things. Sometimes people grow, repent, and only make relatively “small” mistakes for the rest of their lives, like forgetting to take out the trash. Sometimes they don’t.

Let me suggest that the information on sexual predators shows that there will probably be no growth or repentance for any celebrity who preys on children. R. Kelly preyed on children. I’m sorry if your own life experience tells you that a fifteen-year-old is an adult. It’s not. And you, hopefully, are more mature by far than you were then. Hopefully, no adult forced you to do anything too grown up at that time. If they did, hopefully you aren’t doing any mental karate to protect them. 

The larger point, though, is that it’s not even about repentance or forgiveness. It’s about the new understanding of the original point of view of the art. If a piece of art was created by an artist who created it from their warped perspective on life, then maybe the art doesn’t mean what we think it means anymore. Maybe we were singing or laughing along with the wrong messages. Can we be mature enough to adjust our feelings accordingly?

[coweatman]

there are good photos in the original, but, y’know, paywall.

Genesis P-Orridge Has Always Been a Provocateur of the Body. Now She’s at Its Mercy.

By John Leland

Neil Andrew Megson discovered Max Ernst when he was 15 years old, and it set a course for his life. The book was called “The Hundred Headless Woman,” surrealistic collages of human and animal forms. It presented the body as fluid and mutable, and the self as open to negotiation. It was the mid-1960s, and to a British schoolboy who felt he didn’t fit in — into his school, his gender, his body — this was freedom.

In the half-century since, Megson — better known as the musician and visual artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge — has steadily probed at the boundaries of the body, both literally and figuratively, evolving from art provocateur to founder of the influential British bands Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV to semi-established fine artist with archives at the Tate Britain. As P-Orridge now considers retiring from live music, Throbbing Gristle’s albums from the 1970s and early 1980s are newly available in deluxe reissues on Mute.

At 68, P-Orridge lives on the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan in a body racked by chronic myelomonocytic leukemia.

“I’m stable right now, my blood counts are close to normal,” P-Orridge said on a recent afternoon at home, flanked by a snoring Pekingese named Musty Dagger. “But at some point it will finally flare up and become terminal, and there’s no way to know when that might be. Optimistically, two years. Less optimistically, a year, maybe six months. And then I’m on the downward slope to death.”

The artist at home: working-class English accent, Rogaine in the bathroom, black T-shirt reading “Thank God for Abortion.” Breast implants and a mouth full of metal teeth, an idea P-Orridge got from watching the movie “Belle de Jour” on LSD. Shelves full of books and artwork, mostly by P-Orridge, including various fetish objects and a wooden rabbit dotted in blood, the residue of hundreds of ketamine injections.

Since a series of operations with Jacqueline Breyer P-Orridge, P-Orridge’s wife, who died in 2007, P-Orridge prefers genderless pronouns, usually first person plural, but is O.K. with female pronouns. Her life, she said, was an experiment that was still playing out.

“We know that Neil Andrew Megson decided to create an artist, Genesis P-Orridge, and insert it into the culture,” she said. “Some people take their lives and turn them into the equivalent of a work of art. So we invented Genesis, but Gen forgot Neil, really. Does that person still exist somewhere, or did Genesis gobble him up? We don’t know the answer. But thank you, Neil.”

It has been a provocative run. P-Orridge first came into being with a Dadaist performance collective called COUM Transmissions, whose shows included whipping, masturbation and live sex; “Prostitution,” their 1976 retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, included nudity and bloody tampons and scandalized the British public.

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When P-Orridge and others branched off that year to form Throbbing Gristle, they added assaultive industrial noise and Nazi imagery to the mix.

“In terms of being shocking, punk was pretty tame in comparison,” said Simon Reynolds, the author of “Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984.” “They were writing songs about serial killers and cutting themselves onstage.”

In 1981, P-Orridge reversed course in the gently trippy Psychic TV, whose danceable songs echoed the occult writings of Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare, and included a tribute to Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones called “Godstar.” P-Orridge imagined the band as the center of a global consciousness raising, and recruited fans to join Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, a cross between a fan club and a cult, whose members donned paramilitary gear and submitted bodily fluids as part of their initiation.

In 1995, after a recording session with the band Love and Rockets in the Los Angeles home of the producer Rick Rubin, P-Orridge woke up to a massive electrical fire there and jumped from a second-story window, shattering her arm and suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. Psychic TV went on hiatus, but returned in the late ’90s and again with a new lineup in 2003.

But all the time she was making collages and other visual art, including a solo show at the Rubin Museum of Art that made The New York Times’s roundup of the Best Art of 2016. And she was writing books, including, most recently, “His Name Was Master,” a collection of interviews with Brion Gysin, whose “Cut-Up” literary experiments with William S. Burroughs — splicing and recombining texts to unlock meanings — have been a driving aesthetic in P-Orridge’s work and life.

It takes a moment in the apartment to realize that the two naked blondes in a wall-sized photograph, identical of breast and chin, are P-Orridge and Lady Jaye, Jacqueline’s nickname. In the bedroom are photos of their California wedding, June 1995, Friday the 13th. Genesis was the bride. Lady Jaye wore a mustache, tight leather pants and a leather vest, nothing underneath.

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Their marriage — they met at an S & M dungeon in New York, where Lady Jaye worked — began a new creative phase, this one a partnership, in which their main medium was their bodies.

Lady Jaye was both a registered nurse and a dominatrix, a delightful combination. P-Orridge sometimes worked with her at the dungeon, as the domineering Lady Sarah. The pay wasn’t bad — maybe $200 an hour for what was called a “tribute” — but the work wasn’t steady, she said. They had money from a lawsuit after the fire, and an idea: What if they altered their bodies to become a third entity, neither male nor female, but free from the binary framework that they saw as destructive?

They called their project the pandrogyne, the fusing of two persons into a third that only existed when they were together. P-Orridge had been an early proponent of piercing and ritual cutting or scarring. The pandrogyne was their way of applying Burroughs’s and Gysin’s “Cut-Up” technique to their own flesh.

P-Orridge, the father of two daughters from a previous marriage — she attended PTA meetings in a miniskirt and thigh-high boots — remembered calling up her daughter Genesse, saying, “‘There’s something you ought to know. Lady Jaye and myself, we got matching breast implants last week.’ And Genesse just said, ‘What? You got breast implants when you could have bought me a new car?’ That was 2003. She was about 19.”

“My daughters adore me still, despite everything that’s been unorthodox,” she added. “They don’t bat an eye. They call me Papa Gen-Gen.”

Lady Jaye had surgery on her chin and nose to match her mate’s. The couple took hormones but didn’t like them; they took ketamine, daily, and liked it so much that they often went to sleep with full syringes on their night stands, so that whoever woke up first could inject the other partner in mid-slumber.

The French filmmaker Marie Losier documented their relationship in the 2012 documentary “The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye,” which ran at the Museum of Modern Art earlier this month.

The writer Douglas Rushkoff, who briefly played in Psychic TV, recalled nights in the city with Gen and Jackie, as he called the Breyer P-Orridges (like other old friends, Rushkoff refers to P-Orridge by masculine pronouns).

“He and Jackie were our most normal friends,” he said. “We’d just go to the Indian restaurant. He had weird teeth or took weird drugs or had weird art, but we would talk about what to do with savings, or how to deal with air conditioning. Just normal, mundane stuff.”

Then in 2007, Lady Jaye died of an acute heart arrhythmia. Her death left P-Orridge alone, one half of an art project that no longer had a second half.

“It became really tricky,” Rushkoff said. “To make that level of commitment, not just in marriage and love, but to do this thing to your body that doesn’t quite make sense anymore without the other half, that’s rough.”

When P-Orridge developed leukemia, Rushkoff organized a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign that has raised almost $55,000 for her medical bills.

“We realized for the first time in a tangible way how much people care for me,” P-Orridge said. “That was really beautiful to discover. See, I’m getting teary already. That’s a good feeling, that that many people want you to stay.”

The prankishness of P-Orridge’s work sometimes distracts people from the art itself, said Jarrett Earnest, 31, an art critic and curator who met her at a performance piece by Leigha Mason called “Spit Banquet,” in which people sat at a table and spat into empty vessels.

“What she’s done as a thinker and as a maker, this has not been understood in the wider art world,” Earnest said. “People in the music world know her in a specific way. But her writing and her ideas about culture and the relationship of life to art are so profound.”

Earnest added: “She does a lot to play the part of the cartoon, because there’s a part of her that’s really silly. She is those things, but at the same time this sweet, profound, authentic person. It’s not just someone with weird teeth who looks like a cult leader.”

On another afternoon in October, P-Orridge wore a T-shirt that read “Cult Leader.” She was recovering from pneumonia, preparing to travel to Europe for two concerts, the last two dates in an otherwise scrapped tour. After that, she said, she did not expect to tour again, because her health was too unpredictable.

And she was in love, with a woman she’d met in Granada a few years back.

“We certainly didn’t expect it, at our age,” she said. “What a beautiful surprise it was to be in love again. She’s 28. It’s ridiculous, but what can you do, man?”

In the last year, an old bandmate and girlfriend, known as Cosey Fanni Tutti, accused P-Orridge in a memoir of being physically and emotionally abusive. P-Orridge said she had not seen the book, but denied the allegations. “Whatever sells a book sells a book,” she said.

And she was busy, preparing two volumes of her notebooks from the 1960s and a graphic novel called “Man Into Wolf,” whose title comes from a 1948 book about sadism, masochism and werewolves. Museums, she said, were calling about new and old work.

“Derek Jarman said, ‘Gen, when they know you’ve got a terminal illness, they start liking what you do,’” she said, referring to the director and author. “‘You wait and see.’ And now people want the art in art exhibitions.”

If there is a next chapter, P-Orridge hopes it will be to form a collective community, with people sharing resources but having more privacy than in a commune. The ‘60s dream still drives her.

“When you’ve got a terminal illness, you think about what your legacy might be,” she said. “My only answer is, we would hope that it would inspire people to see that they can do a life totally as they would like it to unfold. Live your life every day like a page in your book of life, and make that page as interesting as you can. Whenever you have a choice, say: Which is the better page in my book?”

She said she was not afraid of death. “I’d like to stay, because it’s fascinating here,” she said. “But as far as we can tell, having a physical body is a luxury we don’t often get, and too many people squander that luxury.”

She smiled, a mouthful of gleaming metal. “We’ve not squandered it,” she said. “We’ve utilized it to the maximum we could.”

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 11, 2018, on Page AR19 of the New York edition with the headline: Provocateur of the Body, Now at Its Mercy.

[ashestoarts-blog]

Vent Piece. Art By Me.

I felt the same anger that I did all those years ago. I felt the world fall still, and shrink to only what was in my own lens. My eyes were hazed over, shutting myself down to unresponsiveness because I was afraid of my own anguish. Intimacy is a servicehood that I only give exception to who I think are different, and yet all of those that are different, are the same.

I am deeply afraid of sex. Of intimacy. I often feel that I’m only used for my body. Nobody knows the extent of how bad my abuse was, because I’ve never wanted to tell. Recently, I was disowned by my family for coming forward. For once in my life, I’d like to talk about the horrifics that nobody knows about. I’m going to be unapologetic, because I’m not a whore. I’m a servant, and everyone knows that.

My earliest memory of abuse was at my grandparents house. I was taking a shower, when my grandfather came in and sat on the toilet cover, watching me as he leaned forward onto his knees. I hid behind a towel that was hanging on the rack on the outside of the shower door-- the shower was otherwise see-through. Trying to groom me with a sweet voice, he asked me to come out from behind the shower and to talk to him, and that I “shouldn’t be ashamed of my body.” Before it could go any further, my grandmother burst into the room, screaming at him and crying. Nothing came of it after that, but my grandmother fell into a deep depression. “YOU DON’T DO THAT TO A CHILD!” I don’t remember anything after that.

A year or two later (I don’t know what age I was or how much time had passed precisely, but I know I was very young and didn’t understand what was happening.), we were all at a family gathering-- all the members being on the paternal side. We were out on my aunt’s country property, and it was an okay time. I went into the house to go to the restroom, finding my cousin in the bathroom, who asked me to come inside and help her masturbate. I remember thinking she was in pain (though I now know differently), frantically trying to help her. 

On my other side of the family, when I was still very very young (elementary school), I was also experiencing sexual abuse. In the middle of the night, I would be thrown in the hallway, pinned to the floor as my cousin molested me, asking me to stay quiet, or I was ordered to do things to her.  I do not know how old I was, but I remember feeling strange, and scared. Years later however, it developed to more sexual endeavors, where she would make me practice sexual positions that her parents were teaching her to perform. One of the games would be “marriage” where we would roleplay the ceremony. Husband and wife. And then consummate the marriage. We would repeat it back to back multiple times, over and over. At every family gathering, we were being sexual. 

At one point, there were multiple children over, friends of hers, to which we all played a sexual game. My entire family knew of this game, but did nothing of significance. Or really... anything at all. No. Nothing at all.

The molestation with my cousin continued for years. I don’t remember what age I was when it ended, but I remember completely disassociating. I don’t like violence unless it’s upon myself. Even when I’ve been in physical fights, I always avoided hurting the other person. But at this time, I was being told I was unloved by my family, that I should have been thrown away to childcare (”so that your mom can have a child worthy of love”) or aborted, and I was being beaten at school. Badly. Bruises, being choked, being beaten to the point of coughing up blood. And then.... on top of everything else, I was being molested. And suddenly, she didn’t want me anymore.

I felt a range of conflicted emotions. I was holding all of my pain by a rope, and finally my tendons had separated from my bones and erupted. I disassociated, as though I had completely cut out all emotion at all except for rage.  All I could see was red at the time. I threw her on to the bed, and beat her until the parents came in to save her from me. For most of my childhood, every couple of months, I was being molested-- and suddenly I wasn’t wanted anymore. 

Eventually I made friends when I transferred to public middle school, who proved to be sexual predators. I thought it was normal, or rather, became accustomed to being restrained, or forced to be sexually touched. No matter how much I was reluctant, if they pressured enough, I would eventually stop fighting and submit. All of my relationships were unhealthy and extremely sexual. Most of it occurred in the woods, or in my own home. I joined an anime club, where most of my relationships were sexual. I had an affair with my best friend’s boyfriend as well, where I would be pinned to a tree, or shoved down onto the ground and my shirt ripped off of me, hearing a “you know you want me so bad.” I can still smell the scent of him. Additionally, I was dealing with another boy who often threw me into closets or against a wall, sliding his hand down my pants and pleading with me to have sex. These all went down for months. Eventually, I got into an abusive relationship, who made me have sex every time I was sad. Hours and hours of sex. Of sexting. of pictures. of sex. During that time, I had also been assaulted by my stalker, who forced his hand down my pants despite me using all my strength to stop him.

I don’t even remember my first time. I remember being pressured. And giving in. And crying afterwards, texting one of my friends that I didn’t want it. But I didn’t say no.

Eventually, I was pressured to have sex until I gave in, forcing myself to have sex in a car. I remember crying when I got home. I sat in the shower for several hours.

But then we get to college. I entered a relationship that consisted of only sex. It was the most destructive relationship I had been in, and eventually ended up with me in a hospital, almost dying due to an overdose. I cut myself so badly that my entire body was bloodied. My dorm room was stained with blood. My arms... my neck, my stomach... my legs... my chest... my shoulders. What he would do was speak romantically, or invite me over to his dorm, and then proceed to fuck me for hours until I was literally in tears from the pain. He would never finish. Hours... and hours... and hours. Sometimes I would get an hour break to sleep, and would wake up to him jacking off next to me. Or wake me by touching me in my sleep. Then, he would ignore me for a week, or call me unattractive, and then ignore me for a week. Then the cycle would repeat. He was my only friend in college, as it was difficult to make friends being a trans guy (though I stopped transitioning for him so I wouldn’t be alone). Years later, he would eventually assault me while I was unconscious. 

I don’t even know if I want sex, or if it’s that I’m running through a rythm-- like my body doesn’t even matter. I just obey because it’s the only thing I know how to do. Or I do it because I know it’s the only way I’ll be wanted.

Sorry. All of this came up due to some flashbacks from last night. 

well, thanks for reading I suppose. I feel better after doing the artwork and writing all that out. Please don’t message me calling me a whore. 

-Ashe.

[surveystodestressme]

65.

5000 Question Survey Pt. 16

1501. What did you think of the movie Black Hawk Down? i haven’t watched it 1502. What movie has the most surprising ending ever? shutter island was pretty surprising but that’s the only thing i can think of right now 1503. What are you currently angry at? nothing 1504. Who is harder to please, you or your lover? it’s probably me 1505. What is the most dramatic thing you have ever done for attention? i don’t know

1506. What do you have issues with? plenty of things lol.  this world and all of the crazy shit going on in it 1507. There is a nuclear war and your fallout shelter has room and supplies enough for two. No one knows about the fallout shelter but you. Who do you choose to take in (Remember, the person you choose is the only person you will know in 5-15 years when you can come above ground again)? damn. it’d be so hard to pick.  either jack or one of my parents.  i’m assuming my sister and her wife would be good bc they live in an air force base 1508. Do you have any fillings? yeah 1509. What do you do when you are home alone that you cannot do when other people are at home? nothing really lol.  i do the same shit when i’m alone and when people are here.  masturbate, i guess??? 1510. Have you ever had a near death experience? not that i can remember 1511. Do you read on the toilet? sometimes 1512. Are you afraid of a global nuclear war? not particularly 1513. If there was a global nuclear war would you expect to be a survivor? probably not, tbh 1514. How often do people try to talk to you while you are in the bathroom? a lot, actually 1515. Have you ever swam in the ocean? yes 1516. Have you ever built a sandcastle? yep 1517. Do you feel comfortable in a bathing suit? i sure do 1518. What would be the best season of the year to get married? i think in autumn What would be the best day? maybe friday 1519. What are 2 things that the perfect ___ would do? Boy/girlfriend: be trustworthy and kind Parents: supportive and dependable Friend: funny and adventurous Teacher: intelligent and creative Doctor: personable and make me feel comfortable 1520. If someone you loved was seriously miserable for a long period of time what would you do to help cheer him or her up? i’d try to spend as much time as possible with them and try to make them feel better in any way that i could 1521. What was the best year of your life so far? either 2017 or 2016 1522. When people are born is it predetermined whether they will be a good or bad person? i don’t think so 1523. What is your least favorite bodily function? farting 1524. Does the weather affect your mood? yeah, it really does 1525. If you were underground for 5 years what would you miss the most? being outside 1526. What do you think of the movie Blast from the Past? never seen it 1527. If you were on death row (if you don’t feel evil enough to really ever get there, imagine that you have been wrongly accused and wrongly convicted) what would you want your last meal to be? hot wings, french fries, and some beer 1528. How would you want to die (electric chair, gas, lethal injection, hanging)? as quick as possible, or in my sleep 1529. Who would you want with you when you died? jack and maybe my parents 1530. What would your last words be? i don’t know 1531. What is your favorite summer song? all summer long 1532. Has anyone ever broken a promise to you? yeah 1533. Have you broken a promise to anyone else? i’m sure 1534. Do you eat red meat? sure do 1535. Have you ever broken someone’s heart? someone has said i have before 1536. What would you consider a blessed event? uhhh... i don’t know, in a literal sense, i guess a baptism? 1537. What would you consider a miracle? someone getting saved from dying 1538. Here’s a list of dead rock stars. How big of a loss to the music industry was each one? Dave Williams: Ian Curtis: Aaliah: Rozz Williams: Elvis: Tupac: Michael Hutchence: Sid Vicious: Jimi Hendrix: elvis, i guess??? 1539. What are the most cruel words someone could say to you? probably telling me to die or wishing death upon someone i love 1540. Would you rather catch your parents in bed or have them catch you? i’d rather catch them i guess 1541. If someone offered you $1,000 to cheat on your boy/girlfriend, would you do it? no. 1542. Would you rather date someone 3 years younger than you, or 15 years older? three years younger. 1543. Would you rather like your guy/girl more than s/he likes you, or have him or her like you more? i don’t think i’d be happy with either of those 1544. Which is better, the rush of kissing a new person for the first time, or the comfort of kissing the same person a hundred times? kissing the same person a hundred times, definitely 1544. If you could read your boy/girlfriends mind, but only by letting him or her read yours, would you do it? yeah, i guess 1545. Would you rather lose your bathing suit to a huge wave right in front of a cute lifeguard, or your whole family? my whole family, they know me so it’s not like it matters 1546. Is truth sometimes stranger than fiction? yeah 1547. Do you look back and laugh at things that hurt or were embarrassing at the time? depends on what it is 1548. Would you like to live in the Playboy Mansion? not really 1549. Have you ever looked in anyone’s wallet that wasn’t yours? not unless they told me to 1550. What time and date is it? december 18th 2017 6:49 p.m. 1551. What song would you (or have you) sung karaoke? separate ways or livin on a prayer 1552. Do you run through the sprinkler on a hot day? i would if i had one 1553. Could you survive without: Electricity: i don’t think so Heat: i think i have enough blankets Air conditioning: no, i’d be way too hot in the summer TV: yeah Radio: definitely A car: as long as someone else had a car to drive me 1554. Would you ever consider shaving your head? yeah, actually 1555. What is one thing that will happen to you less than 24 hours from now? i will play some video games 1556. What age would you want to stay forever? i guess the age i am now, 21 1557. What is the softest part of your body? my butt or boobs probably 1558. What would make your day if it happened right now? i won the lottery or got a brand new car somehow 1559. What are you thinking about? sex 1560. Are you on: Drugs: no. The road to nowhere: nah The crazy train: no. 1561. Do you say everything to people’s faces or do you talk behind their backs? i’d rather say it to them. 1562. What is gone that will never come back? my youth haha. 1563. What’s your biggest turn on? when jack grabs my thighs or my neck or pulls on my hair  1564. Have you ever made love in an elevator? no. 1565. Are you spiritually dead? i don’t think so 1566. What’s your favorite care bear? the grumpy one 1567. Do you like the music of Warren Zevon? idk who that is 1568. Have you ever wanted a picture painted onto your car? nahh 1569. Are you an alien in a red striped jumpsuit who plays guitar in a band? no???? idek what that’s from, should i? 1570. If you aren’t an alien in a red striped jumpsuit who plays guitar in a band then who is? IDK? 1571. How many private entries do you have? nada 1572. Are you clumsy? yes, very 1573. As you get older will you let your looks go or have plastic surgery? i’ll just let them go honestly. i don’t care enough 1574. If you wear contacts or glasses would you ever consider laser eye surgery? no because it’s not permanent and it’s very expensive 1575. What is the most expensive thing you own? probably my computer 1576. What do you think of when you hear the word ‘cell’? my phone 1577. Have you ever had goat’s milk? i don’t think so 1578. Do you care how Jennifer Anniston lives her life? not really. 1579. If there was a 'penny per page’ internet tax would you pay it? nah 1580. Do you treat your pets like family members? absolutely 1581. Have you ever eaten tofu? sure have, it’s not that bad either 1582. Do you believe that the 'war on drugs’ is effective? idk. 1583. What would you like to have 435 of (anything but money)? shoes and clothes 1584. How many people know the password to your diary besides you? i don’t have a password for my diary 1585. Do you like Calvin and Hobbes? idek what that is 1586. Have you ever thought of deleting your diary? - 1587. Have you ever thought of moving to OD+? idk what that is 1588. Do 48 hours need 48 thrills? whatttt? 1589. Who do you know that acts phony? plenty of people i work with 1590. Do you like American Pie? yeah, i like it 1591. What is the last law you broke? speeding. 1592. Have you ever run away from home? i always wanted to but never did 1593. Have you had a good feeling today? not really 1594. What was it? - 1595. Did your parents pretend their was a tooth fairy and slip money under your pillow? yep 1596. If yes, how much per tooth? $1 1597. Is there a difference between art and crafts? sure 1598. Have you ever tried out for something? yeah 1599. Did you make it? yeah, sometimes 1600. What’s your favorite lullaby? twinkle twinkle little start, if that counts as a fairytale