#Bro it took so long to post these because the marching band had what i like to call hell week this week

[sundooisagoose]

Ok wowie I've got some art to share

days 9-13 of Goretober!

actual gore warning this time :D

Taxidermy, horns, fungi, burning, and headache!

I'm starting to lean into more art of my characters instead of making new ones because this is my account and I do what I want

[onlydylanobrien]

Dylan O'Brien - NME Magazine Interview

Dylan O’Brien: “I was in this transitional phase – close to a quarter-life crisis”

From YA heartthrob to legitimate leading man – how the 'Maze Runner' star hit his stride after a whirlwind decade

Definitely!” hoots Dylan O’Brien when NME asks if he still has to audition. “I’m not Tom fucking Hanks, bro.” He’s clearly amused by our question, but forgive us for thinking the 29-year-old actor gets cast on reputation alone. A decade into his career, and he’s making an impressive transition from teen TV star and YA franchise hero to charismatic leading man.

New York-born O’Brien cut his teeth on MTV’s hit Teen Wolf series, before landing the lead in the Maze Runner film trilogy based on James Dashner’s hugely popular novels. Leading a band of bright young things that included ex-Skins tearaway Kaya Scodelario, Game Of Thrones’ Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Will Poulter, he honed his craft while racking up nearly a billion dollars at the box office. “My career is a constant acting class,” says O’Brien. “To be able to do the Maze Runner movies simultaneously with Teen Wolf was amazing in terms of getting in reps and working my [acting] muscle.”

Now for the sometimes tricky bit. Many actors struggle with the post-breakout period, but O’Brien is making it look easy so far. This year’s Netflix hit Love and Monsters proved he can carry an old-school family adventure, and new film Flashback (out next week) reveals an appetite for weirder, more cerebral work. He stars as Fred Fitzell, a young man reluctant to buckle down to life as a nine-to-fiver with a boring corporate job and a long-term girlfriend (Mindhunter‘s Hannah Gross). When he runs into a freaky-looking acquaintance from his teenage years, Fred becomes obsessed with finding an old high-school friend he used to drop a mind-bending experimental drug called Mercury with. It’s difficult to say any more without entering spoiler territory, but Flashback is a wild ride underpinned by the idea that we can exist in several realities at once. Even if you follow every plot twist, you might not fully understand the end. “Oh, it’s definitely a headfuck,” O’Brien agrees. “There’s not totally an answer to figure out. There’s a lot of different things that people can take from it.”

Speaking over Zoom from his LA home, O’Brien is bright, thoughtful and really good fun to talk to, especially when he relaxes into the interview, but he clearly knows where his line between public and private lies. When he first read the Flashback script, written by the film’s director Christopher MacBride, his “mind was blown” by just how much he related to Fred. “I felt like I was in this transitional phase of my life that was, you know, sort of close to a quarter-life crisis type thing,” he says. “For whatever reason, it was like me and this script were meant to be. I remember reading it and thinking: ‘I am this guy right now.'”

“There were a lot of things in my personal life that were neglected for a while”

When we ask why O’Brien felt as though he had reached a “transitional phase”, he gives an answer that’s vague but not exactly evasive. For understandable reasons, he doesn’t mention the incredibly traumatic motorcycle accident he sustained while shooting the final Maze Runner film in March 2016. O’Brien suffered severe trauma to the brain and said in 2017 that he underwent extensive facial reconstructive surgery after the accident “broke most of the right side of my face”. Tellingly, he’s never really revealed what happened on set or how it affected him.

Today, O’Brien dances around the details of the accident and other issues he was dealing with at the time, but doesn’t shy away from discussing his inner conflict. “You know, it was a lot of personal things combined with at-a-point-in-my-career things,” he says after a brief pause. He says he’d have been going through some of this stuff anyway, simply because of his age, but it sounds as though success intensified it all. “It was like this whole fucking storm of shit,” he continues. “I was simultaneously so fulfilled and happy about these, like, otherworldly and surreal things that I had experienced in terms of where my career had brought me. I had all this confidence and fulfilment and beautiful people [in my life] – such amazing things to experience at a young age. But at the same time, there were a lot of things in my personal life that were unchecked and sort of neglected for a while.”

O’Brien says that in time, he realised he had to “stop for a second” and “re-explore how I wanted my life to look going forward”. In fairness, you can see why he needed a breather: his career took off while he was still a teenager. After his family moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles County when he was 12, O’Brien contemplated a career as a sports broadcaster – his Twitter bio still bills him as a “no longer suffering Mets fan” – then began posting YouTube videos as moviekidd826. A funny, slickly edited skit titled ‘How to Prepare for the SAT in 45 seconds’, shared when he was just 17, shows he was a born performer and storyteller. YouTube success led to him getting a manager, but his breakthrough role in Teen Wolf still came out of the blue. At the time, he was treading water at a local community college and taking auditions on the side.

Still, he has since taken a rather fatalistic view of this career-making moment. “It’s totally weird because, when I think about it now, I don’t see how it could have happened any other way. I can’t picture myself doing anything else now,” he told Collider in 2011. “It was really sudden and a little random, and not provoked by anything. It was just out of nowhere. It wasn’t my intentional doing.” Today, O’Brien summarises his skyscraper career trajectory succinctly. “I guess I just graduated high school and started acting,” he says. “And then I felt like I was just flying by the seat of my pants and never got a chance to stop.” Thankfully, straight-out-the-blocks Hollywood success hasn’t taken away his sense of perspective. When I say how easy social media makes it to compare yourself unfavourably to others, O’Brien jumps in: “Yeah, that’s very true. I was watching the Billie Eilish doc the other day, and I was like, I’ve done nothing. I’m not an artist at all!”

“No one thought ‘Love and Monsters’ was going to be good!”

O’Brien is also self-deprecating when he talks about being cast in Flashback, suggesting it happened because he had such an intense connection with Fred. “I was honestly like, ‘Who is watching me right now?’ That is the best way I can describe how I was feeling when I came across this script,” he says. “Chris [MacBride, director] and I had this conversation that went so well in terms of [my] understanding this script that I think he’d sent around a lot and [that] very commonly wasn’t understood. I think Chris has even said that the night before shooting, he suddenly had this thought, like, ‘Wait, do I even think he’s a good actor?'”

Though O’Brien has firmly ring-fenced elements of his private life, he’s actually pretty frank about his acting vehicles. He readily admits he was expecting a snobbish response to Love and Monsters, a CGI-heavy hybrid of post-apocalyptic action and romcom that dropped on Netflix in April and topped the streamer’s daily most-watched list. “It means so much that Love and Monsters has gotten the response that it’s gotten,” O’Brien says. “No one thought this movie was going to be good.” His blunt honesty makes me laugh out loud. “No one did though!” he says in response. “And so, fuck that. You know, most of the people who say something to me about the movie, they’re like: ‘I watched Love and Monsters, and it was… good?’ And honestly, that just cracks me up.” For obvious reasons, we hastily decide not to share our response to the film – namely, that it was a whole lot better than expected.

In Love and Monsters, O’Brien plays Joel, a survivor of a so-called “monsterpocalypse” that has bumped humans to the bottom of the food chain. Though he’s known in his colony as a bit of a coward, Joel sets off on a treacherous 80-mile journey to find his high school sweetheart Aimee (Iron Fist‘s Jessica Henwick), which means evading the hungry clutches of various supersize grizzlies including a giant monster-frog hiding in a suburban pond. It’s a simple but pretty out-there premise that wouldn’t work if O’Brien’s performance was even slightly condescending. Instead, his unselfconscious sincerity really sells a film that has as much in common with the family-oriented Robin Williams movie Night at the Museum as darker fare like The Walking Dead.

His obvious affection for the project really comes across during our interview today. “When I read the script, I just thought it was so sweet and funny and smart and unique, but at the same time reminiscent of all these movies that don’t really get made any more,” he says. That’s a fair point: Love and Monsters is neither a fail-safe superhero movie nor a slice of classy Oscar bait. “And when they were talking about how to market this movie, it was so funny hearing all these conversations like, ‘How do we actually get people to watch it?'” he adds. “But that’s a big part of the reason I wanted to do this movie: because it felt like something I missed seeing.”

“I’m lucky to be surrounded by people who want to make something out of love”

So in a way, Love and Monsters was a risk for an actor seeking to establish himself outside of a bankable movie franchise and a hit TV show. O’Brien has only made four films since his final Maze Runner outing in 2018, and insists he hasn’t been tactical with his choices. “I don’t have anyone saying, ‘We need to get you in an Oscar vehicle’, or any of that kind of shit,” he says. “I’m really lucky to be surrounded by people who think like me: that you should do what you’re drawn to, and make something out of love.”

He’s recently finished shooting a mysterious crime thriller called The Outfit in London with Mark Rylance. Directed and co-written by Graham Moore, who won an Oscar for his screenplay to Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game, O’Brien calls it “quite possibly one of the most special pieces of writing I’ve ever experienced”. He first read the script on a plane and says he “actually stood up and clapped” when he got to the end. Considering O’Brien probably wasn’t flying Ryanair, this reaction presumably attracted a few baffled glances.

Anyway, it must be pretty intimidating walking onto set with Rylance, a multi-award-winning actor revered by his peers – Al Pacino once said he “speaks Shakespeare as if it was written for him the night before” – but it sounds as though O’Brien took it all in stride. He says he’s confident in his abilities, but admits to having a slight wobble whenever he begins a new project. “I’m always sort of re-questioning everything – like, ‘Can I even act?'” he says. “But I think there’s something very natural about that. I think even Rylance could relate to that feeling. Acting is like starting a new year at school every single time.”

At this point in his career, O’Brien has made peace with the fact that some people will have preconceptions about him based on what he’s known for: Maze Runner and Teen Wolf. “People will put you in a box no matter what,” he says. “There was definitely a time when that would get to me, especially when it felt like somebody had a perspective on me that in my soul, I just felt wasn’t accurate.” Still, there’s no doubt he wants to show us what’s really in his soul with more films like Flashback. “If anything,” he adds bullishly, “it just makes me think: ‘Right, I’m really gonna show them now’.”

‘Flashback’ is out on digital platforms from June 4

[theyarebothgunshot]

I’d be very interested in your thoughts on the JIB8 cockles panel. just a suggestion for your rewatch 👀

i’ve seen the jib8 panel so many times, because it’s honestly one of the wildest things i have ever seen and i just never get tired of it. 

first of all i want to give you my take on the overall vibe, and then second of all i will get into the details and link to certain timestamps in the video. 

disclaimer: i am not gonna be linking to every single thing i talk about, but i will try my best to link to the moments that stand out to me the most. i have read long posts about this panel before, so not everything in this post is gonna be original or said for the first time ever, simply because there is a good chance that information has stuck in my mind and has subconsciously formed my view of this panel. this is also in no way, shape or form gonna be coherent, unfortunately. i’m just gonna hope that the cockles hivemind will be able to make sense of this regardless. love and light. and lastly, this is all in good fun, so don’t come at me if you think this is too out there please and thank you.

fun fact: i was today years old when i found out that the airbnb story took place one day before this panel. what a sexually charged weekend that was for them dude (gn).

the vibe that i get from this panel is that their moods were off before they got on stage, and where misha kind of looks tired and not 100% enthusiastic about things, jensen apparently decided to get drunk and is trying to make it look like he is thriving. yet, a little while into the panel we learn that it has been an emotional rollercoaster of a day for him, which might have something to do with the overall mood. then again, it could be that something else happened in between the autographs and that panel, who is to say?

i have talked about the d/s subtones in their interactions before and this panel makes my radar ping like nobody’s business. if my interpretation of their dynamics is right, then one could assume that jensen was being very bratty on purpose, trying to stir up a reaction in misha, and i think he probably got what he wanted (more or less. maybe he thought misha would find it more amusing than he did, or but honestly, at that point they have already known each other for nearly 10 years so odds are he knew what he was doing and how misha would react to it. it would surprise me greatly if these two didn’t work out their mutual frustrations with the day and each other after this panel ended- in the bedroom.)

i genuinely think i have never seen jensen flirt more openly and aggressively with misha, ever, and i have never seen misha in the state he was in during this panel either: tired, a little annoyed about the fact that jensen was going off the deep end and that he was not able to stop him, to the point where he just gives up and says things like ‘when in rome’ etc. let’s get into it. 

the mood is set from the very first second: misha is kinda subdued, and jensen is being a bit of a clown, coaxing misha to join him in the madness, which he does to a certain extent. 

we are off to a great start with not just one [0m15s], but two [0m20s] moments in which i just know in my bones they wanted to hold hands. how do i know? because i have been there my fucking self. wanting to hold hands with your crush when you are drunk and acting silly is a love language okay.

as soon as they sit down, misha tries to make conversation and jensen just starts pushing him and pushing him, [1m11s] saying ‘shut up’ and ‘yeah it’s really stupid and it embarrasses me’, but misha tries to ignore it at first and just marches on through. which is probably why i never see people talk about that little comment. it embarrasses jensen when misha sits like that? why would he need to feel embarrassed by his friend’s actions? kinda weird tbh, sounds like husband behavior to me. i have a feeling that when misha said ‘by which he means it’s an innie’, jensen REALLY had to bite on his tongue not to go all ‘you weren’t complaining this morning’ or something like that. look at his face bro [1m55s]. 

and then jensen opens up his legs like the little tramp (affectionate) that he is and when misha tries to stop him he just TURNS to misha with said open legs like a mad man and goes ‘here’s the thing. pick a leg.’ [2m05s] LIKE? who DOES THAT? that is insane people behavior!!! admittedly i am a cis woman and i don’t have conversations with male friends about their bodily anatomy all that often, but i legit cannot phatom that this is a normal thing to talk about with your platonic buddy. pick a leg for me to rest my dick on, old buddy old pal. NOBODY DOES THAT. it’s not even something that i would consider flirting because even though i am into men, i would not find that arousing? so it’s either an action to provoke annoyance in misha or it’s something they have discussed before or both. because misha immediately understands what he means, starts shaking his head in frustration, and actually turns to jensen as if to say ‘are you fucking kidding me right now? really? you are really doing this?’ followed by a ‘this is making me feel so uncomfortable’ aka one of the phrases they both like to use even though they never mean it. 

then when jensen actually goes up to do his ridiculous mating dance and sits back down again, he automatically sits down with his body turned towards misha. 

quick side note: if anybody understands what the joke was about when they talked about ‘cas has big dolls’ i would love to hear it, because that has never made any sense to me, but it’s probably a me problem lmao. 

when misha goes ‘could you watch your language please’ i think that’s a sign that he is genuinely getting a bit frustrated [4m53s] with jensen even though he is obviously playing it off as a joke. right after he says that, jensen puts his fingers against his mouth, as if to shut himself up. i know that a lot of people don’t wanna read too much into body language but hey, i am writing an analysis here so work with me for a sec: i think that could be a subconscious decision to listen to what misha is telling him to do, which ties into the d/s dynamics i’ve mentioned earlier. 

i know people always go crazy when misha goes ‘what did i tell him’ [5m19s] and jensen whispers in his ear. i personally think misha probably told him about the fact that they booked kansas the band, but it’s still pretty telling that that is how misha would react to the question if something he told him is public knowledge. evidently that goes to show that there is enough that misha tells jensen that cannot be shared with the public, which i thought is interesting. 

now that i am watching it again, the ‘j*red would have just said it’ comment kind of stumbles around in my brain asking me to dissect it. let’s just say that i wouldn’t be surprised if they were both thinking back on the many, many times that j*red put his foot in his mouth and made a suggestive comment about jensen and misha’s relationship. 

god i just cringed [6m14s] watching jensen interact with that first girl who asked a question and he just goes off on her about how twins are cool and misha is shaking his head lord oh lord and that is the minute daniella decides that hey maybe they need even more alcohol lmfaoooo it’s a lot. poor misha i genuinely feel bad for him.

and then he goes ‘real men have twins’ and looks at misha and misha is still not having it so he goes ‘it’s just a shirt’ like girl (gn) pleASE that’s husband behavior, yet again, why else would he feel the need to clarify it. ‘look babe don’t be mad or jealous i don’t mean anything by it, it’s just a shirt’ i hate him. 

i just know misha would have wanted to take the apple juice away from jensen lmao. 

one of the moments [9m35s] that always stands out to me is when they go ‘that’s why we don’t bring steven’ ‘that’s right, that’s why he’s not allowed’ idk how to explain it but the way that just flows out of them so naturally feels very coupley for some reason.

i think we can all agree that jensen’s reaction [12m22s] to misha’s ‘i always wear orange underwear’ story is completely fake, right? because there is no way he didn’t know that, and his reaction was very exaggerated. plus, the little gesture to make misha show his underwear? bitch, please. whipped. there was also exactly zero reason for him to come that close to misha in order to inspect the color of his underwear.

the one thing that i wonder about, though, is why misha didn’t know jensen was wearing the famous underbear briefs? but as i am writing this i realise that even if they slept in the same hotel room, there are obviously a few different possible reasons why misha didn’t know what underwear jensen was wearing that day: either jensen showered and changed in the bathroom, so by the time he faced misha again he was fully dressed, or misha had to leave their hotel room earlier than jensen, or jensen changed while misha showered, etc etc. 

in any case……. jensen dropping trou in the middle of this fucking panel? absolutely batshit insane, 10/10 thank you for your service nesnej. 

this [13m54s] is where shit really starts to hit the fan. jensen is OUT OF CONTROL. the long stares??? the ‘rawr’s??? ‘you didn’t even get the full picture’??? (sidenote i would love to know what misha whispered to him right after).

OKAY so. when the girl mentions j*red and jensen goes all Knowing What’s Up and says ‘oh he has had a rough time today. misha kept us up way too late last night. *glances at misha* rrrrrrr’ listen. the only reason i am not reading too much into this is because i do not believe they had a threesome with j*red but also the way he said it was very sus and my mind can’t help but wonder if they were disgustingly flirty and way too touchy feely in front of j*red whilst drunk and honestly that’s probably the case.

of course this is followed [15m15s] by the insane man saying ‘by the way they go down to here’??? and the potentially whispered ‘i’ll show you later’?????? sir i have a lot of questions. number one: how dare you? 

bless this next person for this question, because she starts her sentence with: ‘people who have been together for a long time…’ i actually already made a post about this once so i implore you all to read that because i still stand by what i said in there.

it is of course followed by them both not being able to think about ANYTHING appropriate to say to the question if there is anything they only do in front of each other that doesn’t involve pants. and then misha goes ‘why don’t i just share a private moment that we had’ and jensen’s first instinct is to say ‘shit’. i mean. i am merely perceiving. 

this is the moment we realise that it has been quite The Day for them, but especially for jensen, because he has been emotional earlier in the day. which, again, could explain his demeanor during the panel. trying to distract himself. notice that he gets up and shakes his legs again and goes for a drink the second misha starts to tell the story: coping mechanisms aka distraction, just like he did at the start of the panel. 

the moment where he goes ‘it’s hitting me now. shit.’ really solidifies this theory for me, that he has been acting like a goofy drunken guy all panel, in order to drown out the emotions he felt that afternoon, but alas. once he started to talk about it, it still all came back to him. 

i will say this though: it kind of warms my heart that he was so touched by the fact that the fandom spawned something good. makes me feel slightly less dumb for forming parasocial relationships with that man. only slightly, but still. 

misha going ‘god he’s so grouchy’ [25m32s]? say it with me, folks: husband behavior. once again misha tries to talk jensen down and jensen listens (sort of). say it with me, folks: d/s behavior. and RIGHT after that jensen walks towards misha with this intense fucking stare in his eyes that makes me feel like i am intruding, and then after he gets another drink (nesnej, why?) he just. gently massages misha’s neck and shoulder before draping his arm around him? and his hand lingers when he goes to grab the keychain? okay. 

insert the famous ‘when in rome’ debacle lmao misha was so done with jensen by then it’s so hilarious. the funny thing is that misha says ‘what i mean is show each other our underwear, nothing weird. you can’t look at me like that, because of what you did’, while the question was ‘what would dean and cas do in rome’ and not ‘what would jensen and misha do in rome’ but clearly, once again, the actors cannot make a distinction between the two. interesting :) it also wouldn’t surprise me if jensen has told him to tone down the dean/cas answers but now that jensen decided to fully flash him on stage misha is like ‘sorry but i am not playing by your rules after what you did’ lmao. of course, jensen’s reaction is to go back to parting his legs for misha, like he is challenging him. i mean. you can’t make this shit up. 

am i the only one who thinks that jensen might be thinking dirty thoughts when misha repeats ‘what would dean and cas do’ [27m50s]? because like. that’s quite a face he is making.

when he says ‘i don’t know how to answer that’ and misha agrees, idk, for some reason i get the feeling that that’s in the sense of ‘i don’t know how to answer that in a way that won’t get our fans’s hopes up because we know what they would want and we know what we would answer but we can’t go there’. 

i really feel like the final straw for daniella was the way that jensen reacted to that last question like he was gonna have another breakdown lmao and that’s why the rest of the cast and crew were pushed onto the stage prematurely. because when you think about it, it’s a pretty rude thing to do when somebody is still answering a question? but okay. 

listen - the last 6 minutes of this panel are so chaotic sdjfhsjh the only thing i can conclude from it is that jensen is hella drunk but we’ve been knew. his mood changes by the fucking second. i love him and his little dance and how he sits down on the stage. i feel like i might be jensen coded when i am drunk. i too get slutty and unpredictable. 

so anyways long story short: jensen was hella drunk and wanted to provoke misha, it worked, they had hot sweaty sex after this panel, and the fact that jensen got drunk enough to entrust misha with taking care of shit during the panel makes me very emotional for some reason, and i just love them a lot. thank you for coming to my ted talk. 

[taglegend]

Tag Fact #3 -  I’ve come to realize I’ve always been a fan artist more than I thought. so here is a timeline of influences that shaped my childhood to now. from nostalgic times, to sad changes, to great loss, to strange rises to fame and phases, to stepping stones and finally a laughing place. all the things that make up your favorite fan artist Tag.

1. Rayman (bumped into this in the year of 1999) was actually the first fandom (with crossovers) I bumped into when I was 9. although the internet wasn’t available at the time it was still fun to dwell in home amusements. I remember the storylines and the OC’s I made but they’re kind of embarrassing and it’s probably a good thing there was no internet. I’ve done fanart and comic crossovers of Rayman with Calvin and Hobbs and Nights Into Dreams, spinoffs of Sonic the Hedgehog OC’s, Yoshi with Pikachu, and the Pokemon/Digimon craze with OC’s and other Nintendo comic shorts. but the drawings and comics are long gone and disappeared in the garage in a backpack due to suspecting my sister’s dad accidentally throwing them away. years later towards the year 2018 (now 28), we decided to move to North Carolina and it was my chance to find them again. unfortunately the backpack was gone just like I suspected (my main stuff), but for some reason I found my Pokemon/Digimon fanart, a good batch of Super Mario drawings (vaguely remember doing these), my sister’s drawings and some other neighborhood kids’ drawings in a dirty box. I was partially happy I found something at least but it was the backpack I wanted the most. sometimes I regret not looking for the backpack (’cause I was too busy being a kid) but it’s alright, noone needs to see that shit anyway, ha ha. anyways, I recall being a fan of Rayman from 1999 ‘til 2002.

2. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (bumped into this in the year of 2003) my second fandom I bumped into when I was 12 going on 13. at the time, my sister and I both liked the Sonic The Hedgehog Franchise based on the Battle remake and ended up making our own secret fanart club that consisted of only us two members. she liked Sonic (and that was her boyfriend, ha ha) and I liked Knuckles (and he was my boyfriend, ha ha) and we were crazy in love about Shadow’s backstory. we listened to the game’s soundtracks as we drew fanart and comics after school and man, those were good times. however, as we grew older towards the year of 2005, we ended up having separate rooms and I believe it played a part in disconnecting on the same interest. then one day, I asked her why she wasn’t into Sonic anymore and she replied, “Because I grew up.” I was sad after that and slowly observed that she was influenced by the emo culture and the new friends she’s made. I was the only member of our little club for a little longer...but eventually I moved on too. I still have some surviving fanart we did together but it doesn’t mean shit anymore since she turned out to be an abusive mother from the last I’ve heard of her. 

3. Gorillaz (bumped into this in the year of 2006). as the Sonic years were at its end, I first heard the song “Feel Good Inc” on Music Choice and seeing the first image of them as displayed on this post (except the fan-made background doesn’t count since I can’t find the original artwork). this was my third fandom and later had proper access to the internet to the website I still currently use called DeviantArt. at first I liked 2D but eventually fell for Murdoc and developed a spiritual connection towards the character as obviously seen in my old fanart and rare photos of my devotion shrines on Valentine’s Day and his birthday every year. for the longest time since being a permanent fan from 2006-2017 (11 1/2 years) I had no knowledge that it was a political propaganda band and other realizations I don’t want to talk about. I only followed them because it was a cartoon and not the bullshit behind the musical project. the world I’ve built and support for them for all those 11 1/2 years shattered the fuck out of me and I just wanted to be left alone to find myself again, somehow. activity stopped on all my profiles, the flow of fanart stopped since I now cringe from the fan service and felt I was used for my talent. I didn’t want to be reminded of it all so I took down all my Gorillaz fanart and archived them for old followers’ nostalgia but also in the hopes they’ll be forgotten in my timeline. I ceased to exist in the fandom for huge personal reasons but it’s best to not say why. I know for sure that the fandom wonders what happened but it’s none of their business. THE END.

4. Waluigi (although I knew he’s been around since 2000 during childhood, I took deep interest once I revisited the character again in the year of December 2013). as silly as this sounds, when I revisited him again, the character was so bizarre that I ended up staying up 3 nights and 3 days in a row just looking all over the internet on everything about him and the questionable “hush-hush” absence of a backstory. despite there being no backstory he slowly gained a cult following and in many ways it’s a good thing. however, since the early 2010′s tension has been building up between Nintendo and its fans about him starring in a main game but everyone hasn’t fully gotten it in their heads that it’s not gonna happen. as long as Nintendo is in control of that, the fandom will not win, I’m sorry to say. on the other hand, if it’s going to be this way, then that’s what fanart and comic projects are for. as for me, I am doing my very best to get my comic project “Waluigi Land” going. again, I apologize if it’s taking very long to get Chapter 2 going if you’ve been keeping track but aha moments need to develop before I start permanent drawing (since concepts, character design and storyline needed improvement badly). as of right now I am still a Waluigi fan and I will not quit on him.

5. Turbo from Wreck-It-Ralph (although it debuted in 2012, I watched the movie two years later into the year 2014). for some bizarro reason, I had an unhealthy obsession with this character to the point where I dressed up as him for Halloween 2014. only 2 fanarts of him and the Turbo Twins exist on my profiles, mainly because my mind was more focused on just ‘thinking about him’ or ‘being him’ rather than drawing physical drawings. luckily, this supposed alleged fandom didn’t last long a little after Halloween so I chalk it up as a very short phase. to this day I don’t know what has gotten over me about him. the only thing I can think of now is that I think it’s because the character had yellow eyes and teeth but I don’t know. now that I think of it, that little fucker was ugly as hell and I STILL don’t know what had gotten over me. one day, my brother mentioned what that was about, and I said to him, “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

6. Undertale (although it debuted in 2015, I later took interest in it in 2016). It was all about Sans and Papyrus. I couldn’t get enough of the skeleton bros. eventually Toriel and Mettaton EX became my favorites but it took a long time to draw more of all 4 of them because I had other important things to do in my life plus I was still waiting for the next Gorillaz album to revive my imaginative juices (or so I thought). I really want to have this as one of my frequent fandoms but I just don’t have time for it anymore. it’s still in the back of my head to want to draw them but at this point I still have other better interests to be in. and besides, I’m lazy just like Sans.

7. Cuphead (June 28th, 2017 was the official day I called quits on the British-based band Gorillaz due to the bullshit behind it. since that date I was lost, had no inspiration to look forward to and no cartoon guy to make me smile...but lo and behold of the same year, I took an interest in playing the game Cuphead and man...that shit was a frightening exaggerated metaphor for being on that one drug (forgot the name though) and having sex at the same time but man that was the best fun I’ve had in years. I mean, it’s like, enemies are just so happy to murder you and that scared the shit outta me. and the facial exaggeration?....I think I should stop, ha ha. anyways, the Moldenhauers saved my ass from spiraling down, they have no clue. anyways, eventually I became a permanent fan of their work so to ease the hurt and erase my past from the G-fandom I had to re-wire my brain into a different cartoon category that’s a rather more American, so anything Toon related like Roger Rabbit, Felix the Cat or another favorite that’s a western-based cartoon makes me feel better, especially my new man .......King Dice <3 <3<3<3. however, there was something about this new fandom category I still didn’t quite understand until the date March 14th, 2020. I finally understood what it was but I feel I shouldn’t bring it up. anyways, Cuphead and anything western or rubber hose is my last stop in inspiration for the remaining years of my life. many say never say never but I believe I’ve found my laughing place and that’s all that matters.

[launenji]

Center of Your Universe - A KNJ Fanfic | Prologue

Pairing: idol!Kim Namjoon x idol!Reader Status: Ongoing Word Count: 3031 Genre: Rivals2Lovers. Fluff. Eventual implied smut and angst. Slow burn. idol!AU Summary: It’s 2019 and Kim Namjoon is conquering the globe with his Bangtan brothers by his side. However, BTS can’t seem to shake their top girl group rival from chasing their names across music charts and award nominations worldwide. Now, the boys have no problem with that in any way; in fact they’ve come to respect the girls of HELIOS and their never ending climb to fame that seemed to match their own success. The only real “problem” Namjoon sees is that HELIOS’ confident, fearless, and overall badass of a leader seems to absolutely hate him. And as much as he doesn’t want to admit it, it does keep him awake at night. A/N: Hello! After a year of diving into BTS and reading fanfics about the boys, I wanted to write my own with the beloved Rivals2Lovers trope, because who doesn’t love that good shit? So this is my first official fanfiction, this will be ongoing although I’m not sure how many parts I’ll be producing, but I have the entire story line written out! I also am fairly new to how kpop fanfics are generally published on tumblr, but I’ll do my best. I hope you enjoy this story as much as I have creating it! Prologue | Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3

Prologue: Definitely a (fan)Boy with Luv

March 2019 There was an unspoken rule that came about RM of BTS’ personal life, and that was to live as Kim Namjoon as soon as he steps foot in his hometown of Ilsan. RM existed while he was at work in Seoul; busy with performance schedules, writing lyrics, producing beats, recording content, and basically leading the biggest boy band of the generation to great heights of fame and success. That’s who Kim Namjoon is on a near daily basis. So when Namjoon can find the time to take a few days off and head back to his childhood home for some much needed rest, he’s only Namjoon; a regular twenty five year old guy who loves long walks among nature and grabbing drinks with old friends. And right now he was Namjoon; a regular twenty five year old guy at his parent’s home, dressed in a tank top and sweats, head bopping to his latest musical discovery on Spotify as he pours an entire bag of chips in a bowl for a mid afternoon snack in preparation for some much needed catching up on his netflix shows. Pausing the song on his phone and housing his earbuds in their case, he shimmies over to the couch with his bowl of chips in a small celebratory dance for these rare days where he can go home and actually relax. No pressing schedules to attend, no pulling out his hair to create the right lyrics for their next song, no band/roommates screaming and chasing each other around their shared Hannam apartment after yet another failed prank attempt; just him alone in the house ready to kick back and finally relax.

Armed with his snacks, drink, and the tv remote, he makes himself comfortable on the couch and finally finds that one show he’s been dying to catch up on. However, just as he’s about to press play, the front door swings open with a loud bang. “PUT. THE REMOTE. DOWN.” 

A shrill voice echoes through the family apartment as the newcomer rushes in, hastily chucking her bag and keys on the counter before skidding to a stop between Namjoon and his only source of rest and relaxation for the night. Kim Kyungmin, loving younger sister to BTS’ beloved leader, stands before him with arms folded and with an unyielding glare. “Just because you’re home for the weekend doesn’t mean you can hog the tv the whole time you’re here, hand it over.” She extends out her palm, fingers flexing for the remote. Namjoon groans. “Minnie, I was LITERALLY about to watch my show, can’t you just record what you want to watch and watch it later? Y’know, when I’m usually not here?” Namjoon scoots to the other end of the couch in an attempt to continue on with his planned afternoon of relaxation. However Kyungmin manages to lunge for the remote and swipe it away at the last second, holding it above her head much to her older brother’s annoyance. “Not when you’re watching something you can literally watch anywhere else.” She shifts her pointed glare at his phone then at him before plopping down in his original spot on the couch, quickly switching through the channels to find the show she’s desperately looking for. “That doesn’t solve my solution to you recording your show and watching it later.” Namjoon points out, shoving a chip in his mouth as he watches his sister reach her designated channel. It’s a Knowing Bros episode that seemed to have just started. “If I do that then I can’t react to the episode in real time with Miyoung.” Kyungmin states matter of factly, thumbs flying across her phone as she texts her friend in question. Feeling defeated, Namjoon gives up his quest for his solo Netflix and Chill night he originally planned and settles to watch along with his sister. At least it was a show he actually did enjoy, especially when he was able to be on it with his members at one point. He reminisces his time on the show as he watches as the cast banter over some new found popular trend, the guests of the episode haven’t seemed to arrive just yet. “So who’s on the show this time?” In an immediate response to Namjoon’s question, the classroom door on tv whips open revealing four of the most recognizable women in Kpop; Lee Yuna, Chung Sumi, Han Hyojin, and their leader, Y/N L/N “It’s HELIOS!” Kyungmin lets out a high pitched squeal that Namjoon cringes away from. HELIOS. Arguably the most famous idol girl group to come out of Kpop history to date and BTS’ current standing rivals in the game. Namjoon internally scoffs; okay, so maybe the term “rival” seemed a little too harsh for their relationship to the girls. Let it be clear that there was no beef between Kpop’s fastest rising boy and girl groups despite what the media may try to spin about them. Namjoon and the boys actually do respect the ladies of HELIOS to a high regard and honestly believe that they deserve every inch of recognition and success they’ve received over the years. If the boys of BTS can understand anything, it’s the struggle of trying to make it in such a competitive and demanding environment that is the world of Korean entertainment. Much like them, HELIOS came from humble beginnings; hailing from a small entertainment company established by one of the most respected music producers in the industry. Despite debuting a couple years after BTS, HELIOS grew to be a well known name among teens and young adults. Their unique take on the “girl crush” concept and their unconventional practices of flourishing naturally as an idol group captured the hearts of many, and soon became a trending topic alongside BTS. Namjoon saw many similarities between BTS and HELIOS in the way they’ve grown to their current point of success. Much like the boys, HELIOS liked to connect with their fans personally, most of their viewership grew from watching their growth as an idol group on social media. In fact, the girls each had their own social media accounts and were good at posting daily doses of their lives on and off stage whenever they could. Their fans felt like they could really relate to them on a personal level; recognizing that, at times, these four beloved idols were just girls following their dreams. Other times, their fans were often reduced to a squealing-to-near-tears mess, as currently exhibited by Kyungmin. Namjoon was surprised she hadn’t started frothing at the mouth at this point. “Ugh! I just love them sooooo much!” Kyungmin groaned, voicing out her text message before tossing her phone aside and giving her undivided attention to the tv. On screen, HELIOS stood at the doorway as the hosts of Knowing Bros gaped in awe at their presence. The three women stood strategically in formation with you front and center. Namjoon let out a quiet sigh through his nose. Now while BTS and HELIOS had no history of any animosity towards each other (actually the only interactions they’ve really had was congratulating each other on a job well done in between set switches), the only “problem” Namjoon could find was that you, HELIOS’ renowned leader, seem to hate his fucking guts. He has voiced his concerns plenty of times to his members, especially after passing you and the girls by during music shows. You had a tendency to give everyone but him the time of day, and Namjoon didn’t know why. “You’re probably looking too much into it, hyung,” He remembers Jungkook telling him after another failed attempt to talk to the fellow leader. “I mean, you never talk to her, so I don’t think she has a reason to hate you.” “He’s right,” Jimin pipes up from across the dressing room. “It could be the way she is, after all she always looks like she’s got a 1.5 meter pole stuck up her- Ow! What!? I was just kidding!” His remark was short lived with a swift smack to the back of the head and a warning glare from Hoseok. Though it was rude to say, Namjoon couldn’t deny that, to a certain extent, you did look a little uptight most of the time. 

Watching closely on screen, he studied your resting bitch face-like expression. Despite being dressed in a standard school uniform that admittedly made you look cute, you looked like you were ready to take names and kick some ass while poised in your signature power stance. One hand over a hip cocked to the side as your sharp gaze trailed over the Knowing Bros cast before walking in. Even your movements seemed powerful, as if they were carefully calculated with one foot strutting in front of the other in perfect sync with the sway of your hips, not that he was paying attention to that specific detail. His eyes quickly shifted over to your other members as they moved more naturally on to the set and waved their hi’s to the hosts. Everyone gave their applause as the girls took their place at the podium in front of the classroom. “Please introduce yourselves!” Clearing your throat, you throw on a smirk before making a creative introduction. “Hello, we are from the “Top Tier Global Rising Stars” High School.” The other girls share similar smiles as you before dropping into their standard greeting. “2, 3, Shine On! Hello, we are HELIOS!” The studio erupts in applause and awes of amazement welcoming the girls. Namjoon looked over to Kyungmin with her knees drawn to her chest and chin resting on top, staring intently at the tv. “What? No more weird orgasm sounds for your favorite girls?” That earned him a hard smack to the face. “Shh!” Well, this was his day off to relax. So as he slumped lower into the couch, Namjoon carried on watching the show alongside his sister. About 10 minutes into the show’s friendly banter, Namjoon realized that wasn’t much he knew about the ladies that made up HELIOS until now. For instance, he learned that Lee Yuna was actually the eldest of the group, being the same age as Yoongi. Their fans, appropriately named HALOS, dubbed her as one of the most beautiful women in Korea as she joked about her nickname “The Universal Beauty” to rival Seokjin’s title of “Worldwide Handsome.” 

He also learned that the second youngest, Chung Sumi, was actually a naturally talented rapper who freestyled over beats she found on Youtube and posted them on soundcloud during her highschool days, which prompted her to be the first signed trainee at their entertainment company. It reminded him slightly of his underground rapping days leading up to his own path to an idol.

He even learned that Han Hyojin, their own maknae, could basically do anything from singing to rapping to dancing, making her a deadly triple threat for her young age. She could definitely give Jimin, Taehyung, Hoseok, and Jungkook all a run for their money. But what intrigued him the most was your backstory, something that you never revealed until this point. “So Y/N, you’re not actually from Korea?” Kang Hodong inquires. You shake your head in affirmation. “But you speak Korean so well!” Seo Janghoon chimes in, “Where are you from?” “The States, California specifically.” You respond, prompting a stock sound of amazement over the broadcast. “Another idol from California!” “Speak English for us! Come on!” This causes you to scoff, shaking your head. “What would you want me to say?” “Introduce yourself in English!” Yuna urges you with a bright smile, a round of cheers in the room encourages the idea. Namjoon stared in awe as he watched you introduce yourself in your native tongue to the camera. You seemed more comfortable and natural talking in English and it captivated him in a weird sort of way. Both Kim siblings kept their attention on you as the cast prods on with questions about your personal life and Namjoon can’t help but feel much more admiration for you as an idol and leader who’s made it this far after hearing your story. You share to the cast that you were nothing short of ordinary growing up. You’ve lived a normal life with your hard working parents and siblings. You were an average student with no strong ambitions to pursue for the future. The only passion you did have growing up was dancing, and it brought you as far as signing with your company to become a trainee after graduating high school. Without anything else to lose, you eventually made your way to Korea in hopes to find a suitable career that included dancing, however being an idol was totally out of your range. “So you initially didn’t want to be an idol?” Kim Heechul asks earnestly, you give a small shrug. “I didn’t think I was really cut out for it.” You answer cooly, then turn to your members with a soft expression. “But training with my members made me realize that I could do it and make something out of it.” Your girls return the heartfelt smile, something only Namjoon could completely recognize as a genuine bond between members. It tugged at his heartstring seeing this; despite your cold demeanor, you actually do care immensely for the people around you, which he could heavily relate to. If Kim Namjoon wasn’t impressed by you before, he surely was now. However that still doesn’t change the fact you can’t seem to stand him whenever he’s around you. The show finally cuts to commercial, giving Kyungmin enough time to call her friend and squeal about the events of the show. “And she was a cheerleading captain during high school! Can she BE any cooler!?” Namjoon watched incredulously as his sister took her conversation to her room for a quick break. He remembered teasing her once, when his fame with BTS began to rise exponentially, to never ask him for autographs or connections to any idols she may find herself gushing over in the near future, because he swore he’d never do it. Kyungmin only scoffed at her older brother’s feigning arrogance. “Oh please, you’ll never catch me drooling over any idol group at your expense.” If only she could see herself in a few years giving into the HELIOS craze and buying every single piece of merch she could. The look on Namjoon’s face was unbelievable when he came home one day to find Kyungmin framing a huge poster of your face to put in her bedroom. Her piercing glare stopped her brother from prodding any further with her newest obsession. “Not one word.” And with that, she carried your framed face off to her bedroom where it hangs next to her doorway. Well at least she hasn’t asked for your autograph. Not that he could get it anyway, you would definitely reject him if he even so much as breathed in your general direction. Despite finding out his sister was a die hard HALO, he was proud that she at least had good role models to look up to. However, the idea of her number one bias being the very person that hated him wouldn’t stop bothering Namjoon. Would he ever figure out why you just flat out disliked him? Should he even care at all? Why should he? It’s not like you two were friends. Did he want to be friends with you? Namjoon is pulled out of his inner monologue by his sister walking back into the living room with her hand over her mouth and eyes wide at something currently on her phone. She honestly looked like she was ready to cry. He rolled his eyes at her, now that’s just being a little too dramatic. “Alright, what is it now?” 

Kyungmin wordlessly turned her phone towards her brother, revealing your personal twitter profile and your newest post. It was a new concept photo of you with the silhouettes of the rest of HELIOS behind you. Dressed in shades of burgundy and maroon, you held a finger to your red painted lips. The caption that goes with it is simple and vague, but gets its point across. “HALOS, you ready? One more time~ D-10”

Namjoon counts down the days quickly in his head, leading up to what seems to be your comeback date. Coincidentally, it’s the day after BTS’ planned announcement for their own comeback; Map Of The Soul: Persona. 

He sits back and bites the inside of his cheek, deep in thought. If HELIOS was releasing their new album the same time BTS is, then you will most likely be promoting on music shows within the next coming months too. That meant more chances to pass you by in the studios and more time to figure out what the hell was your problem with him. Was it weird that the thought alone made him a little excited for your comeback more than his? His eyes caught sight of the show that just returned on air, now with you on screen teaching the hosts the moves of your latest single. He felt his cheeks heat up just a bit as he witnessed you sway your hips to the beat of your song before forcibly ripping his gaze away to look out the window instead. Yeah, it was pretty weird, and he really needed to stop dwelling on you so much. But that night, he laid in his bed, unable to get you out of his mind. 

Even though he told himself to not get hung up over you, here he was under his covers at 3 AM scrolling through your Instagram, looking at every single selfie, candid shot, and freestyle dance video you’ve posted since your debut; still thinking about the fact that even though you intrigued him, you still didn’t like him. Eventually he scrolled back to your teaser photo he saw earlier that day, brows furrowing at your post before locking his phone out of frustration. Okay, he had to stop. At this rate he was going to turn into his sister, another  HALO sucked into the HELIOS craze. But was that really a bad thing?

[route22ny]

I grew up in the Bay Area at the height of AIDS panic, and all of that era’s sex paranoia remains burned into my brain, repurposed for Covid-19 and the act of commingling wet breath. A few weeks into this crisis, I found myself having a ten-foot-distant conversation with my neighbor Patty, both of us incredulous at people who still tried to talk to us in-tight face-to-face, like we weren't all suddenly barebacking reality with everyone they'd chit-chatted with that day and everyone in their lives, etc. Patty allowed that she should be able to strike people she considered a threat. I mentioned Florida's attitude toward this legal principle and firearms. I suggested she become militant. I tell that to a lot of people, but I attenuate the humor of it for the audience. I tell every teacher I know to strike.

There are more sirens now. It's hard to tell, because unlike New York, everything isn't quiet. Cars are out on the road—fewer, but enough that hearing a siren can still be vehicular idiocy and not a more sinister house call. But I still hear more of them.

I don’t know why Luke asked me to write about Coronavirus in Florida. I mostly stopped writing last year when a good friend dropped dead in front of his family. (Subscribe to my Substack—we don't update regularly!) Before that, I felt increasingly overborne by events. Things ground to a halt in 2019, but the machine began to break down long before. I ended the 2016 campaign periodically sitting under my desk, high, feeling secure because I wasn't writing anything stupid and feeling good because I was appropriately afraid of everything, but people thought I was exaggerating when I mentioned it.  

I wish I could say my seriousness about the novel coronavirus stems solely from believing in science and peer review and that I would take it seriously regardless, but my spouse is immunocompromised, and my father, who lives out in the Bay Area, had Covid-19, back in March or early April. He didn't tell us kids until he was out of the woods, but for days he had fevers over 103º. My stepmom, a former emergency room nurse, couldn't get him admitted anywhere, because he wasn't having respiratory problems. He woke up the same every day: It felt like someone had parked a Volkswagen on him.

We're supposed to say he's out of the woods. I'll believe that when he dies of old age, or something more reasonable that kills men in my family, like colon cancer or car accidents. Sometimes I think about him dropping dead like my friend, only from whatever post-Covid-19 effect triggers the brain’s forgetting to tell the lungs to breathe—or from the one that leads to storms of strokes, like a brain's blood vessels recreating the burning energies depicted on a CRISS ANGEL MINDFREAK poster. Then I wonder how I would die, or my wife, or my friend in Atlanta, or my brother. I think about drowning in open air, alone in a hissing world, and being incapable of saying the overdue apologies I ran out of time for.

After a while I realized that basically all Luke wanted was to hear from a coward living in the mismanaged kleptocracy of Florida, and the thing is, I can do that! I’m frightened right now!

I considered opening with, Every day I wake up frightened, to throw a fucking jolt into a piece about facing down a pandemic in a place where they have a paradise just for the cheeseburgers. But the joke is, I'm not wastin' away here in Coronaville. Sometimes I wake up and just have to pee, on the rare days when I don't wake up from the sensation of my son elbow-dropping my head because—how rude of me—it's 6:45 already.

In this respect, I am serene: My son and I exercise outside to burn off his energy, so I'm out in the sun for hours a day. I'm tanner, I've lost weight, and my phlegm feels looser. I grew a lushly indifferent goatee. My haircut looks like something that belongs on the gatefold cover of a concept album about a form of locomotion by a band named after geography. While the term "Lebowski Phase" has been applied to my appearance and to the fact that my leg injury and medical-marijuana prescription have collided with the reality of never having to drive anywhere again, I must insist that in many respects I have come to look like Jesus Christ. I am pro life and take no pleasure in reporting this.

As I have said, I am frequently awakened by my son, whose full name is My Beautiful Five-Year-Old Son Maitland. He is a treasure who spends quarantine within earshot of 24-hour news, regurgitating West Wing Democrat observations of mine with five-year-old precocity to harvest follows for Instagram. Maitland is an influencer already on record as supporting L’Oréal, opposing Medicare For All, and, when I first read him the shaggy start to this piece, he said, "Not a good look." He's a natural.

Waking up is violent but easy. The problem is everything after that. By the time I close my eyes, I'm not sure what I felt most on any given day—anger, sadness, impotence, a resentful churning need for vengeance, despair. Any one can seem like a day's dominant emotional dysfunction and then suddenly be overwhelmed by the dread that suffuses prolonged thought about the world outside.

I am one of the people who is Taking It Seriously. Seriously Taking It Seriously, though—not the people who say they're taking it seriously and then tell you about:

• Going to a recent indoor birthday party.

• Having a multi-course dinner at a fancy restaurant, "But it was okay because it was [extremely not-worth-a-life celebration]!"

• A full-contact playdate their kid had recently with two other children.

I abhor these people. I have an existential loathing of these people, and a granular scientific indictment. I enjoy reading new articles to learn new ways in which they are a danger to me. My apprehension is rich and exquisite. May their friends shun them, and may they be abandoned by their gods.

Sooner or later, every day, I think of the threats arrayed against me and my family. Each day, I see the most recent thing said by my governor, Ronald Fuckface DeSantis, in which he explicitly endorses and declares his intent to pursue actions that all available data say will kill Floridians by the thousands. Each day, I think about how, if I do so much as suggest fostering a free exchange of ideas about the proportional value of using every means to stop him, I will be arrested.

Every day, I bounce the "Evil or Moronic?" debate around my brain. I check in with an alumna buddy in Atlanta to see whose governor has shown more recent determination to murder his citizens. I gotta give Brian Kemp credit, because he's really holding his own. Naturally, this leads to wondering if either of them have a natural or acculturated advantage in terms of idiocy and malevolence. DeSantis' enrollment at Yale and Harvard and service in the military problematizes the idiocy narrative only for as long as it takes to remember all the people you've met who've gone to any of them and were dumber than dogshit. It would seem like fate to be murdered by an oaf, but I don't know that it's not merciful to at least be murdered purposefully rather than contemptuously and indolently.

Eventually, this leads to spending some time thinking about DeSantis as a kind of lethal bro angel. It's hard not to see his shitchyeah, brah, people are dyin', it's classic! expression and recognize that the state's chief executive resembles a lout you don't want to run into walking alone at FSU after a home loss. I prefer my jokes about the governor, but my friend David Roth nailed it when he said that DeSantis seemed like a person who would describe himself as “kind of a DUI guy.”

I know there's supposedly a culture war out there. There's a truck in my neighborhood with a Q sticker, and another with a Three-Percenter sticker, and there are more than a few neighbors of the "easily victimized white dude who owns a $50,000 truck he rarely takes off the pavement and who becomes physically belligerent when you correct him" variety, but there's a reason why you really only see “war” shit on YouTube. Few Americans are hostile to general safety protocols, and even fewer act out against them. I live where hate groups and old fashioned unaffiliated redneck trash drive in from the county to make a show of rebel flags, rolling coal and honking to intimidate protests, but people line up six feet apart at Home Depot, wear masks at Publix and get takeout at the pizza place outside without insisting on barging in. Most wars don’t need one side of them to be this manufactured.

Most of my friends and colleagues from this gig live in New York, so I've already sat through weeks of descriptions of streets silent except for ambulances, and I’ve already woken for weeks to the half-twilight of nightmares where friends died in a spare white hallway. There aren't a lot of surprises in store for Florida, and no images I can describe that would make you want to turn back now. It's like we're waiting for the rolling premiere of a franchise blockbuster. The dead won't really start packing them in for a few more weeks, but all the scariest shit hit YouTube when it opened in New York a thousand years ago. The coronavirus as an image, what it functionally is, as a horror, feels as familiar as the Scream mask, and the context that makes that scary as hell already feels dangerously been-and-gone, like an apprehension that Florida had for too long before the actual scare came.

There's a hope that all this will come to little again. Despite Governor DeSantis' refusal to take the initiative on shutting down the state until the last dollar was wrung from the last snowbird, the original shellacking never came. The Tampa Bay Times sampled smartphone data and concluded that Floridians overwhelmingly took the initiative to stay home, and they were aided in their quarantine process by the fact that Florida is car-dependent and atomized.

The heartbreaking realization, as you gradually run across more people who are Not Taking It Seriously or are Expressing Moronic Skepticism, is that for a month there about 80 percent of America was on board with doing the right thing. We, a people who suck at doing the right thing even for the wrong reasons, stood on the side of doing the harder thing if it helped people who weren't even us.

I really can't tell if I feel more anger than sadness at the fact that those who were meant to encourage us in safety, to serve us by offering difficult guidance, wasted our sacrifice and our trust. They squandered the patience given by a beggared and exhausted people. All they had to do was the right thing, and if they weren't sure what that was, they could have erred on the side of saving people’s lives and hoping it counted, and they failed.  

Instead, more people will die, and we'll be shut down again, and we will realize we are fundamentally unequipped for life with Covid-19. Florida is built on enclosed air-conditioned spaces: It's dependent on divorcing yourself from Florida as a climate and place. Asking Floridians to generate a public life under the unshielded rage of God’s angriest sun and baked from beneath by a sprawling pave-ocalypse requires asking them to rebel against everything their infrastructure has taught them for as long as they can remember. It is a car culture to the flesh and bone, and a restaurant relocating indoor tables to a road patio would park its diners inches away from eternity.

A picnic day like that is months off, again. It's time to go back inside and resume Inside Time. Inside Time melts away. I saw a headline around the Fourth of July, from the New York Times, that read, "In the Covid-19 Economy, You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You Can’t Have Both," and I remember seeing colleagues tweet, mmmm, so true, and, gets at something crucial we aren't talking about, and shit like that, and I was like, "Buddy, let's get in the DeLorean and visit March." I have nowhere to go, anyway, and all life is timeless.

We have no family in the area and have had no break. It's the three of us, like No Exit, but if most of the dialogue was the word "no" and a lot of stuff about poop and butts and farts, good guys and bad guys, and what Lego Star Wars would do, but with a lot of excruciated pleading for silence because Mom and Dad Are Working Right Now and We Love You Very Much but Jesus Christ Please Stop for the Love of God I Will Give You a Dollar If You Go in Your Room and Be Quiet and Play That Kindle App That Teaches You to Read That You Pay Attention to More Than Us Even Though I Would Read You a Fucking Novel If You'd Just Shut Up and Sit Still.

I'm resigned to staying in here until 2022. I’m screaming, but I will do it. I'm lucky in that I have access to a community pool and a neighborhood where my son and I can roam around on bikes and romp and look at water and birds and turtles. When we're lazy, we have a porch where we can feel nature without feeling exposed. We have a dependable (ok!!! haha!!!) income, and I can do irregularly scheduled work that allows me to be Parent rather than Employee. Exercise, meals and stories take up enough hours that I might as well lean into it.

But we’re lucky. We have a house and prescription mood-altering drugs and one thousand years of undersleep, but we are in less immediate danger than most. The state, almost reflexively, reaches out to open more doors even as Covid-19 blows past reopening benchmark after reopening benchmark.

The inexorable march for commerce doesn’t even come from malice in many cases; people in charge just don’t know how to do anything else but extort and scold people into working under any conditions, so long as it devours most of their time. All the exploitive principles are expected to work the same even if the world they built is fraudulent. We feed meat and the virus into the machines, irrespective of what the data says, and pray for rain. Watching Florida government on the state and local level is like watching two parents bring an alcoholic home after he got kicked out of rehab and deciding that the best course of action is leaving him with $5,000 in an apartment up the street from a dive bar and then going to Cancun for the week. It was on the calendar already, there wasn’t any choice, he looked very healthy at the time!

We have friends who are teachers, and we are scared for their spouses and kids. I don't know what Florida's plan for its teachers is other than to murder them. Again, I don't know if DeSantis is an idiot for flirting with giving enormous bipartisan sympathy to arguably the most effective labor group in the state, or a genius for flirting with finally eliminating a lobbying obstacle to conservative governance by simply liquidating its members as a class.

I worry if I start listing all the things I'm scared of, they'll never stop, but every day I see my son reach for something he should be able to reach for, and I either have a low-grade panic response and stifle it, or I have the panic response and yelp at him to get his attention and tell him to stop, startle him, and add another layer of gun-shy haunting to his day. I'm afraid he'll eventually become an animal in a Skinner Box in which all the buttons and levers are electrocuted, and there are no prizes.

I'm afraid that my son will always be emotionally arrested at two years behind the development of people the same age who had siblings in their house, or who, like many kids in my neighborhood, had parents who thought kids were invincible to Covid-19 and let them play with whomever they wanted. I worry that he may pay a price year after year even into adulthood because other kids got to practice socializing as we rode past. They got to hang out with people their own age and run around and do vitally stupid shit and say "butts" a lot, and he got look at me heartbroken and knowing empirically and epidemiologically that he couldn't play with his friends anymore but still needing to know why, and knowing that I couldn't tell him anything more sophisticated and anything less terrifying than, "So we don't get sick."

The other day he started crying and then screaming, "I hate the sickness! I hate the sickness!" repeating it in a higher and higher register, until he was up even past that piercing birdlike screech that prepubescent boys make whenever trying to sound like lasers or dinosaurs or squealing brakes. Every day I worry that I see another little bit of his capacity for happiness is dying—that the same awkward process of terror that took me from happy little kid to profoundly unhappy teen to scarred adult is even more rapidly at work, and each day another sparkling and joyous little light of childhood winks out in him, replaced by fear as a necessity of life.

I know that there is no plan for us. Conservatives don't want to be taxed or have their businesses lose money, so people are being kicked off unemployment and sent back to work with no test and trace protocols, irregular access to PPE, overwhelmed hospitals and often limited access to any care. We're doing all this as Florida blooms scarlet like paint being spilled into a mold shaped like the state. We're sending the men in the gasoline suits right at the heart of the fire.

It's a cruelly lazy little culling genocide of the working class, a Wall Street gamble that the blow to the labor force won't be more than a blip on the Dow and, a little recession aside, the One Percent will come out ten years later owning an even greater percentage of the United States. To the extent that there is a plan, that's the plan, and whether you land on the dead or the living part of any of those exchanges is more of a Your Problem than a Their Problem.

For now, it's enough to be hermits and hope the rest of Florida goes on strike by going inside and staying there and writing letters to representatives threatening to never come out. Cooking the same things, getting the same exercise in the same places, having the same awkward conversations on VOIP delay, and living every moment outside like we're three drinks in so we’re ready to get belligerent with anyone who is getting too close. Living every moment with some low-level neurasthenia that grows spine-deep and for the rest of our lives sends shuddering disequilibrium at the thought of air that never seems to move, hallways that lengthen without exits, and objects that seem both unavoidable and unclean. It’s fine. We’re all fine, here, now. How are you?

I feel a sudden Git Offa Mah Land thing about my son, a resolute commitment to homeschooling for the foreseeable future and to keeping the gummymint away. It sucks so much. I was so happy to send him to the public school just a few blocks away, instead of the shitty little charter schools nearby, but now that it’s Plague or Parents, he’s got his parents. Between us, he'll have access to 1.5 first-class educations. I still have my grandpa's service weapons from WWII, the last time America was in a war with fascism, when we took the opposing side. I'll empty a couple magazines into anyone who comes onto my property and tries to stop me from teaching my son critical race theory, Howard Zinn, and Leonard Levy's Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side. I refuse to turn my back on the heritage of my youth, of watching thousands of hours of MASH, by refusing to wear a mask outside or in fact any time I am doing anything other than drinking gin that I made in a tent.

Outside, records fall and progress rolls on. A governor whose go-to pejorative for opponents of all ages and sexes is very likely still “queef” watches as even the president concedes that a Republican National Convention here would be too lethal, as the state repeatedly sets records for daily deaths, beats out all of Europe in terms of new daily cases, leads the nation in cases per day, then tries to set them again. And then, every day, our governor makes his ahegao-but-for-ethnic-cleansing face and psychotically clangs a bell indicating that Florida just became the 15,000 customer at Leadshoe Larry’s Kicked-in-the-Dick, and it’s time for all us lucky winners to line up and drop our pants.

Florida’s lethality is so tacky that it’s almost camp, but there is no satisfaction in being right about how wrong everything is. Nobody gets a prize for correctly guessing the surplus death toll. All you have to do is look someone else in the eye working in life under Covid.

I’m old now, so I have Humiliating Injury Syndrome (HIS), and somehow in the month between the Super Bowl and the pandemic, I tore a rotator cuff, a labrum, or both, by throwing a (mini!!!) football with friends. After four months, I broke down and went to get an MRI. I skulked down corridors and lurked in a corner of a waiting room, like playing spies with an opponent who was the air. Even the clean and modern fixtures felt miasmic and corrupted, like they were a parking garage in an Alan Pakula film.

Eventually a nurse emerged from an office, crinkled her brown eyes, waved and surprised me by asking after my family by name. She lives three blocks away from me and had hosted me at a party once. Later that day, as my car coasted down the approach to my house, I saw a garage door open and my neighbor’s son walk out on his way to his shift at the same grocery store that I treat emotionally like a Superfund site.

I thought about how much I unconsciously held my breath where they work, and how I unconsciously associate those places with poor choices. The danger of the world outside is so massive that I reflexively need to cordon off the threat into areas of blame and blamelessness. In a moment of crisis, years of conservative rhetorical conditioning in the discourse have taught me to reflexively pathologize those in harm’s way. There is less chaos if someone is at least responsible for something. There is less risk to me, if it turns out someone else’s epidemic is someone else’s fault.

But it is someone else’s fault. And it’s not some poor fucker doomed to sit in a box somewhere and accept paper money and hand metal money back and point at where toilets are, because that’s how he keeps the lights on. It’s not the person consigned to some life-sucking task that, on the best of days, is too humiliating and cruelly impoverished of purpose to ever be a reason why someone should die. It’s not the person around whom you hold your breath because you don’t know where they’ve been. It’s the person and people who put us all in position to suddenly feel like we’re suffocating together.

I hate that I sometimes unconsciously hold my breath around strangers, and I hate that they have heard it. I think of my neighbors, and of the workers on whom we’re dependent, and the permanent uncertain shortness of breath I feel, and I want every moment of their anxiety and mine gathered up and then rained on those who shepherded it into being, those who nurtured it and feasted on it, those who profited from it and were indifferent toward it. Those who consider themselves DUI guys and those who pay to elect them and give them sinecures and who are simply too rich to be arrested for boating under the influence anymore.

I think of how I hold my breath near good people and near vulnerable people in places I am wary of and that we all need to share, and I wonder if we will simply hold our breath for the rest of the year, and if we’ve bargained for standing near each other and holding it for all of the next. And I wish so eagerly that all our suspended futures and the air between us might catch at the throats of those who put us here. That justice for a man like Ron DeSantis might be a permanent and sucking terror: stuck always in an involuntary startled gasp at the sight of responsibility, afraid at the approach of every stranger, incapable of drawing a full and restful breath, and never knowing peace again.

Jeb Lund used to write about politics for Rolling Stone, The Guardian and Gawker, and a bunch of other places, and was the Spectacle of Trump Editor at 50 States of Blue. He and David Roth have a podcast about Hallmark original movies that is mostly funny and exasperated and not unkind, and it's not ultimately about the movies anyway. It's fine and people enjoy it. Don't make it weird. He also has a podcast where he watches every Dennis Quaid movie in a row. That is also completely normal.

Ok here’s me again with a couple more things.

You’ll want to read this in the New York Times today about a forthcoming documentary on ICE. After it was completed the filmmakers were apparently threatened with legal action by the agency over the inclusion of parts that made ICE look even worse than they already look doing literally everything else they do.

Some of the contentious scenes include ICE officers lying to immigrants to gain access to their homes and mocking them after taking them into custody. One shows an officer illegally picking the lock to an apartment building during a raid.

At town hall meetings captured on camera, agency spokesmen reassured the public that the organization’s focus was on arresting and deporting immigrants who had committed serious crimes. But the filmmakers observed numerous occasions in which officers expressed satisfaction after being told by supervisors to arrest as many people as possible, even those without criminal records.

“Start taking collaterals, man,” a supervisor in New York said over a speakerphone to an officer who was making street arrests as the filmmakers listened in. “I don’t care what you do, but bring at least two people,” he said.

Here’s one disgusting detail among many.

They followed Border Patrol tactical agents who took pride in rescuing migrants from deadly dehydration even as the agents acknowledged that their tactics were pushing the migrants further into harm’s way. They showed how the government had at times evaluated the success of its border policies based not only on the number of migrants apprehended, but on the number who died while crossing.

***

source:

https://luke.substack.com/p/all-they-had-to-do-was-the-right?utm_source=Brooklyn+Today&utm_campaign=dd6f63665c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_07_28_01_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1ba554d7d5-dd6f63665c-125128182

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #280

“this is the place in our mind with a crooked crown / we came to execute its own perfect shutdown”

Do you have a strong local accent? No. Do you prefer green or red grapes? Red, but either is fine so long as they’re crisp. Can you stand on your hands unassisted? pffff Who was the last person to knock/ring at your door? Pizza guy. How old were you when you last went trick or treating? No idea. Have you ever been bobbing for apples? ”No. That’s a gross game lol you’re dipping your head and mouth into water other people are dipping their head and mouth into.” <<<< This. What’s your most expensive piece of clothing? No clue. What’s the last thing you took a picture of? Guys I actually took a selfie bc for once in my goddamn life, I felt really pretty with the makeup Summer did on me. She's working towards a degree in cosmetology and is so talented with it. What’s the last thing you drew a picture of? A meerkat pup. Have you ever been on a pogo stick? Omg, yes. I got one for I think Christmas one year as a kid and I got SO into it. I learned how to do it really well. Can you down a pint (of anything) in one? Probably not without throwing up. Have you ever been banned from a public place? No. Have you ever been in a newspaper? A couple times, I think. I know once in elementary school for when I was in chorus; we went somewhere for a small Christmas show. Then I believe I was in it for another school thing? Idr. What football team do you support? I don’t care for football or sports in general. What did you want to be when you grew up? My phases included paleontologist, vet, movie director, author, game designer, aaaand I know I’m forgetting one. But my current and long-term goal has been to become a photographer. Being an artist as a free time “job” has always been an aspiration, too. Have you ever tie-dyed your own clothes? In school, yeah. How often do you buy new clothes? Very rarely. Usually just around Christmas or my birthday from gift cards I get. Are you reliable? In some ways yes, in other ways no. Are you proud of yourself? No. If you could ask your future self one question what would it be? If she’s ended up happy. Do you hold grudges? Nah. Do you decorate the outside of your house for Christmas? Mom does pretty much last minute, but only sometimes when looking at the past few years. Can you solve sudoku puzzles? Sure, they’re fun. What’s the most unusual conversation you've ever had? Who knows. Are you much of a gambler? Not at all. I don’t fuck around with money, especially when just $5 makes you feel great. Have you ever been to Disneyland? I’ve been to Disney World. Do you sing in the shower? Very rarely. Almost never now that I don’t play music while I’m in there. As a child did you ever suck your thumb or fingers? I mean probably? I do know I loved my pacifier and was SO upset when Mom’s doctor or someone playfully told me I was gonna have to give it up because my upcoming baby sister would want to steal it, and guess what? Nicole never fucking used a pacifier so I was tilted lmao. What time do you usually go to bed? Lol BRO it can be as early as 7 PM on bad depression days to as late as like, 2-3 AM. I’d say the average time is like… 9:30. What's your favorite animal? MEERKATS hngggggggggggggggg Have you ever been in marching band? No. Do you have any enemies? No? At least I don’t consider anyone to be. Have you ever been a cheerleader? As a kid, Mom wanted me to so I could do something with my sisters, who were actually interested in cheerleading. She certainly didn’t force me to or anything, I just agreed to it despite not being into it. We were with this Christian sports group for a long time doing various sports all the while being taught lessons in Christlikeness. I’ve actually got warm memories of it Did you ever date anyone on the football team? No. Do you sleep with stuffed animals? No, not that I’m against the idea tho. The plushy would just have to be very special to me and also comfortable to hold. How many consecutive days have you ever missed of school? I missed an entire week when I learned about Mom’s cancer. I could barely function. With how much school stressed me, I would NOT have managed. Have you ever been pregnant? No, not in my to-do list. When was the last time you wanted to speak out, but couldn’t? I’m sure it was recently over Facebook; most times, I keep my mouth shut over political things on there that might get me fired up because I’m afraid of confrontation. Are fingerless gloves awesome? I love them. Wore them daily in high school. I still have some of my favorites, though I’m doubtful they still fit my hands… Would you rather be cannibalistic or die in the wilderness? Okay so I’m gonna actually go kinda in-detail, so the squeamish be warned. Realistically, I think I’d choose to die. ESPECIALLY if I was the one expected to kill another person; then, there’s no question. I wouldn’t be able to do it either if I knew the person. If it was some stranger someone else killed and cooked, I don’t know with absolute certainty; starvation really can make animals out of people. I do know for sure I’d vomit. I far more heavily lean into still preferring to die, because I just believe some things aren’t worth living after they’ve been committed. I’d hate myself. I’d rather die feeling clean of conscience. Would you survive on a deserted island? Hell no. Have you dyed your hair eccentric colors in the past? Yeah, I want to do it far more often… What size drink do you usually get at fast food restaurants? Medium, sometimes small. What do you think is the best thing in life? Love, both platonic and romantic. Have you ever sold anything online either on Craigslist, eBay, Amazon, etc.? If not, what is your website of choice like any of the above for buying things? We sold our previous dog over Craigslist, and I sold my iguana there as well. I know Mom has used eBay and Amazon, but idk for what. Have you ever seen an animal give birth? Have you ever had a pet give birth before? I’ve seen old pet cats give birth many times. What is something you want to try to accomplish within the next year? I want a job that I’m content with and can mentally handle. Oh, and I REALLY want to make strong progress on recovering from the muscle atrophy in my legs. What’s the most unusual kind of pizza you’ve ever tried? I have no clue; I’m not that adventurous with pizza or food in general. If you were given the chance to decorate an entire house the way you wanted, with no limit to cost, how would you decorate it? GOTHIC AS A MOTHERFUCKER WELCOME TO THE GOTDAMN ADDAMS FAMILY. What’s one of your favorite things to touch/feel? My cat. :’) How often do you wear tights? Ew, never. Has there ever been anything you’ve become interested in much later than other people? I guess Instagram, but only as a viewer. I don’t have a personal one, just for my photography that I only rarely post. Have you ever had a veggie burger? Yeah, during my vegetarian streak. Burger King’s really aren’t that bad so long as the patty is made well. Do you like candles? Yeah, sure. When was the last time you wore a sports bra? Forever ago when I was doing Wii Fit. Where did you get the shirt you’re currently wearing? I think Hot Topic? It’s an oversized Umbreon shirt. Who last messaged you on Facebook? My friend Summer when we were planning our lil witch photoshoot w/ friends. Who last walked you home? lol you don’t just have someone “walk you home” here. Bundles of homes are way too far and in-between for reasonable walking distance. Did you make any new friends lately? If so, what are their names and how did you meet them? Not really recently, no. Would you rather see your favorite band/artist in concert with 2 other people or have a free $20,000 shopping spree to Walmart? Seeing Ozzy with my mom would be a DREAM, but to be realistic, I’d take the shopping spree pretty damn quickly. $20k? That would do WONDERS for us, especially as we’re about to move into a new place. When was the last time you threw up and why did you? A long time ago when I started a new medication. Do you want revenge on the person who has hurt you the most? … I’m gonna be REAL honest. For the most part, no. But ngl there are times I’m like “I’m gonna work on getting back in shape and become H O T” like a petty bitch lmao this is embarrassing to admit. Has anyone ever claimed that you saved their life? Yes. Did you ever have that near-drowning experience? No. Have you ever performed on stage? For dance, yes, but I never did a solo. Are you a jealous person? Not jealous (usually), but I’ve come to realize I’m a pretty envious piece of shit. Morning person or night person? I’m in my best mood in the morning because I have the “it’s a fresh start” ideology. Then I repeat exactly what I did the day before. :^) Have you ever written a poem for someone? Numerous times. Do you meditate? No, but I wish I could without it only causing more stress. Do you like cranberries that they serve for Thanksgiving? EW I hate cranberries. What don't you understand that frustrates you? Finances. Do you plan on going to college? I’ve tried college three times and dropped out each time. I’m done trying with school. Do you believe the governments hide technology and information from the public? AbsoFUCKINGlutely. Which is your favorite Pokemon? Ninetales! What horror fiction character scares you the most? What’s the name of the villain in the Scream series? Ghostface? I don’t feel like looking it up, but he TERRIFIED me as a kid, and I still think he’s mega creepy. Were you part of the Brownies/Cubs/Scouts/Guides etc? I was in Girl Scouts. Have you ever invented a fairly unique meal or drink? No. Do you have any family secrets? Don’t think so. Do you often read your horoscope? Never. They’re bullshit. Have you ever had a proper Tarot reading? No; also bullshit. Have you ever milked a cow? No. Do you love or hate rollercoasters? They’ve always scared me because I’m afraid of throwing up. Now with how dizzy I get, I absolutely refuse to try one because I WILL faint with all the movement. What’s your favorite sportswear brand? idc Who’s your favorite superhero? Does Deadpool count? Who’s your favorite villain/baddie? If we’re still in the comics/superhero universe, the Joker. Have you ever won a giant-sized cuddly toy from a fair? No. What would you say is your favorite album of all time? Black Rain by Ozzy Osbourne. I fucking adore it; it was my introduction to metal, and still after all this time, every track S L A P S. I deadass played that CD so much that it scratches at a few points. Do you dislike hairy people? lol fuck this question. I’m guessing you’re asking if I find them attractive and not as if people I “dislike” them, but in both cases, it’s no. We’re mammals, who the fuck cares how hairy you are. Do you like your own name? I actually do really like my name. My first one, anyway. Would you ever sign a Prenuptial agreement? NOPE. Want one? You’re gonna have to find someone else willing to, my man. How long has your longest ever phone call been? No less than two hours, but I know more. I have three instances in particular where I talked with either friends or Jason for SO long. Could you ever have an affair with a married person? Hell no. What is your family Christmas like? Nicole comes here so she and I open presents with Mom, then we spend the day at my older sister’s to be with the kids. We also try to squeeze visiting Dad in there the same day, but sometimes it has to be a different one. If you met a genie who offered you three wishes, what would you wish for? (more wishes does not count) Just three is hard… but #1 is indisputably world peace, and then uhhhh the end of poverty and maybe the cure for cancer. I’d have a super hard time picking a third; so many things matter to me. Have you ever had your national flag painted on your face? No, not in my plans. Do you have any strange body things? Well, define “strange,” I guess? Nothing like, really strange. What fairy tale character would you most associate with? Can I be Snow White and attract cute critters like moths to a flame? Also I would 100% take a Good apple. If a loved one was to serenade you, what song would you most like them to sing? It would depend on the person and our bond, really. Is there a cherished song between us? What is our relationship like? There’s no umbrella song I can think of. Is your dad an embarrassing dancer? GUYS!!!!!!!!!!! My sister’s wedding, okay? Father/daughter dance? He actually has MOVES and it was incredible man, never gonna forget that. What if any unusual objects have you swallowed? Nothing, I think. If you were stinking rich, would you only go to places other rich people went? Hell naw, man. There are plenty of great, affordable places in all categories. I could be a millionaire and you’d still see my ass in McDonald’s ordering a burger and fries lmao. Have you ever owned a slinky? My sisters and I had multiple as kids; those were d o p e. Teenage parents, good, bad, or indifferent? An AWFUL idea. A teenager is physically, most likely financially, and mentally unprepared to raise a child properly. It can seriously affect the kid, and of course the parent. What’s the most expensive thing you’ve ever broken? I’m unsure. Pirate downloads, good or bad? It’s bad… yet plenty (myself included) have/do do it. Democracy, good or bad? Good. It’s very important to me that rule should come from the people’s majority versus a small coalition of rich guys. While the majority is not always right, it seems like the best option to me. Communism, good or bad? Okay so to be totally honest I actually don’t entirely understand what communism outlines. Like I just read multiple definitions and small articles and I’m still kinda like “????”, though judging by the countries listed as those governed by communism, I would guess it’s bad? Have you ever been electrocuted? On an electric fence, but it wasn’t too bad. Have you ever been hit on by someone of the same gender? Yeah. The war in Iraq, good or bad? Get the fuck out of it. To start with, I’m a pretty fierce pacifist, and just… killing and killing and killing for YEARS is so goddamn pointless and is just a massacre. The war in Afganistan, good or bad? jfc ^ Have you ever appeared on YouTube? LET’S NEVER TALK ABOUT THIS lmfao Have you ever eaten anything prepared by a celebrity chef? No,, but that’d be dope. Have you ever been on radio? No. Do you prefer male or female singers voices? ”Their gender doesn’t matter, but their talent does.” <<<< Do you have a list of things to do before your ‘x’ years old? Goals should not be judged by age. I’m bad at this and have to remind myself of it a lot. A goal is a goal regardless of a number. Celebrate for *you*. Are you proud, comfortable or ashamed of your body? Very very much ashamed. Do you know html? Super poorly. Have you ever flown first class? lol hunny What are better, violins or pianos? Violins. How old is your oldest blanket? As old as me. My baby blanket is stored somewhere. Do you take enough vacations? lol hell no. I’ve maybe gone on three vacations in my entire life. Have you ever been sick on your birthday? Yup. Then one time I was recovering from a wicked stomach virus but went to Olive Garden anyway lol. I was fine though, and it’s actually a sweet memory because Jason (he worked there at the time) got the staff to do the whole “happy birthday” thing. I got a bombin’ brownie. Who is your favorite person? Sara and my mom. What do you do to stay healthy? lol you assume I’m healthy. What is your favorite form of exercise? Swimming. Do you like going to church? I never did. As a kid, I would cry when/if Mom decided we were going to mass after Sunday school lmao. It’s always been boring and too long to me, even when I was religious. Have you ever fallen asleep during a sermon? Probably as a kid. Do you like to pray for others? No. I don’t believe anyone hears them or will intervene somehow if I ask anyway. Have you ever witnessed a miracle? No. I don’t think I believe in those anyway. Have you ever been the recipient of a miracle? Definitely not. How did you or whoever come up with the name(s) for your pet(s)? I thought “Roman” was a majestic name for a male cat, and Venus has the coloration that the planet does. Who did you last walk a dog with? Sara and I walked Buster the last time I was there. It was windy as SHIT so we didn’t get far because my ass was absolutely freezing, all the while Sara was used to it. Ride bikes with? Wow, good question. I haven’t ridden a bike in many, many years. Hold hands with? My friend Summer did yesterday when she was trying to reassure me of something. For what reason did you last high five someone? Ryder and Aubree each caught Pokemon in Pokemon GO. :’’’’) I was watching them in the car while my sister/their mom was doing something at work, and they wanted to play it; they’ve come to learn that between my phone and DS, I’m the Pokemon provider, lol. I was the proudest fucking aunt ever bc they did SO GOOD after getting the hang of throwing the ball like Y’ALL. When Ash came back to the car, I gave ‘em each high fives before getting back in. What color and type is your vehicle? Don’t have my own car. Looking to upgrade or add any time soon? I doubt I’ll have my own soon. What animal do you have the most possessions *of*, or featuring? Like, décor or stuffed animals, things like that? Not the actual living creature? Easily meerkats, holy shit do I have a collection. What do you use to wash your dishes? Gain soap. Last thing you measured? Uhhh idk. Last thing you weighed? Myself. Last song you danced to? *shrug* What do you remember from your dream last night? I just remember it was a nightmare about Dad being angry. How old were you when you got your first credit card? Lol I don’t have one. Do you talk to your parent(s) [almost] every day? Mom, yes. Dad, no, because we don’t live together. What does your shampoo and conditioner smell like? I just started using a Dove brand shampoo targeting dandruff, so I don’t think it has a specific smell. I don’t use conditioner, just adds grease to your hair, plus mine is short anyway. Last person to tell you that you smell good? Idk. Last person you told that they smell good? I also don’t know. If you smoke marijuana, what is your preferred or typical method? I’ve never touched it. Last person you ran into unexpectedly? Ummm idr. How many plants can you see right now? There’re none in my room. Last compliment you received on your appearance? HA On your character/personality? That I was a loving sister. Do you remain friends with anyone you met at your first job? N/A Who have you hugged in the past month? My mom, Summer, sisters, niece and nephew, Dad… Newest musical discovery? 3TEETH is great. Like, I'm obsessed. Their cover of “Pumped Up Kicks” snagged my attention, despite actually being iffy about it at first. Guess what I’m listening to this minute lmao. Last thing you cleaned? A cup. What exactly do you carry around all your stuff in? A purse. What do you carry around, typically? Phone, keys, wallet, hand sanitizer, and my iPod are items of note. Where is your newest scar? It’s on the palm of my left hand from Roman playing with me. Where is your oldest scar? Idk. Last thing you disposed of? The milk carton. What was the last picture someone sent you? Mom sent me a gif from Hocus Pocus to fit the witch photoshoot Summer, her friend, and I did. Did you hear a siren today? No. What do you typically drink? I would rather not pretend I tend to drink soda lmao Last bad news you heard? My aunt’s brother committed suicide a couple days ago. Last good news you heard? I don’t really know. How far away is the closest cinema from your house? It’s like, 15-ish minutes away. Have you ever been to the emergency room? Many times. Are you one of those people who can’t go without their morning coffee? Y’all know me and coffee. But in place, I have my morning Mountain Dew, rip in fucking pieces. Have you ever worn fake eyelashes? No, though I’m honestly curious what I’d look like. Do you know the story of how your parents met? If so, tell me? They were coworkers; that’s all I know. What is your favorite Chinese food? I love pork fried rice. Do you live far from your parents? I live with my Mom. I live around 20 minutes or so away from Dad. What was the last hot food you ate? I’m assuming you mean spicy as opposed to just hot as in temperature. In that case, probably hot wings. Have you ever seen a meteor shower? No. Describe your current position: I’m lying down in bed, just kinda perked up by my two pillows. Have you used a microwave today? Yes; I had a Jimmy Dean breakfast bowl. Do you prefer going out for coffee or brewing your own? N/A Have you consumed caffeine today? If so, in what form? yikes- Do you know anyone who follows a raw vegan diet and lifestyle? Not that I know of. Have you killed a bug this week? Yes; we’re dealing with a lovely mix of gnats and fleas. What was the first food you learned how to cook? Scrambled eggs. Or maybe pancakes with Mom’s assistance. Idr. Do you have a Bachelor’s degree? If so, what in? No. How many email accounts do you have? Two. Can you go see a doctor alone or do you like to take someone with you? I like my mom to be with me. How long is your average shower? 15 minutes, maybe? It depends on the routine I feel like doing. When’s the last time you had a headache? Yesterday. What woke you up this morning? I think I woke up naturally? A rare occasion nowadays. Who was the last person you cried in front of? Summer, yesterday.

[gagosiangallery]

Richard Prince at Gagosian Beverly Hills

January 15, 2020

RICHARD PRINCE New Portraits Opening reception: Thursday, February 6, 6–8pm February 6–March 21, 2020 456 North Camden Drive, Beverly Hills __________ In 1984 I took some portraits. The way I did it was different. The way had nothing to do with the tradition of portraiture. If you wanted me to do your portrait, you would give me at least five photographs that had already been taken of yourself, that were in your possession (you owned them, they were yours), and more importantly . . . that you were already happy with. You would give me the five you liked and I would pick the one I liked. I would rephotograph the one I liked and that would be your portrait. Simple. Direct. To the point . . . Foolproof. I started off doing friends. Peter Nadin. Anne Kennedy. Jeff Koons. Cookie Mueller. Gary Indiana. Colin de Land.

They didn’t have to sit for their portraits. They didn’t have to make an appointment and come over and sit in front of some cyclone or in front of a neutral background or on an artist’s stool. They didn’t have to show up at all. And they wouldn’t be disappointed with the result. How could they? It wasn’t like they were giving me photos of themselves that were embarrassing.

Social Science Fiction.

Another advantage was the “time line.” If you were in your sixties and you gave me a photograph that had been taken thirty years earlier, and that’s the one I chose, your portrait ended up in a kind of time machine. I couldn’t go forward, but I could go backward. Vanity. Most of the people I did liked the younger version of themselves. So the future didn’t really matter. Half of H. G. Wells was better than no half at all.

Who knew?

After friends, I did people I didn’t know.

I had access to Warner Bros. Records and their publicity files. The files were filled with 8 × 10 glossies of recording stars that they had under contract. How I had access is beside the point. It was a long time ago. Let’s just say an A&R guy gave me access, “permission.”

I spent time in their LA headquarters, in Burbank, and went thru the metal cabinets and took the “publicities” I wanted, took them home, put them in front of my camera, and made a new photograph. The first one I did was Dee Dee Ramone.

I did Tina Weymouth, Tom Verlaine, Jonathan Richman, Laurie Anderson. I did the two girls from the B-52s.

Not knowing these people, having never met them, or talked to them, but still being able to do their portraits, excited me. Satisfaction. I spent weeks in the basement of Warner Bros. I thought I had an advantage. My method, if you could call it that, was far more flexible than the regular way portraits were taken. I didn’t need a studio. A darkroom. A receptionist. A calendar. Makeup. Stylists. I didn’t have to deal with agents or the “personality,” good or bad, of the sitter. My overhead was minimal and I could do the portrait all by myself.

By myself. That was the best.

Why I Go To The Movies Alone.

At first I thought this could be a business.

Up till then none of the art that I was making sold . . . or sold enough to make a living. I had just quit my job at Time Life the year before and was trying to make a go of it living near Venice Beach in LA . . . sharing a house with three roommates and living off the occasional sales that Hudson, my friend from Chicago, would make selling my “cartoon” drawings.

This idea of a “portrait business” made sense to me. Who wouldn’t want their portrait done this way?

I continued to do friends. Paula Greif. Dike Blair. Meyer Vaisman. I did everybody’s portraits for Wild History, a book that I put together for Tanam Press of downtown writing. The author’s portrait accompanied their contribution. Wharton Tiers. Spalding Gray. Tina L’Hotsky.

By the end of ’84 it was over.

I’m not sure if it was the lack of interest in me, or in others. (My energy evaporated.) Maybe it was the inability to convince people to commit to a commission. It was a good idea, but after doing about forty of them, I put them in a drawer and moved on. Bored? Restless? I don’t know. Let’s just say it didn’t take off.

Leave it at that.

My cartoon drawings turned into jokes and the jokes started taking up everything. In the end, I think most people would rather have their portrait done by Robert Mapplethorpe.

Thirty years. Time passes.

The social network.

I looked over my daughter’s shoulder and saw that she was scrolling thru pictures on her phone. I asked her what she was looking at. “It’s my Tumblr.” “What’s a tumbler?” I asked.

That was . . . four years ago?

About three years ago I bought an iPhone. Someone had shown me the photographs you could take with the phone. I had given up taking pictures after they got rid of color slide film. I tried digital, but couldn’t make the adjustment. I never liked carrying a camera and was pretty much inkjetting and painting anyway . . . so the idea of using a big boxy camera with all its new whistles and bows wasn’t for me.

Enter the sandman.

The iPhone was just what I needed. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to point and shoot. You didn’t have to focus. You didn’t have to load film. You didn’t have to ASA. You didn’t have to set a speed. The clarity . . .

I could see for miles.

The photos you took were stored in the phone. And when you wanted to see them, they appeared on a grid. The best part: you could send a photo immediately to a friend, to an e-mail, to a printer . . . or, you could organize your photos, like my daughter had, and post them publicly or privately.

When worlds collide.

I asked my daughter more about Tumblr. Are those your photos? Where did you get that one? Did you need permission? How did you get that kind of crop? You can delete them? Really? What about these “followers?” Who are they? Are they people you know? What if you don’t want to share? How many of your friends have Tumblrs?

What’s yours is mine.

My daughter’s “grid” on Tumblr reminded me of my Gangs I did back in ’85 . . . where I organized a set of nine images on a single piece of photo paper and blew the paper up to 86 × 48. The gangs were a way to deal with marginal or subsets of lifestyles that I needed to see on a wall but not a whole wall. Each gang was its own exhibition. Girlfriends, Heavy Metal Bands, Giant Waves, Bigfoot Trucks, Sex, War, Cartoons, Lyrics . . . were all rephotographed with slide film, and when the slides returned, they were “deejayed” and moved around on a custom-made light box until the best nine made the cut. The “cut” was then taped together (the edges of the slide mounts were pushed up against each other and Scotch-taped), the nine taped slides were sent to a lab where an 8 × 10 internegative was made, and from the internegative the final photo was blown up. I’ve probably lost you. Technical stuff . . . application and technique. Sometimes it’s better to leave the “background” out of it. Better to “take it for granted.” Why should I care how a photograph is made?

Only sometimes.

How was it called back then? Sampling?

Primitive now, but back then . . . 50-inch photo drums were few and far between. The paper was 50 inches wide and came in a huge roll. If you wanted to, you could take a roll and roll it down the street, roll it down the sidewalk, roll it all the way down the West Side Highway.

Shakespeare’s in the alley?

No. Philip Roth is in the alley.

Joan Didion is in the alley.

Don DeLillo is in the alley.

What’s up, pussycat?

There’s a lot of cats on Instagram. Food too.

And there’s tons of photos of people who take photographs of themselves. (Yes, I know the word.)

On the gram. I was just asked why I like Instagram. I said, “Because there’s rules. And if you break the rules, you get kicked off.”

I got to Instagram thru Twitter.

Twitter first.

I’m not sure when I first started tweeting, but I liked trying to fit a whole story into 140 characters.

I call it Birdtalk.

I used to bird in the early ’90s for Purple magazine and birded in my first catalogue for Barbara Gladstone in ’87.

Short sentences that were funny, sweet, dumb, profound, absurd, stupid, jokey, Finnegans Wake meets MAD magazine meets ad copy for Calvin Klein. Think Dylan’s Tarantula. Then think some more and think Kathy Acker’s Tarantula.

Or, don’t think at all. I know I don’t.

Sometimes.

Sometimes I write down the first sentence that starts off my favorite novel.

Relative. I’m not much of a theory guy. But sometimes I think there was a reason why Einstein was a technical assistant in the Swiss patent office.

Let me fill your cup.

Twitter accepts photos, but is mainly text-based. I like to combine the two and tweet both photo and text.

I called the photo/text tweets I was posting . . . “The Family.”

I posted photos of my extended family . . . mother, brother, sister, nieces, cousins, uncles, aunts, in-laws, stepchildren, boy- and girlfriends. I would caption the photos with a short description of who, what, why . . . measuring my words so that they fit into the guidelines of the platform.

After posting the photo/text, I sent the information to my printer and inkjetted an 11 × 14 print of the marriage. I made thirty-eight “Family” tweets.

Distribution.

I placed each “Family” tweet in a plastic sleeve and pushpinned the sleeve to the wall. The wall was at Karma. I put all thirty-eight up. Salon style. It was Saturday. The doors opened at 12 pm. By 12:15 pm all thirty-seven were gone. One to a customer. I kept the one that had my father, mother, and sister in it. (My father and mother were naked, and my sister was sitting in between. My family wasn’t like yours. Hobnob doesn’t begin to describe them.) I sold the “Family Tweets” for $12 each. First come, first served.

Well, well, well . . .

In ma ma ma my wheeeeeeeel house.

I used to stutter. By the ninth grade, the sparkle was in my eye. It got so bad, the impediment turned me into a clam. I slept all day, every day. I wouldn’t get up until Sunday. I waited for Bonanza to come on the TV. I loved the cowboy father and his three sons.

Two summers ago, my niece was working for me out on Long Island and she showed me how to screen save. I didn’t know about the option. What other options don’t I know about?

Screen Save.

This might be one of the best applications in an apparatus that I’ve ever encountered. All-time. Hall of fame. First place. Just what I need. MORE photographs.

Hey kids . . . what time is it?

Now I have a theory.

I was beside myself.

Congratulations.

This past spring, and half the summer, the iPhone became my studio. I signed up for Instagram. I pushed things aside. I made room. It was easy. I ignored Tumblr, and Facebook had never interested me. But Instagram . . .

I started off being RichardPrince4.

I quickly recognized the device was a way to get the lead out. If Twitter was editorial . . . then Instagram was advertising.

A gazillion people.

Besides cats, dogs, and food, people put out photos of themselves and their friends all the time, every day, and, yes, some people put themselves out twice on Mondays. I started “following” people I knew, people I didn’t know, and people who knew each other. It was innocent. I was on the phone talking to Jessica Hart and had just looked at her “gram” feed before picking up the phone. I asked about a picture she posted of herself standing in front of a fireplace wearing what looked to be ski clothes and big fur boots. The post was in black and white, head to toe, full figure, and behind her, above the mantel, there was a portrait of Brigitte Bardot. I told her someone should make a portrait out of this photo. She said, “Why don’t you?”

Come to think of it.

I’m not sure if she knew about my Family Tweets. She might have. I think we even talked about them after she came to my studio for a visit. After I got off the phone, I thought about her suggestion: “Why don’t you?”

I went back to her feed and screen saved her “winter” photo. I sent the save to my computer, pressed “empty subject,” pressed “actual size,” and waited for it to appear in a doc, checked the margins and crop, clicked on the doc, and sent it to my printer. My inkjet printer printed out an 11 × 14-inch photo on paper . . . I took the photo out of the tray and put it on my desk.

Looking at Jessica’s feed reminded me of 1984. Except this time I had more than five photos to choose from. I went back to her feed a second time. I scrolled thru maybe a hundred photos she had posted and looked at all the ones that included her. The one in front of the fireplace was still the best.

Walk on.

Jessica had tons of followers. Thousands. And a lot of them had “commented” on what she posted. I read all the comments that had been posted under her fireplace photo. There was one comment I wish I could have gotten in my original screen save. When you screen save an Instagram image, you can get maybe three, four comments in the save if you include the person’s “profile” icon that appears on the upper left of the page. I decided early on I wanted the person’s icon to be part of the save. But what else could I save?

I went back to my desk and kept staring at the printout of Jessica. What do I do now?

I didn’t want to paint it.

I didn’t want to mark it.

I didn’t want to add a sticker.

Whatever I did, I wanted it to happen INSIDE and before the save. I wanted my contribution to be part of the “gram.” I didn’t want to do anything physical to the photograph after it was printed.

Five cents.

I went back to the comment.

I commented on Jessica’s photo in front of the fireplace, but my comment was one of hundreds and showed up outside, way down at the bottom . . . out of the frame.

If I wanted my comment to show up near her picture . . . how?

I got lucky.

I’m terrible when it comes to the tech side of technology. But somehow I figured out how to hack into Jessica’s feed and swipe away all her comments and add my own so that it would appear under her post. The hack is pretty simple and anyone can do it. You hit the gray comment bar and pick a comment you don’t want and swipe with your finger to the left, and a red exclamation mark appears. You press on the exclamation mark and four things come onto the bottom of your screen.

1. Why are you reporting this comment?

2. Spam or Scam

3. Abusive Content

4. Cancel

To get rid of the comment, you click on Spam or Scam. It’s gone. Just like that I could control other people’s comments and Jessica’s own comments. And the comment that I added could now be near enough to Jessica’s photo that when I screen saved it, my comment would “show up.” Make sense? It’s about as good as I can do. What can I say? Einstein and cuckoo . . .

So now . . .

So now I was in.

Waiting to follow.

Richardprince4 would appear at the bottom of Jessica’s final portrait. My comment, whatever it would be, would always be the last comment. The last say so. Say so. That’s good. That could work. My “in” was what I ended up saying. And what I would say would be everything I ever knew . . . what I knew now and what I would know in the future.

Tell Me Everything.

Finnegans Wake meets MAD magazine.

Zoot Horn Rollo. You seem to be where I belong (emoji).

The first three portraits I did were of women I knew. Or almost knew. Jessica, I knew. Pam Anderson, I knew. Sky Ferreira? I didn’t know, but was following her and had been reading about her new album and seeing posters of her album broadsided on sheets of ply on the Bowery and on Lafayette near Bond. I wasn’t sure what I was doing or why I chose these three. I just had lunch with Pam and had seen Jessica in LA. Sky, I was following because she seemed interesting. There was nothing more. No attraction. No fan. No desire. No date. No wanting anything from her. And the pictures she posted were candid, boozy, and seemed to be letting the viewer in on some kind of backstage diary. She also had thousands of people following her, and I could tap into her followers and follow them. I can do that? I didn’t even know I could follow the followers. Like I said, the hardware was all new . . . and I was just getting started.

The shoreline is never the same. (Like it should be.)

When I first started getting rid of comments, I thought the person whose comments I was getting rid of might get pissed. “What happened to all my comments?” I found out quickly that “the getting rid of” only affected my feed. The deleted comments didn’t affect the followers’ feeds. Their comments were still there even though they were gone from mine. All that happened is that MY comment showed up below their photo. Was I allowed? Yes. I guess so. It’s hard to explain. But the process is open, and at the moment, it’s the way it works and anyone and everyone can do it.

The language I started using to make “comments” was based on Birdtalk. Non sequitur. Gobbledygook. Jokes. Oxymorons. “Psychic Jujitsu.”

Some of the language came directly from TV. If I’m selecting a photo of someone and adding a comment to their gram and an advertisement comes on . . . I use the language that I hear in the ad. Inferior language. It works. It sounds like it means something. What’s it mean? I don’t know. Does it have to mean anything at all? I think about James Joyce confessing to Nora Barnacle. I think about opening up to page 323 of Finnegans Wake. Then I think about notes and lyricism. Policy. Whisper. Murmurs. Mantra. Quotation. Advice.

Chamber Music.

Didn’t Duke Ellington say, “If it sounds good, it is good”? He did say that, didn’t he?

Who are these people?

Larry Clark, Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe take great portraits. I’ve watched Larry take photos and I don’t know how he does it. I wouldn’t know where to begin. I could never go up to a stranger and ask them if I could take their picture. I’ve done it maybe two or three times and didn’t enjoy it. That part of art is in Larry. It isn’t in me. I feel more comfortable in my bedroom looking thru Easyriders and poring over pictures of “girlfriends” that are right there on the page. Page after page. Looking. Wondering. Anticipating. Hoping. What will be on the next page? Will I find a girlfriend that I really like? That’s my relationship with what’s out there. It’s as close as I want to get. That’s what’s in me.

IG is a bedroom magazine.

I can start out with someone I know and then check out who they follow or who’s following them, and the rabbit hole takes on an out-of-body experience where you suddenly look at the clock and it’s three in the morning. I end up on people’s grids that are so far removed from where I began, it feels psychedelic. Further. I’m on the bus. I feel like I’m part of Kesey’s merry tribe. I’m reminded of Timothy Leary’s journals, which I purchased years ago from John McWhinnie, and the concentration that came over me when I discovered his hand-drawn map of his escape from jail. How he literally shimmied on a wire that had been strung up from an outer utility building to the perimeter prison wall . . . and how I would trace with my finger his overland express to Tangier, where he hooked up with Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and spent the next year seeking asylum in different parts of North Africa, ultimately ending up in Switzerland where his ex-wife ratted him out, and how fighting extradition took up the rest of his life. Wow, now it’s four in the morning.

Tune In, Turn On, Come Out.

“Trolling.”

If you say so.

I never thought about it that way. The word has been used to describe part of the process of making my new portraits. I guess so. It’s not like I’m on the back of a boat throwing out chum.

“We’re going to need a bigger boat.”

Included.

Everyone is fair.

Game.

An even playing field.

“Outside my cabin door. Said the girl from the red river shore.”

Men. Women. Men and women. Men and men. Women and women. Blacks Whites Latinos Asian Arabs Jews Straights Gays Transgender. Tattoos and scars. Hairy.

I don’t really know the score.

The ones I adore.

I just know where I belong.

“Oh, there I go. From a man to a memory.”

How do I tell you who or why I pick? I can’t. It would be like telling you why I pick that joke. WHY THAT ONE? There’s thousands of jokes. I read them all. It takes days to read just one joke book. 101 of the World’s Funniest Jokes. Days. If I get one, find one, like one, out of the 101, it’s a good day.

People on IG lead me to other people. I spend hours surfing, saving, and deleting. Sometimes I look for photos that are straightforward portraits (or at least look straightforward). Other times I look for photos that would only appear, or better still . . . exist on IG. Photos that look the way they do because they’re on the gram. Selfies? Not really. Self-portraits. I’m not interested in abbreviation. I look for portraits that are upside down, sideways, at arm’s length, taken within the space that a body can hold a camera phone. What did de Kooning say? “When I spread my arms out, it’s all the space I need.”

At first I wasn’t sure how to print the portrait. I tried different surfaces, different papers. Presentation? Frame? Matt? Shadowbox? I tried them all. Finally this past spring my lab introduced me to a new canvas, one that was tightly wound, a surface with hardly any tooth. Smooth to the touch. Almost as if the canvas were photo paper. It was also brilliantly white. I don’t think it could be any whiter. And . . . the way the ink jetted into the canvas was a surprise. It fused in a way that made the image slightly out of focus. Just enough. The ink was IN and ON the canvas at the same time. When I first saw the final result, I didn’t really know what I was looking at. A photographic work or a work on canvas? The surprise was perfect. Perfect doesn’t come along very often. The color that had been transferred from the file of the computer to the jet, from jet to canvas, was intense, saturated, rich. If someone I followed had blue hair, their hair looked like it had been dyed directly onto the canvas. Dye job. Rinsed. Beauty salon. It was brilliant, great color. You might call it “vibrant.” The vibe between the image and the process was “sent away for,” seamless, effortless . . . all descriptions I used to use when I tried describing my early “pens, watches, and cowboys.” (Has it really been forty years?) The ingredients, the recipe, “the manufacture,” whatever you want to call it . . . was familiar but had changed into something I had never seen before. I wasn’t sure it even looked like art. And that was the best part. Not looking like art. The new portraits were in that gray area. Undefined. In-between. They had no history, no past, no name. A life of their own. They’ll learn. They’ll find their own way. I have no responsibility. They do. Friendly monsters.

Speak for yourself.

To fit in the world takes time.

For now, all I can say is . . . they’re the only thing I’ve ever done that has made me happy.

http://www.richardprince.com/writings/bird-talk

Close

[bpoole500]

Tusk Revisited

This fall marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Tusk, Fleetwood Mac’s defiantly offbeat opus that was underappreciated in its time, even as it presaged trends in music.

After the unprecedented success of 1977’s Rumours, the Mick Fleetwood/John McVie/Christine McVie/Stevie Nicks/Lindsey Buckingham incarnation of Fleetwood Mac pretty much had carte blanche to do whatever the band wanted. A situation like that gives an artist several avenues for their potential next act.

Many acts have followed up a landmark album with “Part 2.” Think of Adele’s 25 or Michael Jackson’s Bad. The artist delivers a follow-up that’s very much in the vein of their big last album. Reviewers will tend to be less enthused, but it will sell well and produce more hit singles, usually pleasing most fans and the record label. It’s a good career move, even if the follow-up can’t help but be overshadowed by its celebrated predecessor.

Other artists respond to a significant breakthrough album by, essentially, not following it up. Perhaps a live set might emerge or some earlier recordings are repackaged for the new mass audience that came aboard for the big hit. There could be live shows. But in essence, the artist just chooses, for any of a variety of reasons, to sit it out. Look no further than the trajectory of Lauryn Hill after The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Fans usually never understand it, even if it makes sense to the artist.

And then there’s the path that Fleetwood Mac took with their follow-up to Rumours. As has been pointed out many times, there is no topping an album like Rumours, a collection that earned strong critical accolades, major sales and cross-genre airplay dominance. It’s one of those albums that, even decades later, remains a strong seller, as new generations discover it (and often access it in new ways, thanks to media evolution). Warner Bros. would certainly have been thrilled if the band had delivered Rumours II. That would have played well with fans, as well.

But that ignores the fact that Rumours was a “lightning in a bottle” moment, the kind of personal/professional alchemy that a band can’t plan. And in the case of this group, likely would not have wanted to re-live even if they could have.

Instead, the band followed the third path that acts sometimes embrace after a major success: go in an unexpected direction. No description drives record company execs to the antacid bottle more than “experimental.” Especially when its affixed to the new album of a key act. But that’s what Fleetwood Mac did with Tusk.

Buckingham is widely acknowledged as one of the guitar virtuosos of the rock world. He’s also recognized for his love of studiocraft and production experimentation. So with a blank check, the band essentially handed the wheel to their resident mad genius and let him steer them into waters that took a different path from the era-defining sound of their recent hit. The result was Tusk, a double album misunderstood at its time, that only years later would be embraced as a lunatic masterpiece.

While Buckingham was thoroughly grounded in the classic rock idiom, he listened to, and was inspired by, everything that was going on in the industry at the time. The restless energy of post-punk and the trashy electro-sheen of new wave. The fearless disregard of tradition of art rock and the sonic collage experiments of industrial music. He was inspired to go beyond what a band could produce using instruments and voices, using production not just as a facilitator, but as a sonic medium in its own right. He wrote numerous songs that sounded little like what he’d produced before and then wrapped his feverish sonic ideas around Christine and Stevie’s more traditional compositions, pushing them to unexpected places. At its core, Tusk was a major, mainstream classic rock band charting the future of alternative music.

As has been pointed out many times, Tusk often feels like the mash-up of two different albums: Buckingham’s paranoid opus, full of sharp edges and nervous tics, contrasted with the more conventional songs produced by his partners. It’s not an unfair paradigm, but even though Tusk has Buckingham’s imprimatur firmly stamped on it, it’s still definitively the work of a band. Drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie follow their guitarist’s lead and achieve the kinds of beats and rhythms necessary to execute Buckingham’s ideas, while the layers of harmonies he envisioned wouldn’t have hit with the impact they did without the unique interplay of his voice with Christine’s and Stevie’s.

Still, Buckingham did go in some startling directions. Bits of everything from rockabilly and the Beach Boys to punk and World Beat are evident in the mix, the album often presaging trends that would dominate the music scene in the decade that followed. The title track is a prime example of Buckingham’s ideas coming together in a striking manner. It boasts the sinister paranoia of many of Buckingham’s contributions, using almost tribal rhythms that referenced African sonic traditions half a decade before Paul Simon’s landmark Graceland. Married with layered harmonies, distorted guitars and an actual marching band, it was like nothing else on the charts in 1979.

“What Makes You Think You’re the One” was another moment where Buckingham managed to translate his impulses into something with commercial appeal, working nervous energy, edgy rhythms and echoes of doo wop harmonies and instrumental flourishes into an engaging stew. Throughout, Buckingham’s songs were filled with off-kilter melodies, production tricks and distortions, layers of harmonies that pushed song structures that could have been familiar into some places listeners hadn’t been before. He borrowed the economy of punk, with most of his compositions clocking in within the range of two to three minutes, often ending abruptly or on an unexpected moment of dissonance. He surrounded the songs with spacey, detached qualities, adding propulsion even to quieter moments. With titles like “The Ledge,” “Walk A Thin Line,” “I Know I’m Not Wrong,” “That’s Enough for Me” and “Not That Funny,” with unsettled lyrics and performances that communicated a certain alienation, Buckingham’s songs more dared listeners to engage with them than invited them in. It’s not what you might expect from a superstar release, but it was brave and creative.

While some critics were inclined to dismiss the more conventional tunes that Christine and Stevie composed, one of the more fascinating aspects of Tusk was seeing how Buckingham co-opted those songs to fit his vision for the album. You got Christine’s sunny SoCal pop and Stevie’s mystical rock and folk run through Buckingham’s offbeat paranoia, for some often interesting results.

Take Christine’s “Think About Me,” a charming Top 30 hit that’s often overlooked today. Buckingham’s production is drenched in the surf pop of the Beach Boys, but spikes it with fuzzy edges, jittery harmonies and wailed vocal counterpoints. Deceptively simple songs like “Over & Over,” “Brown Eyes” and “Honey Hi” took on more complex structures as Buckingham injected the emerging New Wave ethos into them, giving them layers and textures that pushed them out of Christine’s usual comfort zone, adding tension and friction that provided contrast to her cool, clean vocals. Even a gentle ballad like “Never Make Me Cry” got a jolt from the subtle pulse of a strummed electric guitar that Buckingham ran throughout.

Unsurprisingly, Stevie’s songs provided a robust canvas for Buckingham’s production work. Tusk is best remembered for hit single “Sara,” one of Stevie’s more engaging poetic explorations. Even in the edited version (which chops off nearly two minutes, including the entire second verse), it’s a beguiling mix, with Buckingham using a complex layering of harmonies that builds slowly to surround Stevie’s lead, giving an exotic charm to the mix, while he adds fuzzy touches to the edges to give the song an insistent energy. He transformed “Angel” into a harbinger of the country-pop that would come to dominate Nashville a decade later and gave a jittering, unsettling edge to the gentle “Storms” that set out a roadmap for the contemporary folk sound that was right around the corner. Most daringly, Buckingham used Stevie’s mystic rock opus “Sisters of the Moon” to pioneer the template for the dance rock that would become a staple of alternative radio.

Fans and critics didn’t know what to make of Tusk. The title track became a hit because anything that Fleetwood Mac released after Rumours would have made the Top 10. “Sara” and “Think About Me” succeeded with radio as the best examples of the band’s traditional sound melding seamlessly with Buckingham’s futurist production. But many critics at the time didn’t get the album and fans who had bought Rumours in droves didn’t embrace Tusk. It was seen as a failure and would set the stage for a retrenchment (the far more conventional Mirage (1982) and Tango in the Night (1987) would bring this chapter of the band to a close on a more commercial, mainstream note).

But Tusk has had a healthy afterlife. While it hasn’t enjoyed the long-term sales power of Rumours or the group’s eponymous 1975 album, it has remained available consistently and won over new converts over the years. Critical re-evaluations of the album, especially in the context of the ‘80s alternative revolution that followed, came to appreciate how ahead of its time Tusk was and what a crucial touchstone it became for the development of modern rock music. It grew into an “artists’ album,” one of those works cited by other musicians as one of their influences. Both “Tusk” and “Sara” have remained in regular rotation on classic rock and soft rock radio formats, while “Sisters of the Moon” developed into a cult favorite among Stevie’s loyal fans. The band included several cuts from Tusk on their various “best of” collections and incorporated them into their latter day tours to strong effect.

Tusk makes almost perfect sense when viewed from a remove of forty years. Fleetwood Mac took advantage of the opportunity that success afforded them to go out on a creative limb. And in the process, thanks to Buckingham’s feverish creativity and work ethic, helped advance the evolution of rock and alternative music.

[edward-or-ford]

Opening chapter of my new fic

So I finished the first chapter of a new fic I’ve been working on, and I thought I’d share it. Think of this as a teaser of what’s to come eventually. I’ll hold off posting anything more until I’m finished the entire fic (tentatively 12 chapters and an Epilogue), and then I’ll roll them all out in sequence. Unfortunately, I fear that this will not be for a long while. Still, I hope you like this chapter, and here’s hoping it sets the stage effectively.

This fic is in the same AU as Exposure, and is a direct sequel to A Perfect Pines Christmas, starting off just a short time after the events of that story. Reading both of those before diving in here is not a requirement, but it would be helpful.

Non-graphic smut is alluded to here, but the remainder of this fic will definitely be NSFW.

March 2017

Lunch period was drawing to a close at Piedmont High School. The atmosphere was one of excitement and anticipation, typical for a Friday afternoon. Students reluctantly put down their phones and parted ways with friends, scurrying in different directions into hallways that were steadily filling up. There was just one more class left until the weekend.

Dipper Pines had just come from his locker, and was threading his way through the corridors teeming with teenage humanity, heading towards his senior Honors Physics class. He was approaching the classroom door when he heard a familiar screech, rapidly approaching from behind him.

“Diiiiiiiiiiiiiii … pperrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!”

He grinned and stepped to the side of the door, getting himself out of the way of his classmates.before turning in time to face his twin sister Mabel, who was rapidly barrelling down on him.

The teenage girl’s long hair billowed out behind her as she practically sprinted towards her brother, flagrantly in violation of school rules and common sense. She had to jump and spin to try and get out of the way of a younger student unlucky enough to step into her path, causing her to crash into Dipper clumsily. He caught her before she could tumble to the floor. “Sorry!” she shouted to the startled freshman boy. “Sorry, Bro!” she exclaimed frantically to Dipper.

Few other students took much notice of the commotion. After nearly four years, stories of Mabel’s over-the-top displays of exuberance were the stuff of legend in the school and from a distance this show of shameless excitement appeared tame by her standards.

Dipper, though, could see in her eyes that this was not a routine “Mabel Moment”. She was clutching her phone tightly and waving it in his face. “It’s here!” she panted urgently. “The email from CalArts just came! Oh my gosh Dip it’s here!”

“Oh man!” Dipper held Mabel by her forearms to try to contain her quivering. “Did they say yes? Were you accepted?”

Her eyes and mouth both widened maniacally. “I don’t know yet! I didn’t open the message!” she squealed. “I didn’t want to open it without you here! I’m so scared! What if I didn’t get in?”

Dipper was well practiced in suppressing his urge to hold and embrace Mabel. In times of stress and excitement, it had always been perfectly normal for both of them as kids to express support for one another through close, physical touches. Holding hands, and even hugging one another, came naturally to them, and the instinct hadn’t faded as the years passed. But as they grew into adolescence, the twins had to learn to force down their urges to be touchy in that sort of way out in public. It was necessary because the odd appearance of affection and closeness between siblings would attract unwanted attention from everyone else. The last thing they needed was suspicion and whispers that the Pines twins were doing a lot more together than a brother and sister were supposed to do. It would be very damaging for “twincest” rumours about them to start circulating around the school.

Particularly because such rumours would be entirely true.

For over a year and a half, since the summer prior to their junior year, the Pines twins had quietly been connected on a romantic level, emotionally and physically. In the privacy of their home, they could freely complete each other. But elsewhere, they obviously had to be much more careful.

Dipper pulled his bouncing sister away from the classroom door until they were several yards away, standing next to a line of lockers. Students continued to hurry past them, but no one was stopping to listen to them.

“Mabel, you can’t open that message! Not now!” he muttered sharply, trying to be quiet without looking like he was trying to be quiet. He pushed Mabel’s arms down so that she couldn’t look at her phone’s screen.

“Whaaat?!” she whined in sincere confusion. “I have to! You didn’t wait when you got your acceptance email a few days ago!”

“Think about it!” Dipper fired back, desperately trying to signal to Mabel that she needed to calm down. “This is the moment we find out if-” he took a fast glance around it make sure they were not being listened to and lowered his voice, “... if we’ll be together in college. This can only go one of two ways. If you didn’t get in, that’ll be awful, we’ll both be really sad, and I’ll have to hug and kiss you right here in front of everybody. But if you did get in, that’ll be great, we’ll both be really happy, and I’ll have to hug and kiss you right here in front of everybody!” He leaned in, staring directly into Mabel’s eyes for understanding. “You see the problem?”

Mabel’s expression was a combination of grudging understanding of her brother’s logic and indignant outrage at the injustice of her current plight. “Dipper, if I don’t read it, how the heckity-heck am I going to get through the next class?”

Dipper was genuinely sympathetic. He really wanted to know as well, but he also knew how emotional both of them were going to be. This just wasn’t the right place or time. “Mabes ....”

“I’m serious!” she cried. “I’ve got an hour and a half of Statistics, man! Statistics! Especially in that class, I can’t last that long without looking! I have to know!”

The crowds of fellow teenagers were thinning out, the remaining students moving swiftly past them. Dipper glanced at his watch. Smiling grimly to himself, he stared at the floor for a long moment.

“So what are we doing?” Mabel complained.

After several more seconds, Dipper lifted his face, looking back at Mabel with a set jaw and apologetic mischief in his eyes. “We go to our classes, and then we read the email after school,” he replied coyly. Then he snatched the phone from Mabel’s hand and bolted for his classroom door a few yards away. Before Mabel could recover, he was through the door at precisely the moment the bell started ringing. “Sorry!” he called back his sister, and then he was safely inside before Mabel’s fingers could grab hold of him.

“Cutting it a little close, aren’t you, Mr. Pines?” his teacher observed dryly.

“Sorry,” Dipper said again, hurrying quickly to his desk. Slipping into his seat, he noticed Mabel continuing to hover menacingly in the open doorway, and suspected the apoplectic expression of rage on her face was at least partially genuine. The rest of the students in Physics class giggled at Dipper’s notorious twin as he grinned and waved, letting her see him slip her phone into his backpack.

Dipper’s physics teacher was known for his sardonic attitude. He opened his arms in a grand, welcoming gesture to the immobile teenager standing in the doorway of his classroom. “Will you be joining us as well, Miss Pines?” he deadpanned.

“No sir,” she grumbled in reply, ignoring the snickers of amusement from Dipper’s classmates. Shooting her twin an over-exaggerated look of intent to exact vengeance, she marched off in a huff, now late for her class.

By the time school let out, Mabel’s vengeance-seeking impulses had calmed down to the point that Dipper only received a sharp punch on the arm for his insolent behavior. She allowed her phone to remain securely in Dipper’s book bag, away from temptation, as they hurried out the doors of the school and onto Magnolia Avenue.

They headed home from Piedmont’s town center as quickly as they could, sprinting through the winding streets and paths of the middle-to-upperclass neighborhoods. The route home from school was uphill virtually the entire way, a fact which Mabel complained about more than once between labored gasps for air. But the urgency of the moment spurred her on, and Dipper struggled to keep up with her as cool spring temperatures helped to offset the sweat they built up.

They were panting heavily as Mabel waved the white ceramic band on her ring finger over the front door lock. It beeped and the deadbolt slid open, allowing Mabel to stumble over the threshold and into the foyer. Dipper followed, dropping his backpack off of his shoulder to the floor.

A voice called out from the home office at the back of the house. “Is that you, kids?”

“... Yeah … Dad! ...” Dipper gasped back, leaning over with his hands on his knees.

Their father’s job in the IT department of a San Francisco tech firm often allowed him to work remotely, so it was not unusual for him to be home on a weekday. “What’s with all the huffing and puffing?” he asked. He was probably still sitting at his desk, but could obviously hear the twins’ struggles to regain their breath.

“... CalArts … decision … need to read ...” Mabel panted loudly in reply.

After fishing Mabel's phone from his backpack, Dipper staggered into the adjacent living room and collapsed onto the sofa. Mabel wearily took the phone from Dipper as she flopped down unceremoniously beside him, unlocking the screen. Dipper’s attention didn’t leave the device in Mabel’s hands as she switched to her email app.

Her gaze was fixed on the screen, an unopened message from “California Institute of the Arts - Department of Admissions” at the top of the inbox. “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” she repeated over and over, almost as a mantra. She continued to breathe hard, now seemingly more out of panic than exhaustion. Holding a shaking finger over the message, twice she brought her finger to within a millimeter of the surface of her phone’s screen, only to pull it back.

“Aaaaaaaaagh!” she finally screamed. “I can’t do it! .... Dip, please …” she put a palm over her eyes as she handed the phone over. “Can you just … just read it! Please!!” Dipper took the phone gently, then tapped the message. Eyes still squeezed closed, Mabel groped for Dipper’s free hand and gripped tightly.

For a long moment, Dipper stared at the screen in silence. Soberly, he started reading. “It says ... ‘Dear, Mabel’ …” Then his voice betrayed the smile that was exploding on his face. “‘I am delighted to inform you of your acceptan-’’”

The remainder was cut off by a loud ecstatic screech. Mabel ripped her phone back out of Dipper’s grasp and leaped to her feet. After examining the screen for a second, she screamed even louder and started jumping around uncontrollably. Dipper had also sprung up, and with a huge laugh of elation he grabbed his sister around her waist, holding on for dear life as she thrashed excitedly. She threw her arms around his neck and squeezed tightly, tears of joy starting to stream down her cheeks. Dipper squeezed back, lifting Mabel off the floor and spinning her around, all the while letting loose celebratory hoots and hollers.

And then as Dipper lowered Mabel’s feet back to the floor, their mouths came together. It was a smooth and natural action, passionate and completely instinctual. Kissing one another with loving enthusiasm was exactly what their emotions demanded they do at that moment, and they happily complied with the demand.

The sounds of soft lip smacks and satisfied humming were interrupted by a soft beep. From the corner of his eye, Dipper saw his father, standing in the archway between the foyer and the living room, and let out a startled yelp. The twins both jumped from the unexpected sight of someone watching them together.

Their father had obviously been videoing the scene with his phone. He lowered it down to waist level and awkwardly kept his attention focused in the general direction of the device. “Uhhh … sorry,” he mumbled. “As soon as Mabel said what was up, I just figured your mother would want to see this when she gets home. I started recording when … you had just sat down.” He idly swiped the screen, refusing to look up. “I suppose … I can edit the last few seconds off that …” he grimaced, one side of his lower lip twitching, “... yeah ...”

The twins were blushing in embarrassment, Mabel hiding her face in her hands. Dipper began stammering in apology. “Dad, we didn- … I mean, I didn’t mean … We-”

“It's okay,” his father quickly interjected with a wave of his hand, his own face a little redder than normal, as well. “Don’t worry about it. I suppose it was understandable…” he continued, a half smile twitching his cheek, and finally looking Mabel in the eye, “... given the circumstances! Congratulations, Kiddo!” He pocketed his phone and approached her swiftly with outstretched arms. “I’m so happy you got in to the school you wanted!”

Delighted, Mabel let out a high-pitched peep and hugged her father back. “Thanks, Daddio!” she cried out, obviously relieved to be ignoring the uncomfortable moment. “I would never have had such a good portfolio without my Mac and Wac!” she squealed, referring to her Apple laptop and Wacom drawing tablet she had received as a Christmas present a few months before. “You and Mom helped me so much!”

“Me too, Dad,” Dipper added as their father loosened his hug on Mabel. “There’s no way I’d have been accepted either, not if you and Mom hadn’t got me my laptop and GoPro cameras.” He smiled gratefully as his father gave him a quick squeeze on the shoulder.

“You both deserved those things,” their father replied proudly as he stepped back, “but you didn’t get in because of them. Your portfolios were due only a month after you got those gifts, so your applications were mostly based on what you created without all the new technology. You both got in on your own merits!”

The praise felt good. The twins gazed at one another fondly, then tentatively looked back to their father. It was obvious that they wanted to resume what their father had interrupted. The awkward silence that followed always happened when the Pines family had to openly address the unorthodox nature of the twins’ relationship together.

“So,” their father said finally, the natural tone of authority returning to his voice, “you obviously get to … stay together now. Even after you leave home.”

“Yeah,” replied Mabel, avoiding direct eye contact while twisting a finger around a lock of hair.

She looked vulnerable, and Dipper fought down the impulse to insert himself between her and their father. When their parents had first become aware of the taboo relationship on Christmas Day more than a year earlier, their father had been initially angry enough to instill genuine fear in the twins. Enough that they immediately ran away, almost succumbing to hypothermia in the unusually frigid winter temperatures that had occurred that night. And even after all that time, even after both parents had long ago demonstrated that they could reluctantly tolerate the notion that their children were in love with each other, Dipper’s urge to protect Mabel from their father kept coming back. He hated that he still had that reaction.

“When you applied to CalArts, both of you put your names in for residence,” he said to the twins. “You still thinking that it’s a good idea to live on campus?”

Mabel shrugged. “They say the workload is super heavy the first year,” she said. “If we want to get in the studios after hours, we totes have to be close by.” Dipper agreed, nodding slowly.

“You think both of you can handle that?” her father remarked, a skeptical look on his face. “Given what you guys were …” he grimaced as he waved his hand vaguely back and forth between his children, “... just doing?”

Dipper cringed. “Yeah, we know,” he admitted. “When we applied …” he looked to Mabel, “I actually didn’t think there was any chance of me getting accepted into CalArts.” Mabel sighed at her brother’s typical lack of self confidence in his artistic skills. “But now … yeah, we have to really think about how we handle this.”

“No one knows us in Los Angeles,” Mabel suggested hopefully. “Maybe we just … don’t tell anyone we’re brother and sister?”

“Mabel, how suspicious would it look for your boyfriend to have the same last name as you?” said Dipper. “Or what if we accidentally slip up to someone, like one of us says something about ‘our’ parents, or ‘our’ home?”

“Not to mention that you can’t lie to the administrative staff,” added their father. “It’s a small school. There will be employees there who definitely will be able to see that you both have the same permanent address. Heck, they’ll know you have the same birthday! For someone to then see you together as a couple…” he shook his head, “... not a good idea!”

“Oh, Poop-a-doop!” sulked Mabel. “I was hoping somehow that we could be, I don’t know … free-er … or something!”

Dipper glanced apprehensively at his father, who had closed his eyes and taken a deep breath. After a long pause, the man relaxed and spoke up. “Look kids … even if your Mom and I are not exactly thrilled about your feelings … I hope you know we’ll stick with you, no matter what ...” Dipper felt a little surge of gratitude towards his father, and he could tell Mabel felt the same. “... but if you go to college together, and this thing you two have is going to continue, you’re not going to have a safe place like here at home to go to. Because of that, you’re going to want to take risks.” He gave a meaningful look to Mabel, and then to Dipper. “And when you take risks, eventually you’re going to get caught! I don’t ever want to see that happen to you, and neither does your Mom.” The twins nodded gravely, thinking about how their lives would change without the sanctuary of their home to retreat to for privacy.

Then their father clapped his hands together loudly, making both his children jump. He grinned at them as he rubbed his palms together. “But that’s not going to happen until the end of the summer,” he proclaimed. “For now, my kids both got accepted to their dream college, and we are going to celebrate!. As soon as your mother gets home from work, we’re all going out for dinner tonight!”

“It’s hard to believe we’ll still be able to stay together this fall,” Mabel hummed.

“Yeah!” Dipper sighed as Mabel rubbed her cheek on his shoulder. “I didn’t want to dwell on it, but I really thought we’d be going our separate ways after this summer.”

The twins were laying on their stomachs beside one another atop Dipper’s bed, their laptops in front of them with the letters of acceptance from CalArts on their respective screens. They had already said goodnight to their parents, after the family had returned with full stomachs from a nice celebratory meal at a local seafood restaurant. Dipper had changed into his sleeping shorts and a loose t-shirt, and Mabel had joined him in the privacy of his room after she had gotten into her own oversized nightshirt.

“I’m still mad that you got accepted before I did!” Mabel grumbled with a pouty grin.

Dipper chuckled. “I’m sure they weren’t sent in any kind of order. They said that the different departments would send out their notices on their own schedules. The Art and Technology program probably just had more applicants, that might be why they took longer for you.” He nudged Mabel’s head with his shoulder. “You shouldn’t have worried anyways. Your marks are fine, and your application portfolio was amazing!” Then he let out a sigh. “A lot better than mine, that’s for sure!”

“Don’t be a dummy, Dummy!” Mabel retorted, poking Dipper and pointing at the message on the screen of her brother’s laptop. “The proof’s right there! Accepted into the ‘Integrated Media’ program! Of course they loved your sample video productions! You’re gonna get so good at making your weirdness and science-y programs.”

There was a long moment of silence that followed, both twins staring at their laptop screens. Ever the worrier, Dipper was considering his and Mabel's future together. But he was also wondering why Mabel had gone quiet, as well.

“What’re you thinking about?” he asked, not really surprised that Mabel had asked the same question at precisely the same time.

They grinned at their uncanny “twinstinct” and laughed softly. But then Dipper exhaled, his smile disappearing quickly. “You know, Dad was right about how hard this is gonna be,” he sighed. “When we go off to college, I love that we’ll still be together. But …” his voice trailed off and he fidgeted bashfully.

A corner of Mabel’s mouth twitched up. “But what?” she prompted slyly.

Dipper sighed. “We’ll be together, but when will we be able to, you know … be together?”

Mabel’s smirk widened. “Why, whatever do you mean, dear brother?” she asked with mock innocence. Dipper glared back, trying and completely failing to show irritation at Mabel's intentional obtuseness.

She raised a comical eyebrow. “Are you referring to how you’re going to satisfy those nasty carnal desires? Afraid you won’t be able to keep your hands off me?” Her face broke into an enormous toothy grin. “Oh Bay-by!” Mabel purred with an atrocious, yet still somehow sultry, British accent. “Do I make you horny, Baby? Do I?”

Wincing in apparent pain, Dipper whined, “Mabelllllllll please don-”

But the homage to one of Mabel’s favorite cheesy 90s movie series would not be interrupted. Impossibly, her smile stretched even wider. “Do I make you … raaandy?” Both of her eyebrows were now dancing suggestively. “Yeaaaah Baby!!”

Dipper tried to swallow down anything that might encourage the silliness to continue. “I’m just saying …  Dad had a point this afternoon! We’re basically always going to be in public! We’re even going to be living with other roommates in residence. It’s going to be hard to make sure we’re ever in a place private enough for us to kiss … or even hold hands,” he said as he idly squeezed his fingers into her palm. “... let alone … more.”

Mabel gripped his hand back. “But if we were to go to different schools, we’d have none of each other,” she replied fondly. “I don’t know about you, Bro-Beau, but I’d rather have you close and take whatever I can get, instead of being far apart and getting nuthin’ at all!”

After thinking about it Mabel’s way, Dipper nodded. “Yeah, me too,” he admitted reluctantly.

“And maybe after first semester,” Mabel added, “if we find we don’t need to be on campus quite as much, we might get a place to ourselves. There’s a big neighborhood of houses and apartment buildings in Santa Clarita right around the campus. Maybe we could try to rent.” She pulled Dipper by the chin to make him face her. “But to start, we’ve just got to keep control of our …” she fanned her face lightly, “... desperate longings!!! ... for one another.”

Dipper continued to nod slowly in agreement as he thought about Mabel’s plan. Then he smiled in devilish admiration. “Who are you? You look like Mabel, but I don’t think she could ever be so mature about this!”

“I’ll have you know I am mature in everything I do!” Mabel replied haughtily, her expression indignant as she proceeded to place the tip of her index finger between her lips and slather on a thick layer of saliva. Before Dipper could register what she was doing, she nonchalantly inserted the moist digit into her brother’s ear. “Totally mature!” she remarked as she twisted her finger to apply the “wet willy” as deeply as possible.

“AAAAAACK!” Dipper squawked, thrashing about in that completely adorkable way that Mabel found to be so cute. “Mabel, that is disgusting!!” he cried out, unable to suppress a laugh as he clawed at his ear, while Mabel basked in the glow of her latest victory in their playful battles of one-upmanship.

When Dipper had dried a satisfactory amount of spit from his ear canal, he gave a pensive look to his sister. “So … what were you thinking about?”

Mabel waved dismissively. “Ahhh, it wasn’t anything! Fuggetaboutit!”

Dipper examined her face closely. “Mabellllllll …” he accused, scolding her for obviously lying to him.

After a quick flinch of irritation at her own continued failure to fib effectively, she exhaled. “I’m sorry, Dip! I just … I can’t stop wonderin’ … you always wanted to go to a nerd school. It was always your dream to go to a place like MIT, and you were actually accepted to Caltech.” She lowered her eyes. “Do you really want to go to CalArts? Or did you just apply … because I want to go there?”

Dipper shrugged easily. “Hey, I’ve always wanted to make a science and paranormal TV show, remember? If I can get the skills and experience to get really good, maybe self-produce my program and publish it on YouTube, get some subscribers, that’s about the perfect way to jump-start my career in that direction. I might not get the chance to ever do it again in the future.” His shrug deepened, and he grinned guiltily. “And ... the thought being able to stay close to you at the same time … I guess it was a nice motivation, too.”

His sister didn’t look mollified. Dipper realized with a start that he had pretty much confirmed Mabel's fear.

He tried to explain more seriously. “Okay … I guess I have kind of changed my goals … and yeah, it’s because of you. But look, I think I can be good at this program, and I think I’m going to like it! And even if I’m wrong, nothing is going to happen with school that can’t be fixed. Even if I’ve really misjudged this, even if this plan is a big mistake … I can always re-apply to another school and start again with a more technical program the following year.” He leaned in to kiss her temple sweetly. “But Mabel, being near you is really important to me, too. More important than anything! And if I have to change my plans a bit to make that happen, then I have to do it! It's a choice I'm happy to make!”

Mabel’s eyes misted over. “You sure you’re not gonna resent me?”

“How could I?” he answered without hesitation, gently taking her hand in his own and clinking his glossy ebony NFC ring onto her contrasting ring of gleaming white. Dipper’s Christmas gifts from a few months before were always on their right hands when they were out in public, but as was their habit they had moved them onto their left ring fingers at home. “You’re my Mabel forever,” he murmured quietly. “Remember?”

For a moment, Mabel could do nothing but allow the mist in her eyes to develop into full-fledged tears.

“D’AWWWW!” she finally exclaimed, flinging her arms around Dipper’s neck and pulling her face close to his. Dipper was knocked off his elbows by the lunge, and the twins collapsed onto the mattress as Mabel attacked Dipper’s mouth with her own.

Dipper happily responded, snaking his hands around his sister’s body and squeezing as he returned the kiss. As they sighed and moaned through the passionate liplock, Dipper wanted to get comfortable so they could keep stay pressed together for as long as possible. He relaxed his neck and gently guided both of them downwards so they could rest their heads on the bed.

They had forgotten about their laptops until they both bumped their skulls down onto their respective keyboards. Mabel grunted impatiently, glaring up at her screen at the “Reply-to” field on her email program, where random characters were now littered. “Ah, 'Bleeblephlepitappleschneblitz’ to you, too!” she grumbled, hurriedly pulling herself from Dipper so she could slap the screen of her MacBook down. In one smooth motion she stretched down to put the computer on the floor, then smirked and coquettishly posed for her brother, laying on her side facing him.

Grinning at Mabel’s enthusiasm, Dipper didn’t even close the lid of his own computer. He grabbed the big Dell by its front corner with one hand and swung it over to his desk, then turned back to Mabel and gently placed his palm on her cheek.

“A whole new part of our lives begins after this summer,” Dipper murmured tenderly, the smile on his face growing. “And now we know we get to do it together, same as always.” He blinked and shook his head slightly, adoration for the love of his life plainly written all over him. “How did I get so lucky to have you?”

Mabel sniffed and felt her eyes moisten, her brother’s sap never failing to turn on her waterworks. It made it hard for her to force a sassy retort. “That’s not luck,” she replied suavely. “That’s ‘The Power of Mabel’, and it works in ways you can’t imagine!”

“Yeah?” Dipper breathed, gulping as Mabel leaned forward and began nuzzling his neck. “I think I have an okay imagination!”

The nuzzle turned into a soft bite, and Dipper drew a shuddering breath as his eyes closed.

“Buster,” Mabel murmured into Dipper’s ear, “imagination is my department! And I’m gonna show you a little of how my imagination works!”

The twins proceeded to celebrate their good fortune. Their sleepwear was quickly disposed of, and over the course of the following hour, they used their bodies to fully demonstrate the love they felt for one another. Ecstatic noises escaped from their throats, moans and cries that were stifled by each others’ mouths. They whispered expressions of love and endless devotion to each other, staring deeply into one another’s eyes as they approached their climaxes. They gave everything they were to each other, writhing together passionately, their heaving bodies merged in gentle caresses and desperate clutches. Finally, exhausted and satisfied, they snuggled together and drifted quickly to sleep, basking in the knowledge that they were free and secure to love one another, despite their taboo relationship.

The bedrooms were Dipper’s and Mabel’s sanctuaries. For over a year, their parents had allowed them to continue their affair, reluctantly acknowledging the twins’ love for one another. The conditions set for this arrangement were that the twins would always use birth control, they would restrict their attention to each other to within their home, and that for the sake of their parents they would be discreet in the house. The twins knew this arrangement was more than fair, that they were being shown far more understanding and tolerance than they had any right to expect before they were discovered. They had genuine gratitude to their parents, and never wanted to disrespect them. Because they knew that it would make their mother and father really uncomfortable if they flaunted their relationship, they always tried to be as quiet as they could be. As long as the young couple kept their lovemaking to themselves within their rooms, they knew they were safe.

Or so they thought.

On the evening of this college acceptance celebration, Dipper did one specific thing differently when he and Mabel were together in his room. It was an unremarkable action. There was no reason for Dipper to have thought anything about it.

When he had wanted his laptop out of the way and off of the bed, he did not take the time to close the lid and put it to sleep. He simply moved it quickly to his desk.

As a result, the computer was open and active, its screen facing the direction that Dipper had left it when he abruptly placed it there.

Which meant the laptop’s webcam was pointed directly at Dipper’s bed.

And as the twins made love, oblivious to anything other than themselves, the laptop’s network activity light was flashing constantly the entire time.

So I hope you can see where I’m going here: this story is not going to be typical Pinecest. I will be delving into some very uncomfortable places, and I imagine this fic will not be everyone’s cup of tea. You are hereby forewarned.

That said, I hope that you trust me that I’m going to do my best to write an interesting and dramatic story, and that my primary focus remains the incredible relationship dynamic between Dipper and Mabel. I may push the envelope, but I never lose sight of that.

I’ll keep you up to date on when I’m ready to post the rest.

[angelic-guardienne]

It’s 12:30 AM and I’m super tired and still have homework to do and have to get up for school in less than six hours but my brain is whirring entirely too fast. 

A few days ago I made a post about the bros being relatable, and in the tags I said Prompto specifically. 

And me? I’m so angry. I’m so angry. I know I should be forgiving, but I’m so tired of it. I’m so tired.

Read more bc I’m just -- too much. 

TL;DR: Basically I just rant for entirely too long about shitty parenting things, then connect my own experiences to Prompto’s at the veeeery end, followed by “You can’t choose your blood, but you can choose your family” and how both Prompto and I did that.

Reason I said Prompto specifically? Terrible parents. Parents that only care distantly, if at all. Parents that don’t really try.

I suppose it’s a little rude for me to say such things...

I’m just angry. See, for context, my whole life has been between two households cause my parents pretty much hate each other (and whenever I say “hate” they say that they don’t hate each other but that’s beside the point). I spend the week with my mom because she lives closer to my school, and then on weekends I go over to my dad’s.

My mom is golden, more than so. Maybe it’s because we spend so much time together, we’re just that close, she’s pretty much my best friend, she loves me enough for two people, five people. (she’s been a single mom the whole time she’s been raising kids cause my older brother’s father didn’t stick around either, which just makes my mom that much more amazing to me because she raised two kids pretty much by herself)

My dad?

With me, I bottle up things way too much so there’s always that one thing, that super small thing that always breaks the bottle, the last straw that breaks the camel’s back, that’s how I handle like 95% of everything I deal with (unhealthy, yeah, but that’s another thing for another time)

And the bottle bursting always happens whenever I’m in a good point, as in I have a bit of motivation and my grades are good and I’m just generally not as depressed and that bone-deep, soul-deep exhaustion I feel isn’t as harrowing. It’s like the plot of life takes a sudden left turn straight off of a cliff.

The little thing this time was my flute.

Y’all know I play the flute. Y’all know I’m in marching band. 

About two-ish months ago, I took my flute in for repairs, ‘cause it was garbage and didn’t play any notes, and I wanted it for marching band season so I just. Took it in for repairs, that was July? More than two months. whatever, so I got a call saying I could pick it up this week. 

Went over to the shop...

Repairs came out to be $203. Like I said, garbage flute. Buuuut way back when I sent it off originally, my dad was prepared to lay down $200 so that it could be paid for -- as in, there was a pre-payment system so that if the repairs cost $200 or less, they’d already be paid for, but if it was over that amount they’d have to get customer approval before beginning transactions and whatnot.

(Of course it’d be $3 over the line... but anyways)

So I’m like, cool, I’ll just call my dad and he can pay for it and I can pick up the flute, it’ll be great, right? 

Nope. (and here, if this was a verbal story, I’d pop my “p” just because of how simply and quickly he turned me down and how infuriated I am about it)

The basic rundown of what he said was that no, I wasn’t going to get my flute until next week (this week, now) and that I wouldn’t have it by Saturday (a truly important date for me b/c it was my last marching band competition, I wanted to have a playable flute for that ((and I ended up having to use my expensive ass concert flute for that event, anyways))) and that I might not even get it next (this) week because I was low on his priority list.

I probably sound like a brat but -- his daughter? Fucking low on his priority list?

He gave me a hard time when I said I should be at least second on the list, and because I’m a little shit I just took it with a tight smile and an “okay, see you next weekend, love you too, bye.”

And like -- god, he’s been doing this shit for my entire life. I guess it just took until now for me to finally see it. To say the least he’s very poor at keeping his word with me.

(Once my mom said we could go to the movies together to see Spiderman: Homecoming. She promised me we would go. Come the day of, we were running on a bit of a tight schedule due to unforeseen circumstances, and even though I told her that it was alright and we didn’t have to go see the movie, she still took us to see it because she promised. She made time for a basically three hour outing (four, I think, we may have went out to eat) because she promised me that we would go see that movie.) 

((My dad’s never done anything like that. Once, when I was younger, he asked what I wanted, probably something for a birthday or Christmas or whatever, and I said I wanted to spend a day with him, just he and I, so we had one meal together at a restaurant and he took me back home. And me, being myself, I just ate that time up because I didn’t have any other times that I could say were ours, just ours. It’s... kinda sad.))

Every single time he doesn’t keep his word I get all broken up and just completely break down, full out sobs and all that jazz, because? Why? It’s the same thing that keeps happening. 

I’ve been making excuses for him for years, years, my entire life. I’ve been forgiving him over and over.

Because he’s not all bad. He’s really not. (And I don’t mean it sarcastically, at least I don’t think I do, cause I’m not too sure anymore) He buys me the things I want on the appropriate dates, as in holidays and birthdays. He bought me a PS4 with the help of my brother, and he bought me FFXV (also with the help of my brother) and the like. The things I wanted in that moment, if it’s close enough to a holiday, he’ll buy.

It’s the wants, but he never participates in the needs. Never, not once.

You know, when I was younger he would always say no whenever I asked to do something with my friends on the weekends? (There’s one particularly terrible experience that happened when I dared to have an outing with my friends on a Friday without letting him know) Did you know it got to the point where my friends just stopped asking if I wanted to hang out because they knew the answer would be no? 

Do you know how much that hurts?

One of my best friends (we’re estranged now) was having a birthday party for herself, and she was debating on asking me because she knew the answer would be no and she just figured that it would be better if I didn’t know about it in the first place. 

I’ll never forget the look that she gave me, the pure hesitance in her whole being, when she finally told me about the party.

You know I only hear about parties second-hand now? So much time was spent, “Did you go to so-and-so’s party?” 

“I didn’t even know so-and-so was having a party... how was it?”

“Ah... it was fun.”

“That’s good.”

It fucking hurts.

But does my dad care? No. (Sometimes I felt like he was doing that on purpose, just to make it easier on himself in the long run, not having to hassle, trying to cart me around to everyone’s birthday parties.)

But all that was a tangent. 

I don’t think my dad knows where I want to go to college, and I frankly don’t think he cares so long as he doesn’t have to pay anything.

(My reasons for believing that? I told him a while back ((he probably doesn’t remember)) that I was going to apply to both Queens University of Charlotte and Duke University. I want to go to Queens more badly ((which requires more work on my part because I’m basically in a one-income household, so scholarships)). Duke has this financial plan where, if your family makes less than a certain amount of money yearly, the school will cover a certain amount of the tuition. At the current income level and their need-based aid, my mom wouldn’t have to pay anything because my education would be completely covered by the school. Queens has no such plan as that... but it’s my preferred school, for reasons I won’t list at the moment. When I told him these things, he basically told me to “just get into Duke,” because then he won’t have to pay anything.)

Like I said, the big things, he just doesn’t want to be involved in.

He doesn’t help my mom make payments on my car, at all. He doesn’t help with school fees, at all. (I have a fun story about that one) 

When I got my permit to drive, we went driving exactly three times together (once when I first got it, and then twice when I was about to take my test for my license so he could help me parallel park). And after I got it, he called me “driving partner” ...and then hasn’t let me behind the wheel since.

My dad’s never taken off of work to support me. I’m always second place. (As a foil, my mom has taken off of work plenty of times to support me, and then worked extra to make up for it, all for me ((and bills, of course)))

I send my dad a schedule of the football games for this season, basically every time he can come see the marching band perform the show at half-time, and does he come? Not to one game. Not at all. 

I didn’t tell him about competition this weekend because (after much coercing) he’s going to the game next weekend, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get him to do something like this for two weekends in a row.

(And he told me he might not even stay to watch the show, depending on his work hours.)

When he picks me up to drive me to his house on Fridays, he won’t speak to me unless I speak first. He doesn’t ask me how my week was, nothing. The drive is just an hour of fucking silence (because he doesn’t turn the radio on with me in the car), if I don’t talk first.

He once had to pick up some food so he had a lunch for work that evening. So, with me in the car, he stopped by Chick-fil-a. (Note, I hadn’t eaten anything that day, but I hadn’t told him that.) He didn’t ask me if I wanted anything, didn’t ask me if I had eaten, didn’t even look at me. About twenty minutes down the road later, with me having to hold his food in my freaking lap because there was nowhere else to put it, he asks me if I was hungry. And when I say yes, he tells me about the leftovers in the fridge.

He makes me feel like such a nuisance whenever I even think about asking for something outside of the prompted times (again, holidays and birthdays).

I hate it so much. 

And then he feels like he can still think he plays some huge part in my life when he’ll barely speak to me when we do get to see each other. 

It’s like I, as a person, don’t even matter. It’s like all he wants is the final product of a “good daughter,” but not actually put in the work of being a father. (I once got a 96 or so on a test, and was very proud of it, but when I told him, his response was, “Why didn’t you get a 100?” I stopped telling him about my grades after that.)

If my school is doing a fundraiser and I ask him to buy something, no matter how politely I put it, he’ll tell me no. A random ass kid from the neighborhood can come to the door selling bottles of water and he’ll rush to get his wallet.

I just don’t get it. ...is it me?

But anyways... so yeah. My dad, as a parent, does the bare minimum.

To relate this all back to Final Fantasy XV as per this blog, I imagine Prompto’s parents were much the same as my dad.

They were never around. They never actually took care of him like parents should. He came home to an empty house most of the time.

And presumably they sent money, because Prompto ate fast food a lot but surely didn’t have a job, to at least show that they care a little bit.

They don’t want him to die.

So it’s the bare minimum... and Prompto, like me, just takes what he can because there’s so little, and makes excuses for the rest. 

And knowing Prompto (especially with how he reacted to having to kill Verstael), if his parents died in the fall of Insomnia, he would be torn to pieces by it. And he might be asked why, because they were never around in the first place, and Prompto can’t explain it well (neither can I, for that matter) but there’s just something about his parents dying that’s just... killing him, too, even if they weren’t the best parents... they were still his parents. 

When I was having a sobbing fit at the game immediately after the whole flute thing with my father (aka a basic thing of “am I just worthless to him?”), my friend said something to me that really stuck with me. 

“You can’t choose your blood, but you can choose your family.”

And it’s not her own quote (she said as much) but it’s still true.

My dad’s related to me, and I probably love him because of that, because... he’s my dad. How can I not, even when he does make me angry sometimes?

I made my family elsewhere. I have amazing friends that support me, and I have my mom, and I have my section in the marching band and I have you guys, here on Tumblr and everyone I’ve talked to in the past that’s still with me now... I have a family. They may not all be blood, but they’re my family.

Prompto did the same thing with Noctis, Ignis, and Gladio. His parents may have been his “blood,” but he made his own family with the people that really cared about him. He chose his family.

So yeah, I don’t really know how to end this -- this was a little raw with emotion and I know I’m most likely just screaming into the void, but it’s... it’s nice to get some of it out, you know? This probably isn’t cohesive at all.... sigh.

It’s 2:30 AM now. I need sleep. 

[1010meha]

holy dick: I was tagged in something. Well, I was tagged like a month ago and then I was like “I’ll do this the next time I use tumblr on my laptop so I can see the questions and format them right.” Except since my desktop has literally 419 tabs open I never use it and it’s currently in a state of a continuous ongoing stroke. But i rammed my head on it by accident and it started working again so hi i guess. I’ve now realized that all of this has been written in the title part of a text post and it seems really pretentios and narcasistic of me to use this much space for my ramblings and I should probably stop before this gets any longer. Also I can’t spell either of those words.

Rules: Answer 20 and tag 20. Here we gooo

Thanks @ghostlyfluffster who was my homestuck secret santa like 9 months ago and is still following my idiot ass for some reason. thank u.

Name: 1010meha

Nickname: In the 4th grade I had a nickname Glow-Worm which was more of an insult i guess also in 6th grade “Banana Girl” because I did a magic trick with a banana for the school talent show.

Zodiac: Libra. ikr boring

Height: taller than @rynoske by atleasat 3 feet

Orientation:  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯   If i was cool and suave enough I’d say something like “kiss me and find out” but we all know I have the sex appeal of a walnut

Fave Fruit: ..a….walnut….

Fave season: summer bitches no school stress unless your like me and took summer school but still

Fave book: I haven’t been reading muchbecause  I’m a lazy and uncultured wrom of a person but the Phantom Tollbooth still holds a warm place in my heart. 

remmeber when I said my laptop had 419 tabs open. It literally just blacked out on me for a second. call an electrician. or an excorsit. Maybe both. An Elextrorcist?

Fave Flower: Forget-Me-Nots? or Jasmine.

Fave Scent: coconut. god I’m so indian

Fave color: porple

fave animal: fuck idk. Probs the mantis shrimp. it’s fucking THE SHIT MAN OKAY HEAR ME OUT. ok so first of all, it sees colors that we can’t even comprehend??? because it has like, 5  times as many color receptors, meaning it can see thousands, if not millions of more colors than we do??? what the dick?!?!. It has 2 claws that shoot out water at the same speed of a gun shot from a 22 caliber rifle. thats 1500 newtons of force in less than 3/1000 of a second. It literally boils the water around it with it’s underwater shockwave and can be seen to make BURSTS OF LIGHT under the sea. they’re fucking deadly. Not to mention, they’re fucKIN RAINBOW GUYS. THEY’RE RAINBOW COLORED SWEET JESUS ON AN UPSIDE DOWN BOAT WITH A TREE SHOVED UP HIS ASS THIS IS THE NEW GAY MASCOT. THIS HOMOSEXUAL HELLBEASST  IS HERE TO FUCKEN PARTAYY. ok I’ll stop but not without a picture first:

I also forgot what i was doing. oh yeah

Cofee/tea/hot cocoa: Coffee if its extra sweet and creamy and also hot cocoa with whipped cream and marshmallows mmMMmmMm

Avg Hours of Sleep: hahahahHAHAHAHhahHAHAHhahahHAHAHAhaha. ha.

Cat or Dog person: [insert the “why not both” meme]

fave fictional character: I can’t and won’t pick a fave, but the most recent one that came to mind is prismo from Adventure time

Number of blankets I sleep with 3 in the winter, 1 in the summer

Dream Trip: Japan, for the Culture ™ also I quite enjoy the food and landscape i wanna paint there

Blog created 2012? i think

Number of followeres: heck if I know. I forgot how you check. I think i just hit 600 or smthn

Random fact:  Me and my friend kinda wandered into this building in Caltech where nobody was there and found this rooftop cactus garden and I stole a pouch of hot cocoa from a lil table and i stuffed it in my jacket pocket and 3 months later our marching band got to go to San Francisco to march in the Chinese New Years parade and in the hotel I found the bag of hot cocoa and I drank it and that was my dinner. Moral of the story is clean out your jacket once maybe ever.

Now a list of ppl I know or want to get to know better:

ok so @rynoske bc obvs then also @adozensinammonrolls if you want t a fun time and @hector-is-my-waifu waddup also @potato-inertia if that’s still alive hey @tinyarmageddon I see u rebloggin my posts fam @sassycharmander we’re mutuals I forget but do I know you irl?? @baronvoncandy tell me abt the large red fruit @memethighs sup @the-wicked-rad-and-hella heyyooooooo @officialmustachiolady yello hello yes hi @king-queen-trash what’s up my mutual dude @ashestoashesjc you seem cool bro I hope know you better @fandomoutcast you’ve been a mutual for so long thx @ask-aph-fruk woah holy shit you follow me I didn’t know that until literally just now @hella-rad-noodle @fuchsia-and-boonbucks and @savannasaurusrex yall are still following for some reason holy sh1t thx

PS: for Orientation I was considering saying “portrait” or “landscape” but then I punched myself square in the fucking face

[phillyvoices-blog]

The Whirlwind: In Conversation with Nico Meyering

“You don’t really have a choice about getting knocked down. You do have a choice between staying down or getting back up.”

The view from this height is breathtaking.

I’m meeting my interviewee for lunch at the University Club, a top-floor members-only restaurant and lounge for students, faculty, and staff of the University of Pennsylvania. I’m a PhD student there, enjoying the Club’s “first year of membership free” perk. And my interviewee is enjoying the large tables.

“Sorry bro, I like to spread out.” Nico Meyering grins sheepishly at me, running a hand through his blonde hair, a nervous habit he will repeat often during our time together. On the table are a spreadsheet, a notepad with some hasty scribbles, a smartphone he uses like a computer, a half-forgotten graphic novel, and a sparse lunch of sweet potato soup, two turkey burgers, and mixed vegetables that he keeps meaning to eat. The phone lights up with some sort of reply and Nico speaks into it, recommending a sleep study and a “trach downsize before decannulation” before adding that he isn’t a medical professional. I admit that I don’t know what any of those words mean.

Nico isn’t a medical professional but he IS a whirlwind.

I met Nico years ago when we were both graduate students at Binghamton University. I thought his energy and constant movement was just the result of too much coffee or the stress of final exams. But here, dressed semi-formally, he’s the same whirlwind from before. The first thing I learn about Nico is that he’s always moving. I’ll learn much more over our hour together.

Nico was born 31 years ago with a nervous system disorder called congenital central hypoventilation syndrome (CCHS). The most notable and life-threatening symptom is the body’s lack of an automatic impulse to breathe, which means people with CCHS need lifelong mechanical ventilation when they sleep. Some need around the clock venting. Other CCHS concerns may include eye/vision issues, speech delays, or digestion issues.

After Nico was born, his mother swung into action, finding other CCHS families and bringing them together to share stories, support one another, and eventually connect doctors to families. A few decades later, those ragtag families are now The CCHS Family Network, Inc., a federally-recognized nonprofit that funds research and raises tens of thousands of dollars for the roughly 1200 people worldwide living with this condition.

Nico has been ever-present; he shows me photos from each successive gathering. He rattles off his various duties: moderating the group’s Facebook presence, being a liaison between people with CCHS and their families, explaining CCHS to general audiences (his TED talk from December 2017, Dis-ABLE-d, has been viewed on YouTube over 500 times), and trying to mentor teens and preteens with the condition.

“We are ninety-nine percent just as healthy or normal as people who don’t have CCHS. We have hobbies and interests and pet peeves and everything. I keep telling people: CCHS is manageable when you stay on top of it. It’s not fatal. It’s not degenerative. We have equal or better life expectancy. We get married, we have jobs, we get stuck in traffic, everything.”

The second thing I learn about Nico is that he jokes as much as he moves: constantly. It’s possibly his humor that has kept him going; while CCHS isn’t fatal, it also isn’t trivial. Nico rattles off over a dozen names of friends he has lost to illnesses made worse by CCHS or to tragic mistakes like falling asleep off their vents. “It’s up to us, you know, to keep their names alive. We gotta keep telling their stories.” He says determinedly. Behind that determination, however, is a measure of sorrow: Nico has lost many friends and he admits that it’s difficult to find new ones. But when he feels like I’m asking too many questions about the sadness, anxiety, and risk of living with rare diseases, he noticeably steers the conversation to a happier topic.

“You don’t really have a choice about getting knocked down. You do have a choice between staying down or getting back up.” He points out, making rare eye contact with me.

At 31, most Americans are building resumes or families. Nico is helping to build a movement. His vision of the CCHS community is larger and more comprehensive than the original group that met once every few years.

“I think something every group needs to constantly work on is inclusion and evolution. Our group is no different. That’s why we had a paper newsletter for so many years and now we’re online. It’s why we were English-language only for a long time and now we have some volunteers who can translate for us. We began by talking mostly about physical health and medical issues, now we include mental health and social issues. Young adults with CCHS were the first people to begin discussing the emotional burden of life with a rare disorder.”

I ask him what else the CCHS Network needs to do.

“We need to keep raising money because that money goes right to funding CCHS research. We’re rare and we’re a small group, so nobody’s gonna save us. We save ourselves. We share research and medical articles on CCHS, but we also need to start dealing with practical questions. I mean, a young couple who find out their baby has this disability aren’t interested in medical articles right away. They need to know about trach care, venting options, and how to talk about CCHS with other people. Chances are that they’ll have to educate doctors and nurses about it all.”

Nico’s in-your-face advocacy didn’t come naturally. He wasn’t outspoken about disability issues and disability rights when I first knew him. He is an introvert and his family is private by nature; Nico thinks it took significant time for them to accept Nico speaking candidly about his disability. And while Binghamton-Nico is different from Philadelphia-Nico, the seeds of change were always there: his early championing of LGBT and mental health issues years ago influenced how he advocates for people with CCHS today. “Whether it’s gay rights or disability rights or any other issue, this is true: if you don’t talk about it there won’t be any progress. You make your own momentum.”

Part of Nico’s value as a patient advocate comes from the bonds he’s formed in progressive communities. He marched alongside Occupy Wall Street, handing out water bottles and band-aids to other protestors. He volunteered with a soup kitchen and still keeps in touch with the guests he served. When a local school district cut sex ed classes, Nico volunteered with a LGBT community center to talk about contraceptives and consent. He protested so much at city council meetings that he eventually got thrown out of Binghamton’s City Hall for promoting services for homeless people, something he still gets visibly annoyed about. Seven years later, though, the people that share his posts and donate to his CCHS fundraisers are those same people he spent so long helping. In the week since our interview I found myself back in Binghamton to see family, and almost everyone I talked to, from the city’s former Mayor Ryan to guests at Nico’s former soup kitchen, remember his name and deeds.

Nico cracks a grin when I mention my Binghamton visit. “The biggest thing I learned there is that you eventually need friends, allies, people in your corner. You can do a lot on your own, but you do more in a team. If we can work together to write a grant or help someone in need, then that’s what we’re gonna do. Eventually the CCHS Network will have to work with biotech or pharma companies to develop a cure, so it’s good practice.”

I ask him about partnerships the Network has formed already and he demurs, but he does offer some thoughts on rare disease partnerships in general: “I was at the Global Genes conference [for rare disease research] back in June, and I can tell you that most research hospitals and biotech companies recognize the need to work with patient advocacy groups. We are no longer ignored. There are maybe some researchers who think they can whip up a cure without patient involvement, but they’ll learn really fast that they need our input because without it they will go bankrupt.” He rubs his goatee briefly, “The market is real Darwinian like that.”

We pause so Nico can send an email to a CCHS family in Michigan. He signs off with an apology for replying so late. When I see his phone wallpaper it’s a woman with long black hair holding a long, black cat. He sees me looking and smiles. Nico is never short on words and each story is like a voyage.

He met Brittany online in April 2016. He noticed they were both AmeriCorps alumni and shared an interest in anime and Star Trek. At first he hesitated. He was unemployed and she mentioned wanting to eventually move to New York City. Nico was looking for a long-term relationship and she was only in the area to tend to an ill family member. But he took the time to send a few paragraphs and their first date was at a local Thai restaurant. The two now live together in Philadelphia, where she is a teacher and he is a financial administrator for a rare disease center. The couple got engaged in December and they share their apartment with three cats: Apollo, Hera, and Hermes.

“I dated some women for a year here and there, but we’d always break up whenever I finished school or moved states to take a new job. Brittany has really stuck with me.”

Nico claims to have been a nervous kid growing up, dealing with health concerns and wanting to fit in. Sometimes he’d descend into crying fits because he felt emotions too strongly, like a time when one or two misbehaving kids caused his entire class to miss recess.

“I think we get this message as kids, and this is especially true for boys I think, that emotions should be buried or that you handle difficult situations yourself. This is a bad message. It’s harmful. It took me a while to figure out that emotions and friends are strengths rather than weaknesses.”

I don’t see any trace of that nervous kid. Nico leans back in his chair, rubs his hand over stubble, peppers his sentences with “bro”, “dude”, and “man” regardless of gender, and fires off a quick message about different CCHS mutation types. To passerby, he is just a nerd reading a Spider-Man 2099 comic (he points out that it’s a different character than regular Spider-Man,) not one of the biggest names in a very small pond.

But why is he so busy? Why now? After living in a handful of different states and working tons of different jobs, Nico saw some patterns emerging for disabled youth. For one, he says, there’s a knowledge gap and a skills gap between the end of high school and becoming an established adult. The time you spend getting your health under control is time you can’t spend learning life skills. In fact, Nico reveals that he learned how to tie a tie and how to shave by watching YouTube videos.

“When I was on the job market, CCHS moms would always remind me ‘You need a job with good health insurance!’ They wouldn’t stop reminding me. I think they may believe it is easier to get a full-time job with benefits than it really is. Even if you have the schooling and the skills, it’s difficult. Even when you have insurance, it’s tough to understand it.”

So Nico made a checklist to help young adults and their families prepare for independent living. “It’s a conversation families need to have together. It’s not you versus your kid. It’s your whole family versus the problem.”

Other projects followed: a guide to seeking employment while disabled, a guide to CCHS care in schools, one-page factsheets about CCHS for families to give to doctors and nurses, a slew of public speaking appearances, mostly at comic conventions (his talk on disability representation in anime was rated the best panel at GeneriCon 2019, and he repeated the talk at Wizard World Philadelphia this summer.)

He talks animatedly about another idea: setting up a small fund to buy pulse oximeters and other vitals monitoring equipment.  “Our bodies send signals that our brains don’t always catch, so we could be ill and not know it. If you have a machine that tells you your oxygen levels are low, that could be the difference between resting at home or exerting yourself and ending up hospitalized or worse. I haven’t fleshed this concept out yet though.”

He also wants to help people with CCHS explain the condition to others. “Stigma kills people and knowledge kills stigma. Our disability is nobody’s fault. It’s not contagious. We haven’t done anything wrong. It’s just the way it goes, dude.”

And he talks about money. Since being elected to the Board in 2015, Nico has worked hard to lead collaboratively and to consult others before taking action. It’s what led to his popular Dungeons and Dragons charity games, which raised several hundred dollars at the last CCHS conference. It’s what led to his “Faces of CCHS” project last November, which was shared on Facebook over one hundred times. His last fundraiser brought in several hundred more dollars.

“We need to make a difference AND get attention at the same time. Good cash flow lets charities steer their own ship; even $10 from a few people helps us go to rich people and say ‘Look, we have all these people participating. They believe in our cause. Will you believe too?”’ and then send them some cute baby photos. That’s a good pitch.” He smiles.

It’s clear Nico loves talking about CCHS and his work in disability issues, but getting to know the man behind the work is frustratingly difficult. I ask him about his hobbies like video games and hiking, but he says it’s difficult for him to find the time for those hobbies: “Sometimes I wish I could finally finish a game, but I don’t go ten minutes without needing to do something or reply to someone.” His lack of free time doesn’t seem to bother him. “Anyone can turn on a PS4. Anyone can read a good book. But not everyone can help a CCHS person or family in need. The work is the important thing here.”

Looking to the future, all Nico sees is hope, the word he has tattooed on his left arm. He plans on seeing a CCHS cure in his lifetime, he tells me. Until then, he’ll keep on making the CCHS journey easier for everyone.

“I think some parents are frightened when they realize their children are growing up in a very different world. And I think CCHS kids are scared by the responsibilities that come with being an independent CCHS adult. It’s less scary when you listen to each other and work together.”

[omgstupendousbouquetbasement]

Drake Breaks Taylor Swift's Record at Billboard Music Awards

Mother's Day is in a couple weeks, but Drake gave his mom an early gift with a heartfelt speech at the 2019 Billboard Music Awards, where the rap star also broke Taylor Swift's record for most wins. Drake turned up the love for his mom when he picked up top artist, besting Cardi B, Ariana Grande, Post Malone and Travis Scott. He won 12 awards Wednesday in Las Vegas, making his career total 27 (Swift has 23 wins). He looked up to the ceiling as he held the trophy, then said: "I just want to thank my mom for her relentless effort in my life. "I want to thank my mom for all the times you drove me to piano. All the times you drove me to basketball and hockey — that clearly didn't work out. All the times you drove me to `Degrassi.' No matter how long it took me to figure out what I wanted to do, you were always there to give me a ride, and now we're on one hell of ride," Drake said. Family bonding was a theme at the three-hour show, which aired live on NBC and was hosted by Kelly Clarkson Ciara's young son and husband, NFL player Russell Wilson, danced along while she worked the stage, and Nick and Joe Jonas gave kisses to Priyanka Chopra and Sophie Turner of "Game of Thrones" fame when they sang in the audience before hitting the stage. Brendon Urie of Panic! at the Disco looked to his parents as he accepted top rock song, quoting the name of his current hit: "Hey look Ma, I made it!" Mariah Carey's twins cheered her on as she sang a medley of her hits and accepted the Icon award. She was in diva form before taking the award from Jennifer Hudson, throwing her napkin on the floor after dabbing her face with it. "Without getting into all the drama, all the ups and downs of my career ... I guess I always felt like an outsider, someone who doesn't quite belong anywhere, and I still feel like that lost interracial child who had a lot of nerve to believe I could succeed at anything at all in this world. But, and this is the truth, I did believe because I had to," she said. "The truth is I dedicated my life to my music — my saving grace — and to my fans." Cardi B, the night's top nominee with 21, locked lips with husband Offset on the red carpet and the couple sat closely inside the venue. She won six awards, including top Hot 100 song for "Girls Like You" with Maroon 5. "I remember when Maroon 5 hit me up to do this song. I was like, `Bro I'm five months pregnant. I can't even breathe.' But this record to me was so amazing. I was like, `Oh this is going to be a hit.' And now I sing this song to my daughter because she's the girl that I need," she said. Drake and Cardi B — who both won multiple awards during the live telecast — used their speeches to promote love and appreciation for their peers in the music industry. Others, too, brought on the positive energy when onstage. Imagine Dragons' band leader Dan Reynolds used his speech to highlight the dangers of conversion therapy on LGBTQ youth. He earned rousing applause. Florida Georgia Line's Tyler Hubbard followed suit, telling the audience after winning top country song: "In the spirit of so much truth being spoken tonight by so many talented artists, I think we should speak some truth." "As artists we all get to experience so many unbelievable things, but in our opinion, at the end of the day, it's all for nothing if you're not using your platform for better ... to spread love, to help those in needs, to be a light to your community," he said. Swift kicked off the show when she brought her new music video to life with a colorful, eye-popping performance of her song "ME!" Dancers wearing bright, pastel colors spun in the air holding umbrellas and a marching band kicked off Swift's performance — like most of the world, maybe she was inspired by Beyonce's new Coachella film? Madonna, wearing an eye-patch, teamed up with Colombian singer Maluma for a performance, but it was Grammy-winning Christian artist Lauren Daigle who had the night's best performance. She sang "You Say," giving the audience a calm, yet strong and powerful performance. She was backed by three awesome background singers and a pianist. BTS, who performed alongside Halsey, also had a major night. At the Billboard Awards and American Music Awards, the K-pop band had only previously won "social" awards based off their fanatic fan base, but on Wednesday BTS picked up top duo/group, besting Grammy-winning groups like Maroon 5, Imagine Dragons and Dan + Shay. "I still can't believe we're here on this stage with so many great artists," RM said as fans screamed loudly. "We're still the same boys from six years ago, we still have the same dreams ... we still have the same thoughts. Let us keep dreaming." An unlikely winner at the Billboard Awards? "Game of Thrones" actress Maisie Williams, whose plays Arya Stark on the HBO series and shined brightly on last week's episode. "Shout-out to Arya Stark for putting in that work last week," Drake said onstage after winning his first award of the evening. from Blogger http://bit.ly/2IUPysJ via IFTTT

[mollyohmolly]

the first half of age 26

(now five years ago, last half of 2013)

26 overall: not a banner year. I briefly toured a bit of the world, and I’ll keep that as my solace, but overall this will be remembered as a year of grave missteps. And will I ever learn? Yet to be determined. For the sadsack rundown, this year I: -gained 40+ pounds -moved back to Seattle for a sad, sort of humiliating summer -got two telephones stolen off of me -had a few falling outs -remained single for the duration -did not advance my career (read: begin) at all -drank myself into oblivion many, many nights -spent a stint homeless and broke -got fired -borrowed money from my folks -shipped my dog off to my folks since I was too much of a deadbeat to take care of him -am now laid up in my room because I tumbled down a hill blind drunk and rolled my ankle out and don’t have health insurance There were beautiful moments nestled in there, but they are momentary delusions at best. Began my year in maybe my favorite place on earth, a stretch of coastline along California Highway 1. I was living in a hippie home in Lower Pacific Heights in San Francisco with a ragtag group of weirdos, and I was working at a rock venue in the city’s trendiest/most rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. I was sleeping with a chatty blonde boy -- the lights tech -- half because we laughed a lot and I was lonely at the time, and somewhat because he lived around the corner from the venue. I convinced a Canadian boy I had met the previous summer to fly down for a birthday adventure, so he booked a WestJet. If you want something, ask for it. We had a great story if left adbriged - we met dancing in Vancouver one warm August night; lost track of my friends, got locked out of the house I was staying; he stayed up with me all night in a diner; took a bus back to the house as the sun came up over the (?) mountains. (Leaving out making out against a car, sleeping together.) I moved to San Francisco that autumn, and the next March I flew back up to Seattle to get Adderall/show off my California tan, he bussed down from Canada, and we had this idyllic weekend with friends and laughter that in some ways made me idealize Washington all over again. From there, we moved on to Skypes and sexts and adorable phone calls where I just listened really for signs of that damn Canadian accent in my lonely little bunk. My best friend from high school decided to move down to San Francisco from Portland, chasing the sun and good times and whiskey. Laura arrived the weekend of Bay to Breakers, a veritable bro fest. Our friend Lisa was there that weekend with her bro boyfriend Jeff, and we did the whole brunch/Dolores/Divisadero bar thing. I took her everywhere; things were not going to be so lonely. One night, Laura and Todd the light tech and I went to see Akron/Family show at the Independent on Divisadero. I was really the only one stoked for it, as that band had provided the soundtrack to many forlorn rides on the 595 from Olympia to Tacoma to Seattle during college, staring out at the gray Northwest. Turns out their sound had changed from foresty to bad electronica. Laura bailed and Todd walked home, and as I was walking home Nick the Canadian sent me a series of beautiful text that stirred my weary little heart after months of near-despair in San Francisco. “I don’t know what it is, but you get me in a way I’ve never been gotten,” is maybe the last thing I read before I felt plunged forward onto the concrete. So that was the night I was mugged, and the next day my mom and aunt flew into town, and there I was with bruises up and down my knees and thighs and a busted-up hand from punching a grown man in the nose with a strange shock of untapped strength. My heartsick mother replaced my phone with the newest model and we spent the weekend by her pool and exploring the city somewhat. She hated my house, but loved the wharf. Rented a Mercedes and careened down Lombard. Took a duck out, wore a sailboat shirt. Nice time, glad to have had it. I picked Nick up at the Oakland airport in an Audi we had rented for the weekend. He picked me up, he spun me. My hobby, as Stephen said, is importing boys. Tim, Hadleigh, Andrew, Brian, Jake: my favorite moments are at airports. I wore this white summer dress, he wore bright shorts. Went back to my house, my roommate Ryan called him a “Canadian ken doll.” We packed up the car with some tent, some muenster, and off we drove. Highway One is maybe one of the most magical places on earth, a stretch of impeccable California coastline. Craig and I first drove down years and years ago now, had dinner at Orson Welles’ old cabin, sat by a fire on a ledge at the end of the earth. So that’s how I wanted to spend my birthday, figuring that would set the tone for the rest of the year. Put on a playlist, drove into the sunshine, down long expanses of exquisite coast, his hand on my leg, his sideways smile in my periphery, all lips and hair and restless energy. Stopped in Santa Cruz, had lunch on the beach. Felt like we’d been together for years, a wonderful illusion. Bit of his temper towards others was cropping up. Didn’t care. His arm around me, always. He ran up behind me on a ledge. Stopped at coves, watched sea lions. Fell in love for a few days. Put up a tent alongside Big Sur River, then drove to the Henry Miller Library, got into a bottle of Bulleit and some Arnold Palmers. Watched a very formative band, one of my favorites, Two Gallants, play their melodies under soaring redwoods. Nick wrapped his arms around me while the singer smiled that golden smile, elbows rubbed off of his sweater, a brilliant perfect night, drove back, built a campfire, felt like it would never get better, and it never did. So for a weekend, we were this brilliant couple. We never could be: he lived on the other side of a border and it wouldn’t work. But we got along just fine, had the same sense of humor, had a great time because it was fleeting. The next day we took our time getting back to the city, stopping and climbing along bays and ravines in Carmel and old churches in Davenport and everything was wonderful. Met Laura at al our regular bars on Divis on Saturday night, got daydrunk with all my coworkers at the Chapel on Sunday, went to a fancy cocktail bar in the Haight, blacked out, made out, bought a grab bag of bullshit from the bodega for dinner the last night, made out, cuddled, cursed, laughed, cried, bonded, Monday morning my birthday came around and we rented another car called “Maple Syrup” and drove to Crissy Field and he took me to lunch at a French restaurant in an alleyway downtown -- drove him back to Oakland and after he checked in at the desk he came back out of the airport door and instructed me to give him “one more hug” before he flew away. Everything in California fell apart all at once. My $550/month sublet ended and housing was bleak. My parents wanted to ship Brogan back, but he had nowhere to go. Washington State wanted $800+ for my stint on unemployment. The Chapel was giving me a few measly shifts a week, and the money wasn’t stretching, and I couldn’t afford a down payment on lease in this tech-rich city. By fluke, I saw a Facebook posting for a $667/month sublet in Seattle with a group of Seattle University alumni that I somehow had ended up friends with. If I could reverse any decision, it would be this one. But I’m not sure; the summer that followed was one mistake after the next and the regrets would only stack and marinate, but maybe I’d have ended up worse. Maybe moving into Laura’s new apartment would have strained our friendship, maybe a lesson in humility was necessary, maybe it was just nice to have my dog around for a summetime and maybe I wouldn’t be in the apartment that I’m in now if not for a series of disasters. Or maybe had I stayed I would have met a great lad and had a great adventure and now I’d be splitting finances and writing for a living or I’d have lucked into some office job that I’d grow to resent, but wondering gets me nowhere. The fact is, I made a terrible choice, one that I thought would fix everything but just launched me into an awful, unshakeable depression that I’m only now beginning to see the other side of. I decided to move back to Seattle for the summer. With money that my grandmother had left me after her passing, I had booked a plane ticket from New York to Reykjavik to Amsterdam, and then a return ticket from Copenhagen a month later. It was very financially irresponsible, but fuck it, I figured. I doubted my ability to ever have my feet on steady ground, so I may as well get something out of the messes I make. So I moved back to Seattle for the summer. I can’t think of this past summer without cringing, fully. Everything I did was wrong. Everything was bad. I lived in Judkins Park, which is a good mile or two out from Capitol Hill, where I drank and worked and hung. I had all of these illusions of life back “home” after forgetting that I did leave for a reason; there was nothing left for me. It took me a few week to find jobs, and when I finally did, I took anything I could get. I got a job through my old manager at a new high-end restaurant called the Old Sage; the only job left was a fucking host. For weeks, we had to come in in the mornings to train and get the restaurant ready for open, taste scotches at 10am, and for what? So I could work the door at a total dud of a restuarant that was priced above what anyone was willing to pay on 12th avenue? They threw me a few shifts bartending at The Coterie Room down in Belltown, which was painful in its own way. The other job was a fucking GRAVEYARD shift at a hipster DINER that just opened, Lost Lake. Embarassing. So for 8 hours a night, from 10am to 6am, I would sling fucking breakfast food to drunk people who would have to wait upwards of an hour for the stoned cooks to put their mush on a plate and then I’d tip out every goddamn person in that terrible system and walk with like, $150 maybe, and then I’d walk home the 40 minutes to Judkins Park to save money and I’d try to make it interesting by trying to listen to a new album on the walk home every day, but all I’d hear is the familiar chorus in my mind: you’re 26 and walking home from a diner and you live a sad life and you should quit it all you fucking desperate idiot. And they’d do first call at 6am so there’d be this group of fellow idiots on the bar side at dawn and then I’d walk home listening to Wolf Parade: “I’m a disaster. I could not be burning faster. I walk into webs, and take my meals with weirdos.” Then I’d walk Brogan and sleep through the sunshine and hope it all would end. I did not end up with Nick. I was honest with him when he left San Francisco, saying I would not pine for him and that I couldn’t promise anything but that I’d of course love to see him again. We made plans to go to Banff for his birthday. A few weeks later, I was moving a few hours from him but it was too late. He went home to the girl he’d previously quit. She was plain, fit, dull but probably sweet, into yoga and beer and running, 27, and more importantly, local. I think they live together now. Well, fuck. My romantic life was one dud after the next and mostly didn’t happen because I worked around-the-clock for very little pay. Zach Tyerman returned home from med school briefly and we met up at Manhattan Drugs for drinks, then Poquito’s for dinner. We met on my roof the night Craig stole my passport to see me again; a few weeks later Craig and I were dating, and we did that for a few years. Zach moved in around the corner with a guy I had once dated, Ryan Calderon. He hit on my friends, he flirted with me. He was a goofy fellow; Craig and I would joke about it. Zach and I would study at Vivace or Roy Street a lot during the wintertimes. He brought me to dinner to meet his mother and all his aunts, and I won them over easily since I wasn’t dating him so I wasn’t nervous impress them. His parents would come visit me for brunch at 22 Doors. I wrote his essay for med school; he got in. Our friendship was predicated on never sleeping together, so as I got dressed and drank the first few whiskey lemonades of the night, I promised myself: don’t sleep with Zach. When I saw him, he looked sort of great. He had a new haircut, more gentlemanly, and he was dressed well, and age seemed to have softened his features in a nice way. And it was way he treated me: he had flipped the switch to on, and without the usual teasing contempt he reserved for women with boyfriends. He used to say I had some frustrating charm. And I only frustrated him further that night. In assuming sleeping with him might ruin our friendship, not sleeping with him was probably more damaging. We went to Carly’s going away party at Big Mario’s. She was flying off to Hawaii for the summer to be with her parents, who were negotiating a divorce. I’d be taking her room in the third floor of the condo until she got back, the very week I was leaving for Europe. Kaitlyn had decorated the bar with palm trees and tiki lights, and I showed up drunk, and I regaled Zack Bolotin and Shaun Callahan of the story of my very last night in San Francisco. While waiting in a bar on Mission Street, I was approached a man who offered me CINCUENTA for “in-house” services. Mostly I was offended by the price. (Also that night: left my purse with the keys to my apartment with all of my luggage in it at another bar. Right before my flight, while all of my roommates were out of town. Always a fuckup!) Anyway, between dinner at Mario’s we had segued briefly to Linda’s and picked up a friend of Zach’s from highschool, a kind, outdoorsy guy named Alex. And now at Mario’s, Alex had his hand on my leg underneath the table and Zach stormed off into the night. Sent some wild texts. Trying to make amends the next day, Zach seemed to take the whole thing very personally. “He should have read the situation!” and “I feel like you were doing this to hurt me for some reason.” It seemed a lot like when Zac found out about Andrew, so maybe it runs in the name. But anyway he didn’t miss much: Alex and I went back to Judkins, fooled around, and somehow when Kaitlyn and Carly got home, Brogan got out and bolted, and I ran FULL SPEED down Norman Avenue -- never sprinted so fast in my life -- and across fucking Rainier Avenue through traffic BAREFOOT and eventually cornered him and scooped him up by a parking garage maybe a half mile from my house and then realized I wasn’t wearing shoes. Alex invited me to a bonfire at his house the next day, to which I responded (sort of joking? but kind of not?) “I’m not going to Ravenna.” To this day, Zach kind of rudely alludes to this whole situation via text. Fourth of July was my first day at Lost Lake, so I went down and began that awful chapter. While there, I ran into Eric, a thirty-something man I had met the previous summer at a soul night at Chop Suey. We had exchanged numbers, but I ended up with a friend of his, a real weirdo named Aeden. There was still something about him that made me incredibly nervous. And our story had a very loose end. But not to worry! We tied it up that night. Todd flew up to Seattle for his birthday and we had an okay time. I picked him up and he was so incredibly chatty and I realized this was a terrible mistake and I was so irritated the entire ride up from the airport. But it was his birthday and he had flown up, so I figured I’d just show him the town and try to have a good time and not give him any illusions about this being a lasting relationship. So we did. Went to the docks, some bars, Belltown, walked Bro, had some good adventures, rented some cars, did poppers with Tim, made him dinner, he had the time of his life and he still waxes poetic about the week so all in all, I’d say it was his version of my weekend in Big Sur. Then I met Party Bro, a guy who came into Lost Lake at 5am in a puffy vest and a shiny cap and ordered chicken fried steak with a kind friend, then conned me into staying by offering to buy my Uber home if I stayed for first call. He was a real douche and I knew it and he knew it and that was that, I guess. He was unapolegetic about being a party fiend and in love with his own damn life. But I guess I figured that was what I needed; I was leaving in a month and I wasn’t trying to find a reason to stay in Seattle. This was a guy I had 0% chance of falling for. He tried to kiss me getting into the Uber. Then he came to a bar, Montana, where I was hanging with Drew and Brian who’d flown in and tried to kiss me. Then I figured I wouldn’t put out for him, because that’s the way to keep these guys around for a good time. He asked me on a date, a real date. He made reservations, he picked me up in his car, it was a warm summer night. I wore a little black dress and heels, he wore dress shoes, we looked great. He ordered a big platter of food on the back patio of Poppy, and I decided not to tell him how picky of an eater I was, and gamely tried the salmon. I’d like to think we both brought our dating a-game. Then we went to one fancy cocktail bar after another, and he didn’t let me pay a dime the entire night, and Doug Wargo saw us and whispered, “Whoa” to me. We went to Sun Liquor Distillery and then plain ole Sun Liquor and it was a great first date, and I could tell he was very well rehearsed at first dates. So that was an okay thing to distract me from the bullshit of the rest of the summer, there was some dancing, some nights at dives, a canned bullshit speech the night he introduced me to his friends, and of course after I slept with him it sort of petered out. On his birthday at Havana, Kaitlyn let him buy us shots and then told him she was not a fan, and then her and Carey and I sort of ran off into the night, so that was that. During Block Party -- all the roads in Capitol Hill get blockaded off and a bunch of bands perform -- I worked all three nights at Lost Lake, so I got to go all three days for free. It was okay. Not what it used to be, or I’m not who I used to be. It ended spectacularly: Party Bro came in to say hello and kiss me good luck at the beginning of my shift, and towards the end of the night he came in blackout drunk holding hands with a rando girl, and then tried to text me some bullshit - so I put my phone down on the counter behind the bar, never to see it again. Felt like a real fuck up - hadn’t had the phone for more than a month or so since the last one got mugged off of me, and now it was gone again, and for what? Some scumbag I was just hanging on to so I could feel a little less lonely for a little while? Cool. Spent some nights with Nicholas, as has been our way for years and years, but by now it meant less than ever. Whenever I look back on a bad time, I try to rationalize it by considering maybe some good came of it. I did this for San Francisco round one: at least I got to ride out my crippling loneliness in solace, and also I got a great friendship with Drew. Out of this summer, I got a surprisingly great friendship with Carey. The first few weeks in Seattle, I stayed in his room downstairs while he was on a motorcycle trip through Southern California. It was great because the doors opened to the yard, where Brogan could frolic. I spent those weeks with Kaitlyn, a solid friend, and Carly, a peripheral friend. They complained about weird passive-aggressive text exchanges with Carey, a weird poster he’d hung in the bathroom, and the general living situation with him. He wasn’t so bad, I countered. “You’ll see,” they forewarned me. He returned, I moved upstairs, we shared some whiskey, and then we just sort of got along really well. He got along with Brogan. We had the same interests in life, although despite being a stoner, he was way more motivated than I was. Not a hard feat. We were into the same music. We cared about similar things. Liked the same beer and whiskey and bbq food and that made for a good summer hang. We had met summers ago, had practiced our Spanish on each other at cafes, and then had a fairly unspectacular session together before a Weakerthans show, so all of that was out of the way. Things were cozy. Kaitlyn was getting involved seriously with a guy, and so it was just me and Carey a lot. We’d hang on our computers, stay in an watch TV, ride his bike to the bank, grocery shop, share car2go’s to the hill, grab drinks or dinner, catch shows, drink beer, plot our lives. Spent a lot of time on the T-docks along Lake Washington. It was like the best parts of coming home to someone without any of the messiness of a relationship. One night at Judkins Park, I felt this weird desire to just tell him everything that made me tick somewhat incorrectly, just because I felt like at that time it wouldn’t affect his opinion of me really because it didn’t matter, but at the last moment decided against it. I didn’t know how to begin to phrase it. We were in a car2go, headed to the hill like usual. Fuck it, I figured, I like this friendship at the very basic, well-functioning level that it is. All of this would ultimately implode while I was in Europe, but for a few months Carey was one of the people I was closest to, if only from proximity. I do remember nice nights: -Tim got tickets to Hairspray! and it was weird and we almost left and it was raining hard but we were dressed up and it was fine -Seeing Elway with Carey and Peter at El Corazon - the pop-punk soundtrack to our summer -Brian came to town for Block Party weekend in July -One night at Montana with Tim & Drew & Brian and then also Party Bro -Wandering around the hill with Feven -Going to Fisherman’s with Kaitlyn, where we used to work, and getting the tour from Jim -Seeing a lot of sunrises -Seeing a lot of sunsets -A lot of days spent at Madison -Block Party with Kait and Carey -a lot of cab rides -Drew packing up my room -kareoke at Pony with Tim & Stephen and then also Ryan McMichael, in town from Paris -Dom sleepover -SubPop festival in Georgetown -weird rose wine night at some fancy place in Eastlake with Kait and Erin -Marc driving up from Portland and little adventures - exploring Seattle -weird perpetual flirtation with weird Linda’s bartender - a loose end that will likely never get tied up -knowing it was all fleeting But mostly I’ll remember how weird it all felt. Saying farewell to Seattle was all too easy. My illusory trip in March had been washed out by a stale, sad summer. My time there was dead and gone. So I did what I’ll look back on as truly idiotic: I left with absolutely no plan, and not enough resources to return to anywhere. The government had tapped my bank account and drained some money for my unemployment debt, and living in Judkins Park had cost more than the $666 rent, with storage, cabs, and general well-being. I was bloated from eating diner food all summer, and had maybe $1200 amassed after everything for my trip. I quit my jobs with very little notice, so as to burn the bridge and not tempt me to just return to them when I got back. I planned on bringing Bro to NY while I was away so my folks could watch him, but Carey offered to watch him for help with the next months’ rent. Because Bro was acclimated to the house and oddly adored Carey, I figured it was best to leave him be rather than hurtle him across the country. This decision maybe would come to overshadow my summer in Seattle as one of my worst decisions of the year. So off I went. I flew to my parent’s house in upstate New York, and Tim arrived the next day. We hung with our old friend Erika, who had since had two children with one more on the way, and had also gotten married. It was strange. I was sleepy. We spent all day gathering last minute supplies, like locks and weird sheets and walking shoes. (The locks were too small, the sheets were pointless, and the shoes were only broken in by the end of the trip.) Then we packed up our bags, they drove us to JFK, and we boarded our Icelandair plane. Look, I won’t ever regret this trip. There’s a million minute things and some very large ones that I would absolutely change, and a lot of it is within me. I went on this trip very, very lost. I went without a plan, and even less of a game plan for when I returned. I didn’t expect to find the answers out there, but I was hoping that it would at least give me some perspective, or I’d gain some interesting experiences. I’m getting old and I’ve got to get out there any way I can, and I did. All that aside, I went about a lot of things the wrong way. Timothy and I agreed from the get-go that this trip would almost certainly at times try our friendship, and it certainly did. But this friendship’s endured bouts of bullshit before and it will again, oh well. First stop was Iceland. I had become transfixed by the place via Google Earth many moons ago; I’d spun the globe and found this strange land where people actually lived, and a little lagoon where people swam, and it seemed otherworldly. (Years later, my sister would become transfixed and sully my interest a little, but nevermind that.) So we booked the free layover and a hip hostel by the water. Got my first passport stamp at customs. Bought a few bottles of liquor at duty-free. Took a shuttle to our hostel, and our very first night, things went awry. I was anxious to explore, but Tim was cranky and didn’t like the taste of his vodka and just wanted to Skype with his boyfriend. The hostel was a ghost town -- off season in September -- and I sat in the dead but beautifully curated lobby and wondered how the trip would go. We had absolutely none of it planned, minus a few vague ideas: for me, Barcelona was a must; for us, the labyrinth in Berlin was a long-time plan; and for sure, our flights were leaving out of Denmark. It was fucking freezing in our hostel room that night and the next and the next. The next day was better, we explored downtown Rejkjavik -- a small town by any stretch of the imagination -- all of the magical street art and skate parks and rad dads in thick sweaters and the whipping wind and the little shops and cobblestone walks. Then we took a shuttle with a nice Canadian couple to the Blue Lagoon, and it shot straight up to one of the more surreal, magical moments of my little life. The drive there looked like we were scaling the moon, and we drank vodka 7up out of Icelandic water bottles. We changed in futuristic locker rooms where I shared awe with an older Canadian woman. “Look at where we are now,” I must have repeated several dozen times to Tim. And then I spun around in the warm water memorizing every curve of each hill and every plume of smoke and the expression on every placid face, like I used to when I was young, and I filed it all away for when everything else gets bad. We drank some expensive beers and paid via our wrists, and then I had a truly spectacular exit: we ran to catch the bus, Tim pulled my arm to lead us to the correct one, and down I went, headfirst into a beautiful glacial spike. Boarded the wrong bus and then the right bus with a bleeding head gash and napped the whole ride home. Tim fed me water and ibuprofen and made us friends for the night, and then I went out dancing with a fresh head bump. I’d eventually fall in every country I visited, but the first fall is the deepest, and I gashed a hole in the only pair of jeans I’d brought with me, day two. Same ole story, different backdrop. But Iceland was weird and magical and met got my first taste of traveling life, where everyone hails from far-flung places and asks each other, “How many months have you been out?” Met a cute girl from Baltimore - danced all night - drank water - Haarlem - dance clubs - regulars - beautiful intriguing blondes as far as the eyes could see - winding streets, whipping wind - met some rando, deliriously stylish Icelandic students in a closed-up Mexican shop/drank their tequila - the next day was one of the most painful mornings of my life: hungover to hell, freezing, massively dehydrated, and with a gaping head wound. Veronika from Baltimore left a bottle of alcohol and a note in her wake, off to drive off towards the Northern Lights, never to be seen again. But that’s how it goes. And later I got drunk on that traveling life and also a Mexican writer’s Mezcal - walking down the hall to a huddle of chairs by the window, seeing their silhouettes in the light from the water and the mountains - seemed unreal. Some Canadians, a German girl, two English blokes, the Mexican, and once we drank everything up, we went downstairs to where a man named Magnus was hosting a bunch of beautiful, sweatered musicians grown and raised and grisled up there, with a set by a man named Snorri. And so the night went - up a hill just following along, a feeling I felt once in the Hollywood Hills - in a corner of a bar with a softspoken man who studied caribou in Greenland - dancing to a song I vowed to remember as I recorded the moment away in a small room - every moment stranger, colder, kinder than the last. We barely made it out of Iceland. I stayed awake all night, just Tim, the caribou man now, and me in that cold 8-bed room. Got us up for the 4am shuttle to Keflavik. Babysat Tim the entire time, nausous and obnoxious. Got on our flight to the Netherlands, Tim vomited while we were taxiing. Then again. Cruised in to another odd world, this one with long swathes of colored fields (tulips!) and long rings of canals. Then we got to Schiphol and my card was rejected at the ATM, despite forewarning my bank of impending travel. Also, despite paying the $25 for international service, that was also a fluke. Exchanged some cash at an exchange to get by, Tim bought us Burger King in Schiphol for being such a baby, and I secured a place to stay via Couchsurfing. The address was maddeningly confusing and the directions even murkier, but we got on a train and winged in and finally things were feeling foreign, with all the gibberish on the signs. I’d found a nice Scottish lad to put us up for a few days, and he had a flat on a canal in Leidseplein that his corpo job put him up in and he let us stay in for free. It was lovely: white walls, exposed beams, two floors, very modern. It looked exactly like where Craig would live and how he would keep it.  The lad was nice, his speech very garbled. He gave us the entire top loft, which led to a garden patio. Spent about four days in Amsterdam. It was my first European city, so I drank it all up - the bikes, canals, flower shops, buildings from the 1500s on, cafes, languages. I had never visualized Amsterdam much. The Red Light district was disarming, fantastic looking women framed in little windows offering themselves up. Not sure what I expected there. In some windows, they were doing mundane tasks, like snacking or texting or removing nail polish. Went to the photography museum and saw a photograph of Newburgh, New York. By a canal, flipped through an entire photo book of self-portraits over several decades; watched a man’s body degrade, shift, had to briefly confront my own terror of aging, already felt. Ate an expensive breakfast and realized we ought to start scrounging around grocery stores to save our cash - hated having to give so much consideration to money but necessary. Smoked in a weed cafe, but all the weed in Europe is cut with tobacco. Tim found a massage chair, changed his world. Found a really old cafe, felt really weird in it, got lost on the way back. Still a lot of fresh panic from that mugging last spring. Didn’t go to any of the big museums or the beer tours because I don’t know. I’ll save that for when I’m older. This trip was, as I’ll repeat often, the sampler platter trip. It seems like a very American way of saying I’ll dip my feet in a few seas or whatever. Went out with Iain, our host, nice bloke. Kind of was over Amsterdam and the cold after a few days and ready to journey on though, and convinced Tim the sun was what we needed. Years ago, I planned to do a semester in Barcelona. I had spent a semester in New York studying art, which consisted of just going to galleries and museums and plays and ballets and operas and concerts for a few months and somehow getting college credit for that. I lived in the ground floor of a classmate’s fucking $7 million dollar brownstone while there, and I split the roommate with my classmate Kate, and we plotted replicating the program in Spain. And we hammered out the details and I saved up several thousand dollars to do it and then when the time came Kate -- working parttime as a florist in Olympia -- did not raise the funds and then my relationship fell apart and I moved into a terrible apartment in Capitol Hill and postponed the trip to the winter, then the spring, and then by summertime my grandmother had passed and my cousin was getting married, so I spent it back in New York instead, and I never went to Barcelona. So if there was one fucking place I was going on this trip, it was Spain. It seemed like the place where I belonged, if that’s such a thing -- I loved the language, and I loved all the stereotypes -- the siestas and the long nights and the lax sense of time and the beaches and the dancing and the casual drinking and the small plates and it seemed like it would fit well with my idealized self. So we went. Tim chose the hostel, I whined, it was kind of the worst -- a lot of younger kids, a late-night hallway brawl, not much charm, but a big patio and, you know, a place to sleep I guess. Food was cheap. All was well. We arrived unexpectedly the first day of Barcelona’s biggest festival, La Merce. Just a wild party in the streets waiting for us. I’d met a South African bro on the plane ride, who at first weirded me out because he never moved from the middle seat when the aisle was open, but was rather nice, spoke with a vaguely British/Afrikaans accent. We ventured out on their relatively simple train system to where the festival was, along the way met a cute guy from Seattle, now studying mathematics in upstate NY at Cornell. Brilliant! The festival was brilliant as well and perfect and wonderful and all else, and beer was a euro on the street, and we wound our way through these little alleyways to find a bizarre dance with a bunch of gigantic puppets, and children building human towers in white with red sashes, and drank Manhattans in some pub, and danced to this African woman who was intensely wonderful and I promised I’d look up though  I had no reference. We caught a train back - walked the wrong way drunk - Tim was pissed and drunk and weary of me probably - furious - walked ten paces from me and I’ve never felt such weird tension, disappointed - ended up getting in a cab and it was playing this British kid Jake Bugg - “Broken” - his voice was wobbly, maybe a little contrived - but at that moment it broke my heart in a million little ways and I couldn’t shake it and I felt rejected kind of cruelly by a friend and it was sort of crushing - this came at a time when I felt wholly rejected, kind of cast off, adrift, and I needed something, anything, because I was not enough for myself. We acted the next day like nothing had happened, as we do. We met up with the South African, Stephen, at Barceloneta, and for the first time I swam in the Meditteranean, and it was warm and lovely as beaches tend to be. We agreed to meet up again, and a memory burnt into my mind is meeting up again at the Arc de Triumf for the festival that night - Stephen in his backpack, but further off, for some reason a perfect image: Sam Hopkins, the Cornell baby genius, leaned up against the ark, one foot up, with a bar of dark chocolate tucked into his flannel, hair askew. We had a lovely night and then another and then they, too, were gone from our lives, with vague promises to meet again in Capetown or Seattle. On a Sunday we climbed Montjuic for another part of the festival that allegedly included a circus, but instead ended up at an EDM festival. I was out of sorts with Tim and it was weird when maybe it could have been wonderful if I didn’t live so much in my goddamn head, or wasn’t so sensitive, or maybe if I took more of the molly that our new Swedish comrades offered up. There was another girl named Ally that only fueled my crumbling spirit, although I can’t place why. But there was a bunch of sweet humans, and we had a good night, a Pernilla and a and a, should have took more drugs maybe, should have let go for once, but the fear was burrowing into me and I felt it hard that day and that night and even at some dark salon bar I would have loved, I felt so entirely out of sorts. I felt wholly undefined. And it’s not easy to snap out of it in a communal room with three German guys. We decided to slow our pace because the time we had already spent in transit was irritating and who ever is in a rush to get out of Barcelona? So I found the next hostel and it was a damn good decision. The next week was long and wonderful and cozy. Within a few minutes of settling in, we met a Slovakian girl named Nina and a French-Canadian boy named Dominic, and set off to the beach with them, and collected other friends that week. We found L’Ovella Negra, a little pub for travelers that offered sangria by the five-gallon bucket, and the hostel offered a full slate of activities mapped out on a chalkboard. That night we went to La Merce and then a club and there Dominic the young French Canadian, off to southern France in the morning, kissed me and we kissed again among all the characters along Las Ramblas and then I told him he should stick around a few more days and when we got back to the hostel he booked his bed for a few more days and then we made out in a space made for hanging out clothing to dry. Should have left it at that night, but no. He stayed. We collected more friends, had more adventures, went to more clubs and bars, went off to Sagrada Familia, insane and intricate. Connor came along, a big, moody young guy from San Luis Obispo. The “tour guide” for the hostel was a Polish girl named Kate, but she was so casual about her role, it actually made for a way better experince. Kind of a rather beautiful weirdo. A few more. I settled in with Dominic because, I don’t know, looking back I needed affection, and he was sweet and simple, and he liked little things like going to the Dia  market together to make a simple breakfast, and maybe I just wanted that feeling of someone wanting to be around me so much. Ended up kind of hating myself for it, but not til later. For now everything was nice. Dominic and I went to Park Guell. We took naps, woke up at odd hours, drank one-euro wine by the bottle. Gave Tim and I the airing out from each other that we needed. Easily one of the best feelings was when we all decided to stay even longer, and lined up by the desk, and rebooked our rooms again. So Barcelona will always exist as this time in my life when reality was suspended and I was maybe the maximum amount of cozy one can be before death. Could never list half of what we did there. Decided on Berlin next, since we were eating up a lot of time in Spain. We only had a few bad moments in Barca. One night we agreed to go to a gay club for Tim, and everyone backed out, but Dominic and I still went and shored up enough euros for cover and drank shit beer in a musty room while Tim whined for a good half hour that no one would do gay things with him when we did, in fact, come hang. Another night we all took Adderall, and Tim became kind of a dick, and Dominic was kind of a youth about it and reacted poorly to his now-racing mind, and Connor disappeared for a solid 24 hours in the Barri Gotic, and I just felt elevated and chill like I always do when I take it. And while he was grouchily coming down, Tim and I squabbled a little bit about our tickets to Denmark, because sharing finances AND making travel decisions together was kind of becoming a burden. There was also the morning we left for Germany, because we hadn’t actually communicated about getting to the airport after the ticket-booking showdown, and when the time came Dominic, now claiming he loved me, took awhile to say goodbye to, and we had to run to Plaza Catalunya to board a shuttle, didn’t speak to each other once during that ride, and then RAN across the entire airport with our fucking backpacks, while all the while thinking: If we don’t make this plane, this might be the end of our friendship. So then there was Berlin. I broke down that night in my hostel, the Heart of Gold. Finally everything caved in. It dawned on me that I was heading “home” soon but that I actually did not have a home; my parents were in NY, my dog and belongings in Seattle, my best friend and a few solids and a job I guess were in SF. But they all felt like I was going backwards, without any forward momentum. I had an 8-bed room, but I was alone in it, and I slept for a solid day, and when I woke up I had no concept of where I was, and it was one of the eeriest feelings I ever felt, though peaceful. I had created nothing meaningful to return to. So I wallowed a bit. Berlin was cold and drab and I felt like I was coming down from Spain, and that familiar yearning for a sense of belonging. So a dull panic washed over me. Germany’s history is bleak, so attempting to distract myself playing tourist was futile, so I just wrote by the River Spree. A group of deaf people sat around me, the only person occupying a bench, and one stood in front of signing to them. Felt surreal, like a joke I’d laugh at later. I sat up late and read the internet in the lobby, also a 24 hour bar, the only area with wifi. It was meant to promote interaction over technological addiction, but in actuality it caused everyone to gather in the lobby to plot out their days on their devices, alienating everyone. One night, a lovely moment: a rando group of travelers gathered together playing music, a quiet performance of “Fly Me to the Moon.” My aircraft was grounded, and they offered to rebook me. “I’ll meet you anywhere in the world,” Dominic wrote from Toulouse. So I contacted my parents, upset, and they booked me flights to Paris, and I told Tim. Discouraged, I posted on FB about my flight being grounded/being bummed in Berlin, spoke with Carey about the delay, and got a message from Dana putting me in touch with some friends of hers. Had another bad moment with Tim the next day nearing the Berlin Wall, but kind of getting tired of telling those stories now. Doesn’t matter. Later he tried to make amends when he found a festival -- it seems we arrived just in time for their Reunification festival -- and I tried to muster up some excitement, but I’d been so weirded out in my hostel and with Tim it was difficult. Rode a ferris wheel with a Syrian, watched the poppunk band The Wanted perform, got a scarf for the cold, drank an Irish coffee. Taryn told me that if ever I feel weirded out while traveling, to find an Irish pub, and she was right. They’re the same everywhere. Checked in to Tim’s hostel since he convinced me it was better, but switched rooms to an all-girls rooms to allow us more space. Somewhat bolstered by the promise of Paris, and not ending the trip on such a sour note. But then Dana’s friend Warwick contacted me, and I met up with him and his wife and their friends in a little smoky pub in Nuekolln. In high school, I had a penpal named Colin, and he spent a semester abroad in Copenhagen, and he’d written to me about the Dutch concept of hygellig. Cozy. And I’ve been chasing it ever since. And then there it was, at Leidak. I drank nearly two liters of wine, got reamed at by the old German cashier in German, got on a random train, wandered around in a wino daze, and then there it was. I hadn’t taken to Berlin the way people told me I would - it was quiet and cold and harsh and bleak, and I used those descriptors to exhaustion - but a quiet, simple sort of night changed my mind, because it was so quiet and simple, and because the humans were so kind, and because I knew they had endless strings of quiet, simple nights drinking Dada cocktails at little smoky pubs and talking about this or that and maybe some nights were wild but all I ever wanted were the mellow nights I knew they experienced in abundance. I looked around: I would have loved to be a part of any circle of humans in that bar, and I heard snippets of their languages and laughter and I wanted in. I guess it’s that simple: I wanted in. I didn’t feel so much as I belonged with this particular set of humans as I felt I could belong somewhere, a feeling I hadn’t had in a long while. I made eyes with a bright-eyed boy across the way, and my next memory -- this one clear as fucking day -- was being held against him at a U-bahn station in Kreuzberg -- I remember because when we momentarily broke off from me I asked “Wait...where the hell are we?” and he answered, with his sloppy smile, “We’re in Kreuzberg” -- and note I don’t think anyone has ever kissed me quite that fervently -- he reminded me of a schoolyard bully, can’t place why -- and we ended up back at his large flat in Kreuzberg via taxi -- and goddamn if I hadn’t sifted through this night 200x since -- Laurence, you ruined Paris for me. I awoke in his bed with all my stuff back at the hostel in Mitte, but it was settled, I would stay with him for the rest of the weekened - “Now let’s go get you sorted” - since I was just wandering through, there was no pretense about a relationship, no bullshit. And so we went, and we got sorted. Found Tim. I made shit hostel breakfast with what leftovers I had, some stale bread, some scrambled eggs, and while I cooked he came and put his arms around me, a simple movement, but I still riding that high of a fleeting sense of belonging. He was a writer, teaching English, approaching 30, a bloke from Manchester. We napped at his place after wandering around Kreuzberg, and then he went and fucking kissed the top of my head just when “Slow Show” came on, unknowingly, and he held me the whole time as I promised not to fall for the loveliness and novelty of this stranger, but by then it was too late, si claro, he could easily shoehorn into being the next Nick: a beautiful taste of something I’d always want to drink some more of. Nick had done a similarly absentminded thing -- he’d wrapped me up into his sweater with him while waiting for the bus that morning in Vancouver -- and even then my heart was like oh no, oh no. And ever since, I’ve been giving up on decent guys whose only real fault is they never caused my dumb little heart to spike in some silly way. We met Tim at the labyrinth, a plan we hatched long ago. We drank in the corridor for awhile, then got the gold coin - a woman spun me and sent me off - first fright was own damn reflection popping up - crawled around in that wild, haphazard maze for awhile - standing there was Laurence, taller, eyes bluer, hair wilder - found Tim and the other Laurence, crawled on the floor to a neon-white room and danced and crawled back and went upstairs and kissed Laurence for awhile. Everytime you access a memory, it degrades like a shitty jpeg, so I try not to tap into these things anymore. We had dinner back in Kreuzberg at some Italian place and then fell asleep together again and woke up; I had a flight to catch and he had a match to get to, so he walked me to the bus stop and I said farewell and he went, nearly offended, “Wait a minute, kiss me goodbye.” So I kissed him goodbye and went to Paris to meet Dominic “under the Eiffel Tower at sunset.” Paris was doomed from the start. Never agree to meet anyone under the fucking Eiffel Tower at fucking sunset. Never flee to Paris as a means to delay figuring out your damn life. I never gave it a fair shake. Don’t even feel like thinking about it. Flew to Orly and stopped at a McCafe to charge up, got an awful message from Carey, checked my depleted bank account, I don’t even really want to go through this part of the year right now. It’s like a cloud fogged me over from the inside out. Blood went tepid. Can’t explain it. First few moments in France: I don’t know, what the fuck ever. You know what, Paris was beautiful, and odd, and winding, and I had some great nights, drank some great wine, met some weird humans, and maybe some other time in my life I’ll process it, but not now. Point being, by the end of the trip, I was a mess. And I had to catch a flight to Denmark from de Gaulles. McMichael had taken me to the train and bid me well - I fell one last time in the square before leaving. Gave me a strange smile, like we both recognized how fucked up it was, and I remembered him in his apartment on Melrose years ago, and again in his apartment in the first arrondisement of Paris playing “Life is a Pigsty,” wearing the same face. On the plane, tucked into a copy of a The Big Sleep I’d picked up at Shakespeare & Company at Laurence’s suggestion, I found a series of post-its written haphazardly by a drunken Dominic from his last night in Paris and it all slowly dawned on me. Between those and Carey’s increasingly agro messages, man, I crumpled. I’m weak enough as is, but damn. So Copenhagen was weird. Caught the train to the hostel Tim suggested in Norrebro, only to find it all booked up and in fact, every hostel in Copenhagen all booked up. Sent out some flairs on Couchsurfing from an Irish pub where the barman had a vague Manchester accent. Can’t explain the daze I walked around Copenhagen in, carrying my full backpack, feeling utterly defeated. Knowing that all of this navel-gazing and sorrow was overinflated and bearing down on a good time, but maybe necessary, no I didn’t realize that at the time. I just wanted to drift off into the sea and let go of it all. The trip was over, my escape was over, and reality was even bleaker. I could not have charted a rockier landing. And where to? What next? What did I have now? I saw so many lives pass in front of me that I wanted to try on for size, but not this one any longer. Melodramatic, sure, but I suppose in a foreign land all alone there’s some lenience on grand, sorry self-pitying. A Taiwanese man found me on CS and I met him and a few others at a lovely pub after being berated by my taxi for not having a chip on my card. Threw all my krona at him and ran in, backpack and all, to a rather nice place. Had a lovely night with another host and his surfer, a blonde book publisher out of Helsinki. Taoi ended up being kind of a weirdo, but nevermind that. Everything faded away for a little while. Called Dominic to apologize, and perhaps explain myself, wished him the best on his travels. So by the end of the trip, I was a real mess. I hadn’t combed my hair in a month, and it was curly as hell and nearly dreadlocked. I took my flight to Norway, where everyone has blue eyes and everything is polished nicely and beer is nearly 20 bucks a bottle and I was hungry and weary and broke and tried to sort of bathe in the good nights, the good humans, the good stories, the good hours, the good moments I’d memorized from every angle. There was no shortage, and I tried not to let the fear leak in to those, quarantining them to a kinder home in my mind. Took an 8-hour flight back to JFK. Was alerted at customs that it seems I now had two pink eyes. Rushed to the bathroom to clean up before seeing my parents, and there was my mother, and there was her vision of her lost-at-sea daughter: two pink eyes, matted hair, unwashed clothing, torn jeans, kind of gaunt and very tan. They fed me and let me sleep for a day or two and then I broke down in my parent’s bedroom and admitted I had absolutely no plan for what came next and not even an idea of what I wanted out of life and very little money and no way to take care of my pup adequately and all of this came from their 26 year old daughter. They went to work and when they came back, they offered me a bailout: I could come home for a little bit while I got back on my feet. Safe and sound in my bed, I almost considered it. But you know what, fuck that, fuck all of my whining about poor decisions, I love my parents and I know this offer was put on the table in order to help me out and ultimately get me back on the east coast and away from my haphazard nomadic ambling, but thank the LORD I did not take them up at them. It would be like redacting the past near-decade of my life. Ultimately, they gave me a grand as a loan to sort my shit out with the promise I’d repay it from a paycheck at a financially lucrative, upstanding job, and soon, but as it so happens I’m not that on it, but at least I’m not living at home. The following winter was one of the most depressing periods of my life. I entered into a phase of homelessness, unemployment, couchsurfing, meandering, freeloading, and just being a general degenerate while I tried to get my ducks in a row. And I pitied myself, dear lord did I pity myself. More, I despaired every decision that had led me to this life. Couldn’t pin it on any one thing - I was pretty consistently irresponsible. Realized early on I’d have to cash in on every ounce of good fortune I could, cash out really. So I did. I stayed with Nicholas for two weeks in Seattle while I collected Brogan, paid off Carey, paid Tim the remainder for our trip, moved my stuff from one storage locker to a cheaper unit, collected leftover checks, whatever. Got to Seatac, then to SFO. Stayed with Todd for a few weeks on 19th & Valencia in SF, WITH Brogan, but didn’t sleep with him so as not to make it any weirder, eventually he got weary of that arrangement. Shipped Brogan back to New York, stayed with Laura for a month. That took us the holidays. Couldn’t afford to go home for either, for the first time in my life. Thanksgiving Laura and I ate mashed potatoes at an Irish pub, and then drank at Pop’s. Christmas we ate at a Chinese restaurant, and then drank at Casanova. She left from Makeout Room to see about a boy, and so did the others we were out with, so it was just me and this stoner bro, so spent the night with him. Picked up every shift I could at the Chapel, working 6-7x a week. Agreed to a $900 sublet on 26th & Folsom for the month of January while I worked on setting up a living situation. New Years Eve was my last night at the Chapel though; worked the mezzanine bar alone, and when 12 struck I was just sort of there to watch it happen, stayed up into the wee small hours of the morning with my coworkers and then disappeared off of the schedule. Had to go in not once but twice to ask if I was fired, and finally Keith told me: yes, we’re letting you go. Per the owner’s requests. Cool.

favorite moments of the year: -blue lagoon -sam - arc de triomf -cab - pigalle -party bro - poppy -hallway @ kex

[theouterhavenprod]

Shovel Knight took the gaming world by storm when it first released in 2014. It was one of the first incredible Kickstarter success stories, earned dozens of awards for gaming excellence, and became the golden standard for retro-styled games. Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove is the definitive Shovel Knight experience. The package comes with two full length additional games, Plague of Shadows and Specter of Torment, tons of bonus challenges, amiibo support and more. Even more crazy? The whole thing costs just $25! 

Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove is a must own game for Switch owners, and one of the best games I have ever played.

Name: Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove

Platform(s): Nintendo Switch, (Coming in April to Wii U, 3DS, PS3, PS4, Xbox One, Amazon Fire TV)

Publisher: Yacht Club Games

Developer: Yacht Club Games

Release Date: March 3, 2017

Price:$24.99

Gameplay: Steel Thy Shovel… And Thy Bombs… And Thy Scythes! 

When unpacking the entire Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove package, it’s critical to emphasize that Shovel of Hope, Plague of Shadows and Specter of Torment are three entirely unique games bundled into one. While level layouts are similar, especially in Shovel of Hope and Plague of Shadows, the way you traverse these stages changes dramatically depending on the campaign you’re playing. 

Each game does have similar concepts that reappear throughout. Each stage has hidden treasure chests for the player to scrounge up, highly entertaining boss battles, and secret areas. The treasure you find sticks with you throughout your adventure, and you can use to it upgrade your armor, equipment, life and more. 

Half-Smashed Checkpoint

Navigating each stage is a joy, in part thanks to the checkpoint system. When you reach a checkpoint in most stages, you can opt to break it and move forward without saving your progress. This gives you a considerable amount of gold, but if you fall in battle you’ll go back to the last intact checkpoint. The risk/reward system often had me standing by the posts, strategizing based on how confident I was in my own ability.

Another cool concept is the punishment for death. You have unlimited lives in Shovel Knight, so your deaths are punished by dropping a large amount of treasure. If you get back to the place where you died, you can reclaim this lost treasure. Die again before collecting the bags, however, and you’ll lose it forever and have new treasure to regather.

Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove also has bonus challenges and New Game Plus available for each individual campaign once you’ve cleared the story. That’s an incredible amount of content for just $24.99.

Shovel of Hope

Shovel of Hope is the original Shovel Knight campaign, and the most traditional of the lot. You play as Shovel Knight, a hero coming out of retirement to free the land from The Order of No Quarter. From the get-go it’s clear that the game’s controls are concise. Shovel Knight never felt unwieldy and the result is pure platforming bliss. Our hero can attack enemies by shoveling them, spearing them from above, or using magic items found in chests hidden in each stage.

Shovel Knight can find new items hidden in each level!

Of all three campaigns, Shovel of Hope is the easiest. Shovel Knight’s abilities are limited and well-defined right out of the gate, making controlling him simple and delightful. As a platforming veteran, I’d say the difficulty is on par with Super Mario World. The game’s difficulty slowly creeps higher as you close in on The Enchantress’s Castle. Still, the challenge is never overbearing. Additionally, cheap deaths are hard to come by. I can’t think of a time I felt cheated in Shovel of Hope. The stage designs are brilliant.

The levels you progress through all have their own unique identity, and each stands out because of it. You’ll visit all the classic places: a forest, an ice area, a volcano. But there’s also some unique ideas mixed in, like Propellor Knight’s flying stage and Specter Knight’s Lich Yard. Every level has a gimmick to navigate, but those gimmicks never feel overbearing. In the Lich Yard, for example, you’ll run into the occasional power outage where the screen goes dark. These areas pop up sporadically throughout the stage, but aren’t around long enough to wear out their welcome. The same goes for the conveyor belts in Tinker Knight’s stage, and the wind turbines in Propellor Knight’s airship. 

The old school graphics are second to none

Shovel of Hope features a navigable world map ala Super Mario Bros. 3., complete with enemy encounters and challenge levels mixed in with the main stages. You can also visit a few towns and enjoy the lore of the world. For an 8-bit platformer, there is a whole lot of world building in Shovel of Hope. I loved talking to the NPCs because you never knew what to expect. There’s some funny dialogue to be found throughout. 

Also adding to the package is the absolutely fire soundtrack. Every single tune in Shovel of Hope is a winner, and they’re guaranteed to be stuck in your head for weeks. And even then, you won’t be tired of them. I’ve had “In the Halls of the Usurper” and “High Above the Land” on repeat since last week.   

Best yet, you can also play co-op mode in Shovel of Hope! There are definitely times where it’s clear areas were meant to be navigated by one person only, but for the most part adding a second player is seamless. Unfortunately, Shovel of Hope is the only co-op game in Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove.  

There’s really nothing bad to say about Shovel of Hope. The game hits all the right notes, from beginning to end. If this was the only part of Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, I’d still call it a must buy. But it’s not. There are two more games for you to play! 

Plague of Shadows

Truthfully, it’s hard for me to differentiate my favorite game included in Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove. If I was forced to say which I enjoyed the most, I think I’d end up choosing Plague of Shadows. Of all the Shovel Knight games, this one has the most personality. You play as Plague Knight, an alchemist, battling through the same stages that Shovel Knight does on a quest to create the ultimate potion. Plague Knight’s band of alchemists aren’t welcomed in the main town, so instead they work underground. The characters you’ll find there are hilarious, even cute at times, and the sense of humor is again on point. While all three games focus on the theme of love, I found Plague Knight’s story to be the most touching. 

Part of the World Map

His gameplay feels dramatically different than Shovel Knight’s, although things are equally pinpoint. Plague Knight moves slower than Shovel Knight, but he can triple jump and soar through the skies with his bombs. He too finds upgrades hidden throughout each level, and by collecting green coins you can further improve your arsenal. Mixing and matching bomb types with detonators and casings gives players the freedom to take on tough obstacles in their own unique ways. There is always a tool for the job, it’s just a matter of finding it. 

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Each bomb style is useful in its own way

Glide Jump across wide pits!

Green Coins are everywhere and some are tricky to find!

Overall, Plague of Shadows is notably more difficult than Shovel of Hope. Plague Knight’s additional jumping ability can make landings tricky as he soars at rapid speeds. Again, deaths are inevitable but fair. I never felt frustrated or stuck playing through Plague of Shadows. 

Outside of the gameplay changes, things are mostly intact from the Shovel of Hope campaign. There’s a world map, mini-bosses, and eight knights to defeat before facing off with The Enchantress. The replayability value is high, as there are hidden green coins to collect in every stage. I still haven’t found them all!

All in all, Plague of Shadows is a similar take on Shovel Knight with a new protagonist and interesting power-ups. Again, if this game alone cost $24.99, I’d recommend it to everyone.

  Specter of Torment

The final game included in Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove is Yacht Club’s latest addition: Specter of Torment. You play as the undead Specter Knight, and this one radically changes up the formula. If Shovel of Hope is Mega Man, Specter of Torment is Mega Man X. And that’s awesome. If Yacht Club had made a third game with the marginal changes found in Plague of Shadows, the game would have been bland. They didn’t. Specter of Torment is an intense game with an interesting story and some really cool gameplay twists. 

Bonus Challenges are still everywhere!

Specter of Torment serves as a prequel to Shovel of Hope, detailing how The Order of No Quarter came to be. Specter Knight himself is a mysterious and unique character, and we learn a lot about him throughout the campaign.

Minor changes include the removal of the world map and towns. Instead, Specter Knight encounters mini-bosses in The Enchantress’s tower, which serves as the central hub. A minion warps Specter Knight from stage to stage as he recruits the boss knight’s into The Order of No Quarter.

Those changes are fine, because this game makes its money in its gameplay. Specter Knight can run up walls a short distance and wall jump. Most importantly though, he can launch through the air by targeting hanging objects, enemy attacks, enemies themselves and more. He’s slower than Shovel Knight, and can’t jump like Plague Knight, but he gets around at the fastest pace thanks to this awesome technique. The best moments in Specter of Torment all come when you’re navigating vast cliffs by launching from target to target. These moments are thrilling, and well implemented in remade boss battles. The final boss in Specter of Torment stands as one of my all-time favorites, despite its relative simplicity compared to the rest of the game. I won’t spoil it, but it’s very cool. 

Specter of Torment is by far the hardest of the three campaigns, and I hate to admit that that’s mostly because there are a few problems with the homing slash. Several times I was reminded of frustrating Sonic the Hedgehog deaths, with Specter Knight slashing towards an area I didn’t mean for him to target. There’s also no way to get Specter Knight to do a standard slash in the air when moving towards an enemy. It took me a while to adapt to this, and I often would accidentally sling myself over a cliff when I just wanted to jump and cut. Far too often I perished because Specter Knight slashed down through an enemy on a platform I needed to land on and into a pit, rather than stopping his momentum upon contact. This was frustrating, but perhaps I was just spoiled by the precision of the other two games.

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Levels are almost completely remade. This is the lava level in Plague of Shadows.

There’s still a ton of personality in Specter of Torment

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy Specter of Torment. I absolutely loved it. My greatest highs while playing Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove all came from this campaign. When things work, and they do 99% of the time, this is the funnest game of the bunch. The feeling you get when slashing through a tough area at high speeds is unmatched. It’s packed with collectables, and features an incredible soundtrack of remixes from the first two campaigns. In the Halls of the King is my favorite, but they’re all amazing. 

Retro Gaming Done Right

I’m not the first person to rave about Shovel Knight, and I won’t be the last. This package of games is incredible, each brimming with personality and entertainment. If you even just slightly enjoy fun, you will love Shovel Knight. It’s more than one of the best games of this generation. It’s one of the best games ever created.

I do want make a note of how this game plays on the Switch specifically. I played Treasure Trove in every format possible, and found that it’s best experienced in handheld or docked mode with the Switch Pro-Controller. In co-op, I often had issues getting Shovel Knight to not spike the ground while using the individual Joy-Con held sideways. The joystick isn’t as accurate as a d-pad. That’s not to say you need a pro-controller to enjoy this game, but it is best experienced that way. I had just as much fun playing in handheld or docked mode with the Joy-Con grip. It’s really just the Joy-Cons sideways that’s slightly inaccurate. Tabletop mode works just fine as well, although the screen is a bit small when two people are crammed around it during co-op mode. At the end of the day, the portability aspect makes those slight frustrations completely worth it.

Regardless, Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove is a must buy for Switch owners, and everyone else once it launches on other consoles this April. I still can’t believe it only runs $24.99, because I’d easily pay $100 for all this content. 

Shovel Knight Treasure Trove (Switch) Review: The Epitome of Excellence Shovel Knight took the gaming world by storm when it first released in 2014. It was one of the first incredible Kickstarter success stories, earned dozens of awards for gaming excellence, and became the golden standard for retro-styled games.