#I have. so many thoughts about Fern I might actually go insane

[cierv-o-robot-o]

Couldn’t decide which version I liked more

[thatguywiththecoydog]

The Bad Seed (1956)

Spoilers below.

Warning: There are some themes in this post that might make some people feel uncomfortable. I will be discussing themes of suicide, murder, and antisocial personality disorder. Not to mention, there are a lot of violent descriptions that I go into detail about. If these are subjects that bother you on an emotional level, please have some discretion upon reading this.

I recently watched The Bad Seed from Warner Bros. released in 1956. This movie is based on the book and play of the same name.

The plot (major spoilers start at paragraph 2):

The movie starts off normally enough with the Penmark family living their everyday life. Kenneth, the man of the house, is stationed off on military duty, leaving his wife, Christine, and his eight-year-old daughter, Rhoda, at home. Rhoda's reputation at the apartment she lives at is a good one, as both her mother and the landlady, Monica, adore her and everything she does.

One day, Rhoda leaves for a school picnic at the lake and everything is as it should. Meanwhile, Christine is having lunch with the other people in the building when she gets a rather disturbing message from the radio. A child in Rhoda's class has just drowned in the lake. This ends up being a boy named Claude. Claude had previously won a penmanship medal that Rhoda was also competing for.

Rhoda says this on various occasions, "That medal was really mine."

Rhoda comes home unfazed by what happened, which is a bit off-putting to Christine. Even stranger, Rhoda seems to be in high spirits after the whole situation.

The next day, Rhoda's teacher, Miss Fern, comes by to explain to Christine that Rhoda was the last person to see Claude alive, suspecting that she may have had a hand in his death. She also explains that the penmanship medal disappeared from Claude's person, who had the medal with him that day. Miss Fern links these two events to Rhoda because she was seen trying to snatch the medal for herself the morning of the murder, reportedly, until Claude cried.

As things are getting tenser between Christine and Miss Fern, even to the point of expelling Rhoda, Claude's parents burst into the front door. His mother, drunk and distraught, and his father, trying to stop her. Claude's mother, again, accuses Rhoda of having a hand in her son's death.

Christine does not believe that her daughter could have done such a thing as murdering a classmate over a medal until she discovers the penmanship medal in Rhoda's room. She then questions her about why she had the medal and if she knew anything about Claude's death. After a lot of back-and-forth between the two, Rhoda says that she bought the medal off him for 50 cents. Christine does not believe that story and is overall, pretty dubious of Rhoda at this point.

That night, Christine's father visits. Along with him, is a doctor who explains to both of them that there is a new (for the time) study that homicidal tendencies can be passed on through genes. These actions can apparently start at a young age. As he leaves, Christine looks a bit panicked.

Being troubled by some sort of nightmare or memory that has plagued her since childhood, Christine explains this to her father who is shocked to hear that from her. The memory involves her running away from home as a toddler because she suspects that her mother had murdered her brother. This prods her father to tell Christine that he "adopted" her. She was found as a toddler at a house nearby to one of a notorious serial killer.

After her father leaves, Christine worries even more that Rhoda has killed Claude, if the study the doctor was anything to go by. She begins to suspect that Rhoda has genes that give her homicidal tendencies. At that moment, Christine catches Rhoda attempting to dispose of her shoes. After more severe questioning, this finally gets Rhoda to confess that she had killed Claude with the shoes. Christine, now distraught, tells her to put her shoes in the incinerator where they will be burned.

The next morning, the apartment caretaker, Leroy, teases Rhoda that she killed Claude, somehow ironically guessing he was whacked into the water. After how defensive Rhoda got about it, especially with how he guessed that he whacked him with a pair of shoes, Leroy goes down to check the incinerator, only to find the remains of a pair of shoes. Rattled that Leroy knows too much, Rhoda gets a match and lights his bed of excelsior on fire before he goes down there and locks himself in.

Meanwhile Christine, once again, is attempting to calm down Claude's mother from her drunken rage. After she leaves, Monica comes to see Christine. After some conversation, they hear some commotion from outside. They look out the window to hear Leroy is screaming trying to escape his cellar room, which is now on fire. Two other men get him out, but not on time. He runs around the lawn screaming and on fire (this happens all off-screen). He finally silences, collapses, and dies.

This sends Christine into a large, hysterical depression. That night, Christine throws the medal back into the lake and tells this to Rhoda. After this, Christine grinds a lethal amount of sleeping pills into a glass of water for Rhoda, which she drinks. As she is carrying her to bed, Christine mutters, "Nobody can save you from that [being taken away and "shut up"] unless I save you, so sleep well and dream well, my only child and the one I love. I shall sleep too." She then walks out of Rhoda's room and into her own. As the screen fades to black, we hear a gunshot and a thud. Christine had shot herself in the head.

They are taken to the hospital promptly after neighbors hear their neighbors hear the gun. They both survive. While Rhoda was completely better after a few hours, Christine was in a coma, with little to no chance of surviving.

After getting home with Kenneth, Rhoda is put straight to bed. Kenneth then gets a call from the doctor, saying that Christine has miraculously survived the shot, with a shot of her being conscious, but bandaged up.

After hearing that her father is asleep, she puts on her raincoat and leaves the house into the pouring rain. She goes to the lake to try to fish out the medal that Christine had thrown into the lake. As fate would have it, Rhoda is struck by lightning. This is where the movie ends.

My thoughts:

I think many people would overlook this movie, seeing as it is a black and white film from the 1950s. However, I would say that this movie does deserve a watch if you can find it. Even with the spoilers I gave, there was a lot I left out, so you could still enjoy it, even if you read through the entire plot. I was able to watch it using TV on-demand services, as Turner Classic Movies (TCM) has it available as of now ad-free.

Here's a list of what I think the movie does right:

It really thinks ahead with its depiction of mental insanity and how it can be passed down through genetics. Most people in the 1950s would usually say that murderers with some sort of mental disorder come from a bad environment alone and that they would not be influenced by their heritage. Modern 2021 science tells us that mental disorders are just as likely to come from genetics as well as environment. I think that is really forward-thinking of the authors of the original book and play, as well as the directors of this movie opting to keep that detail in-tact.

The acting is phenomenal. You can get almost sucked in completely by how great the actors portray their roles. You can feel your heart sink when you hear Leroy screaming in pain and you can also feel a lot of emotions coming on during Christine's depression.

The use of background music is great. All of the music heard in the background really matches the tone of the scene it is playing on.

The movie will sometimes break up the tension with a bit of comedy, so it isn't all doom and gloom.

There are a lot of twists and turns throughout the movie, which I will not share again if you skipped over the plot section. The movie really does make you think about the characters and their situation and what they are going to do next.

Now. Here's a list of what the movie did not as good and how they could have fixed it:

The movie starts off very slow. This could put some people off from watching it when the ending of the movie I could consider to be a classic film masterpiece. I think if there was less filler at the beginning (there's a good 20 minutes before the actual plot begins), the pacing would feel a bit faster.

Overall, I would probably give this movie a solid 9 out of 10. I definitely recommend you give it a watch, especially if you are into old psychological horror movies, or even if you are interested in psychology or sociology.

[purplesurveys]

857

Your last ex finds out you’ve fallen in love with another person? I got back with my ex and I’ve only been ~in love~ with her, so this question doesn’t apply to me at all.

When’s the last time you were surprised? Today, because I SAW GABIE. After four goddamn months!!!!!!!!!!!! It was a big surprise to see her again, even if we did plan this out yesterday. I loved every bit of the brief time we had. Still giddy as fuck.

Would you fall apart if that last person you kissed walked out of your life? Realistically it wouldn’t be the end of the world but it would still suck and I would still be devastated, of course.

What is the last non-alcoholic beverage you had? Had water after finishing my dinner, just a few minutes ago. But I’m heating up some water so I can make coffee to drink for tonight.

Your mom finds used condoms in your room, you tell her? I’ll tell her it’s probably a prank from a friend, because it most likely would be. I’ve no reason to keep condoms, used or unused. Also I’d be pretty fucking pissed with such a prank and I’m likely to have a talk with that friend.

Do you prefer pasta salad, or coleslaw? I’d go with coleslaw, mostly because I do love it anyway and kinda because I’ve never heard of pasta salad.

Do you find smoking unattractive? I don’t find it ugly but it’s not necessarily attractive either. I don’t mind it, which is a far cry from what 18 year old anti-cigarette Robyn would’ve said.

Where’s the last place you went besides your house? I went to Gab’s house this afternoon. We played dress-up games, I bought from his dad’s small business (which sells theeee best Korean street food), she told me all about her internship and showed me the different softwares she uses, and she also introduced me to transcribing websites that can pay me a bit of money every hour because we’re both panicking about our futures hahahaha. Our activities were a bit of a rollercoaster but I fucking loved it. I was so happy for those three short hours.

If you were granted one wish, what would you wish for? I would love if I could get to dine in one of my favorite restaurants again.

Could you go for the rest of your life without drinking alcohol? Yes, I can. I’m not dependent on it and mostly drink it socially, except for the times I have bottles of soju in the fridge to drink when I’m alone and just wanna chill. Also, childhood trauma because of alcoholism in the family has made me pretty firm in my decision to not fall in too deep with my drinks.

Whose bed were you on last? Just mine.

When was the last time you changed in front of someone? March, probs? I don’t do that a lot except with my best friends.

Last person you kissed, have you cried in front of them? A few hundred times.

Do you trust all of your friends? Yes. To begin with, they’re my friends because I trust them.

Do you think the last person you kissed is nice? Yes. I don’t like it when she loses her temper because it takes a while for her to be in control of it, but 99.8% of the time she’s the nicest, sweetest, and most understanding person I know.

Does anyone call you babe? Just my girlfriend, I think.

Do you think you can last in a relationship for 6 months without cheating? Of course. Do you think the last person you kissed is a player? Well she’s only been with me and that’s been going on for a while, so I don’t know. We’ve had ‘what if we never got back together’ conversations though and she has told me that single!her definitely would’ve dated around and fooled around, so it’s possible that she could’ve been a player.

Could you go out in public looking like you do now? I would change my shorts. My tank top is decent; it’s actually meant to be worn outside but since it’s sleeveless and thin, I’ve taken to wearing it around the house so that I look cute here as well lol. I miss dressing up.

Do you believe exes can really ever be “just friends”? I do but I also don’t. Situation’s different for everyone.

Your ex wants you back? She did four years ago.

Would you rather love one person or have many short relationships? Just the one.

Anyone say they want to be with you forever? Mmm nope. It’s okay though, not really a fan of such dialogue. I’d rather she express this thought in different, less-cliche words.

Do you remember who you liked this time 3 months ago? Gabie.

Ever dated someone who was gorgeous but they had a conceited personality? No, I never thought of her as conceited.

Last person you had a deep conversation with? Again, Gabie. We had a brief but deep conversation about our plans for the short-term future, i.e. job-hunting, the possibility of freelancing for now, etc.

Is there a member of the opposite sex on your mind? Other than my dogs, no.

Did you reject or accept your last friend request? I ignored it for the meantime, haha. I don’t know who he is but we have tons of mutual friends apparently, so I’ll ask around to see if it’s safe to add him.

Would you prefer being locked in a room with your ex or your worst enemy? Ex, because that would also mean my current girlfriend and I’d never say no to being stuck in a room with her.

Have you kissed someone in ‘09 that means a lot to you? Didn’t kiss anyone in that year.

Do you want your ex to be happy, even if it means not being with you? I don’t have an ex but if I got into this situation with Gab it’ll be a hard-pill-to-swallow kind of situation. I’d ultimately let her go but like while I’d be bitter for a while, I would accept that it’s what she wants.

What would happen if you had a baby with the last person you kissed? That’s gonna be a huge breakthrough from a biological standpoint but I think I’d be more horrified than excited? I was traumatized enough by what happened in Eraserhead, so I’ll rush to the doctors first before celebrating lol.

Would you prefer a kiss on the cheek or neck? Neck.

Would it hurt seeing the person you last kissed kissing someone else? Yup.

If the last person you kissed bumped into you at school, what would you say? “what the fuck are you doing here”

Do you have a member of the opposite sex you can tell everything to? Andrew.

Do you believe your latest ex thinks about you? So tired of explaining the whole my-ex-is-now-my-girlfriend thing over and over lol so I might just skip questions like these if they still come up.

Has the last person you kissed, met your family? She’s met them but she’s just Gabie, Robyn’s best friend since seventh grade to my family.

Have you ever received a myspace message that made you cry? I was never active on Myspace.

Name someone whose name starts with the letter “L”: Liana, my successor in my vice-presidential position in my org.

Do you think anyone has feelings for you? Yep.

Will you fall in love in the next month? I think staying in it is more apt to say.

You’re insanely drunk stumbling through the streets, slurring songs, who are you with? While I’d let myself get to that level of drunk, I definitely wouldn’t let myself go out in public because that’s just dangerous. But to slightly answer this question, I’m willing to get irresponsibly drunk with Kate, Aya, Jo, and JM. Probably not Luisa because the last time we got drunk together she held my hand and it felt so off and I just wanted to run to Gab and cry because I was so creeped out.

Next time you will kiss someone? I have no idea. In another four months, maybe?

Who was the last person you talked to before you went to bed last night? I think Gab. I just said I wasn’t ok and that I’ll just go to bed.

Do you like to cuddle? Only with my person.

If an ex said they hated you, you say? -

Do you know anyone who would just drop everything to come see you? No. I think that could get pretty unhealthy.

Have you ever done something you told yourself you wouldn’t do? Tons of things. I’ve stopped saying I’ll never do this and that because I always end up doing so. In the last decade I’ve joined a college org, drank alcohol, smoked a cigarette, vaped, liked smoothies...list goes on and on.

Have you ever suspected anyone of cheating on you? Nopes.

Is there someone you used to talk to every day that you don’t talk to at all? Yeah, people have come and gone. Sofie, Athenna, Macy, Chelsea, Kaira, Fern, Gabe, Agatha, Sachi, Audrey, Angel, Andi...again. List goes on.

Could you ever be friends with the person who hurt you most in life? That would be my mom, and I am at best civil with her. We have good days but they’re rare at best. I don’t see myself ending up being best friends with her many years from now.

Can you have more than one best friend? Yup, I have two.

Has anyone said they love you in the last week? Mom, dad, Gab, Angela, Angela’s mom, and a bunch of people who congratulated me when I uploaded my grad photo on social media.

Last compliment you received? My hair.

Are you starting to realize anything? Now that I’m out of school for good and off to the real world? Absolutely.

Who was the first person you talked to today? My mom because she actually woke me up -_-

Do you think you can last in a relationship for 3 months? I’ve lasted a lot longer than that.

Have you ever known someone that just creeped you out? Yes. And my intuition turned to be right because they were recently officially reported for sexual harassment.

Do you hate it when people mispronounce your name? No because I don’t know how they can possibly mispronounce it; it’s pretty straightforward. I do get misspellings a lot but I’m not annoyed a lot by it because I understandably have the less-common spelling of the name.

[voidendron]

Deep Blue Sea: Ch. 16

Chapter 16: Abandoned Subnautica/JSE Egos Crossover

(( note: I haven’t played/watched gameplay for Below Zero yet, so please don’t spoil anything for me! Things from this fic might retcon stuff that happens in it, and I apologize if they do, but I don’t want to spoil any more of the game for myself than what already has been ‘til I can play the whole thing through myself ))

Warnings: Swearing Characters: Marvin the Magnificent, Jameson Jackson, Dr. Schneeplestein, Chase Brody, Jackieboy Man POV: Marvin the Magnificent

Silence.

Pale Faces.

Keen’s words hung in the air between them.

“…We need to help him.” Jackie’s voice startled the rest of them from their shocked trance.

Marvin swallowed. Shook his head. Oh, hell no. “Are you insane?!” He ran his hands through his hair with a shaky breath. “There’s somethin’ here! We need to get off this island!”

“I am not putting my life on the line for someone else,” the doctor growled.

Jameson signed something—Marvin had no idea what it was, but his frantic nodding had him figuring that the chef agreed with them.

“He’s in danger!” the security guard insisted. “The recording was recent—he could still be alive!”

“Jackie’s right.”

Marvin’s head whipped toward Chase when he agreed. “No. No, no, no. He’d been so damn calm in his other messages, and how he’s panicking! You really want to run into whatever made Keen panic?!”

Chase frowned. “It’s a small island. How bad could it be?”

Their three-against-two changed when Jameson ducked his head, then offered an agreeing nod. He was signing again—Marvin would really need to learn those, wouldn’t he?—and the other two so…hellbent on saving Keen sagged with relief.

“Really no other way to change your minds?” the entertainer asked.

“We’ve gotta find Keen,” Jackie repeated, “and hopefully Yu, too. There were only two of ‘em, there’s five of us.”

“Yeah!” Chase was tucking his flippers and Seaglide near some…ferns? was that what they were?

“And if something does come after us?” Marvin challenged, gesturing harshly first at the doctor, then Jameson. “Doc’s ankle is fuckin’ shredded and James’s got broken ribs. They’d be picked off easy.”

“Anything attacks either of them—any of us—” Jackie hoisted up his broken flare in threat; he didn’t have to say any more than that.

Marvin and Henrik glanced at each other. For once, it seemed like they were both on the same page: They did not want to meet whatever had gone after Keen. Did the other three just not understand self-preservation? God…

He tossed his flippers near where the others were putting theirs. His air tank and Seaglide followed, but he was far more careful not to throw those down.

Seeing Henrik’s flippers actually laying with everyone else’s made him double-take. Marvin had always thought he had big feet. Definitely made sense why both of them had needed more materials than the original dive suit blueprint had called for.

Deep breath. The others were leaving the beach, leaving the two of them behind. Well, Marvin would much rather stick with the group than be left alone on the island.

“Come on,” he grumbled. He really wished they’d brought survival knives. He’d feel a little better if he could at least defend himself. “So!” he called ahead—both Chase and Jackie glanced back at him. “Any plan for what we’re gonna do if we find whatever went after them?”

“Depends on what it is, I guess.” Chase shrugged; he was walking backwards now.

Marvin just frowned and shook his head, watched the path ahead of them.

Wait.

…Path?

Henrik was eyeing it, too.

“Please tell me you’re thinking the same thing.”

“Something has traveled this same route for a long while, yes.”

They were following the path, and Marvin couldn’t help the unease settling into his gut. The feeling only amplified when they came across an old habitat and its overgrown garden.

Glances cast around, and Jackie was the first to approach the settlement.

It looked abandoned. Falling apart. Broken windows.

It had been there a long time.

“…I don’t think we’re the first to get stranded here,” Jackie said, voice soft.

Then, he was suddenly yelping; Marvin and the others jumped and scrambled away. From the way Marvin saw it, he was acting solely on instinct when he swung his flare and the little ankle-biter of a creature went flying.

When he blinked at it, Marvin actually found it in himself to snort. Was that thing some kind of…crab?

“Scared the hell outta me,” Jackie muttered, “but there’s no way that’s what had Keen panicked.”

“Unless he got swarmed?” Marvin suggested.

“Maybe..? I’m don’t know…”

Chase cleared his throat, pointing to the habitat. “They had to have made it off the planet, right?” Chase was inching forward, toward the multipurpose room’s shattered window. It looked like a mudslide had caused it. “I mean, it’s clearly been abandoned a long time.”

Marvin’s eyes were scanning the old habitat. He didn’t like this.

“Yo, check this thing out!”

When Chase tried bolting in through the broken window, Marvin grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him back. “That window’s broken. You really want to step on glass with bare feet?”

“But look!”

Marvin’s gaze followed his pointing finger. There was…something, in the room. Glowing. It didn’t look like anything he’d ever seen before. “What is that thing..?”

“I mean. It looks like the mud’s covered all the glass?”

When Marvin’s grip slackened, he must have taken that as a go-ahead and ran into the room. He was careful while climbing through the window not to cut himself on any of the glass that still remained, and when he came back he had something in each hand.

“There was a data log, too. Also, this thing’s surprisingly light? Like…what is it?”

He gave the data log to Jackie to put in his PDA, then set the glowing whatever-it-was on the ground between all of them.

“Is like a tablet,” Henrik said.

“Yeah,” Chase agreed, “but it doesn’t look human.”

It seemed Marvin and Henrik had the same idea when they both reached for their scanners. Marvin’s scan finished first, and everyone’s PDAs chirped as the data was transmitted to all of them. When he read the information, he only shook his head.

“I really doubt it’s human. Estimated to being abandoned here hundreds-to-thousands of years ago? Yeah, definitely not ours.”

“Alien technology?” Henrik winced as he knelt down to pick it up, ran his fingers over the glowing purple symbol. “What were these people doing with it?”

“Well, from the sounds of it,” Jackie said—another chirp as the data log transferred from his device to the rest of theirs, “—they found it, and also had no idea what it was.”

“They? How many?”

“I count four people in the recording. Three men and a woman, but I’m relying on the PDA translating for me ‘cause they’re definitely not speaking English.”

Marvin opened the new file on his own device, listened for a moment, then shut it off to read over the translation instead. “Sounds like they were from a Mongolian settlement. I don’t speak it, but I’ve performed for one a few times.”

Four people had lived in this now-abandoned habitat: Two Torgals (probably related, he figured), Sepse, Maida. Where had they gone..?

When Chase and Jackie explored the rest of the habitat and came back with a few more data logs, it looked like where they’d gone was deeper. Much, much, deeper.

Apparently they were part of Torgal Corporation—no wonder the names were familiar. Paul was the head of the company and had gone missing about ten years ago. It hadn’t been the same since.

…Ten years ago. God. They’d never made it off the planet, had they? Would that be their fate, too? He could feel his stomach twisting.

Bart was Paul’s son and heir to the company, Marguerit Maid a hired mercenary, and Antony Sepse a microbiologist.

He could see it in the pale faces of his comrades they all feared the same fate, and it was Chase to break their silence.

“I…I kinda doubt we’re in the mood now, but I see two more habitats.” He outstretched an arm, pointing. “There, and there.” Perched oh so precariously at the tops of two mountain peaks were, sure enough, two more habitats clear even through the fog that seemed to have lifted some. “C’mon. We can still try findin’ Keen and Yu. Who knows. Maybe we’ll have better luck than that group did.”

Marvin closed his eyes and took a slow, steadying breath. They’d find a way off the planet. They had to. But…did that really mean rescue never came for that group..? No, don’t think about it, he scolded himself. Instead, he offered a hand to help Henrik back to his feet, and the five of them started for one of the habitats.

What they found didn’t lift their spirits any. A PDA, not a data log, met them. Bart and Antony—the other two were dead?—regretting going down so far. Bart was ill in the recording. With the scientist’s help, they were trying to find a cure, but failing. One of them mentioned that Antony was wearing a special suit—some sort of hazmat diving suit—that had kept him from catching the same illness, and now left him needing to be extremely careful not to touch Bart with his bare hands.

Then it was over. Nothing more to the recording; just a dying man and one of his crew members trying to save him.

“I’m really startin’ to hate this planet,” Chase growled. “What do you think he had?”

Instead of an answer, Henrik pulled his scanner from his hip and ran a scan on himself. The answer had Marvin furrowing his brow.

“Performing self-scan. Vital signs normal. Detecting trace amounts of foreign bacteria. Continuing to monitor.”

He aimed it at Jameson. Same answer. Jackie: Same. Every one of them ended up with the same results. “Trace amounts of foreign bacteria” just kept looping in Marvin’s head. That couldn’t be good. Right? How the hell would they even have it? They didn’t even know that it was the same thing Bart had, but a part of Marvin very much was suspecting that it was.

“Could just be…I dunno, some sorta alien flu?” Chase shook his head and stood a little straighter. “We’ll keep an eye on it, okay? Don’t let it get to you, though. We’ll worry about it if we need to.”

If we need to, Marvin’s thoughts parroted. As if they hadn’t just listened to a man dying in a recording.

“…Do we really want to check that last habitat?” Marvin leaned out the door to peer across at it. “Things are just getting fuckin’ worse and worse on this island.”

Keen and Yu attacked by something. Survivors from ten years before who’d probably died long before rescue could even hope to find them. Some weird alien artifact that Henrik and Jameson were taking turns carrying. An alien sickness.

“Whatever is there can only be the cherry on top, yes?” Henrik grumbled. He was leaning against the wall, foot held off the ground.  Jameson was sitting on the floor near him, eyes squeezed shut and hand pressed to his chest.

“Besides,” Marvin added, “those two clearly need a rest, and I am not resting on this island. Far as we know, whatever went after Keen and Yu could be, oh I don’t know, watching us?!”

Chase grimaced and gave Jackie a look.

“We, ah…” He ran a hand through his bleached hair, fingers catching the tangled curls. “What if we have them head back to the habitat? And…you can join ‘em?”

Jackie started nodding. “We can’t just abandon those two if they’re still alive. I’m not doin’ it.”

“And splitting up is probably the worst thing we can do,” Marvin muttered.

“We either split up, or all go to the next habitat together. I’m not leavin’ this damn island until we at least know what happened to them.” Chase crossed his arms, closing himself off for further debate. He’d made up his mind and there was no way Marvin was going to change it.

“Fine.” Marvin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine. I want them alive just as much as you do, but I’m not risking my life for them.”

Chase shouldered past him. “Then let’s get back to the damn beach so you can leave. Fuckin’ hell.”

Did Marvin feel guilty for it? Sure. Did he feel awful leaving just the two of them on the island while he took their injured comrades back to their habitat? Sure.

Was he going to risk his life for someone who sounded like they probably dead anyway? Hell no. Marvin knew his priorities, and that definitely wasn’t one of them. He felt bad for Keen and Yu, holped that whatever killed them hadn’t let them suffer, or that they had, by some miracle, survived—but he wasn’t going to stick his neck out for them.

He’d had enough near-death experiences these last few days to last a lifetime, thank you very much.

Flippers back on, air tanks attached to their masks, Jameson helped into the Seamoth, and they were off.

His only thoughts were “good luck” when he glanced over his shoulder, saw Chase and Jackie at the edge of the island now, watching for them to make sure they made it a safe distance away. Then the two of them disappeared into the brush.

Good luck, he thought. You’re gonna need it.

[all-hail-the-witcher]

every book i had to read for english and why i didn't like any of them

i woke up thinking about this and decided to make this post. for context, i went to public school and was on the honors/ap track for english. i am a firm believer that english teachers ruin books for their students inadvertently. this is my experience:

6th grade language arts

we read three books during 6th grade, bridge to terabithia, the cay, and where the red fern grows. and i had to read a wrinkle in time over the summer which i didn't understand like at all so I'm just gonna skip that one honors english was not a thing until 8th grade where i went to middle school so this was a regular english class and i hated it. it was also a double period class for some reason, so i had an hour and a half of language arts every day. 

it took us half the year to read bridge to terabithia. i am not kidding. that book is like maybe 100 pages and it took us a good 4-5 months. this is because our teacher stopped us every time we got to a pice of figurative language and made us analyze it. every. single. piece. i got so bored that i read ahead and then got in trouble for reading ahead. needless to say, i absolutely detested bridge to terabithia and would not touch it to this day if my life depended on it. 

after bridge to terabithia we read the cay. this took us the rest of the year. the cay is a relatively short book as well so i got bored with this one quickly as well. i really dont remember much about the discussions, but i remember a long one about how the cover was “inaccurate,” which, yes, it was but i dont know if a bunch of 11 and 12 year olds need to spend a week debating that. i think i hated it mostly because, again, we read it for 5 months. 

the last three weeks of the school year, our teacher gave us a book and said “here read this before school ends because we have to read three books a year and we only read 2″ (for context, the other language arts class had read about 5-7 books that year and found it insane that we were “still reading bridge to terabithia”) so i read where the red fern grows. all in all it wasn't a bad book, i did kind of enjoy it, but since i was rushed reading it on top of all my other homework and because it was definitely ahead of my reading comprehension level, it wasn't my favorite.

7th grade language arts

now, a bit of a disclaimer here, this was the year that i was in language arts with the guy i had a crush on and one of my close friends at the time. so, i didn't really pay that much attention to begin with. we read quite a few books in this class, but I'm not sure if i remember all of them. again, this was a double period. 

i think the first book we read was freak the mighty. i remember not liking this book because i felt like i was missing something. there was definitely some kind of metaphor or something in there that i was supposed to get but because i was literally twelve i didn't get it and i didn't find the meaning in it. theres nothing more frustrating than reading a book that you dont understand.

after that I'm pretty sure we read the wave. it was explained to us that the wave is supposed to symbolize how the n*zis came to power and all that stuff, and while we all knew this, i dont think we really Understood it. (probably because we were 12). we all kinda saw it as a joke and thought it was funny. i think that if i read it now i would be like. “well shit this is really interesting” but 12 year old me wanted to make fun of it with the rest of my class. 

i think we read seed folks next. this was another book that just went over all of our heads. its about how a garden changes a whole bunch of peoples lives which is like, super interesting. but none of us got it and were like “lol this is stupid” so much so that we actually stopped reading it. like my teacher stopped having us read it.

I'm fairly certain the last book we read was the miracle worker. a lot of us had had to read parts of it before that class so we were all kinda familiar with it already. i vaguely remember some kind of obnoxious class joke about the book that was probably rude. i remember finding it interesting, but there were so many activities we did about the book that i lost interest. 

8th grade honors reading

this class was A Trip. i liked the teacher, but she was a little out there. its unclear whether she got fired or just didn't come back after that year. i had a lot of fun in her class but it was usually because we all bonded over hating the assigned reading.

i dont remember what order we read the books in and i dont remember if this was all of them, but to the best of my recollection this is what we read

we definitely read romeo and juliet. by the time you're in 8th grade, everyone knows the story of romeo and juliet, so it wasn't like that suspenseful or a surprise or anything. but we had to act the reading out. yes we had to act out romeo and juliet. with burger king crowns. and wrapping paper swords. clearly the teacher was trying to have fun with us, and it was fun fun for awhile but it got old. especially when you got participation points taken off your grade if you didn't read for once of the characters (which is massively unfair because not everyone wants to get up in front of a class in a paper crown holding a wrapping paper tube and read in old english when you're 13 but whatever). 

we also definitely read animal farm. it was another book that went right over our heads (or, mine at least). i didn't actually really understand it until i had to read the communist manifesto for ap euro senior year. and our teacher talked in a bad russain accent the entire time? i could barely keep the characters straight, let alone analyze the underlying message and all that. now i might actually like it since I'm a history major and have a decent background on the russian revolution, but at 13? no thanks.

the one book that everyone hated (including the teacher herself) was farewell to manzanar. it was a memoir about a young girl growing up in the japanese internment camps and looking back on her life and stuff like that. the story itself was very interesting and we all learned a lot from it. but the person who wrote it did not know how to write. it was confusing, some chapters made no sense, and none of us generally knew what was going on. we had to finish the book because we were the honors class, but the regular class got to stop after chapter 6. 

i think we only read 4 books that year and the fourth one was the outsiders. this was one of two books that i actually liked the entirely of my public school education. i kinda vibed with it when we were reading it and then i vibes with it more once i got to high school and rediscovered it. it was just a good book, pretty solid, good themes, fantastic. 

9th grade honors english

i absolutely hated this class. hands down the worst teacher i ever had. she was one of those that should have retired 20 years ago but was still teaching for some reason. and she hated kids. legitimately. that was the first time i got a c and it took my parents a long time to realize that it wasn't because of me, it was because the teacher was absolute shit. the only thing that made that class bearable was the fact that my friend was in there and so was this guy that totally like her so he would flirt with her pretty incessantly and it was Hilarious. 

we read so many books that year and i hated all of them. a lot of them were like greek dramas and plays? like we read oedipus rex and julius caesar and antigone. and i hated all of them because the teacher made me hate reading and made it seem like a chore. 

by far the worst was the old man and the sea. i hated that book, hemingway was terrible. i struggled to find any kind of meaning in it and connected all of my responses to the bible because my teacher loved it when people did that.

we read inherit the wind and to kill a mockingbird and all quiet on the western front which were the only books i found remotely interesting. but i still hated them because i knew that we would have to do her reading quizzes which were impossible so it was pointless to read the book anyway. 

and we also read a raisin in the sun. i dont remember what this was even about except that there was some kind of insurance money involved. but by this point we were all really done with our teachers shit and my one friend legitimately said during class “but, ms. [name] if you put a raisin in the sun, doesn't it just get more raisiny?”

10th grade ap english language and composition (american lit)

i loved this class and the teacher but i hated all the assigned reading because we read it for the ap test. everything you read was in the context of having to find themes and shit to write about on the ap. so i didn't really get any of the books for that reason. i think we only read three and they were the scarlet letter, the crucible, and the great gatsby. i kind wish i paid more attention to gatsby and i think i would like it more now but at the time i detested it. we also had to read grapes of wrath over the summer and i hated that. i wanna read books to read them, not to come into school and write essays on them. also the ending was weird and i hated it.

11th grade honors (british lit)

another bad year of english, not quite as bad as freshman year, but still bad. still hated it. i outlined many fics in that class. the teacher did not like me and i did not like her. she also talked in this weird fake almost british but not quite accent that sometimes still haunts my nightmares. she was also one of those backwards feminists who claims they're a feminist but still was sexist in her favorites and the way that she treated people in the class?? after english i had math and my friend (the same girl who said the thing about raisins freshman year) and some others would complain to our math teacher about our english teacher. math was essentially a support group for english where we would discuss answers to reading checks. 

over the summer we read 1984, which, cool concept (esp right now) but i hated knowing that i had to find some kind of deep meaning in it because i was going to have to write an essay on it as soon as i came back to school.

from there i think we read beowulf which was interesting. i dont know if we actually read the whole thing or just excerpts but again, i hated looking for meaning.

we read a tale of two cities which was like the one book i actually wanted to read because i am a huge fan of the shadow hunters book serieses and will and tessa quote that book all the time. i think if i had read it to read it it would have been better but first, dickens is wordy and weird and second i dont really wanna have to search out symbolism while I'm reading because its required.

we read macbeth, which i just didn't like. idk why. i just kinda thought it was stupid. i dont really have an explanation for this one. i think it was because we read it in the old english and that confused me a lot of the time.

and we read jane eyre. the only thing i remember from jane eyre was “pathetic fallacy” which is where the mood of the scene is reflected in the weather. i dont wanna dissect a book like that. and also my teacher referred to the book as “jane” but she said it “jAAYYneeE” which was annoying. 

12th grade ap lit

dear god. this class. i had issues with this class. our teacher was something. everyone was afraid of him. e v e r y o n e. he ran detention and didn't know how to match his clothes and wore skinny ties. he had three swell bottles the he would bring with him to school every day. people claimed he used to be in a rock band and that was why his voice was so high pitched and weird. some said his wife left him, others said he had a kid. we were genuinely confused by him. he didn't teach, he yelled at you for doing things wrong without giving any instructions on how he actually wanted it done. he made college out to be some big scary thing where we would all be trampled. but mostly, he was an existentialist. 

we had to read song of solomon over the summer. i hated it. i didn't hate it because of the messages and all that stuff, no the book itself was good and toni morrison is a great author. i just hated the fact that there was graphic description of incest, necrophilia, or sex at least once every 5-10 pages. i didn't wanna read that. and it turned me off the book. so when he asked us if we liked the book when the year started i said no and i argued with him about it. and he hated me for the entire year. 

next i think we read waiting for godot. which was absolutely terrible. its literally a play where nothing happens. it would have been funny except that i knew i was gonna have to write an essay on it. how do you write an essay on a play where nothing happens? literally all of our discussions about it were about existentialism and it was terrible. 

we read the metamorphosis, which everyone hated cause it could have been written in like 4 sentences. and our teacher thought he was So Clever for assigning it to us. he thought it was the biggest joke. and he went on and on about how its about existentialism and blah blah. the book would have been funny had he not only discussed it in regards to existentialism. 

i think next was hamlet. i would have like hamlet had we not discussed it only through the lens of existentialism. its a good play, but i hated it because of the way he talked about it. even now, i only like it to make fun of the way he liked it. my friend and i send hamlet memes to each other all the time but only cause they remind us of our teacher.

one flew over the cuckoos nest. the second and final book that i actually liked my entirety of school. i dont know why i liked it, but it was just a good book. our teacher also had some kind of weird cowboy trope thing that he thought mcmurphy fell under which i thought was hilarious. the essay i wrote on that book was the only one he wrote “nice job” on and i still have it somewhere

my friend claims that we also read the stranger. i dont really remember what that book was about except some guy shot some people. there was definitely something in it that i didnt get. 

anyway in conclusion required reading ruins books. when i told my creative writing advisor that i out of all the books i read for school i only like the outsiders and one flew over the cuckoos nest she was like “yeah, english teachers really ruin books for students”

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S3 Ep 1: Can We Just...Ignore the Apocalypse? Let’s Just Ignore the Apocalypse.

Ah guys, we’re back, it’s a new season! Sort of! It’s a filler arc that probably won’t make a huge difference on anything in the plot but bro has promised is hella weird so lets dive into it.

Remember all the stuff we were talking about last season, and how I had to like basically carry around a notebook and take character notes like for the first time since my High School English class when we read Shakespeare? Remember how freakin complicated everything got?

Well the writers for this season decided to do a soft reset on all of that mess. Apparently they’ll get back to that crazy stuff we spent a whole season building up but with a new season they’d get a new audience of viewers, and maybe they didn’t want them to be confused. Because, lets be honest, nearly all of the latter half of S2 would be unwatchable if you did not know what was happening.

They also knew they had a problem, especially since they were waiting for the manga to catch up to the show at this point so they couldn’t accidentally step on the manga’s shoes and invent things that later negated the manga entirely. They had to edit. They had to stay as far away from the manga points as they could. And they did it in the most ridiculous way.

Y’all don’t even know this blog was *almost* a SeaQuest DSV blog. But it was pulled. So then it was almost a Kolchack the Nightstalker blog. But that got pulled. Yugioh was my third choice. Much like my dating life.

That’s right, we’re going to do a soft reset by adding a whole new set of characters! A whole new plotline to keep track of! To show us this tantalizing view of Kaiba island and then just.......detour.

It’s honestly, a welcoming thing for me, a reviewer, because I was getting hella lost and now it’s back to basics. Although, there are certain things they just...didn’t even address.

Cold as ice, Yugi. Cold as freakin ice, like way to appreciate your most interesting friend. Like maybe put that house fern where Bakura died or something. Anything.

What teenager finds out their other teenage friend freakin died last night and is like “well...that happens” and of all teenagers--especially Yugi Muto. Yugi is usually so freakin extra but he doesn’t really...seem to be freaking out. I’m so used to this kid having a melt down so often, that when he’s not having a melt down, I assume there’s something absolutely wrong with him.

Yugi kind of glazes over the more complicated parts of Season 2 in some flashbacks, and then the blimp starts shaking violently to get us right off course in both location and plot.

(read more under the cut)

We did not get a peek at anyone’s mirrors to see if the giant mystery purple bottles are still around. A shame.

Also, guess what time it is, just by looking at this image. Just guess in your head, knowing that all these people went to bed at like 3AM last night.

Yeah it’s canonically 5 AM. In grand Yugioh tradition, all these kids, mostly a bunch of really gross boys, who are still in clothes from the day before, who miiiight not have showered, are now going to continue their adventure, just piling on the gross as much as possible until this season ends. It’s like every little kid’s dream honestly.

Anyways, we’re gonna fly right into a plot dump that is maybe one of the most insane dumps this show has ever dumped--and y’all we’ve had some nuts dumps--but this one is especially weird because it actually makes sense within the continuity.

Just remember when you hear this that we are in Season 3. It is Season 3 and this has never once come up, not even once before. That one guy on the writing staff who really, really, REALLY stans Seto Kaiba apparently walked into work the day when they were making this episode and was he like “wow, everyone called in sick to work today and no one’s here but me and I can go home or I can finally just go NUTS.”

So this entire time, the Kaiba’s were basically the Patriots. OK.

I mean, it actually makes so much more sense as to why these children know how to ride a helicopter and why Seto randomly knows CQC. I never thought I would ever get a proper explanation for this but here it is. Kaiba was being honed to devote himself to the...war economy...but then he said “actually nah, because that’s too effed up even for Yugioh” and then to spite his father replaced every weapon with trading cards.

And then...accidentally weaponized trading cards in the process thus turning into his own Father. 

I guess that’s why people are legit dying in this tournament and Seto and Mokuba are like “Yeah? This is what happens?” since they were literally raised by some Hideo Kajima mini-boss. They probably have no idea what children’s games are supposed to be like, so when Yugi loses his nut and starts Shadow Realming they’re like “hm. Is this what kids are into? I’ll go along with it. See Dad? I am blending into kid culture real well. Really good at kid stuff.”

Like, it’s a good layer of irony that these two decided to bring peace and harmony to the whole earth by replacing weapons with games you’d play with children--but then they chose the one game that will absolutely end the Earth quicker than a weapon of mass destruction. Congrats. You did it.

This show, man, sometimes I’m not sure what it wants Seto Kaiba to be. Because, yeah, Seto just showed us a very nice thing he did as he randomly does--he’s basically won a Nobel Peace Prize by default--but he’s still a complete asshole. Like did he just feel like he has to show up Yugi again for saving the Earth last season by reminding us that Seto has already done that before this show ever started? That he dissolved the freakin Patriots before this show ever began?

Like Seto single-handedly fixed the entire plot of Metal Gear. Like this is the child that ended how many wars with getting rid of the ammunition? This is the child the writers chose? Seto freakin Kaiba?

And then he turned around and essentially put cards into a bunch of guns and you wear them on your wrist what the hell is even going on with this kid?

But don’t worry we won’t get even five seconds to register this plot dump, much like that time they told me that Seto freakin Kaiba has a dead soulmate from 5000 years ago who is now four separate playing cards and also probably his Great^nth Grandmother.

The Seto lore is rapidly getting more complicated than the Yugi lore and Yugi Muto is two people. Just saying.

Anyway, lets meet our new villain.

So the theme of this arc seems to also be a theme that the writers are currently wrestling with. You got Yugioh which has a very--INTERESTING background, it’s this horror manga turned effed up anime turned much more tame child’s anime and it’s like, that’s a lot of pressure for this team. Kinda feels like every time they try to do Yugioh there’s going to be people that are pissed off because it wasn’t like what came before it. And so this whole story of Kaiba trying to get out of his problematic Father’s shadow is almost like the entire writing team at this point just begging us to please let them do a thing without having to do 158 on-screen murders.

(JK, they’ll murder off more people in this very episode.)

And so this arc they decide to make this character who, as bro mentioned, is a throwback to Season Zero Kaiba, but with better hair. Sort of. Honestly, I mostly only see the white shirt as a reference but I can see what bro is getting at, especially since their hair shape and eyes are like...VERY Kaiba-ey. Anyway, I called it right away before we saw this kid that he’d be a distant relative here to claim his cut of the Kaiba inheritance pie so, because his hair is Mokuba blue-green, we’ll just make him a Season Zero green. Because it looks like no one else’s font color.

Honestly, hopefully that won’t get too confusing if he and Mokuba are speaking at the same time but I have changed Mokuba’s font color once already and now I might have to change it again...

They’re already kidnapped, right? Like all of these people on this blimp have absolutely been kidnapped by Marik and are at this moment at his mercy? (mercy meaning “he just doesn’t feel like it right now”)

So yes, Noah kidnapped them, but at the same time he’s just borrowing hostages from Marik for a little while. He’s just babysitting some other person’s kidnapees from how I see it.

Also, his name is Noah and he lives on a very big ship. That’s uh...a little on the nose there with the naming conventions, Yugioh. As far as villains go, at least this kid doesn’t live underground and get tortured with back tatts. But, with the way this show is going, I would not be surprised if all the Kaibas got Agent 47 serial codes on the back of their heads.

*I love a good Star Trek tractor beam, don’t get me wrong, but never in my life did I think I’d see a sci fi tractor beam being used on a freakin party blimp*

Marik, PS, is still standing here on top of this blimp saying “this will be very interesting to just let another villain waltz in here on my territory while I just chill on the couch for a little while. I am tired.” which was...actually pretty true to Marik. This kid will let anyone else do his job for him if given the opportunity. Such a lazy villain. In a show where all the villains have been pretty lazy.

Now, Noah insists that everyone get the hell off this blimp, but Seto was like “Really, honestly, I just want to keep one secret today. Just any secret. Lets just have this conversation in private and everyone else, please don’t mind my family issues. No need to call the cops, it’s just a light kidnapping, no big deal. Family, amiright?”

So because they’re getting shot at, they stubbornly get off the blimp.

And then Marik wrote himself right out of this arc. At least according to my bro.

So, in honor of blimp, lets give that blimp a good send off. One last time, for blimp

I will miss you, blimp.

So, down a hallway and in a room of so much bloom they run into...these guys?

I had to like really think for a while to remember who the hell these guys were, it feels like 10 years ago since that one-off MMO arc that I figured would never come back.

Apparently time doesn’t work the same, much like in Narnia, so the Big 5 are just straight up insane now. Got it. Really glad I get to try and keep track of the names of 5 new people, don’t hold me to it, I’ll absolutely forget the name of every one of these mini-bosses. Anyways, while they were strapped to Kaiba’s game for 2 months, they freakin died.

Yeah, what?

Wow Yugi killed 5 people and it’s not even Season Zero! Like this is a Yugi kill, right? Like Yugi did this entirely? Like that whole game would’ve been a lose if Kaiba wasn’t told exactly what to do by Yugi and Pharaoh? Nice.

And then they got...the digital version of Shadow Realmed.

Ah the digital space. We can go anywhere here. Any environment. Anywhere. lets see where they go.

Man this show and it’s obsession with island climates.

I say that, forgetting they’re all from Japan.

Apparently every season of Yugioh contractually has to have at least one reference to Tristan’s enigmatic ass. Thing is--assuming they’re all hooked up to sensors or whatever---is there just one that covers...farts? Like there’d have to be, right? Google, stop whatever weird self driving car glasses you’re making and get on that.

After Kaiba proves that you can’t actually touch anything in this universe, Tea immediately sees a great opportunity and just starts touching all the stuff that she can’t touch, too. So she goes over to the bushes and sees this looking back at her. From a bush.

This still doesn’t answer the question of why the hell there was a clone in the bush!

Anyway, apparently Kaiba has made hundreds of clones of himself so he could play cards since he had no friends growing up and that wasn’t even the weirdest Kaiba plot dump this episode. Kaiba and his Clone Wars just feels so tame now.

So they go over rules--it’s a lot of words all right. Whatever, we don’t go into duels here, but overall they have to choose a mascot whenever they play to act a King in chessboard. So if their mascot card dies, then they lose.

Honestly they could just kill everyone straight up but youknow, it’s Yugioh so we’re gonna throw some honor into this murder by making it card murder. It’s fine. Don’t think about it.

Ishizu just slept through everything, right? Like she looked outside, saw all this go down and was like “NOPE” and then went right back to bed? I mean...that is also sort of what she did for half of last season.

And no, Yugi never ever once mentioned that Bakura freakin died last night. Amazing.

[sceptilemasterr]

“I, uh... I love you.” (Part 6 - Heart Vs. Mind)

Main Pairing: Estela x Taylor (gender not stated)

Other Pairings: Diego x Varyyn, Craig x Zahra, Grace x Aleister

Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama

Warnings: Violence, swearing, possible character death (it’s ambiguous)

Summary: With Estela and Aleister captured by Rourke, Taylor and Grace go in to rescue them. But Rourke has a new trick up his sleeve...

Note: Similar to Part 3, the bolded words represent in-game “choices” if I worked for PB. Which I don’t. Unfortunately.

Note 2 The Note’s Revenge: Credit to slighter_writer on AO3 for the idea for this one!

Previous Chapter: Link

Masterlist: Link

"Taylor, you're completely insane."

You glare at Jake. "Don't they mean anything to you!?" you demand, looking around at your friends one by one.

Michelle shrugs. "Of course we care, Taylor. I'll admit I was never the biggest fan of either of them...still, they were part of the group." She sighs and looks down at her feet. "But attacking The Celestial? You heard Varyyn's scouts, that place is locked up tighter than Fort Knox. You'd just get yourself killed."

You think of Estela at the mercy of Rourke and his henchmen, and your gaze hardens. "So you want me to just do nothing? Like hell I will!"

"Taylor, Michelle's right, you'd just--" Sean starts to say.

"No! No, I'm done with this, okay? I'm gonna save them, or die trying, understand? With or without any of you." Before Sean, Michelle, Jake, or any of your other friends can say a word, you storm out of the audience chamber of Elyys'tel angrily.

Frustration and anger cloud your vision as you wander through the Vaanti city, neither knowing nor caring where you end up. You keep climbing, up and up the massive tree, until finally you arrive at a large platform jutting out from the highest branch. Though it's too far away to actually see, you gaze southward in the direction of The Celestial, tears blurring your vision. "Dammit, Rourke, you BASTARD!!" you shout at the horizon, slamming your hands into the railing. "You...son of a..." Finally you slump to the floor, overwhelmed by hopelessness.

You aren't certain how much time passes. Five minutes? An hour? Half a day? Does it even matter anymore?

"Taylor?" You recognize Grace's voice as she approaches. "Are you--"

"No, Grace, I'm not okay," you mutter. "How could I be? It should've been me he captured...It should've been me."

You both stare in silence for several minutes before Grace speaks again. "Um, Taylor...that's not what I was going to ask. I was wondering..." She looks down and sighs. "I was wondering if you were ready to go yet."

"Go?" you echo. "Go where?"

She smiles faintly. "The Celestial, where else? I'm not giving up on Aleister any more than you are with Estela. Even if the others think it's impossible." She shrugs. "I was thinking about what you said this morning, and you're right, we can't just do nothing. I may not be the strongest or the most useful member of our group, but I'll do whatever I can."

You shake your head. "It's true neither of us are the strongest, but you're definitely one of the smartest, Grace. And even if it's just the two of us, I think we can do this."

Grace shyly looks down at her feet. "Thanks, Taylor. Also, looks like you'd better make that 'the three of us.'" She gestures behind you, and you turn to see a familiar zebra-striped fox watching you from the other side of the platform. "You coming too, Furball?"

"Mrooooow!" says Furball affirmatively.

Hope begins to swell in your heart as you stand up, glancing once more in the general direction of The Celestial. Estela, Aleister...hang on. We're coming.

Arachnid troops patrol the perimeter of the hotel, now sealed up tight with defensive shutters. You, Grace, and Furball watch, hidden behind a dense patch of ferns. "I count five...no, six soldiers," Grace whispers. "Plus who knows how many more inside."

"Right. We need to get in and get out, fast," you reply. "Any way to tell where Rourke's holding them?"

"The rooftop, if I had to guess? Unless you see some kind of clue that might give us a hint?"

You survey the area carefully. You choose to focus on...a large leaf on a windowsill. "What about that leaf?" you ask, pointing it out to Grace. "Does that mean anything, do you think?"

She squints. "I'm not sure, but it might be... Can you get me closer? I need to check something."

It's not going to be easy, but you trust Grace, so you agree. "We'll need to get past those guards," you say. Two Arachnid soldiers are standing at opposite ends of the building, each with patrol routes that take them directly past the windowsill in question. "What do you think?"

She watches for a moment, counting to herself, as the guards continue walking back and forth. "Okay, looks like the guard on the right walks away from the window about every six seconds. The other guard walks away every twelve seconds. We're gonna have to time this right."

You nod and watch the guards carefully. One...two...three...four...five...six seconds! You stay where you are, watching the guards walk by. Seven...eight...nine...ten...eleven...twelve seconds! You run, quickly! Grace sprints toward the window and you dodge to the side, scooping up a rock and tossing it in the other direction. "What the hell was that?" asks one of the guards, moving toward the source of the noise and away from Grace. The remaining guard stays put. "I thought I heard something..."

Holding your breath, you watch as Grace grabs the leaf and examines it closely. Finally, she starts sprinting back toward the jungle and gestures for you to follow her. Once the both of you are safe, she holds out the leaf to you. "Look at this!" she gasps excitedly. "Do you know what it is?"

"A...leaf?" you guess.

"Not just a leaf, this is the same one that healed Aleister's hand, remember?" She gestures wildly toward the leaf. "These markings, the angle of the veins and the shape...it's definitely the same kind. He must have known I would recognize it!"

It still looks like any other leaf to you, but you decide not to mention that. Instead you say, "Okay, so what did he want you to know? Why would he leave this?"

Grace looks down at her feet. "I...to be honest, I'm not quite sure. It was just sitting there, by the window to the--"

You both come to the same realization at the same time. "...The restaurant."

You meet Grace back where you started, after having made a full circle around the hotel. You shake your head. "Shutters over all the other entrances. Looks like this is the only way in or out." The two of you observe the main entrance, now defended by thick steel plates and the four Arachnids posted in front of it. "Any ideas?"

"We can't get in that way. Too heavily guarded.," says Grace.

"Don't tell me you're giving up--"

"Of course not! We just have to open up one of the smaller entrances. One where Rourke and his people won't be expecting us. Let me think...." You absently stroke Furball's fur as she mutters quietly to herself. Then she looks down at the striped fox and her eyes widen. "That's it! We use Furball!"

"Wait, what?" you ask.

She gestures toward the thick shutters surrounding the bottom of the hotel. "The shutters are made of steel. Traditionally, steel tends to be created with a largely face-centered cubic structure, which when exposed to subzero temperatures..." She trails off when she notices your glazed look. "Sorry. I keep forgetting you aren't Aleister."

"Gee, thanks," you respond sarcastically.

"Uh, that's not what I meant, I mean...you know! Anyway, the point is, if Furball can freeze the latches on the sides of one of those steel panels, we might be able to break them and release the shutter. We'll have to be quick, though, because those guards will notice sooner or later."

Having no better ideas of your own, you shrug. "Okay, let's do it then. I think the rear entrance by the pool had only one guard; why don't we try there?" Grace nods.

Slowly, quietly, you make your way back around the hotel, until you are hidden just outside the rear entrance. Just as you expected, a single Arachnid patrols the perimeter outside the shutters. Grace scoops Furball up into her arms. "Okay, Taylor, you need to distract him. I'll handle this part."

You turn your attention to the guard. The moment he turns away from the shutters, you run out of the bushes and shout... "Hey! Bugface!"

The guard turns and opens fire, but you're too quick, ducking out of sight back into the bushes. Angrily, he strides toward you, and you spot Grace lifting Furball up to the first latch. "We're spiders, not bugs, idiot!" the guard growls, but you've already circled several yards away from him. At the sound of your footsteps, he turns toward you, completely ignoring Grace. "Get back here, kid!" Once again he opens fire, and you...duck! The bullets fly over your head, harmlessly.

Clink! Another latch springs free, weakened by Furball's ice breath. The Arachnid turns toward the noise but you quickly chuck a nearby rock at his face. Angered, he whirls on you again, but before he can fire you've closed the distance and tackled him. The two of you wrestle for a moment, and finally you manage to latch onto his gun. With both hands, you hang on, and finally you are able to wrench it away from him. You bash the gun over his head with a resounding crack! as you notice the final latch breaking free. "Uh, wow," says Grace, eyes widening at the sight of the unconscious Arachnid. "Nice job, Taylor."

"You too," you say, gesturing toward the newly-made gap in the shutters. "Should we go inside?"

Having left Furball safely hidden in the jungle, the two of you now creep through the hallways of The Celestial. Everything feels eerily quiet, your footfalls echoing loudly in spite of your best efforts to walk silently. Making your way closer to the restaurant, the two of you round a corner and you suddenly spot a flash of color on the floor. "What is it?" whispers Grace.

You pick up the object: a small scrap of teal cloth, unremarkable at first glance. But you know better. "It's Estela's," you respond. "It must've been torn off of her hoodie. Of course she'd put up a fight," you add, smiling to yourself in spite of the situation.

"I'm guessing Rourke would probably keep her and Aleister together. We're on the right path."

You grip the stolen Arachnid gun tightly as you advance further down the hallway. Soon you're approaching the entrance to the restaurant, and the two of you round another corner to see... "Well. Rourke's made some upgrades," you observe. Two security cameras scan the area around the entrance, and a set of iron bars block the entrance. An automatic gun turret of some kind extends down from the ceiling. "Now what?" You heft the gun experimentally. "Maybe if I hit those cameras...like, right at the same time...."

Grace reaches out and pushes your gun down. "Don't be ridiculous. That would be an impossible shot. Maybe if Jake or someone were here, but as it stands...I've got a better plan, anyway." She pulls you back around the corner and down a side hallway.

"Grace?" you ask. "Where are we going?"

She enters a deserted banquet hall, and having no better ideas, you follow her. Grace quickly strides over to a maintenance closet on the far wall and pulls it open. "Now what was it...Aha! Here!" She touches a spot on the wall, and a hidden door in the back of the closet swings open! "There's a passage from here to the kitchens. It was probably designed to permit staff to quickly bring out the food during large events."

You're impressed. "Wow. How did you find out about this?"

Grace suddenly looks down at her feet, blushing. "Oh. Well...Aleister discovered it not long after we first arrived. He...er...showed it to me during New Year's Eve, and we...."

"Nice to be able to go somewhere private. I understand." Grace nods, staring wistfully into space. "We'll get him back. Even if it's just you and me. We'll get them both back."

"How do you do it?"

The question surprises you. "Do what?"

"That. How do you stay so hopeful all the time, even in such a hopeless situation?" She gestures around you. "Rourke could have a dozen soldiers in there. We could die. Even getting this far was mostly down to luck."

"Luck and skill, Grace. We wouldn't be here without you recognizing that leaf, or figuring out how to release the shutter, or finding this passage. I trust you, and I trust myself, and I know whatever happens, I'd rather be braving whatever dangers Rourke throws our way than sitting in Elyys'tel doing nothing. When it comes down to it, I have to believe things will work out. And they will!"

She takes your hand and gives it a quick squeeze. "I'm glad you're here, Taylor."

"Me too, Grace. Now let's get to that restaurant and kick Rourke in his stupid face."  She laughs in spite of herself, and together, you and Grace step forward into the passage.

When you emerge into the kitchen, you are pleasantly surprised to find it deserted. You can hear people talking in low voices from the restaurant proper, but they are too muffled to make out what is being said. "Wait," you whisper urgently, looking around. "We should grab weapons while we're in here."

"Good idea," whispers Grace. She lifts a sizable cast-iron bar and waves it experimentally. You watch her, surprised. "I'm no Estela, but you'd be surprised what I can do when I'm angry," she explains. "And right now, Rourke is making me particularly angry."

"I'm impressed." You look around the kitchen for something that catches your eye. You take a pair of kitchen knives! You use some nearby rope to fashion a makeshift holster for them around your waist, and lift the Arachnid gun. "You ready?"

Grade nods, looking toward the entrance to the restaurant with a steely expression. "On three." She holds up three fingers, lowering them one by one. Finally, at her signal, you channel all of your pent-up anger and frustration and kick the door open.

WHAM!

In an instant, you scan the room for enemies, but the actual sight before you leaves you stunned. There isn't a single Arachnid in sight. Rourke is seated at one of the tables, and at your entrance he glances your way for only a moment, as though your arrival was just a minor annoyance. But the real surprise is those seated at the table with him....

"Estela!?" you ask, shocked.

"Aleister!?" asks Grace, equally shocked.

Neither Aleister nor Estela react to your presence whatsoever. You lift the gun and point it at Rourke. "You have five seconds to explain what the hell's going on before I pull this trigger."

Rourke casually turns in his chair to face you, as infuriatingly calm as always. "Ah, Taylor. And Grace, was it? I do so dislike interruptions. Would you kindly both wait outside?"

You are momentarily confused, but keep the gun trained on Rourke's face. "Let. Them. Go."

Rourke spreads his arms wide to show his empty hands. "They are not prisoners. You misunderstand, Taylor. We were merely having an enjoyable family dinner together before you two so rudely interrupted. Now please, leave us."

You're not sure why Estela is there if this is supposed to be a 'family dinner,' but you have bigger concerns at the moment. Grace takes a step forward, brandishing the iron bar. "Aleister. What are you doing? We need to leave."

As before, neither Aleister nor Estela are reacting at all. "My son," says Rourke, "would you please inform this young woman of the situation?"

At this, Aleister looks up and speaks for the first time. "Yes, Father. We are in the midst of a family dinner. You must leave at once, Grace." His expression is blank, his eyes unfocused. His voice sounds even more monotone than usual.

"We're not going anywhere," says Grace, her voice angrier than you have ever heard it. "Rourke, what did you do!?"

Rourke gets up from his chair, his smug expression never leaving his face. "There, you see? They are here because they wish to be here. You are trespassing and interrupting, but I am a generous man." He withdraws a small control panel from his pocket and presses a few buttons. "I have disabled my defenses and ordered my troops to stand down. You may leave now, and I give you my word that you will not be harmed. But please, stop disturbing my family's privacy."

Before you can respond, Grace suddenly lets out a yell and charges at Rourke, iron bar raised to strike! "Grace, no, wait!" you cry out, but to no avail.

Rourke deftly sidesteps the attack. As Grace recovers and turns back toward Rourke, he gestures toward the table. "Aleister? Please restrain this madwoman."

Grace begins to charge toward Rourke again, but this time, Aleister gets up, standing between her and Rourke. At the sight, she hesitates. "Grace, you mustn't disturb my father," Aleister says in that same robotic voice. He wrenches the bar from Grace's hands and tosses it aside. As he moves to restrain Grace, he briefly turns to the left, and you notice a small metallic device affixed to his left temple, lights blinking erratically.

The sight snaps you out of your confusion, all the pieces suddenly falling into place. "Mind control. You're disgusting, Rourke," you growl. Rourke has only a moment to glance in your direction before you unleash a hail of bullets in his direction.

When the ensuing haze clears, Rourke remains standing, unharmed, a shimmering crystalline shield surrounding him. The shield dissipates. "I tire of this. Daughter, eliminate this intruder, would you?"

Daughter? Your brain has barely a second to process this before Estela has snatched up her spear and is charging straight at you! You block, the spear-tip coming down with such force that it nearly shears through the gun you hold. Sparks fly from the now-useless weapon as she whirls, advancing on you once more. "Estela! Please, it's me!" you call out, but her expression is just as blank as Aleister's, with a device just like his affixed to the side of her head. She brings the spear down once more and it's all you can do to yank out the kitchen knives at your waist, desperately parrying the blow. "Estela!"

"Taylor! Look out!" calls Grace as Estela comes at you from the side, smacking you hard across the face with the spear's blunt end. Dazed, you struggle to get up as she thrusts the spear point-first toward your right side.

You roll left! The spear strikes the carpet with such force that it becomes embedded in the floor. Estela struggles to wrench it free. and you spot an opening. You go for her head, tossing one of your knives aside as you grab the machine on her temple. You attempt to wrench the device free, but she suddenly cries out in pain and you realize the thing is implanted deep beneath her skin. Shocked, you momentarily lose your grip, and she lashes out with a kick that sends you flying to the floor, landing at Rourke's feet. You look up to see his smug face looming over you. You leap to your feet and try to stab him with your remaining knife, but Estela manages to get her spear free just in time and knocks the weapon from your hand with a well-timed block.

Weaponless, you gaze up into her eyes, searching desperately for some sign of the Estela you've come to know so well, the Estela you've been slowly falling in love with every day since coming to the island. But her expression remains more blank than even a robot's. "Estela, please. I love you! Don't--"

She brings the spear down hard just as you barely scramble out of the way, and she starts to march toward you once more. "Taylor! The bar!" shouts Grace, and you spot the iron bar she had been wielding earlier, now forgotten on the floor. Behind Estela you spot a pirate cutlass mounted on the wall. The knife you cast aside earlier lies on a table. You go for...the cutlass! As Estela lunges left, you go right, darting around her and leaping toward the back wall, grabbing the weapon off of the wall just in time to block another spear strike. "Ah, very good!" calls out Rourke, as if he was merely watching a somewhat-interesting movie. "This should be quite interesting."

Estela strikes again and again, but her movements are slow and telegraphed, nothing at all like the quick style you've grown used to from countless sparring sessions. A side effect of the mind-control, you assume. Each time, you manage to block, and at several points she leaves a clear opening in her defense. But you cannot bring yourself to strike back. You remain on the defensive, blocking and dodging every strike she attempts. "Taylor. Surrender," she says.

"No, Estela." Your blades lock, and you stare into her eyes, desperation written plainly on your face. "Whatever Rourke's done to you...the real you has to be in there somewhere. Please! Snap out of it!"

She backs away for a moment before lunging with a low sweep from the right. You leap over it and block her next attack. "This...isn't you!" you grunt, barely managing to deflect another set of blows. "We promised we'd--" CLANG! "--never hurt each other--" SLICE! "--no matter what!" Your voice begins to waver as the emotion threatens to overwhelm you. You sidestep as she strikes again, her right side wide open for an attack...but once again, you refuse to take it. "Estela, please! It's me!"

Estela suddenly stops in her tracks, blinking in confusion as her expression softens. "Taylor?"

"Estela...are you..." you start to say, but then the device on her head lights up once more, sparks dancing across its surface. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Rourke, frustration on his face, fiddling with the control panel from earlier.

You start running toward him when Estela's spear blocks your path. You turn and see the glazed, emotionless expression back on her face, the device having once again taken hold. "Do not harm Father," she says, her voice flat.

"Screw you, Rourke!" You bat Estela's spear aside and charge back toward him, but once again Estela blocks your path. "Estela, please. Don't do this!" She attacks you, and you block her blows several more times until one final strike sends the cutlass spinning out of your hands. She then flips her spear and smacks you with the blunt end several times, until you're finally sent falling to the ground.

You hear Rourke's footsteps approaching you as he applauds slowly. "Well done, well done indeed. Taylor, you impress me. However, as enjoyable as this has been to watch, I have other things to do and very little time to spare." He steps over you and takes a place just behind Estela. "Daughter! Kill them."

Estela raises her spear, poised to stab you directly in the heart. You are too battered to stand or otherwise avoid the strike. Desperate, all you are able to do in these last moments is cry out: "Estela, I love you!" You close your eyes tightly, waiting for the end...

But nothing happens.

Slowly, you open your eyes. Estela stands over you, her face contorted in agony, the device on her temple sparking and blinking faster than ever. "No! I...won't..." she forces out through gritted teeth as she struggles to twist the spear, forcing its point toward her own chest. "Taylor..."

"Kill them!" calls Rourke, more forcefully this time. "OBEY!" He glares at the control panel in his hand as his fingers dart rapidly across it.

"No!" you shout as Estela slowly but surely brings the spear point closer to herself. "Estela..."

"I'm...sorry...Taylor..."

Then everything happens so fast.

A light-colored blur rams straight into Rourke, tackling him to the ground and sending the control panel sliding across the floor, out of his reach.

Grace grips the back of Estela's spear, pulling it away from her.

Aleister grapples with Rourke on the ground, fighting over a gleaming shape in Rourke's hand.

Grace pulls the spear out of her hands and forces her to the ground, saying something into Estela's ear as Grace does something to the device on her temple.  You rush to Estela's side, heedless of Rourke, and cradle her head in your arms as Grace works her magic. "What...what's going on?" you ask breathlessly.

"I figured it out. It's some form of modified neuroprosthetic wired into the temporal lobe designed to override the will of the subject...and with the proper application of force combined with the subject's own participation..." She pauses as she concentrates, intensity written on her face. "We can overload the system with excess feedback, forcing it to...a-HA!" The device goes completely silent and all the lights shut off. "...Forcing it to shut down!"

You let out the breath you hadn't even realized you were holding, and pull Grace into a hug. "I don't believe it! You're amazing!" Then you turn back to Estela, lying on the ground. "Estela?"

She slowly opens her eyes, and this time they are shining with recognition and emotion. "Taylor?" she breathes. "Taylor!" She leans up and wraps her arms around your neck, pulling you into a kiss that seems to last a lifetime. When she finally pulls back, she's shaking, and you see her eyes starting to water. Tentatively, she touches the side of her head, feeling the now-inert device. "How...how did you...."

"It was all Grace," you explain. "She did...uh, something...to get it to shut off."

"Thank you, Grace," Estela says, hugging the other girl tightly in gratitude. "Have you done this before?"

Grace shrugs. "With Aleister, a few minutes ago...Aleister!"

The three of you turn at her words to see Aleister, still fighting with Rourke, on the ground. "Grace!" he calls out. "Watch out!"

Rourke angrily shoves him off and stretches an arm toward you. Estela's eyes widen in horror. "No! Taylor, look out, he's got--"

BANG!  The gun in Rourke's hand fires. A second too late, Aleister leaps back onto his father and pulls his arm away, forcing his next shots to go wide. Terrified, you look first at Estela, then at Grace, and sigh in relief when you see no sign of bloodstains.

Then the pain hits you.

Estela shrieks when she sees the wound, frantically whipping a tablecloth off a nearby table and wrapping it around the blood now pouring from your left side. "No! No, no, no...Dios, no..."

"We've got to stop the bleeding! Aleister, get over here!"

Aleister looks up from where he has Rourke in a headlock. Seeing what has happened, he grips Rourke by the throat and tightens until the older man falls unconscious, then rushes to your side. "Damn my father," he growls. "We've got to get to safety."

"He already deactivated all the defenses," Grace points out. She and Aleister begin discussing escape options, but you can barely hear them as you begin to feel yourself blacking out. "...Estela?" you gasp weakly.

Keeping one arm applying pressure to the makeshift bandage, Estela caresses your cheek with the other. "Taylor. Hang in there. I can't lose you, not now..."

You smile in spite of it all. "I'm not going anywhere, I promise," you tell her. "I love you...Estela."

The last thing you hear before slipping into unconsciousness is the voice of the woman you love. "I know, Taylor. I, uh... I love you."

Next Chapter: Link

Tag List: @brightpinkpeppercorn

[acsversace-news]

I have to be honest and note that I felt this episode was a little bit of a structural mess — with the caveat that it’s still remarkably well-acted, and “a little bit of a structural mess” for this program is the equivalent of giving a kid on the honor roll a B+. It’s still something to be proud of, but that kid might be a little irritated that you didn’t just hand over the A-. Yet again, I think the problem in part stems from something we’ve talked about at length — namely, that this show is about Andrew Cunanan, and not Gianni Versace, but the title means there’s a narrative requirement to check in on Versace every now and then, even when it feels a little ham-handed. This week, there is a parallel drawn between Versace coming out to The Advocate, and Andrew’s victim Jeff (who is so well portrayed by Finn Wittrock) speaking to 48 Hours about the question of gays in the military, and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. While the scenes between Versace and Donatella are very well-acted (if weirdly blocked; half the time, Gianni walks into a room, sits at a table, does nothing, then gets up and walks to another table, and I honestly think it’s to show off the sets), they felt like unnecessary, if interesting, bookends to the REAL story in this episode, which is how Andrew knew Jeff Trail and David Madson, and why he eventually killed Jeff. You could have cut both Versace scenes out of this episode without it impacting the narrative thrust of the story, and to me the parallels felt a little clonky, even though I found them independently compelling.

I also highly recommend Vulture’s fact-checking of each episode, especially for episodes like this one, where I often wondered how much was fact and how much was supposition. It seems that everyone in real life is still in the dark about why Andrew hated Jeff Trail as much as he did, or what happened between them — because everyone who knew the answer died, I suppose. And the scenes that are supposed to elucidate this do seem a little flabby. Jeff and Andrew’s confrontations felt like they were written without The Powers That Be having actually made a creative decision about why Jeff is really so mad at Andrew in the first place, and why Andrew actually chose to kill him. Last week, I assumed Andrew killed Jeff because he knew Jeff and David were hooking up and he was jealous, but that doesn’t seem to be the case; this episode sort of implies that he just kills him because they have a big fight and Jeff hates him for vague reasons. I mean: Andrew is hate-able and also tried to “accidentally” out him, and is also a creepy person who wears other people’s dress whites; there are MANY legitimate reasons for Jeff to hate him. But the actual scene of their confrontation felt like strangely unspecific to me. Certainly, Jeff is miserable not being in the military anymore but his blaming Andrew for that seemed like a narrative stretch for that character, who comes across as a hugely kind, decent, and conflicted person. I think that’s the main stumbling block of this show — there is so much we don’t, and can’t know, that the story-telling by nature turns a little vague.

Alson: This was the episode were I really realized that they actually are telling the story backward and it felt a little confusing; my theory is that, in retrospect, this will prove to be the one episode where that conceit is a little bumpy (it worked well in previous episodes, I thought). It was hard for me, on occasion, to hold in my head where, exactly, we were in time and how much we were jumping around; there are flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks, and it was somewhat dizzying.

Other thoughts, before we look at some visuals: Finn Wittrock, as I mentioned, was amazingly good in this episode, and Jeff Trail’s story broke my heart. I found the scenes of his suicide attempt, and his attempt to remove his own tattoo, as painful to watch as anything I’ve seen on TV in a long time; he is heartrending in this. Cody Fern, who plays David, is also excellent in this episode (although last week was more of an acting tour de force for him, naturally). And Darren Criss is just great. He is so chilling in that scene wherein he’s going through Jeff’s stuff and puts on his dress whites; it says something that it’s just terrifying to watch him put on a hat and watch a video tape. I don’t know that this show is getting as much buzz as The People Vs. OJ Simpson — what has? — but I hope the acting is recognized, because it’s really superb.

These scenes with Gianni, Antonio, and Donatella are VERY compelling to me, although at this point in the series, they also kind of feel as if they've been ported in from a show that's more about Versace's life. I obviously wanted to include this so you can see Versace's amazing wall of books. 

And this was a nifty shot -- and that's a glam jacket on Donatella, who is arguing against Gianni's coming out publicly because she thinks it might hurt the business; 1993 was a very different time. 

I did have to kind of laugh in this scene; Gianni is explaining to Donatella why the Advocate interview is important to him, and  all Edgar Ramirez does is walk to various work stations, briefly stand next to them, and then walk to the next one. It seems like...an unrealistic look at his atelier. That being said, I actually thought this scene was really interesting and illuminating. I didn't know, for example, that Perry Ellis had died of AIDS, and nearly collapsed on his own runway, which is incredibly sad. I'm currently reading Tina Brown's Vanity Fair Diaries -- which are dishy and great, and you'd like them, I think; a lot of the Amazon reviews are like, "there's so much name-dropping!" but when you're EiC of Vanity Fair, you have a lot of names to drop -- and much of it is about the AIDS crisis in New York in the early 90s, and it's so sad and poignant. There is also a whole bit here where Gianni is talking about how he should have died, but it's a miracle that he didn't, and again the show is kind of vague about whatever medical issue he's talking about: IS he talking about AIDS? (I also wonder how much of this vagueness is due to the show's unwillingness to get sued by the Versace family.

This is a very naive question, but what do we think Andrew is injecting into his toe? He seems too peppy for it to be heroin? I am assuming it's speed, but this is not my area of expertise.

It made me laugh in the Vulture piece where they noted, essentially, "we do not know if Andrew had a creepy stalker wall of anyone in San Diego." (He did NOT have a creepy stalker wall of Versace in Miami.) Nevertheless: there's no better way in TV to explain that you're dealing w. a real crackpot. FWIW, this vaguely reminds me of my own shrine to Ralph Fiennes when I was in college.

I'd like to commend the costumer for absolutely nailing Man Denim of the Early 90s.

Darren Criss is SO GOOD at being...very alarming even when he's ostensibly being nice.

This actress, Sophie von Haselberg, is Bette Midler's daughter, which I figured out because I thought, "WOW, she looks like Bette Midler."

I thought the Jeff Trail storyline tracing his time in the military -- he's terrified that people will find out he is gay -- was really, really moving. I also think this INSANE COMIC the Navy gave to officers to explain Don't Ask Don't Tell seems BONKERS. Can you imagine being the artist who had to make this thing?

[treechangeseachange]

It’s been an extraordinary ride since we lost our beautiful forest home on 3 December 2019 to the beast that was the Currowan fire that took 312 homes and consumed 500,000 hectares. It has taken time to reach this point of writing. I scribbled here and there but only in the last month have found a place from which I can write. We are moving slowly but intently towards recovery - which feels like the right sentiment to bring to this blog. Not my anger as ferocious as a bushfire about governments and organisations that contribute to bushfires through negligence or inaction. Aerial firefighting equipment could have been a game changer on 26 November when the Currowan fire ignited by lightning in drought ravaged forest. The fire was all but inaccessible to fire trucks that were almost futile in the absence of water to replenish them. But the federal government now famously didn’t listen to fire chiefs in May or November. Additional aerial support was approved on December 5, too little too late for us. The State Forestry Corporation will shortly receive a letter from me asking why a forest can be logged then the uncommercial debris (approximately 2/3 of the tree) be left to cure in the sun for 2 years to become the perfect bushfire conductor towards and through our block. But ahem, I’m not writing from this angry place, or I would write about the delays and disorganisation of governments, agencies and organisations as they grapple with a disaster of geographical and time magnitude they had never prepared for. I am not writing from the sludge of post adrenaline exhaustion caused by two evacuations and 6 weeks of fire threat, compounded by the mental energy required to manage my grief as well as my children’s, and sealed by the physical demands of renovating our investment property that needed to be fast tracked for habitation. After a Melbourne Christmas escape we also endured 8 days of stress returning via a circuitous journey of bush fire avoidance in order to finally return to our new residence. During the journey there were anxious days when we couldn’t contact our dog’s kennel, which is located in a particularly badly impacted bushfire area. Eventually we made contact and learned the kennel and our dog narrowly survived. That return journey brought additional tiredness but critically more instability to children’s minds, something we are struggling to manage still. Nor will I write this blog about the deep sadness I feel at the loss of trees, animals and habitat. I, who like many people on the south coat, choose to live here to be connected to nature and experience its beauty, initially found the flora and fauna loss completely overwhelming. My daily commute through at least 50km of which was burnt out forest and villages, initially was too much for me to bear, my workplace supported me to work locally. Quite apart from our forest including the favourite 300+ year old ‘grandmother’ spotted gum, the extent of the impact on the south cost forests and wildlife is immense and while epicormic regrowth is already occurring, wildlife and habitat recovery looks precarious. It’s brutal but I can’t write from this place. And I won’t write dwelling on loss of things miniature and enormous, trivial and significant, useful or valuable. Each item is a stitch in the tapestry of our former life. We still periodically feel a stab of remembrance when another thing is realised as lost. A wedding dress, a mother’s gold, favourite snowboard gear, treasures from world travels, Santa’s homemade toy cupboard, a hard earned black belt, a bifold door, our own milled timber, a barely used split system, children’s birthday books, our solar power array & batteries. Many things are easy to relinquish but some tug at the heart or mind. The night my sister in law returned my husband’s beads which she unwittingly had in safe keeping, or when I found I had indeed packed my husband’s wedding ring were insanely emotional moments. But at the end of the day things are things. While I am disappointed I don’t have my wedding dress, I’m really glad I didn’t pay to dry clean it, and practically it’s less important than a saucepan or a vegetable peeler. The more painful loss is our home, painstaking and lovingly made beautiful and comfortable by my amazing husband. Even he sighs at the prospect of beginning again. But we endure beyond property and things so I won’t write about this. So if I’m not writing in anger, exhaustion, sadness or grief, why have I included all of the above? Because, you can’t appreciate recovery until you understand loss. And this is the perspective I am writing from - recovery. My family’s recovery is predominantly due to the generosity of others. This generosity, which is still coming, and still brings me to tears, has enabled us to be living in a house, importantly in our own space, and starting the process of creating a new normal. The support has been wide ranging from the immediate shelter provided by amazing friends during evacuation, through to tradies and friends helping us get into our house in those first few weeks, then astoundingly generous physical and monetary gifts and presents from family, extended family, friends and their families, my workplace and our phenomenal community. There were three angels who started a gofundme page for us – the angels didn’t ask me, they thought I would say no, so they asked my husband and then told me it was for my kids so had me cornered. The page generated staggering donations from people near and far, known and unknown. Family and that page gave us the financial means to finish renovating the rental property which has now become our new home. Some of you reading may be one of our generous donors – thank you from the bottom of my heart. Key also for recovery, we both had jobs and incomes to go back to. Many in our region are not so fortunate. Many were vulnerable before the fires, they are even more vulnerable now. Recovery centres are still open along the south coast and the need is great. Slowly the help is coming and councils and agencies do recognise the road is long and are working on support for the long haul. We have been back to our block only twice. Mainly this was due to practical reasons – initially it wasn’t safe and then we didn’t have time as we were too busy renovating. The first visit was hard, intense and overwhelming. We went to witness destruction and loss. As my 6 year old marvelled, it’s all gone down to nothing. The second visit was purposeful, we wanted to explore the rest of our block and see if the rainforest gully had survived. Two months had elapsed since our first visit. We were a bit nervous about how it might impact our mental health being back, but staying away wasn’t ideal either. We promised the boys we wouldn’t be near the house for long and that we would explore the block. Thankfully it turned into a healing visit. While still confronting, the burnt out home didn’t bring the same horror as the first visit. Wonderfully we discovered tomatoes and strawberries growing in our veggie patch! We brought them back to Mollymook to be the first plants in a new veggie garden. The rainforest gully had sadly been completely burnt out, but I cried with relief to see fern fronds emerging from black stumps. Due to the absence of vegetation we could actually explore the gully like we had never been able to before. And best of all, with the significant rain we had in February, the creek was running through the gully - it was clear, rocky and beautiful. The rest of the block had been burnt, but many trees were fluffy with newly sprouting shiny green leaves. So what’s next for us? People ask, will we go back? Will we rebuild? Will our house build be different? Answers: Yes. Yes. And yes. It’s one step at a time. We’re still in the queue for the clean-up with everyone else. But in the meantime we will probably get a shed up and we’ve been given an onsite cabin so we will work towards an interim but movable habitable space. We can’t afford financially or mentally to lose everything again. But we want to get back onto our land and it would be very handy to get some holiday rental income from the Molly house. When things are settled and the world is back to normal we will sell our investment property and commence the subdivision and house build. It’s definitely a marathon not a sprint. We think we will have the means and the energy to achieve it. Plenty of blog opportunities ahead! Right now we are living in the right now. We are missing the treechange but we are still living the seachange intent of our move from the city. Mollymook isn’t our first choice, but it’s still a lovely place to live - after school beach visits are easy and the boys are loving that. We are exceedingly fortunate to have this house – it was without a doubt the best decision we made last year. It is an adjustment to come from 72 acres and only one house in sight on the hill above us, to a goldfish bowl backyard with houses all around. Gradually the feeling of being on display is subsiding, feeling hemmed in is not. Fortunately it’s a quiet road so we’re not too disturbed by traffic. Gradually we are getting used to the streetlight across the road. We have an especially lovely neighbour and her youngest son is a regular and welcome visitor. The boys still go to their same school and in fact I drive them past school and out of town to catch the bus from their old bus stop as it’s on the way to work and is 20 minutes closer to the office. I have sadly gained an extra 40mins per day commute time. Some bush habits haven’t changed, in the shower I still start washing my feet in the cold water before it runs hot – preserving rain water will be a hard habit to lose. Being back on the power grid is a novelty, sometimes I put the dishwasher and the washing machine on at the same time, and at night! Few readers powered by the grid will have understood the significance of that sentence – night time appliance use - got it? OK never mind. It is recovery, but it’s fragile. We are up skilling on child psychology and parenting big time. I probably started writing this blog a month ago, when a new virus wasn’t worrying that many people. Right now everyone’s worrying and for our community it feels like a body blow. We’ve experienced disaster, we know the feeling of the world being upside down because nowhere feels safe. We’re exhausted, we need to connect, but that is being denied us. How will we all cope with this? Hopefully the same way we coped with the bushfires, with the help of friends, family, community. To those of you reading who helped us in this recovery, thank you. It means everything to us. In the midst of the fires I used to end conversations with, “Keep safe”. Now I say to you, “Keep healthy”.

[starryoak]

“Hi, I’m ‘Dr.’ Fern, N.D., D.C., Ac.D, D.O*, all completely, totally legitimate medical qualifications across all zones and definitely not fake diploma’s! I’m here to give you what other Doctors won’t give you! Quasi-zonal, semi-medically sound, mildly tested to the bare minimum required by the Zonal Medicouncil, medical help the right way; with Holistic Medicine!”

Fanart for the webcomic Awful Hospital, an amazing comic by Sir Bogathan Leech, otherwise known as @bogleech/Jonathan Wojcik. It’s insane, disturbing, features quite a lot of nausea inducing visuals, but lots of humor and story, as well as some heartwarming and tearjerking moments. It’s extremely good, just…. if you don’t have the stomach for it, you may not like it. But it is very good.

SPOILERS BELOW FOR ALL OF AWFUL HOSPITAL, PRETTY MUCH. NOT SPECIFICS, JUST LOTS OF ASSUMPTIONS THAT THE READER IS COMPLETELY CAUGHT UP WITH THE COMIC.

Anyway, this is a drawing of Fern, the protagonist of Awful Hospital.... A Fern, at least. I worked hard to make this look like something that would fit in canon, meaning I went way out of my style, but it works, I hope?... My lines are thicker, but I'm hoping to improve.

Essentially, the beginning of this was when I got to thinking; what if FERN was a Doctor at The Hospital? I know it wouldn't ever happen..at least  I think... But I still wondered; what would she look like? What would she do? What core concept of medicine would it make sense for her to fulfill? All the concepts seemed to be covered. But then I got to thinking even more, and since most (if not all) the Doctors at The Hospital are puns on something, I thought of something. The Doctor is missing a quack homeopath!...

Ok, so yes, homeopathy isn't medicine, but it IS something that (unfortunately) is accredited in some countries, as well as other bullshit ‘medicinal’ treatments, and has many supporters and practitioners and diploma mills... So perhaps the core concept of homeopathy could eventually grow so big that the concept manifests in the hospital?... God, like they NEED any more quackery in that place. But Fern’s name would be a pun, so... I did it. I’m unfortunately bad at Bogleech style zonal lingo, so you’ll have to deal with boring, normal quackery rather than the bizzaro quackery that The Hospital purveys in.

Meet ‘Doctor’ Fern!

‘Doctor’ Fern is possibly the least qualified ‘medical’ professional in The Hospital! Yes, even less qualified than Phage... At least he's guaranteed to eat bacteria. ‘Doctor’ Fern is a practitioner of only the most diluted medicinal concepts, the most scientifically unsound, most expensive snake oil treatments. Her patients recover only through spontaneous remission, although she does have a low fatality rate; her treatments are often at their best, completely ineffective. She dilutes all of her concepts to homeopathic standards, so not even one nano-particle of even an inkling exists when she administers it. At worst, her treatments are poisonous and lead to worsened or even better, NEW symptoms. But she claims she's the only REAL Doctor in the whole Hospital. Nobody else treats the cause, only the SYMPTOMS of the disease. She treats the cause, not the symptom! Her low mortality rate can only be attributed to the absolute ineffectiveness at any real medicine, so she can't unintentionally administer too much homeopathic remedies and cause them to overdose, but her ward is full of patients who have been waiting so many layers to recover that it’s starting to cause a huge ruckus. But she’s certain that SOME kind of treatment will work, but as long as it’s mainstream medicine, they’ll never get better!. ‘Doctor’ Fern’s treatments are chaotic, ever changing, never standardized wrecks, basic misunderstandings of the fundamental nature of medicine and disease itself; somehow even in The Hospital, the conceptual nature of homeopathy and other ‘holistic’ medicine carries over... in other words, even though The Hospital has nonsensical, ever changing functions and cures, the fact that most of ‘Doctor’ Fern’s treatments are bullshit gets carried through, as bullshit is intrinsically woven into the very nature of her medicinal practices. Even the things she performs that qualify as medicine in some cases are usually misapplied, snapping necks when all the patient needed was a quick realignment of their core concepts with their spinal arrangement, acupuncture used for things other than relief of mild pain, trepanation for non-approved purposes, she’s a wonder at failure to medicine.

A no-nonsense nonsense provider, ‘Doctor’ Fern’s personality is similar to her canon counterpart, but warped by The Hospital, obviously assimilated into The Hospital’s jargon completely, ‘Doctor’ Fern is completely understanding of most lingo that all the Hospital Staff know... and deliberately chooses to misapply them. She’s caring, but has even less of an idea of what she’s doing than Phage does, even if The Hospital was at full running capacity, she would be utterly incompetent. As it is, she’s currently CRIMINALLY incompetent. Despite her inability to cure her patients, most of them (generally the ones with less of an idea of medicine) consider her their favorite doctor, which is likely why she’s still alive. Those who go through spontaneous remission end up thanking the good ‘Doctor’ for their recovery, and admittedly, even with her terrible abilities, she genuinely cares for each and every patient she can. 

Her design is complex and very symbolic, which I’m actually quite proud of, even if it is a bit ‘busy’, I worked hard on it! Since each Doctor (Besides our fair Doctor Ichabod Malachi Man) seems based on the very basic or very first treatments of their respective specialties, I looked up the very first herbal medicines, which was apparently using the plant Gingko Bilobo. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but I used the leaves of the tree for ‘Doctor’ Fern’s hair. (also, you always must write Doctor as ‘Doctor’ when referring to her, as her doctorates are all fake or non accredited) She has a Gingko Berry for an earring as well, one that’s a bit old and bruised. She has normal doctors scrubs, but her shirt is emblazoned with an alternative medicinal parody of the Caduceus. I gave her ears for the explicit purpose of demonstrating yet another ‘medical’ treatment; ear stapling. Apparently, according to some, surgical staples in ones ears will help one lose weight. Her teeth are borrowed from Page 711, when she imagined strangling Dr. Phage. This is strictly because it made her creepier to the eye, as it felt... right, to give her a more unsettling visage than our friendly neighborhood Fern. Her gloves are not, in fact, medical gloves or in any way sanitation related or even sanitary, but Reflexology reference mitts. the belief that pressure points on the hands line up to everywhere else on the body (and of course, everyone has a different idea of what connects to where, so ‘Doctor’ Fern changes her mind on what it does every five minutes.) Even though acupuncture can be an effective treatment for some causes, I stuck two needles in her head both for flair and due to the misapplication of acupuncture as a cure rather than relief for pain. She also has a trepanation hole in her head that constantly oozes out something conceptually similar to blood, but likely not actually blood. I don’t know what it is or if I want to KNOW what it is. Her necklace is a piece of ionized jewelry, which does.. some bullshit or something about Qi, Look, I don’t make up this stuff, someone else does. Her feet are covered in Kinoki Foot Pads instead of any proper footwear. Kinoki Foot Pads are pads that turn a dirty black overnight when you wear them, supposedly because they drain out ‘toxins’ from your feet, but really because they’re made with green tea and such that react with sweat and air, but whatever, ‘toxins’.

Anyway, that’s what I think Fern might look like as a ‘Doctor’. Or, at least, passing for a Doctor.

*(N.D is short for a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine, D.C is short for Doctor of Chiropractic, Ac. D is short for Acupuncture Doctor, and O.D is short for Doctor of Osteopathy)

[la-appel-du-vide]

THAILAND 2019 - Day Nine {Phuket}

We had actually planned ahead for Phuket, which is unlike us haha. Usually we sort of plan as we go, but this time we had arranged tours for both of our full days. We had a scheduled pick-up time for 8:45, so I set my alarm for 8:00. For whatever reason, it’s way easier to go to bed early and wake up early here. We wake up on our own usually around 7 everyday, but I set an alarm just to be safe. It’s definitely not like that at home. If I have to get up before 10, I hate myself.

Sure enough, I woke up after a terrible night’s sleep on a piece of CEMENT and went to get my phone (because if you remember, the only outlets that work are in the freaking kitchen). It was like 7:45, and we were just lounging around, because we knew we had a whole hour before we needed to be down in the lobby waiting. I decided to check my email, and that’s when the panic set in. I had an email from the tour company from 30 minutes ago, saying our driver was there and that we needed to go down ASAP. I also had a missed call from a Thai phone number. FULL PANIC set-in, and we jumped out of bed, threw on whatever swimsuit and clothes were closest, grabbed as much stuff as we could think we might need in like a minute, and full sent it downstairs. We were upset, because we didn’t think it was fair for them to tell us one time, and then change it last minute. We were pretty sure they wouldn’t have waited that long for us – it had been like 45 minutes at that point – but thought we’d check anyway. Sure enough, no cars were waiting when we got down there. We were super upset, so I tried to call the company to find out what could be done. Luckily, when she answered, she told me she had sent that email to us instead of another group by mistake, and that she was calling to correct it. So we panicked for nothing, and still had our original pick-up time of 8:45. We went back up to the room to reorganize and regroup for a few minutes, and then we went down to meet our driver, who was there right on time. (;

It was a short ride over to the marina, where we were greeted with a minimal, but still nice, complimentary continental breakfast. We ate some muffins and fruit, purchased water shoes and waterproof cell phone cases for the tour, and then headed down to the boat docks. We had a three-engine speed boat waiting for us. We sat in the back, and enjoyed a very quick (it’s a super-fast boat!) ride over to our first stop of the day, Koh Khai island. This was a pretty crowded island. There were a lot of tourists there already for that early in the morning, especially since there aren’t any hotels on the island and it’s more of a day-trip destination. We were given an hour of free time there. We started off with a full send into the beautiful water. We had snorkel gear, so we tried to swim around and see what there was to see there, but with so many boats and so many swimmers, there was so much dust you couldn’t see anything unless it was directly in front of your face. We did see a lot of sea urchins though, and they spooked us. We were pretty glad we had decided to get the water shoes, because those suckers would really hurt to step on. It was a failed snorkeling effort overall, besides seeing a couple of fish.

We hopped out of the water, and wandered around the island, and took some photos while we were at it. All the rocks are covered in clam shells/mussels or something, and they hurt if you touch them so we had to be careful. Then our time was up, so we made our way back to our base camp to meet our group. We had a couple extra minutes, so we ordered some smoothies from the beach bar – bad news, they were terrible.

Then back to the boat! Next stop? James Bond island! This was the part of the tour that I was definitely most excited about. James Bond island is one of the most iconic landmarks of Thailand. It’s in all the pictures you see! It’s called that because a scene in one of the James Bond movies was filmed here. We pulled up to the shore, and had to climb up some steps to the other side of the island to get our first glimpse of James Bond island! It was just as stunning as all of the pictures. I was floored. This world is such a gorgeous place, and I’m so happy to get to see so much of it.

We walked down to the water, took some photos, and enjoyed swimming around for a while. All too soon, it was time to head back to the boat. It was a moment though I won’t soon forget.

We drove around to look at the other side of James Bond island by boat, and then jetted off to Gypsy Island, which I think is actually called Ko Panyi. But it’s a cute nickname. This was a super interesting island for us! This is a residential island and about 1400 people live there. All the houses are built on stilts over the water, they have a school and a floating soccer field, and though everything seems to be falling apart and a little ghetto when you really look at the houses closely, it’s really a beautiful place to live! We started out with lunch at the New Fern restaurant. We had another Thai buffet style lunch, and it was actually really good, even though we were super nervous about it. I ate fried rice with sweet and sour chicken/vegetables on it, onion rings, and some delightful watermelon. You never know how the Thai food will be, it’s hit and miss, but we enjoyed this lunch. Then we got to wander around the village. We saw some cute little Thai babies in Kindergarten, in the middle of their school lessons, we saw the floating soccer fields, wandered through the rows of homes, and even bought some real pearl earrings! I guess this area is abundant in pearls, so they sell them for much cheaper than we could get them at home. We picked out some really pretty ones, and we are excited to wear them.

Then, what do you know, back to the boat! (;

Next up, was kayaking through caves in Phang Nga National Park! We drove a little ways, and then met a blow-up kayak stand in the middle of the bay. We debated bringing our phones, but were worried the kayak would capsize and we’d lose them, so we didn’t. And boy do we regret it. We’ve got to stop doing this. From now on, the rule is always to take the phone. We hopped in a kayak and had an employee in the back to paddle us around. He took us through some caves into what reminded me a lot of the Mexican cenote. It was gorgeous blue water, surrounded by rock walls with lots of plants growing down, and it was just stunning. We had to duck a bit going through the caves, because the stalactites were hanging down so low. Super cool experience, I just wish I had some photos. Then he paddled us around a little more outside the caves, and it was super relaxing. When he took us back to the dock, it was free time for swimming. We grabbed some life jackets and jumped right in. While we aren’t big fans of the salt water, we freaking love swimming here. The water temperature is perfect and refreshing, not to mention so pretty, and we just floated around for about 30 minutes really enjoying ourselves before it was time to head out.

The nice thing about this tour company too, is that throughout the day, they’d offer us cold water bottles, Coke and Fanta for free, and occasionally fruit as well. That was a nice plus.

Our driver drove us around more of Phang Nga Bay, to see some more of the 42 islands in the park, and then we headed back to the marina. It really amazes me that of this vast ocean, the driver knows exactly where to go. I can’t imagine looking at all this water that looks the same and having any sense of direction tbh.

We got back to the marina, loaded our stuff up, and walked back over to the tourist office. They had us fill out surveys, and then they took us back to our hotel. Between all the swimming, sand, and insane wind on the boat, our hair was not in good shape. But we were already wet, and already dressed for it, so we went up to the roof to check out our swimming pool.

Ok, I know I’ve hated on this hotel a lot, but honestly, the pool was literally the greatest thing I’ve ever experienced, and it might have made the bad stuff worth it. It was this gorgeous infinity pool on the roof, with perfectly crystal-clear FRESH water, of the most amazing temperature. Swimming in nice water with the most amazing view? Yeah, that’s my dream. It was the perfect way to unwind after a busy day. We swam around for a while, and I just loved it so much. I’m obsessed with being in the water. I even found a flower for my hair. (;

Then we headed back to our room to shower. It was nice to clean our hair up after all the trauma we put it through, haha.

We were starving at this point, but didn’t really want to walk back down to the Pizza Company, so we went and asked Ms. Jub if there was a nearby mall we could go to. She called us a taxi to take us there, and it was such a gorgeous mall. We were a bit under-dressed haha.

We found a place called Lucky 13 Sandwich, and decided to eat there. It was super good, actually, and a nice change from what we’ve been eating. Then we rounded out the night with a DQ cone, of course. (;

We texted Ms. Jub and she sent the taxi back for us. We did a few little housekeeping items, but then it was bed time, because we had an even earlier morning ahead…

[ourlittlebitofnothinguniverse]

Revenge time, you gotta do all of them too.

lmao ayyy ur finally off anon for smth!

jokes on u i love answering things like this it’s not revenge it’s a treat

hERE WE GO

1: What is your name and does it mean anything? my name is Rachel and it means ewe in hebrew and was the favored wife of jacob

2: How long have you known your best friend? like? two and a half years idk when did we meet

3: What position do you normally sleep in? any that i find comfortable altho probably most common is on my stomach surrounded by a nest of pillows ayy

4: Were you a part of any “clique” in high school? um my school is kinda too small for that but ig u could say i was (and am until the third) part of the “weird kids”

5: Who was your favorite teacher in high school and why? aaaa mr scott bc he was just So Rad holy fuck he took us to portland for a weekend and let me lay on the floor in class and overall was hella

6: Do you wish to travel a lot? ehh??? like i have no money to even go to the store now gotta be realistic abt this shit. i suppose ideally tho ig i’d love to explore if i knew i had a home to come back to i need me roots i am a tree

7: Did you participate in any sports while in school? hELL NO

8: Show a sample of your handwriting: 

9: Have you ever given blood? yeah and it made me sick for three whole days, never again sry ppl

10: Do you like the way that you grew up? hPFHDSAFKL; nope

11: Do you like your siblings? Why or why not? hadhsf;lks;dfa again nopE they were all abusive

12: How did you meet your best friend and why did you become friends? u sat @ my table and told me damien was scary and we became friends bc u liked to read and same

13: Name one movie that made you cry. fuCKING WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS. GETS ME EVERY TIME

14: Do you prefer to read poetry, write poetry, or neither? both! lov me some poetry mm good shit lov that word crompch

15: Things about someone that you find attractive? when somebody has a passion and they talk abt it or try to share it w/ u like i might not be interested but it’s 100% guaranteed that i will still lov that u have smth u care abt a lot *unless it’s murder tbh

16: What song are you currently listening to? the silence of my soul idk i was watching mark play prey

17: Have you ever broken a bone? If so, how? nope i am made of solid wood no bones to break

18: A random memory from you childhood: when it would rain i would go play in the concrete ditch beside our apartment complex

19: Where did you grow up? Arkansas. mostly camden but when i was a bby child we lived in stephens for a couple years (until i was like? abt to be in second grade)

20: What was the last thing you watched on tv? i don’t watch television like a normal Human i binge netflix and the last thing i watched was a show called Father Brown which had the guy who played arthur weasley and he was a priest who solved murders it was p good i liked it

21: Do you think you’d make a good parent? i’d b that vodka aunt tbh (but like replace vodka w/ choc milk or apple juice or smth no alcohol will touch these pURE lips)

22: Would you like to meet any of your Tumblr friends in person? i mean sure if i trusted them but i don’t know any tumblr ppl all that well so

22: What was the last dream you remember having? we went to a vacation house and when i checked tumblr a guy i hated and had blocked had found me again and sent me dick pics and other nudes thru the message system and got mad when i didn’t respond bc i lost my phone but my only response was to be like wTF DUDE STOP??? and then we left and i woke up but he was so pissed and i was just like how did u find me wtf

23: When is your birthday? oct 23

24: How many pillows do you sleep with? So Many

25: Do you wear glasses? If so, how long have you been wearing glasses? I WEAR THE DREADED FACE LENSES and i have since like sixth grade (altho i probably needed them for longer i just kept somehow passing the school eye exams bc by the time they caught it i was having such bad migraines i had to hide under the desks @ school bc the light was too much and i couldn’t see SHIT)

26: What color is your hair? shit colored

27: Name 5 facts about your appearance: round, friend shaped, DREADED FACE LENS, about a 1, Squishy

28: What is your favorite soda? cherry cream or cherry sprite

29: What is a strange talent that you have? i can completely forget conversations i just had lmao jk that’s not a talent that’s mental illness! hm i can somehow telepathically sense certain songs when somebody else is thinking abt them

30: How’s the weather right now? LOVELY but still kinda cold

31: Why did one of your friendships end? nobody likes me and i’m gonna die aloneidk man ppl just stop being my friend they get bored of me or smth

32: Who do you miss right now? a lot of ppl

33: Why did your last relationship end? i am a single pringle who has never been in a relationship other than platonic friendship unless u count our broship bc we are totally still getting married in holy matribrony

34: Are you still figuring out who you are? isn’t everyone?

35: Have you ever been admitted to a hospital? Why? no but i came close when they thought i had like? gallstones (i think it was gallstones anyways it was smth like that) when i was eleven bc they were gonna do surgery but it was rly just stress presenting in a weird physically painful way

36: What is your favorite restaurant? what are restaurants? i have never heard of such a thing do u think i, a poor people, have seen such a sight? a myth, no more

37: What is word that you always seem to spell wrong? All of them i cannot read

38: Would ever adopt kids? i mean i adopted my cat does that count?

39: What is your favorite kind of pizza? DISCOURSE FLAVORED jk pineapple ham pizza is bomb but i also just like str8 up pepperoni

40: What was your first thought when you woke up this morning? “god i dont wanna do this” this referring to school but then my second thought was “aa my son is so cute” bc he snuffled my face when he saw i was awake

41: When was the last time you got really really happy and why? whenever i look @ archie bc he is my son my lov nd one of the only things keeping me from going insane in this hellhole called home

42: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever eaten? germ-x

43: How do you start a conversation? i dont

44: What’s a band you’ve been obsessed with lately? idk? i don’t rly pay attention to that but ig i rly like mother mother lately

45: Do you come from a family “of money?” lMAO I WISH

46: Do you have a bucket list? sort of but not really? like my kinda bucket list involves: adopting and keeping three cats, two dogs, a ferret and a bunny, having my own library room in a house i own, and having enough money that i can actually own a house of a reasonable size like u kno all things that i will never be able to accomplish exactly like a bucket list is for but Not

47: What is your favorite series of books? so many

48: When was the last time you laughed so hard your stomach hurt? when i saw that lord of the rings thing i just reblogged

49: Where do you go when you’re sad? my brain?

50: 5 random facts about yourself: I lov the aesthetic of traditional art but i suck @ it i played clarinet for 5 years and i was rly disappointed when the band director made it so that i no longer felt comfortable in the band and quiti have a need to say hello to every crow i see

i love what’s in the ocean but i hate looking at the ocean and beaches

i chew my nails when i’m stressed and i hate it but i Can’t Stop

[erraticfairy]

12 Depression Busters for New Moms

It’s supposed to be the most exciting time of your life … and everyone is telling you how lucky you are to have a beautiful baby, but all you can do is cry. You’re pretty sure none of your new-mom friends are feeling this way. But they might be. Because 15 to 20 percent of new moms, about 1 million women in the US each year, experience some form of postpartum depression.

Truth be told, my baby days were the most difficult and painful hours of my life. I was a hormonal and stress train wreck. Looking back now–my youngest is five–I see that a few alterations in my lifestyle might have helped matters. I’ll share them with you, so that you don’t have to feel so bad … or, you know, all alone.

1. Say it … “Yikes.”

Take a moment to consider all that has changed in your life. Your social life is … poof … gone, not to mention your sex life and any romance that was left in your marriage. You don’t remember becoming a Navy Seal but, like them, you operate on about three consecutive hours of sleep at night. Plus there is this seven-pound creature that you are responsible for – and let’s just say it’s more demanding than the fern in your kitchen that will forgive you if you forget to water it for a day or so. Oh yeah, that adorable, Gerber baby is louder than the Winnie the Pew keychain one of your frenemies bought you. But the very act of registering all the modifications can be surprisingly comforting … like proof that you’re not imagining it: you’ve entered another world, and you definitely don’t speak the language.

2. Identify the symptoms.

At some point, you’re going to need to distinguish symptoms of the new-mom culture shock and its accompanying baby blues from a bona fide mood disorder. You can find a list of the standard symptoms for postpartum depression by clicking here, but better than that, I think, is the description actress Brooke Shields gives in her memoir, “Down Came the Rain”:

At first I thought what I was feeling was just exhaustion, but with it came an overriding sense of panic that I had never felt before. Rowan kept crying, and I began to dread the moment when Chris would bring her back to me. I started to experience a sick sensation in my stomach; it was as if a vise were tightening around my chest. Instead of the nervous anxiety that often accompanies panic, a feeling of devastation overcame me. I hardly moved. Sitting on my bed, I let out a deep, slow, guttural wail. I wasn’t simply emotional or weepy, like I had been told I might be. This was something quite different. This was a sadness of a shockingly different magnitude. It felt as if it would never go away.

3. Start talking.

Journalist Tracy Thompson begins her insightful book, “The Ghost in the House” with two brilliant lines: “Motherhood and depression are two countries with a long common border. The terrain is chilly and inhospitable, and when mothers speak of it at all, it is usually in guarded terms, or in euphemisms.” Which is why you need to start talking …. often, for long periods of time, and loudly. But with safe people.

4. Find safe people.

How do you find these so-called “safe people” who won’t report you to the pope or child services for saying things like you want your body back, you want your old life back, and at times you wonder if you made the right decision by having sex with your husband without a birth control method in place? That’s tough, and like so much else in life, you just need to feel your way through. I personally look for a sense of humor. Any mom who can laugh at the squash stains on her new Ann Taylor sweater is a candidate. The mom who left the playgroup 15 minutes early to get in the half-hour pre-nap ritual is definitely not.

5. Get support.

Once you identify five or six suitable moms who aren’t too annoying, it’s time to start a support group, known in some parts of the country as a “playgroup.” It can be fewer than five or six, but you should be able to corral lots of takers if you hang out long enough at your library’s children’s hour, Tumble Tots or some other gymnastics class, or attend any workshops or social events organized by national mom groups like “Professional Moms at Home.”

Me? I walked around my neighborhood and put a flyer into the mailboxes of homes in which I could see a stroller. I also posted signs at a local office supply store, coffee shop, and diner. Once ten moms confirmed interest, I hosted a playgroup every Wednesday morning at my house. For a year. The group eventually disbanded when I asked folks to take turns hosting because my house was getting too trashed. It didn’t matter, though, because it had served its purpose: which was NOT to help our children socialize–that’s only what we claimed–but to provide an outlet for us to spill our guts because many of us were absolutely going crazy.

6. Beg for help.

In her informative book, “A Deeper Shade of Blue,” Ruta Nonacs, M.D., Ph.D., writes: “One of the most challenging aspects of caring for young children is the social isolation. In traditional cultures, a woman’s family fathers around the mother after the birth of a child. They help her learn how to care for her child … Nowadays most women with young children spend most of their time at home, alone.”

I advise you to get on your knees, to skip all those manners and laws of social grace that keep you from pleading with your in-laws for some help. Barter with them, negotiate, promise to name the next kid after them if they babysit for a night, ANYTHING you possibly can to get some free help because you are going to need it, and the less of it you have, the more risk for developing a serious mood disorder. If your relatives are unable to assist, buy the help. Cash out the retirement funds for this one. Trust me. You’ll be glad you did.

7. Sleep. No really … sleep.

Part of the reason I’m so adamant that you get help is because the longer you stay sleep-deprived the better chance you have of winding up like me … in a pysch ward. Brain experts have always made the connection between insanity and insomnia, but new research suggests that chronic sleep disturbances actually cause certain mood disorders. You stay up one too many nights with that crying baby, and you are bait for a mental illness. Not to scare you. But, again, BEG FOR HELP so that you can at least get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep … consistently. Don’t follow in my tracks and get your first night of slumber in a hospital.

8. Hang unto you.

The second biggest mistake I made as a new mom was throwing my old self into a locked closet until, well, I graduated from the outpatient hospital program, where I learned that motherhood doesn’t require chucking my prior existence: my interests, my friends, my career, and so forth. In fact, the nurses there convinced me that if I could recover a little of my old self, I might even be a better mom. So I hired a babysitter for a few hours a week, which allowed me to pursue some writing projects, go on an occasional bike ride, and have coffee with a non-mom friend and talk about something other than poop.

9. Watch your language.

I’m not talking about the profanities that you’re no longer allowed to utter in front of the miniature tape recorder disguised as your infant. I’m referring to your self-talk. Erika Krull, a mental-health counselor who blogs for Psych Central, wrote this in a recent blog on motherhood and depression: “It’s the combination of ‘must, can’t, won’t, should, could’ kinds of thoughts with the high level of emotion that can send moms down into the pit of depression or anxiety. Black and white thinking is a setup for disappointment, despair, lack of satisfaction and meaning, and low self worth.”

10. Eat brain food.

I hate to be a killjoy here, because I know that you’ve already had to say bye-bye to lots of pleasures in your life. But here’s the thing: the more stressed and sleep-deprived you are, the more inclined you are to grab for the chips and the cookies. Research has actually confirmed that: sleep deprivation and stress both contribute to obesity. It’s a vicious cycle, because the more chips and cookies you consume, the more out of control your world spins, and so forth.

Ideally, you want to shoot for lots of omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin B-12, and folate. Unfortunately, they’re not hiding in a Hershey’s dark chocolate bar. If I were God, I would change that. You can find omega-3 fatty acids in boring but tasty things like salmon, tuna, sardines, walnuts, canola oil, and flaxseed. Vitamin B-12 is found in fish, seafood, meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products. Folate is found in fortified cereals, spinach, broccoli, peanuts, and orange juice. Your brain will thank you.

11. Get online.

You’re lucky, in that cyberspace is pretty much ruled by new moms. A few years ago I attended a BlogHer conference, where approximately 80 percent of the blogs represented were mommy blogs. In fact, the BlogHer site is a good place to start if you want to know what other moms are experiencing and writing about. Other winners: The Motherhood, CafeMom, Maternally Challenged, Postpartum Progress, and Dooce.

12. Don’t lose your sense of humor.

If one thing saved me during those years my kids were babies it was a sense of humor. “If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go in sane,” sings Jimmy Buffet. So, if you have already gone in sane, it’s best to snicker at the madness in front of you. Ah, the relief I felt some of those afternoons, once all the tension held in my shoulders and in my cheeks released into a wild laughter … after I had spent an afternoon chasing two kids at the mall, one with diarrhea and the other hiding underneath the bras in J.C. Penny’s lingerie section. Flexing that humor muscle … it’s as important as the tight abdominal muscles that you’ll never get back.

from World of Psychology http://bit.ly/2JBMvFZ via theshiningmind.com

[casualdestinynut-blog]

Beautiful

I woke up completely and utterly exhausted wondering why it’s so hard to breath.  Thankfully it’s warm enough to open the window.  Thankfully there’s oxygen to breath and a square intermediary agent between me and the oxygen I can raise when the house has gotten so stuffy I want to go outside and never come back in.

Last night while I was walking Peter I saw an old woman sitting in a picture window surrounded by plants, Victorian standards like ferns and rubber trees and snake plants.  I used to keep a lot of potted plants and enjoyed a greater quality indoor atmosphere in the winter for many years.  Now I don’t have any.  Technically there are some but they’re in the other room and they’re all dying from an acquired disease that’s outright killed most of them and left 90% of the rest deformed and sickly.  Mites, tarsonemid mites -- the damage that’s emerged on the ones that are left looks exactly like the kind of damage from tarsonemid mites posted on google.  Along with some regular houseplants I had a very nice specialist collection of various scadoxus and haemanthus species and had flowered almost all of them.  But when I imported a couple bulbs from Greece that never really grew for me in the same way mine had always done, the others started to grow with the same sort of mite damage as the plants from Greece and I knew I had a problem.  Even though I don’t like poison I tried some expensive miticide thinking that I’d put too much time and effort into my collection not to try to save them, but it didn’t work.  The past two years most of them have died, or else they grow deformed with the damage from the microscopic creatures.  They literally fell apart in my hands.  I used to spend a lot of time taking care of those plants but maybe it’s time to toss what’s left into the forest and to buy new ones.  Tarsonemid mites can’t survive without plant matter to live in, so if I’m going to have a thriving microcosm of tropical forest life surrounding me and gifting me with a more healthful atmosphere again, I need to get rid of the ones that are carrying mites.  There are a couple plants that don’t seem affected that I’d like to keep, but maybe I’ll keep them in the other room away from the new plants in my bedroom.

The happiest time in my life was when I was taking care of those plants and writing my first novel.  It sounds silly but it’s true, and it’s recapturable.  I don’t think I’m going to grow any specialist varieties, but I can have a pretty decent collection with regular houseplants that anyone can grow.

Part of the reason I hurt my back was that when my plants started dying I had more time on my hands, and I replaced that time with more exercise.  I didn’t know how to handle the fact of a complete failure in my hobby -- I’d grown plants for many years and had several dozen healthy specimens when the mites hit.  Now maybe there are between 8 and 12.  The high exercise provided helped me not pay attention to the fact that without my hobby I felt out of control of the world.  Those plants were a big part of my connection to nature, which is also a connection to life, to all of us who are living on the planet and who find ourselves aspects of a kind of acid referred to as deoxyribonucleic.  At least one of the species I used to keep was endangered in the wild yet has become a subject in pot cultivation, where it grows well and even though isn’t very common yet was becoming more common in human cultivation than in the wild, like the Gouldian finch.  I grew my four examples of it from seed and they were large and robust, but they never grew to flowering size before the mites ate them.  It’s been two years since my plants and subsequently my life started to decline, to fall apart, and it’s like the universe is offering me a reminder of how I used to live, when I was happy.  They probably would’ve been flowering for the first time around now, or next year, if they were still alive.

I was exercising too much for a year before I actually hurt myself permanently, so I don’t think that in and of itself was too much of a problem -- it was the weakness that exercising too much eventually inspired that allowed me to be tricked into doing something I wasn’t capable of doing and hurting my back permanently in the light brown haired synchronicity with darkest haired whites, where a light brown haired woman imagines an offense by a black haired man in the subtext of body language, and a light brown haired man appears later in a social context seeking revenge for imagined offense, again happening in the subtext of his language.  I’d practiced a moderate regimen before, but in any hobby there’s necessarily the feeling of control that comes with it, and the feeling of a loss of control when suddenly you can’t do that hobby anymore.  A connection to nature gives meaning, a connection to life is the essential ingredient to a healthy spirit.  My dad’s downstairs screaming at the television set.  Like most self-identifying conservative belligerents, he has no connection to nature whatsoever and is proud of it.

So, it was the neighbor who tricked me, the guy who showed up on the street with his new dog around the same time my plants started dying off from the mite infestation.  He has light hair and is athletic with a symmetrical skeleton and is the ‘robust’ kind of guy because of whose existence adult authority figures prevented me from existing as a valid creature of three dimensional space, precisely because guys like him existed and it was explained to me by the adults in my life that it was their privilege to be outward and outgoing while it was my privilege to be inward by obeying the teachers and doing schoolwork, to the extent of prohibiting basic gym class and the use of a rake because of the ostensible ‘delicateness’ my deformity entailed.  I’ve proved them wrong, of course, and there are lots of other people diagnosed with the same condition as me who weren’t held back as extremely as I was, so I might be a special case.  Why is it so heinous that he tricked me?  Because he’s the luckiest guy on the planet from my perspective because he was allowed to do everything I dreamed of doing while I grew up being told to stay in the house, but then found himself paired in perfect timing/synchronicity with a guy like me, a guy who wasn’t afforded the same privileges as him, and instead of letting live and living, he decided to drive me crazy and to trick me into hurting myself.  I’m envious of him, I admit, but everyone’s envious of someone, although it’s very interested he and I found ourselves linked like we did, considering he lives the life I grew up dreaming of living but being told I wasn’t allowed to because I didn’t look like him.  Why do I know it was a conscious decision on his part?  Because he showed that he felt guilt for it when he drove his car with his family in it into his driveway and they didn’t get out of their car, that he thought I might actually harm his family and so waited until I was far from his house while walking my dog with no intention of harming anyone to tell his family it was safe to get out of their car.  This was a year after the actual event that was for a long time a possibility as the most salient social cause of my madness yet which now has become a certainty, after I’d lost my connection to nature and seemed to have found myself at the mercy of a society I never considered myself to be a part of.  That’s how I know, and why the conundrum of actually thinking of how to get revenge on him has become a preoccupation, why the interaction with him and his wife has become so clearly the most salient social factor in my madness.  While Foucault doesn’t think it’s possible to ascribe blame to a singular social causality of a madness, that when a madness happens (and I was crazy, I was weakened and I went crazy), all social factors in retrospect seem to have been causal to the madness itself.  This is where I think he’s wrong, because while *at first* it seems like every social factor is causal, once the person who went crazy takes personal responsibility for their part in the emergence and manifestation of the madness (which I did by an elaborate process of writing and trying to come to terms with the fact that because of the injury owing to my insanity I can’t even do the moderate exercise regimen I did before my plants started dying, even though I tried to return to it), we’re inevitably faced with the fact that humans are social creatures, and it doesn’t take much to look at each social factor and to really think about their truths and implications and to begin to eliminate the social causes that had nothing to do with the emergence of the madness and to see more clearly which ones did contribute to the emergence of the madness.  People have actually told me, randomly, to blame the redhead, but no -- it was the light brown haired guy and his light brown haired wife.

It was the neighbor I was envious of and I used to write that I admired who for some flaw in his character decided to fuck with a guy who, even though growing up in the same socio-economic environment as him, was told he couldn’t do the things that the neighbor was allowed to learn how to do.  This was a guy who used to shout things at me when we were passing by each other out walking our dogs, when I was trying to mind my own business.  Notably not long after I hurt myself I found an editing partner and we traded novels and offered comments on them, and her book was *about* a young black haired guy who was under the care of a light brown haired guy, his older brother, who turned out to be extremistly controlling and hateful, leading to the black haired guy’s death.  There’s both wisdom and magic in literature.  I didn’t want to be too quick to blame, but women usually know what’s happening with me.

So, I’d been suffering from writer’s block which I’ve cured by looking at his facebook page again because I’ve been basing the family whose infant granddaughter was murdered by a deformed family friend on his family.  But because we’re connected he’s going to be able to tell.  But I’m glad I’m writing again, and reading.  Delillo’s Libra is an amalgam of lawman and outlaw so far.  The narrative seems non-linear but that could just be my confusion, but I’m not completely lost yet and have been enjoying his prose.  There was an interesting definition of charisma in the novel last night, about Kennedy’s specifically: he was the first president to have all the secrets to himself, the first president the American people were completely in the dark with about what was going on, the first president from whom the American people could keep no secrets.  Charisma is about secrets.  I wonder if I’m transparent.

Tomorrow’s the meetup.  The final meetup where I’m going to ask if anyone else wants to take it over.  Because I don’t want to do it anymore.  I’m too broke, and I want my beautiful life back.  And I want revenge on the neighbor.  Nothing having to do with guns or injury, but revenge nonetheless.  I”m going to think about how on the dog walk.