#I learned a lot of random things as a kid because my mom would jump from hobby to hobby

[always-a-slut-4-ghouls]

Why is it that when you’re allergic to some kind of metal it seems impossible to figure out what it is without professional help? Maybe it would be easier if my skin turned green when I wear something but nooo my skin only gets mad when it’s a piercing, none of that normal contact. I just have to stick things in my ears and see if I forget them after an hour. It’s easier to rule out metals I don’t react to (I have found maybe three?). And it’s not like I could experiment since childhood because I don’t actually know when I started having a reaction to certain piercings. Was it since my first? Who knows! I didn’t even realize I was experiencing an allergic reaction until I was around 24 years old. Someone else described their allergic reaction to certain metals in piercings and I was like “oh, that’s not how everyone feels wearing them?” When I told my cousin about it she was like “wait, so almost every time you wore any piercing jewelry you had your ears burn the whole time? And you still wore them for years before you switched to hypoallergenic only? You must be really dedicated to wearing jewelry” and I really doubt it was dedication. I’m pretty sure I’m just stupid and thought that earrings and stuff just do that if you don’t wear them often enough. I figured it would go away if I wore them more often but I was never consistent enough to be like “this is weird because I am wearing them consistently” I would go weeks between wearing anything and it didn’t, ugh. That wasn’t dedication or stubbornness, it was just me being really clueless and tolerating pain well

It went “wait, ears aren’t supposed to be spicy? Oops.”

I just liked sparkly things 🤦‍♀️

[joysmercer]

post-season 3

Terri will freely admit that she wasn’t overly enthusiastic about her daughter suddenly deciding (with less than a month’s notice) to spend two weeks of summer at a camp run by her boyfriend and otherwise minimal adult supervision. Yes, a lot of it was because she (selfishly) wanted her daughter to spend that time with her after not being together for half a year, but she was also concerned on a more general level: across the country with no cell phones? The summer before her junior year? Terri would much rather she stay home, focus on SAT prep if anything, and prepare for her future—not go to some theatre workshop where she’s unlikely to learn anything of value. 

It did help to find out that Gina has been cast as the lead in the first-ever stage production of a wildly popular Disney movie and will also be starring in the associated documentary. This is a novel experience, can go on her college apps and résumé, and really, who is she to judge when all expenses are paid in exchange for signing a few release forms? 

Still, she misses the days she could hear about each rehearsal straight from the source instead of random teasers dropped on the Disney+ twitter account, and she especially hates that she has to work and miss Gina’s big debut. By the time intermission is called on the livestream, Terri (ever-so-grateful for the weekend off) is already en-route to California. 

Terri pulls into the Shallow Lake parking lot and spots Gina immediately among the throng of campers checking out and saying their goodbyes. She’s grown at least an inch, Terri realizes with a jolt. Gina is nearly seventeen now, on the brink of adulthood, and the way she’s carrying herself now demonstrates a demeanor entirely different from the teenager she’d dropped off at MSY just a few months ago. Why does time always move so fast with these kids? 

Gina whips around as soon as Terri slams the car door shut, as if she was able to hear it from all the way across the yard, letting out a loud squeal of delight that sends Terri’s heart melting before launching herself straight into her mother’s arms. Terri is instantly reminded of a five-year-old Gina doing the exact same thing at kindergarten pickup.

“Hey, sweet pea,” she whispers, returning her daughter’s tight hug. Some things never change. 

“Mom? What are you even doing here? I thought you were closing on the house? Oh my god, I had no idea—"

“I finished all that yesterday, and since I have a free weekend, I thought we could take a mother-daughter road-trip back home – just like old times.” While their last few moves had been too far apart to drive, she and Gina used to spent nearly every school holiday or long weekend transporting their lives across state lines while eating their fill of fast food and pancakes, touring random obscure roadside attractions, and making some of their fondest memories. 

Gina beams. “I’d love that,” she says, bouncing on her heels excitedly. “I finished packing, actually, so I just need to take care of one thing real quick and we can head out.”

Then she smiles big and wide again, an expression she saves for truly special occasions (like, apparently, 10 hours with her mother in a car), and quickly kisses Terri’s cheek. “Love you, mommy. Be back in a bit.” 

Gina sprints off in the direction of, according to a nearby sign, a “Yurt Locker”. Strange name, Terri thinks. She doesn’t have a chance muse on it (or what the hell it even means) further, though, because someone bellows GENEVIEVE MARIE! so loudly that both Gina and Terri, now at least 20 feet apart, jump at the sound. 

The source of the voice appears a second later—or at least Terri assumes that’s who the curly-haired boy with a shit-eating grin on his face now standing in front of Gina is, given her daughter’s currently crossed arms, flushed cheeks, and, surprisingly, equally playful smile. Terri eyes the boy curiously. Gina doesn’t give out her full name to just anyone and rarely allows anyone to use it (Terri can’t remember the last time she herself even said the word Genevieve, let alone added her middle name to the mix). But Gina seems entirely unfazed now, as if having this boy yell it for all to hear is a regular occurrence. Who is he?

Then she notices the acoustic guitar he’s clutching, and it hits her. Kristoff: Ricky Bowen.

It had been a while since Gina had mentioned Ricky in their weekly FaceTimes. His name had only ever come up in relation to Ashlen’s role of Belle in the spring musical, and even then, it was mostly to complain about his two left feet. If it weren’t for a panicked text conversation on Valentine’s Day (Gina’s teddy bear got lost in transit, long story), Terri would have entirely forgotten about him.

Clearly, not only has his dancing greatly improved this summer (if yesterday was any evidence), but so has his friendship with her daughter.  

Ricky pulls out a set of keys and gestures to the parking lot, fanning his face with his free hand, and that’s when Terri realizes he’s wearing…a pink-and-blue snowsuit. Gina laughs and rolls her eyes at him, clearly teasing him about his ridiculous attire for an LA summer, but when he says something else, Gina suddenly shakes her head, pointing straight at Terri. 

Terri gives a small wave to the kids, and Ricky immediately waves back excitedly.  Okay, then. 

Turning back to Gina, Ricky says something else and Gina smiles shyly and nods. Terri watches as the pair hugs goodbye, a motion that is simultaneously so natural neither think twice about it—falling into a tight embrace that nearly lifts Gina off the ground—but so awkward when they separate that Terri can feel the tension from all the way over here. Okay, then, indeed. 

Ricky meanders toward the bright orange bug almost double-parked in the last slot of the lot. Terri recognizes the car from her driveway last fall – but also remembers Gina mentioning that Ashlen’s boyfriend also drives an orange bug that the three of them and EJ would carpool to school in, leaving Terri to wonder which possibility is weirder: that Ricky and his friend got matching ugly vehicles together, or that Ricky transported his friend’s car across state lines for two weeks and his friend actually agreed to it. 

There isn’t much she knows about Ricky Bowen, actually, except that he has an apparent penchant for nabbing lead roles out from under everyone else’s noses and—surprisingly—actually justifying those casting choices. Gina’s scene partners are often so dry she has to work double-time to make the chemistry believable. Last night, however, Ricky showed a level of talent that nearly matched her own daughter’s in the way he was able to hold the audience captive even without Gina on stage with him. There was one solo of his in particular that had actually caught Terri’s attention (she had taken the opportunity to answer some emails) when, right at the end, he suddenly directed the final line of the song away from the audience and into the wings: you’re what I know about love, he sang, straight to Ana. Straight to Gina. It was not only a genius move but one she doubted he was directed to do—he must have come up with it himself. 

Still, something about him sets Terri on edge. Questionable decisions (seriously, snowsuit?) aside, he has the demeanor of a class clown, someone who stays while it’s fun but bolts when things get hard. It makes Terri uneasy, especially since it’s clear that this is someone Gina cares deeply about. 

“Sorry about that.” Gina’s back, suitcases in hand, shaking Terri out of her reverie. “I had to tell Ricky I didn’t need a ride first.” 

“Oh, I thought EJ was giving you a ride home,” Terri says, taking one of the suitcases from Gina. 

A tense silence. “Mom, I told you we broke up, remember?” 

“I know, sweetheart,” Terri quickly assures her. Gina had called early yesterday morning from Kourtney’s phone, relating the news with a quick “it was a long time coming, we’re still friends, prom was super fun otherwise, see you soon” and hanging up before Terri could even get an I’m sorry out. “I just assumed you’d keep the same arrangement since Ashlen and your other friends are there, too.” She winces. “I see how silly that sounds out loud, though.” 

“Yeah.” More silence. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Terri asks gently. 

Gina shakes her head no emphatically. “I told you, it wasn’t really a surprise. I’m fine.”

“Okay, okay, got the hint.” Terri laughs, sighing internally with relief when Gina gives her a (albeit watery) smile. She opens the car trunk and shoves the suitcase inside.

“So, why was Ricky wearing a snowsuit?” Terri asks as they settle in and buckle up, unable to keep the question to herself any longer. 

“Oh, he wasn’t supposed to be at camp at all, and showed up without a ton of clothes, so he mostly borrowed from others I think, and got pizza all over his laundry yesterday, too.” she giggles slightly, then continues, “plus the guys dumped ice water on themselves last night and he put is wet towel on top of his open suitcase, like an idiot.” She says all this with the nonchalance of someone explaining 1+1=2, not…whatever she just said about sudden enrollment, pizza, and ice water. 

“That doesn’t explain the snowsuit,” Terri says, now even more confused. 

“Rumor has it he was supposed to go skiing with his ex? he didn’t say, though." Gina shrugs. 

“that girl Jamie’s working with?” 

“No.” Gina doesn’t elaborate. 

“Well, regardless, he’s very talented,” Terri supplies. “I did enjoy that one ballad of his yesterday, the one with the guitar and lights.” 

“Oh.” Gina smiles softly, almost to herself. “I liked that one too.” 

Terri’s stomach twists, like they’re about to go barreling off a cliff they can’t see and can’t stop. 

“Is he doing the fall musical as well?”

“I dunno. Probably. It’s his senior year, he won’t have many more chances.” 

“I didn’t realize he’s a year ahead of you,” Terri says, surprised. “How are his college apps coming along?”

“Mom,” Gina groans. “It’s literally summer vacation, and believe it or not, I didn’t ask. He probably hasn’t even started thinking about them yet.” 

“Fair,” Terri says, although, internally, she disagrees. if Ricky were truly serious about his future, he would have had his summer plans set in place long ago, and a solid school list by now. 

I can tell you like him, Gigi, she thinks. And then, suddenly, I wish you didn’t. 

It’s a strange thought, and a foreign one—Gina has yet to make a friend that Terri straight-up disapproves of.  What Ricky does with his life is really none of her business, and Gina’s a smart girl—she won’t go rushing into poor decisions even if her friends are walking bundles of chaos. Plus, from the little she’s seen, it’s clear he cares about Gina, too. Maybe as much as she does him. 

But Gina in a relationship is…different. Gina in a relationship was more carefree, a little less focused. She begged to go to prom despite having an exam the next Monday, she shifted her summer plans around for a camp she showed no interest in before, and she prioritized FaceTimes and texting every night over reading or sleeping. there were no lasting negative repercussions for any of this, but if there was ever a time for Gina to conserve her extra energy for something worthwhile, it’s now. 

Ricky a good friend, Terri decides. As friends, he keeps her grounded—but anything more than that? She’s just not sure. 

[corvidares]

thoughts and feelings about fnaf: into the pit

(spoilers! talk of endings!)

so, while i enjoyed playing this game a lot, i am left feeling dissatisfied in a lot of ways, mostly in relation to what the hell just happened

on the side of things i LIKED:

the pixel style!!! good god this feels so perfect for fnaf. obviously we've always had the minigames in the retro style, and while fnaf has had a fine enough "look" for years, i really hope to see more stylization like this. the pixel art and animations are beautiful and full of character

there's a lot of visual detail, both in the sense of easter eggs (of course) and background clutter. fnaf games are always good at having gross settings, and this definitely does that. even the cloud of dust that pops up every time you jump in the ball pit is yucky, lmao

speaking of details, the sound design is also VERY good. it conveys a lot of what is not seen; the closer you get to a kid thats been captured by spring trap (pit trap? guys idk what to call him) the more you hear their cries and whimpers. of course, as always, sound is a part of the gameplay too, helping you know if spring trap is close and that you need to hide

the writing in terms of dialogue and such is good! i like that oswald is.. well, he's kinda dumb. rightfully so, for a kid! he does things that arent always logical, it takes him a hot minute to figure out that hes in the past, etc

its also genuinely distressing and sad to see him suffering, to see him try to tell his mom that something is deeply wrong, only to be brushed aside because (presumably) the possession magic is invisible to adults. to see his trauma get worse and worse as the days pass; nightmares, visions, straight up sleeping through his school day because he's been up all night! even his idle sprites are always sad and scared

the gameplay itself! the learning curve felt appropriate, i liked the strategy of using the noise makers, hiding, and the vents. fwiw i did play the "creepy" setting which is essentially easy mode. but i still died plenty, its not a complete cakewalk or anything.

the classic fnaf snark sense of humor is definitely here in this game, and i love it. the achievements? hilarious. the tips on the loading screens, jeff's entire character?? good stuff.

misc things i noticed:

for whatever reason, after night 1 i had a constant "bloody/strain" filter at the edges of my gameplay. not sure if this is like, random? game footage ive seen doesnt have it, and one even had a different filter. not sure what to make of it, it seems odd to just be a meaningless, randomized detail?

i got one glitch: after checking the cameras while the other kid is in security with me, oswald's sprite didnt reappear and i couldnt do anything. so i had to restart the game lol. not major, and i have no idea how common it is. otherwise everything was quite functional iirc

regarding the more critical side of things.. im mostly frustrated. now, i know fnaf, i know it never serves you answers on a platter. i know theres always an abundance of easter eggs and secrets (which i have tried to research, tho the game is still new). but upon finishing the game and seeing all the endings, i realized i didnt get answers about a lot of things i thought i would. for example;

where the hell is foxy??? the other core three are there and get added as enemies when you progress. his stage is present and some kids at the past party mention they miss seeing him. but he's not on ANY of the imagery throughout the pizzeria. in fact, we don't see him at all. if i didnt know who foxy was, i would only know his name. the only exception might be some empty masks in the backgrounds, but honestly i doubt it. this seems.. really strange to me. ill elaborate later

why did spring trap tie up oswald's dad? what was he going to do to him? did.. did anyone even die? oswald rescues everyone!

this is probably silly and i acknowledge that. but what was up with the giant spider jump scares..... i assumed itd be a new enemy or something but nah. THAT SPIDER WAS TOO BIG. WHY

what was oz's dad doing this whole time? was he trying to escape at some point? why is his shit all over the resturant?

onto just general critiques:

the gameplay did get a bit formulaic and sometimes fetch quests felt repetitive and/or like busy work. like why did i have to get five different sets of keys. bruh

the story has a lot of plotholes. and again, this is fnaf, these games have always looked like swiss goddamn cheese. but i can still be frustrated about it

for example, how is time passing in the past versus the present? IS it passing if we're not there? how do we affect the past? why does no one in the present acknowledge what happened here?? did spring trap get caught in this timeline? did anyone die? was oswald always a part of these events or did he change the timeline? this is presumably the first four/five murders, but a lot doesnt add up. is there a timeline where oz is one of the murdered kids? in the bad ending, he gets possessed, but not stuffed in a suit.

how does spring trap's possession even work? back then he was still alive and perfectly mortal... right? but then again, he supposedly strangles himself in the end, then leaps back to life to kill jeff? huh???

why is spring trap so animalistic? he doesnt seem human, and his eyes glow, which i dont think is something that suit can do (though i could definitely be remembering wrong)

speaking of which, i dont think the og four's eyes glow either, but they do in this game.

the "true good" ending does not make any fucking sense, first of all. second of all, considering the amount of work one would have to do to get it, it is extremely minimal. if i had done all that and only gotten a slight dialogue change as well as a "yay happy eating pizza at jeff's" scene i wouldve been PISSED.

also, speaking of not making sense, im sorry but oswald's lie to his dad about what happened is so obviously not true. why does he not question this at ALL? ESPECIALLY considering he has a fucking CHUNK OF HIS ARM BITTEN OFF. we see in jeff's ending that that shit bled a fucking lot! was his dad too concussed to call him on the obvious lie of "you fell and hit your head". and if he was, he would OBVIOUSLY NOTICE LATER THAT FIVE DAYS HAVE PASSED. AND THAT SOMEONE WAS WALKING AROUND PRETENDING TO BE HIM. WHAT (and dont say "oh he thinks he just lost his memory of those days" YOU DO NOT LOSE HUGE CHUNKS OF MEMORY UNLESS THERE IS MAJOR BRAIN DAMAGE OR TRAUMA. UH UH)

while talking to my gf, we came up with a couple theories.

one, she thinks its likely this game had more planned. and i agree - the missing presence of foxy is the biggest indicator, in my opinion, but theres other things too. for example, despite the fact that we're never able to enter the library or mill, both places have a map that can be pulled up when you press the map button outside those buildings.

the mill, especially, obviously has a ton of animatronic parts in the trash, and we all know that can be important... it seems to be too big a thing to be a simple easter egg, but what do i know.

another thing that feels way too big to be an easter egg is gabrielle; the girl who gives you a notebook with information about the animatronics (not foxy :( ) that provides hints for later. she mentions that her grandfather was a technician that worked with them back in the day. he never talks about it now though (the ONE acknowledgement we get in the present that bad shit went down!!!)

like.. is this henry? someone else? SURELY that is not a random guy. but it's a one and done interaction. i thought, when meeting her, that she would become a friend and ally, that we'd be able to learn more. the writing seemed to slant that way, but no. we're never able to talk to her again afaik

all this lends itself to the idea that the game was pushed. i can perfectly picture, like a year ago, someone telling the team "fnaf 10th anniversary is august 2024, get it out for then" and them having to cut stuff they had planned (but perhaps not developed, as afaik there are not missing assets showing foxy or the other things mentioned)

which is obviously a shame, and if thats the case i of course commend the team! this is a great game, especially if it was rushed. but this is becoming a pattern with fnaf games, and considering this is such a big successful franchise, that should not be the case.

anyway! overall, i truly did enjoy playing into the pit, and im very glad it was my first experience playing a fnaf game myself rather than watching a playthrough. and there are secrets that seem to be deliberately cliffhangers, in true fnaf game fashion. such as the photo that stuns spring trap, or the minigames.

[mygwenchan]

Let me think a bit about this scene between Jump and Porche to distract myself from the fever 😩

So! I guess a lot of us have wondered why Jump was so interested in Porche's dad during the car scene. After all, what does it matter to him who Porche's father is? But of course, Jump has already shown that he can be quite attentive. He is someone who likes to acquire information about the people around him, because you never know when it'll come in handy!

So now we have Jump who notices a piece of paper in the car's trunk. It tells him that the car is registered under the name Jason Lee.

He then learns from Porche that Jason Lee is Prom's and Porche's dad. But wait... Lee? Jump gets very interested all of a sudden, because neither Porche nor Prom use that family name. Their name is Ponglred!

Jump immediately moves away from Porche and continues to ask "Are you mixed?" (aka dad is Chinese while the mom is Thai) and most importantly:

Now I don't know about you guys, but Jump actually looks really concerned to me here. It's like he wants Jason Lee to be Porche's stepfather and not the biological one...

My guess right now is that Porche and Prom are the sons of Mr. Lee's mistress. That would explain why they have their mother's last name (divorce hasn't been mentioned so far). It could also be the reason why the two of them are allowed to sort of waste their potential. Mr. Lee sounds like a very rich and powerful CEO, yet Prom doesn't get pressured into being a big shot at the company (Porche is the only one who told him to quit that job at Playboyy, but only once and Prom dismissed him. Cause really, why should Prom bother? He still gets to live in that villa with the giant pool!). There doesn't seem to be too much pressure on Porche either, if he's able to spend his days fucking the car wash boy (and before that Porche was hardly ever present at the car repair shop). Yeah, sounds to me like the spoiled kids of a rich guy's side chick.

And that might very well mean that Mr. Lee has more than just those two kids (the old cougar probably jumps onto everything that moves...)! Maybe some other mistresses' son didn't get as lucky as Porche and Prom. Maybe his mom got cast aside and ended up living in poverty, meaning her son had to pick up sex work to survive 👀

Playboyy likes to drop hints pretty openly and in-your-face (like Nant's necklace for example), so I'm very certain that Mr. Jason Lee will play a bigger role in future episodes. Who is he exactly? Just a random CEO? The owner of the Playboyy lounge? Or maybe even a sort of king pin who is pulling the strings from behind the curtains? Also: Does he have a third son?!

One thing is obvious. We should keep the name "Jason Lee" in mind!

[fixfoxnox]

It’s been a while since we’ve had sito headcanons!!! Have there been any additions to the world building of sito since the last time???

There have been a couple of things! Or at least more things that I can kinda comfortably mention lol:

So we officially have Price being in love with Nikolai now, however they aren't together (yet) they just pine and literally everyone around them knows

Price no longer got his hat from Alex in universe, instead he got it from Nikolai which we will learn more about in the NikPrice one-shot (still working on it, its gonna be so long 😭)

You guys get some stuff on Price's sister now that I've officially started building her (thank you therapist is laswell's wife anon)

Her name is Josephine Laswell (Price), she took Laswell's last name while they were married.

She's an on base therapist who typically does short term sessions with people, and usually they are sessions that the soldiers specifically sign up for, not ones they are forced into

However, Price knows that a lot of times therapists will just sign through the papers for the military members far too quickly, and he wanted to make sure Roach was okay so he asked his sister to take him on as a patient since he knew she would actually fully make sure he was okay before sending him back into the field.

She only goes by her first name on base, it was a request from both Price and Laswell who didn't want her getting caught up in their work if something happened. Because of that her name tags only ever say "Dr. Jo" or "Dr. Josephine"

Price calls her Josie as a nickname and Laswell calls her Pheenie as a nickname

Soap definitely doesn't tell his family when he brings Ghost and Roach home with him for the first time

Like he talks to his family at least once a week on a big family video call, and straight up sometimes Ghost and Roach will just be chilling in the background so they assume that Soap has told his family

Then they go home with him and meet them for the first time and Soap's mom is like "John why didn't you tell us you had boyfriends!!!"

Then its just a big jumble of Scottish words as the entire family start like jumping on Soap who is returning with just as much energy

Then suddenly it just stops and Mama MacTavish is like "anyways, you two both come inside its so nice to meet you, here let me give you a hug"

Also Roach definitely thinks he is the youngest out of their trio until Soap finally admits (gets caught) about lying about his age and Roach finds out that he and Soap are actually the same age and he legit gets so excited about it just because now when Soap tries to pull the "older and wiser" card he gets to throw it back in his face

Was thinking about Roach's first life again and particularly his childhood and thought I'd give some more on that plus a fun behind the scenes

When Roach thinks about that memory from when he was a child of his dad throwing him into the river, he remembers the location. A long dirt Roach through the woods leading to a little river with a bridge and highway above it

Fun facts, I actually used a place that my family used to go when I was younger as inspiration for the place. So the place where Roach got thrown into the river is technically real and exists in Arkansas lmao

I think Roach, in his first life, because he spend so much time trying to get out of his house to get away from his parents spent a lot of time in the woods around his house

Spending time in the woods meant getting use to all sorts of critters/creatures as well as getting good at spotting things like snakes so that he could avoid him

That being said he was definitely the type of southern kid/teen who would go outside for like five minutes then come back up to the house with a snake in one hand and a possum in the other lmao

He's never mentioned that he really isn't afraid of any animals to the 141 before

Jackson knows because he definitely watched Roach pick up enough random ass snakes/rats/whatever else during their time on Griggs squad. Point is, Roach has no fear

The 141 discover this bit by bit

They're tracking through the woods toward one of their objectives and suddenly Roach rushes forward and grabs Price, pulling him to a stop

The whole team are confused/lowkey annoyed until Roach steps forward and picks up the snake that Price was about to step on

A rat ends up running into the break room on base. Gaz freaks tf out and refuses to get off of the couch. Roach walks in and within like two minutes is carrying the rat outside in his hands

Just little things like this that the 141 eventually have to get used to because it's just part of Roach's charm lmao

Roach's first kiss in his first life was with the son of his church's homophobic ass preacher. They would sneak away from after church activities and into the woods to "hang out" which for two repressed teenage gays really just meant making out

Roach genuinely thought he was going to marry that guy and their relationship lasted until Roach decided he was going to leave. He asked him to leave with him

He said no because he was too afraid to tell his parents yet. Roach never held it against him, but their relationship ended and Roach never saw him again after he left

The same boy did exist in his new life, but Roach stayed clear of him because of Simon/the mental age difference

Currently, both Ghost and Price have both had glimpses of their first life through dreams

I've mentioned Jackson having struggles with sudden loud noises and flashes of light due to his first life, but I think he also has issues with planes/aircrafts because of the memory of the crash

Jackson is also a southern boy, thinking from like Louisiana. He can kinda turn his accent on and off, but most of the time it onlycomes out when he's passionate/in the middle of sex. He can also speak Louisiana French

Honestly my idea of what Jackson looks like changes every two seconds he's like a chameleon so he has like no in universe appearance yet dkfnfn

His sense of style however? Stylish man to say the least

Like somehow always looks put together, even in sweatpants and a tee shirt. It kinda pisses Gaz off sometimes, but most of the time he's just like "God damn my boyfriend is hot."

Headcanon that Gaz loves spicy foods and assumes that Jackson can't take any spice so he puts some in his food at one point to prank him

He's terrible surprised when Jackson just eats the food with no issue. Jackson has to be like "babe I've literally grown up eating Cajun food have you never had Cajun food" and then he makes Gaz something with a lot of spice and Gaz is the one who ends up not able to handle it sjfbjfndjdj

Cajun! Jackson my beloved

[wirewitchviolet]

So I just watched every Child’s Play movie and now I’m going to talk about them.

A few recent conversations with people have lead to me picking up some weird trivia notes about the Child’s Play/X of Chucky movies (and the recent TV series based on them), and as luck would have it, almost all of them are on Tubi right now, the one streaming service that still seems usable, and since they’re honestly on the very short list of ‘80s horror classics I never got around to, why not marathon through all seven and blog about it? Also before I do the whole “continued below the fold” thing can I just note real quick both that the later entries are surprisingly queer, so, on topic for the month, and that every single sequel, spinoff, whatever is written by the author of the original screenplay, and this series is practically the only thing on his IMDB page. You don’t see that sort of writer-controlled franchise basically ever.

Child’s Play (1988) is, of course, an evil doll movie. That’s kind of its own whole subgenre, and honestly does a pretty good job of elevating itself from what that generally entails. The absolute first thing we see on screen is the backstory here, where a police detective is trying to gun down a serial killer, who as just sort of a random thing (at least until later when he goes back to the witch doctor he learned it from to complain) has a magic soul transfer spell he’s apparently really itching to use, what with the having been caught for all the murders and all. He can’t find anyone to body jack, but ends up pinned under a pile of these very My Buddy style jumbo dolls and gives it a shot. I feel like this opening was probably a studio mandate thing, or at least a late addition, because otherwise the movie plays things real close to the chest about the whole thing.

We have this YOUNG (6 year old actor) kid who gets the possessed doll as a late birthday present after his struggling single mom buys it from a shady guy on the street who swiped it from the deadly shootout scene, and he talks about things the doll says to him, but we never actually see the conversations and without the intro you could totally play this up as a misdirect that we’ve got some sort of evil child here. You’d figure we’d be doing the whole thing where the kid is trying to tell everyone the doll is evil and nobody’s listening, but mostly he just gets to be a cute latchkey kid kept somewhat in the dark on this, and before we even really have a decent body count or string of suspicious things, his mother actually just notices she never put the batteries in the thing, so even the standard squeeze me and hear catch phrases talking doll stuff he’s done shouldn’t actually be possible.

She does a whole lot of worrying about how if either she or her latchkey kid explain this, CPS is probably going to get involved, but eventually confides the whole “hey this doll I got my kid might be possessed and responsible for some recent deaths” thing with the detective looking into things, who is just super relieved because he was actually already going down that road and also didn’t want to say anything that absurd, and then things just kinda rush to a conclusion after the aforementioned witch doctor check-in gives us the rest of our lore for these early entries. Turns out if you pop your soul into a plastic doll (or presumably other inanimate object), first off your only option for bouncing out is the first person you told your real name to (which he carelessly did with the kid), and also that inanimate body is eventually going to start gradually becoming human and obeying sensible rules like being full of meat and having basic mortality going on, and also this eventually closes that window to jump out. So OK NOW the kid he’d mostly been ignoring is in danger, they burn the doll, shoot it a lot, the end. Impressive animatronics work.

Child’s Play 2 (1990) is... the more by the numbers experience I was expecting the original to be. We start with the reveal that the protagonists of the first movie and second cop who showed up at the end did in fact go public with their story and it got enough buzz that the doll’s manufacturer went to the trouble to gather up what was left of it, do a full rebuild and restore, and test things out to put any sort of possession rumors to bed, and we also find out that oh, actually that looming concern over the whole first movie actually WAS totally valid, and the kid was dumped into the foster care system (which does not come off in a good light here at all) “while his mother recovers.” That’s the last mention of her we ever get too, so presumably she’s just locked in some psych ward indefinitely or something, which is pretty damn dark.

Quick tangent here- So the doll itself is “a Good Guys doll,” and while at no point in the series do we really go in too deep on this, Good Guys is apparently some sort of Care Bears-like cartoon that aired for a bit before getting the merch out, and part of the gimmick is while the dolls all otherwise have the same appearance and stock dialog, they all have different names (or at least a wide pool of names), and like... this is somehow the one thing I can’t suspend my disbelief over. Like yeah it’s a neat gimmick that you don’t know what your specific doll’s name is until you first put batteries in, but you are leaving so much money on the table not encouraging kids to collect the whole cast. And like, there’s a pre-existing show right? Shouldn’t they all have unique character designs from that alone? Also other Good Guys dolls keep showing up in the sequels, 2 here has one already in the house that Chucky replaces, but aside from a quick gag of having to pause to remember what name to say here, the unique name thing never actually ends up mattering, so it’s weird to introduce it.

But yeah, kid’s in foster care, so NOW we have parents who don’t believe him about the whole killer doll thing and wonder if he’s doing messed up stuff like you’d figure. They’re also taking care of a girl named Kyle who’s super jaded about the whole getting bounced around from home to home thing and talking about being abused in a lot of them and such, and she kinda becomes our co-protagonist here. This one WOULD end up pretty boring except I want to say the last third of the movie is this big extended climax in the doll factory and they just really go all out with weird creativity. Lots of hazardous conveyor belts and molten plastic and machines shoving limbs and eyeballs in. They have a ton of fun with it and it really sticks with you. They also cash in on that “doll eventually becomes more human” thing for some really incongruous gore as Chucky gets just horrifically mutilated and rendered into an indistinct mass. Good stuff.

Child’s Play 3 (1991) is the one entry in the series that’s just kinda more of the same. We’re jumping forward a decade or so with the toy company deciding to finally clean up the again really impressively grotesque aftermath of that second movie’s climax and start making these dolls again. Feels a bit early to be doing the retro ‘80s toy line thing but I guess it’s just a forward thinking movie like that. Anyway some of Chucky’s blood leaks out into the main molten plastic vat as they’re using a crane to remove his remains from the floor so he’s kinda reborn as the first new doll off the line, kills the CEO, and tracks down the kid, who’s just been transferred to military school, because the foster care system still sucks. Bit weird how Kyle’s not addressed at all, after the ending of 2 pretty strongly implied she was just going to go raise the kid off he grid somewhere, but here we are. Generic military school/bullying stuff, 16 year old kid. There is a point where Chucky realizes wait this is technically a new doll he’s possessing and that first person he tells his name to bit presumably got a reset, so he’s trying to possess this other kid (who I don’t buy as young enough to be into this doll, especially when he’s at a military school). We switch settings to this super elaborate haunted house ride at a nearby amusement park for the climax which is kind of fun, but it’s no doll factory... and even the writer doesn’t care much for this one. We are out of steam, trilogy over.

Bride of Chucky (1998) eventually picks things back up and just kinda goes “screw it, we’re capital-C Camp horror-comedy now.” We’re also doing a lot of retconning. Soul transferring now requires this magic amulet, and we’re no longer doing the doll-slowly-becomes-human thing. We ARE doing the doll-is-full-of-meat-and-blood thing though. We’re also saying before the original movie Chucky had a girlfriend (played by Jennifer Tilly, this will be relevant later) who was also a big fan of murder and broadly in on it, and while it took her a bit (or not? I’m figuring 2 took place immediately after 1, but then we skipped forward 10 years for 3, and now this is actually a decade from the original and mentions the dolls having been a thing back in the ‘80s, so the math gets weird here), she found all the Chucky bits after he was tossed into an industrial fan in 3, stitched them together, and casts a spell to revive him.

Long story short they have a very hot and cold relationship going, where at first the plan is hey, let’s restore Chucky’s humanity and go get his crime spree money, but then they have a fight, she locks him in a care, he kills her and magic rituals her into a similar doll, they fight some more, then eventually decide to just find some random couple to body jack and go back to being human. Contrary to the title they don’t actually get married at any point, but do get engaged, and the audience is challenged with the fact that at some point (while, again, both are dolls, but remember they ARE full of meat, so this makes SOME sense) they have sex, she gets pregnant, and the big ending sting after they start squabbling again, ruin the body stealing plan, and get shot for their trouble, she gives birth to this weird doll baby who we see pouncing on someone who approaches the scene later. Also I don’t know if it’s coming across from this summary but there’s very little in the way of slasher stuff here. It’s like, 90% wacky unhealthy relationship banter by volume.

Seed of Chucky (2004) picks up from THAT ending somehow, and after a big ol’ CGI montage of where murder doll babies come from goes into this narration from the perspective of the hideous doll baby from the end of the last one, who has since grown up somewhat and is actually very nice and polite and was actually just giving a big hug to that person in that stinger. Anyway after years of working as a fake ventrilloquist’s dummy, and going off the assumption of being Japanese because apparently having Made in Japan stamped on your wrist is a genetically inheritable trait for living dolls (and extra weird because I’m pretty sure the doll Chucky was possessing at the time was made in the factory from 2 and that was explicitly in Chicago), the spooky doll child who is our protagonist learns they’re making a movie about the events of Bride of Chucky and sees the same wrist stamp on the prop version of Chucky in that. So, off to the set to do a magic ritual and bring the actual sophisticated animatronic movie props used for in-universe versions of these movies to life, harnessing the souls of those dead murder parents and yeah this all works out somehow. And now it’s time to get super meta.

From here we have two plot threads going. The one with the kid, and one where Chucky’s love interest is struck by how amazing the casting it is that they got Jennifer Tilly to play her for this movie, both because she sounds just like her and she looks just like she did before she got turned into a doll, and also because she and several other people in this movie as an odd running gag thought she was really good in the Wachowski’s first movie, Bound. So the bulk of this movie’s actual plot is this evil murder doll plotting to possess her own voice actress and that’s just great. The plan is also to get whoever’s she’s dating as a host for Chucky (initially real world rapper Redman and later her limo driver), and to artificially inseminate her with... the title of the movie to get a human (or, more human anyway?) baby for the kid to possess. Long story short this actually does work out except for Chucky stopping at the last minute and realizing that this is very ridiculous, and being some limo driver dating an actress isn’t as cool as being a famous killer doll, so screw the whole thing. Oh and then gets dismembered by his own child with an axe after a goofy martial arts battle, because it’s kind of a tradition for every movie to end with Chucky’s gruesome dismemberment.

Then the other half of the plot is these two being parents to this child who they each project their own gender onto and who personally never really gave the matter much thought, and they straight up go all Ed Wood fighting over whether to call them Glen or Glenda. The child in question eventually says something along the lines of “I do like being a boy, but I also like being a girl, can I just be both?” which scores some pretty serious points for progressiveness for 2004, but then kind of immediately loses them by kinda playing this up as a split personality thing and getting the tidy (for some value thereof) solution of Jennifer Tilly actually having twins, so hey, just possess both these babies and actually be a boy and a girl. But like, put a pin in that one.

Oh and fun trivia. I suspected this on my own and wikipedia confirms it with quotes. Going full camp for Bride and casting one of the women from Bound basically pushed the whole series over some sort of queer event horizon, which the writer was OK with because hey, he’s openly gay. This movie had to switch studios because the first thought it was “too gay,” and he just kinda doubled down from here on out. Like I don’t think any straight characters, major or minor, get introduced from here on out.

Curse of Chucky (2013) took another decade to come out and went straight to video. Which, you know, reread that last paragraph, and while we are just making everyone gay now, it seems our writer and now also director realized he flew too close to the sun with the high camp duology and we’re back to doing the standard evil doll thing, terrorizing a new family, with the actual real life daughter of Brad Dourif (who plays Chucky and was also Wormtongue in the Lord of the Rings movies and the guy with the giant eyebrows in the ‘80s Dune) as the lead, she’s in a wheelchair due to Chucky attacking her mother while she was pregnant back before the whole doll thing happened, and we’ve kinda got a back to finish the job sort of setup, with this whole extended family in a big house getting bumped off and gradually piecing together there’s something up with this doll someone mailed to the main character’s niece.

This is the one entry in the series that didn’t do anything for me. It goes a bit nasty and gory on the kills which previous movies kind of just saved for big awful Chucky deaths oddly enough. It doesn’t have the high camp energy of the previous couple either and I miss it. Someone pointed out to me that it is interesting how it manages a really good fake out and absolutely comes across as a straight up reboot until a good ways in, at which point Chucky takes off some patch-overs hiding the scars from being sewn back together in Bride and giving a bit of a speech that basically amounts to “oh no absolutely everything is still canon actually. There’s just more to my life than stalking the one kid and dealing with my unstable girlfriend.” Also this one ends with a post-credits scene I literally found out existed just now when looking up release dates because Tubi kept jumping right into the next movie as credits started, and it’s kind of important to see for that one to make even a little sense, as Chucky mails himself to the kid from the original movies, and hey he also gets a phone call from his mother, so OK either she did get let out of wherever eventually or he got adopted by someone decent. Nice to learn. Also nice to learn this actor didn’t get messed up from staring in a horror movie when he was just freaking six. Anyway he counter-ambushes Chucky with the big ol’ rifle he has because I mean 3′s still canon.

Cult of Chucky (2017) is the last movie in the series... because it’s setting the stage for the TV series. And by “setting the stage for the TV series” I mean it just kinda does the screenwriting equivalent of dumping a whole bin of legos on the floor and leaving it for someone else to clean up. Makes this honestly just a complete mess of a movie (especially coming in without seeing that post-credits scene) but honestly it was probably the right call. Unlike most other things following the trend of adapting an ‘80s horror series to a serialized TV show, we didn’t actually have a big sloppy mess of lore and confusing continuity and unaccounted for characters, so yeah, make a big mess of things and spend a season or two cleaning it up, sure.

Basically the protagonist from Curse ends up institutionalized because... she was kind of the sole survivor of that one and insisting a doll killed everyone, but it’s not really plausible she did it because the house it takes place in isn’t all that wheelchair accessible. So we have this whole cast of other committed people here to be... not great portrayals of mental illness (but I mean, I’ve seen much worse) and give us some victims to run through, and a super awful corrupt hypnosis and sexual assault-y head of the place. And like, the tone of these last two is such that when she learns Chucky is actually there she tries to kill herself and Chucky then discovers this and sews her wrist back up. Not a fan.

Thing is though we’re cutting away now and then to the kid from the original trilogy interrogating the half-exploded and severed head of Chucky as was mailed to him in that post-credits scene, while Chucky is running around the mental hospital, and the eventual explanation for that is he found lessons online on how to possess multiple dolls at once. Also people. And by the end of the thing we’ve got 3 Chucky dolls running around (plus the interrogation head), plus our protagonist is possessed, and for good measure Chucky’s girlfriend still possessing actress Jennifer Tilly is in the mix, and original kid had a... poorly thought out big hero plan that just kinda lead to him being locked in a padded cell. And yeah, as a starting point for a TV series, sure, I’m good with this. Oh and this also had a post-credits scene I missed, where Kyle from 2 shows up to torture the head. Glad she’s still around.

So that’s the whole series, aside from, you know, The Series, which I am quite tempted to watch now if I can get my hands on it, and the ACTUAL reboot with Mark Hamill and Aubrey Plaza where it’s less possessed doll and more evil smart home setup. Although that’s STILL the original writer and I hear it’s actually quite good, just, yeah, access issues here.

Speaking of the series though, that pin I put in the whole Glen/Glenda thing? While I haven’t watched the show what first sent me down this rabbit hole was catching references to Chucky having a queer kid and while I’m pretty sure Seed of Chucky had its heart in the right place with... let’s be blunt, bad execution, having 20 years to learn how to do better apparently the show just freaking quadruples down with it, and both of the twins they possess at the end of that grow up to be nonbinary, are played by a nonbinary actor, do the whole they/them pronoun badge thing, and for good measure Glen has a more femme look than Glenda. And yeah both their parents are actively cool with this, so, you know, that’s just cool.

As is this series on the whole, really? I’m kind of surprised. I don’t like slashers, generally speaking, which these definitely are except the super campy entries in the middle. But they’re pretty clever and fun, and like, Chucky works way better as an actual character than other slasher villains tend to. Some people find Freddy Krueger fun but like... go watch the first movie again. That backstory is too irredeemable for me to watch you do improv while killing kids. Most others are just silent killing machines. Chucky though, despite the whole magically possessing a doll thing, is Just This Guy. Like yeah he kills people with little to know provocation, but he’s got this schlubby put upon working class guy from New Jersey who just kinda got caught up in a weird situation thing going on. Plus I’m easily charmed by good practical effects and damn is that doll rig impressive.

Oh yeah I keep writing these giant posts and then forgetting to plug my Patreon at the end. I know people don’t like plugs but apparently this blog is now how I survive and I’m not doing a super great job of it. The sooner I get back to the point where my rent and utilities are properly covered the sooner I can stop spending most of my time begging and do stuff interesting enough to write about.

[peoplingisnotfun]

So I am actually non-binary, black, of the female sex, and have neopronouns.

They are: Tey, an abbreviation for my literal, ACTUAL name on my birth certificate...

The name I literally came into this world with, given to me before anyone ever called me "she"...

Fey, for the way my spirit moves in my body, and they, because it is neutral.

Now, let me repeat, my first, initial, neopronoun that folks swear is so hard to use instead of "she" ... is my literal NAME. On my birth certificate.

That literally means princess.

I think that speaks volumes in how those people show respect to others. And don't get me wrong, I can empathize, I truly can.

But it's harder to do when kids actually give me the respect of seeing me as a person and actually aren't really confused on their own.

They only get confused when their parents tell them I don't know me.

They tell them not to respect my literal name, given to me by the one who gave me life in the first place.

I have been non-binary all my life, just realized it within the last few years.

Putting on the label merely relaxed me, put a name to all the things I couldn't fully explain to people who weren't like me.

My mom didn't magically stop being my mom, couldn't decide whether to be my mom or dad because her and her child were the same sex, but different genders.

My sisters weren't magically confused about the fact that they are women and I'm not, just because I'm their eldest sibling.

So when I hear about 'don't confuse other people's kids...' I'm not. On any level. On the real I'm not even trying to be noticed by any kids. Or adults.

And yet, the minute I'm in public, people's kids stay fascinated with me, whether I'm speaking or not, to the point it sometimes affects my day.

To the point that, I am wombed yet childfree, and still sometimes have to literally lead them back to their own parents, because they were starting to follow me.

As a retail worker, to get through a transaction I have fussed or talked with people's kids... to get them to listen to their own parents. And they did.

So I'm not the attention seeker here. And apparently my being universally commands people's attention... so respect the attention my whole being commands.

My first identifier of my person, is my name.

My first identifier of my personality, is my name and how I move in this world.

My first indentifier of how I view the equity of people,

how I view my worth in response to other people, is the last thing that I personally would allow someone to respectfully call me.

So I am literally telling you exactly who I am, how I am, from jump, when I respect you enough to even explain my whole being to you.

I am telling you my truth, my honesty, because I assume you deserve to be respected with sincerity.

Tey. Short for Teyana. Which literally means princess.

My literal birth name.

Fey, as in fairies, magical, sparkling, all that. Literally how I move, sound, even how I sometimes speak. Since being able to talk. Which is super super noticeable visually.

Like bro... I sing and dance at random times, I struggle to understand general human concepts, I get excited over cool rocks that glitter or have cool physical properties, my hair is down my back with flowers on the ends, how did you not know???

Like... I know you can see it from the front and the back unless I go up 3 sizes but like... it's enough to ignore my entire existence?

And they, because even though I glitter and sparkle, I'm still made of water and dust just like everyone else. And I like being human, eating is great.

And yet, because you (cisgender society as a whole) would have to *want* to learn people like me,

because you would have to muster up genuine respect to learn how I think,

my literal name does not matter.

Only that I have a womb. Only how society can benefit from me. And then I'm black, so a whole lot of invisible labor is expected with that. Anyways...

I don't matter as your fellow human being. So you can't even teach your children to see me as human too. So, trying to learn how I identify is too hard and not worth it.

Only that I look like I could go in this group or another. And how well I act in the group.

Because respecting me, in my space, takes too long for you to understand.

No.

Not even when I was cosplaying as a woman did I accept my humanity being lesser.

Respect the access I allow you to my person.

Respect the way the black women in my and others' lives, in my family, in many families, fought tooth and nail for none of us to love and live as anyone's Mammy, leaving all of us free to explore who we truly were.

Isn't that what we are all fighting against? People trying to teach hate? Teach that a certain group of humans will never deserve to actually be a free human?

How can we be about it, when people who claim that are afraid to try?

Listen.

Even without giving birth myself, all my life my womb has used by a patriarchy.

To associate my use to my gender, to tell me my goals, how high I should reach, how much respect I deserve.

On top of being used by complete strangers to teach me that a stranger, especially a cisgender man, will always know me better than I will.

That never made me feel like a proper human.

The respect of my personhood, whether I was a little girl, a child, woman, or anything else, did.

And I was lucky enough to be born from a woman strong enough to do so and mean it.

Speaking of my extraordinary mommy, most importantly, respect my name.

I earned it, and it was given to me by my best friend in this entire world.

You don't understand my name, and my purpose, that's fine.

You don't know how to teach my name.

Therefore, you can't define my purpose, fine.

But if you are asking for my presence socially, if you find yourself participating in my life in any way, you will take what I give because neither you nor your child will ever own me.

And I'm not letting you disregard me and my family at the same time by refusing to address me as I am.

I can still respect your confusion and possible frustration with me.

I can still work with you comfortably.

And still demand the respect I deserve.

Even if you cannot understand how my respect functions.

More people need to teach their pupils that you do not have to understand right away, and not understanding doesn't make you mean or wrong.

It doesn't always mean you hate the person.

But they still deserve respect for still making it here, same as you. Because living literally breaks us all down, second by second, minute by minute.

Or, as my mom says,

"I am loathe to say I understand someone, because I can never understand what it is like to live their lives, in their shoes.

But I can always respect the fact that this person still managed to make it to me.

Still, I demand what I command.

I give honesty to them as a fellow person.

I give respect because we deserve it as people who didn't choose to exist here.

And that is what I demand because my presence commands it."

[ayearlaterletters]

10JUL2024 - 14JUL2024

This letter will mark the first letter I am writing to you. My letters will consist of randomness, my pov, thoughts and emotions. Most importantly, from the heart so please bear with me.

I want to recap our days together, every day. Something for us to look back on and remember the little things and the good days. I'll try to remember the little things you do or say to me that made me feel good.

On July 10th We went to karaoke for less than 2 hours. I sang L-O-V-E by Nat King Cole and you sang do for love, sail away, Telephone Man, and Michael Jackson love song lol. After karaoke, we head on over to Claudia Birthday celebration at Dave and Busters. We got to see Janel and Mya, Gaby C and her daughter, Sean, and Claudia's co-workers from her other job. We threw up the 4's as a bit and you bought the photos! I loved it for the frame because it's hilarious - what were we thinking we are just goofy lol. After we ate pretzels and garlic fries and drank your alcoholic beverage we played games. I got hit smacked on my face with a basketball because I wanted to win so bad on tic tac toe basketball, which I did win! After gaming, we went to the parking lot because I needed to go home and rest. I also accidentally took the night medication instead of the day one so that's why the alcohol was hitting fast but I was still functional! That day you wore your hawaiian button up, black trousers, docs, and a jacket. I wore a mini floral dress, jean jacket, and white heels to match your style. I wanted to dress up with you because I thought you looked handsome. When you wear trousers and a button up I think you're dressed up even though you don't agree. We were kissing pressed up against your car then we hear Mya say we left 30 mins ago when we really didn't lol. we were just admiring each other looking into each others eyes. You and I took a drive to Sunset Cliffs and we were intimate until 1am. I went to work on 1 hour of sleep lol. I would do it again.

On July 11th

I took an 8-hour nap according to you lol. I know for sure I took a juicy nap. After my much-needed slumber, I texted you and you scooped me up to attend your brother's volleyball practice at the YMCA. That day I learned about slapbox and it's such a guy thing to do. Apparently, you are a champion at this boyish sport. Attending the YMCA felt very nostalgic and I learned you were a YMCA kid too which made me smile. Little things I learn about you make me feel a closer connection to you because of the little things we have in common. After rooting for Marcus, he is extremely good at serve jump, we went to baked bear in PB. I learned Marcus and you had a bowling arc. Custom bowling balls too! Next time we go bowling or anytime we go bowling, Marcus is more than welcome to join us and he said he was willing too. Also, you sitting on my itty bitty lap with all your weight and all legs on top of me was so heavy but I love feeling you on me and then I sat on your lap and you picked me up surprisingly. you're so strong. You drove me home and it was a great evening spent with you and your brother.

On July 12th mid-afternoon, we went out to get So Saap - fun fact it means " Very Delicious" in Thai. My grandma taught me the translation and I didn't tell you that day because I forgot, but I just remembered since I'm now writing this. After lunch, we took a nice drive to Balboa Park. I pointed out a vegan restaurant that offers vegan Caribbean options. That place has been on my bucket list of places to eat. You told me you went to a location nearby to play the bongos and you have a homegirl that teaches something there - not sure. Fun fact: I played bongos too in the 5th grade - very fun. I showed you my magic card trick that my mom learned from somebody she knew in prison. My mom is very impressed I remember the card trick after all these years. I wish I could show you another card trick that my cousin showed me but I forgot and I couldn't figure it out, oh well. You also showed me Yu-Gi-Oh on your mobile and I was just clicking on random buttons but yeah I never understood the game when I was younger nor will I know now haha.

After spending time together at Balboa Park, you dropped me off at home. That was the day I told my mom I'm with you seriously. Her advice: have fun, be happy, and don't argue. I'm very happy she is supportive of my choice. I couldn't wait to tell you about my conversation the next day but it was news that was much needed to tell in person rather than over a phone call or text because this is something serious to me. It's a lot for me to tell my family something serious like that because we usually don't - family dynamics.

You went out about your day with Ezra and Oscar to Red Robin to get some milkshakes and have a boy's day. Oscar wanted to cancel on ya'll because he was tired. that had me dead lol

I missed you that evening. I contributed to the playlist you shared with me and then I was knocked out from the medicine.

On July 13th

I had a good day at work, came home, and took a good nap before I would see you to have some energy. You scooped me up around 3:30 we drove to Otay ranch and got some vegan orange chicken from panda express. We made our way to Plaza Bonita to attend our showtime Long Legs and sneak in some snacks from Target. On our way there I told you the news I've been needing to express to you in person. You were so happy even though you were just joking about me not telling my family and keeping you a secret but I can tell you were genuinely happy because I sure was. We make our way to target watched a really fascinating movie that captured us both and we were definitely feeling each other that night. On our way to sunset cliffs, you said " I feel like I finally hit the jackpot" that statement alone made my heart just M E L T. I just felt so special. You also called me divine. out of your league. words and statements I don't understand or can't comprehend because I didn't know those words could apply somebody like me. i am the apple of your eye. Sunset cliffs was so beautiful that night. clear skies, Waxing Gibbous as bright reflecting off the ripples of the coast. God, you took so good care of me that night I wasn;t keeping track of how many times I came because I just came when I felt like you were getting me there. As we were driving home too we kept getting flashbacks and you said me sucking your dick was heavenly lol. i love when you're in charge of me. I can't believe you became soft after coming once. i did that lol. What a beautiful night to end with my lover. Came home, knocked out, woke up, took a shower, then went to work.

Today is July 14th

Establishing this blog has been on my mind since July 12th. I originally wanted to do PowerPoint presentation leading up to our one month officially. I have that folder on the side, I just have to scroll through messages if I want to really to go deep but I'll find a way to deliver my message to you. Today is a rest day between the both of us. we got to catch up on some things before you start your new job tomorrow and I need to do laundry, clean, and go for a walk. I'm so happy for you and I am proud of you.

I miss you always. you leave such an everlasting impression on me.

angel numbers today: 11:11, 4:44, 5:55

[help-help-i-need-an-adult]

Cool that you don’t want to be loud in public, but maybe don’t assume other people “want” to.

My mom was half deaf and refused to learn sign language to any usable degree outside of being able to tell me basic orders in church without talking. Probably because she was also half blind and being able to get her to see my hands had its own sets of barriers. Plus, dad would never have taken the time to learn. That meant, that from the age of 7, in order to communicate with my primary caregiver, I had to project my voice and use excellent diction in order to be heard and understood without screaming.

Slow, loud, and clear were the goals. A lot of people associate those with either public speaking without a microphone, or yelling. For me, it was just asking what’s for dinner.

And I’m also a classically trained singer, so what I was doing to just communicate with mom at 7 became reinforced with expert instruction by the age of 9. Literally, some of the best choral directors in the world were teaching me how to make sure my voice could fill a concert hall for long periods of time without straining my voice.

No one ever struggled to hear me while presenting a project in class because what a lot of people call “teacher voice” is my default.

“Loud” is now my natural default. It’s actually very difficult for me to not be loud because the vocal placement that allows my voice to carry is where it learned to default to. My “inside” and “outside” voices aren’t that different to other people. I think they are very different but I’ve been informed by enough people to know they aren’t.

It’s so much a thing that when I perform, “breathy” and pianissimo are the colors and dynamics I struggle with most. Because they are the opposite of where my voice wants to be.

My quartet will ask me what dynamics I want where in a pice we’re working on and then increase their volume level by a step to match me, because I’m the loudest of the 4 of us. (People would argue that that means I should be singing bass instead of lead or tenor, but that’s another post.)

When my current chorus does riser placement, the person who is naturally the loudest ends up in the middle on the top row. And guess what? That’s my spot. Every year the coach that helps us with that before contest tries to put me somewhere else and every year, I end up there anyway. Because I’m loud.

A voice part suddenly has the melody and needs an extra voice for a few bars? I get asked to make the jump. Because I’m loud.

It’s not a choice I’m making consciously when I’m just talking anymore. I can choose to be quieter but I have to actively think about it because it means how my voice is placed has to be different.

I’ve had several people get mad at me for yelling at them when I was just talking. It didn’t feel like yelling because I wasn’t. I was projecting, yes, but not yelling and I didn’t have any anger behind it.

I’ve even had random ass people come up to me at noisy restaurants and tell me off for “yelling at your grandma” when I was literally just speaking loud enough for MY MOM to hear me over the music, screaming children, noises associated with moving/clinking dishes, and a full room of people talking. They thought I was loud before? Those people got to actually hear me yell as I yelled at them and gave them a brief explanation of how my mom needed me to be loud and they should mind their own business. The whole restaurant would suddenly be a little quieter the remainder of our stay.

As for the Indy Children’s Museum, it’s just a fun place to play and learn and the kids get loud. It’s a museum where loud is normal and should not be discouraged. The giant slide they set up in the main room at Christmas had tons of kids screaming and squeezing because it’s fun. The carousel alone is loud enough that if you’re in that room, you’re gonna have to speak up anyway. Mom always thought the moving water in the water physics room was particularly difficult to understand people over. There are some rooms and exhibits that are quieter but it’s not unusual for a kid to get excited and be loud in those areas either. And that should be ok.

So, museums should be quiet? Maybe an art museum or something but some museums should be loud. There isn’t a cut and dry always correct answer to that question.

Some people like to be quiet. Cool! I personally don’t like talking to people in public at all when I don’t have to, but when I do speak, it’s loud. Because that’s what I was trained to be.

There is even evidence with how loud I CAN get that my vocal cords are naturally inclined towards strong volume anyway. Because not everyone’s vocal folds are the same. Some people have thicker or thinner folds and they sound different when they do different things. It’s why no two people sound exactly the same and it’s why some people are naturally loud or naturally soft spoken. The organ we use to make sound has more to do with it than anything else.

So maybe don’t over think other people’s voices and volumes. “Want” usually has very little to do with it.

[factual-fantasy]

20 ask things :-)

(Comic in question)

So the funny thing about the creature in the last few panels, is that most people seemed to jump to the conclusion that its Burntrap. I think its mostly due to the body shape and its purple eyes.. Which is fair.

But also may I remind ya’ll that in my AU, when a bot of some kind is “infected” with “the bug”..

Their eyes turn purple. So whos to say that’s William following Foxy around?👀

@subspacecadet Foxy and Bonnie might not know what that means, and just assume you’re calling them “furry”, like they’re covered in fur. Which for Foxy is like “Yeah duh, I have a fake fur coat” and Bonnie’s thinking “My shell doesn’t really have fur but okay-”

Same would go for the Glamrocks. I don’t think they would know what that really means.

The only character that would probably know what being called a Furry means is DJ Music Man funnily enough. He’s always hanging around older kids in the arcade and might have heard them talking about Furries once. In which he would know being called a furry is usually supposed to be an insult. In which he would be offended on the Glamrocks behalf.

Random kid: “I don’t like Freddy, he’s a furry! >:(”

Freddy: “..I.. believe you are mistaken. I don’t have fur. I have a plastic shell! :)”

DJMM: “>:/ Yeah well ur MOMS a furry” 

Random kid: “>:O”

Freddy: 

Not quite, but her bitterness towards Roxanne does heavily involve Foxy. 👀

@yukurie​ As it stands right now, my AU branches off from the ending where Gregory escapes from the Pizzaplex at 6 AM and is found by Vanny in that box.

Except in my AU, Vanny didn’t find Gregory. Gregory didn’t stop somewhere nearby and sleep in a box. Gregory just kept running, and was never found.

Although after part 2 of “Bits and Pieces” is posted, I plan to take a break and really build up my FNAF AU more. A lot of my timeline is left blank, which needs fixing.

So with that being said, my AU might be re-written and this ending will no longer be canon. :/

@banaanipapu​ 

XDD No worries! That just tells me someone really likes my work! :}}

@lets-zofifi-stuff​ (post in question)

I didn’t really have any dialogue planned out for that doodle. But I imagine Sunny is in tears because someone finally visited him after months of being all alone.

He’s probably stumbling over his words asking Foxy about everything that’s going on outside the Daycare. 

“Have you seen DJ?? Is he okay?? He’s still in the arcade right?? Are the others okay?? Why has no one come to see me?? Have they all forgotten about me?? What’s going on out there??”

And Foxy’s just like:

Did she really? Whack. But it doesn’t really matter because Monty mix isn’t really a thing in my AU for 2 reasons.

1: I completely forgot it existed and thus didn’t write it into my AU--

And 2: I don’t think there would be a logical reason for it to make any animatronic that consumes it go crazy.

In my AU, Chica attempts to consume food during her “malfunction” for reasons unrelated to Monty Mix. And the animatronics don’t have stomachs, its not like she could eat it, absorb something toxic in it and go crazy. If anything she could consume it and it clogs her up internally and she shuts down. But again this doesn’t matter because I didn’t write Monty Mix into my AU-

@cherrycreamfairy​ Thank you! :DD I do my best! :}}}

@void-the-bear​ 

Girl go back to SLEEP

(Coming from someone who ALSO isn’t asleep when I really should be rn)

AOSKJDOASDKS THANK YOU! :D

If they ever encountered those animatronics in cannon, they would probably be completely mangled and shut down. In which Foxy and the others would just find them super creepy.. and weirdly HUGE.

As for if they were alive/active?.. I have no idea. Considering my Glamrocks aren’t supposed to be murderous and possessed.. it probably wouldn’t be a friendly encounter 😬

Thank you! Unfortunately though I.. am not the best at teaching people how to draw things or giving advice. 

I mostly draw through muscle memory. And I don’t really know how to describe how I’ve learned to draw the way I do. I guess I looked at how other people draw faces and tried to mimic it. I guess its like-

“Okay I drew this sad face, but it doesn’t really look that sad.. lemme look for how I can improve this face.”

“Oh! This artist also drew a sad face! And they drew the eyebrows a certain way, that makes the character look really sad :( Let me try that!”

And then I draw the weird eyebrows, see that its an improvement, and draw it like that from then on-

You see- I’m not really good at giving advice/teaching 😭😭😭

@halogenrobotics I don’t see why not! :0

@ourlifestooshort Thank you! I’m glad you like them!

And I do have full body refs for them, but uh.. I think I’ll just uh, keep those tucked away in my files for now- 😅

@chromchill Thank you! I’m glad you like them! :}}

And I would like to say I’m taking breaks, drinking water and stretching.. but uh.. hehhhh... 😅

Awwww, that’s a great headcannon!

(Comic in question(?))

We’ll just have to wait and see! :}

@cali-the-temmie Uhg, very frustrating. Although its nice to hear that everyone is calling them out and knows its stolen work.

@noisyapricotcalzoneclod Nowhere! My Refinedtale AU has been put on hold BIG TIME in favor of my FNAF AU. 

And even if it wasn’t, my RefinedTale AU is still a work in progress. And I haven’t fully planned out Gaster’s recovery, nor have I drawn/written it. :/

I am 100% sure my Kung-fu panda AU thing ends with Shifu being completely fine. :} I know this because I made it.

[1111jenx]

Do you really think that virgo risings look seductive and foxy 💅

Absolutely 100%!

Not only that I also think they're the most underrated besides Aquarius Rising😭 People really think Mercury children can be plain or look like "aliens"💀 (I have heard SO MANY PEOPLE said this!! maybe its me but i dont see it guys). Let's do Virgo Rising some justice shall we:)

Virgo Rising/ Mercury in aspects to ASC

first thing first, they literally look like dolls. (esp the women omg)Think expressive eyes, pointy/slimmer and long noses and curvy lips ( not necessarily thick but more like the shape ). even people with more melanin can look a bit paler naturally!!

so many people are gonna come for my neck but i'm a simp for mercury people so i'll say it: they look GORGEOUS without makeup. not in a taurus rising way but wayyyy more delicate?!🤣 baby face without makeup though HAHAHA

these natives usually are CRAZY about their own health as they're prone to a lot of random or some distinctive allergy/diseases or nutrition issues and their health are not necessarily the best if not well aspected or there are no other placements to cancel out(6H Aquarius)

smartass. no they really are. as a kid, they probably traveled a lot or had access to a lot of knowledge about the world and different cultures! grow up reading books or knowing a lot of random fun facts🌸 (Sagittarius 4H)

believe in knowledge is power, ALWAYS learning smth new or interesting🖤

poker face. they have this worse than ANY other earth rising. saturn rising looks very "stern" and dry but mercury/virgo rising simply looks so soooo mean💀 yes the rumours are true, these individuals invented resting bitch face. can literally be browsing for tortilla in Walmart and strangers would think they're contemplating on killing someone. (true story)

the funniest thing is after some period of denial most virgo risings are now aware of their RBF and why do i feel like they secretly like it??😃😃

quiet and peaceful aura when they're not talking. HOWEVER the peaceful part may only come out when they know you well. if not most of the time they're just quiet and a bit anxious (mercury effect) will try to cover this up by putting on their RBF again🤣

kindhearted. mom friend of the group. even if they have the most underdeveloped, stereotypically "childish" or "immature" placements, their virgo rising will always take over. my friend whos a sagittarius sun/moon(yes, she's doing okay dont worry💀) but she has virgo as her rising sign!! would always complain on and on and get super mad at us about how annoying we are when we're drunk and passed out on the floor, but would ALWAYS give us water, take off our makeup, (magically) change us into our pajamas( she even color-coordinate them) and would set a timer every 10 minutes to go back and make sure we didn't choke on our own puke💀💀

random waves of sadness when they're by themselves. identity crisis as bad as saturn but not as career centered but rather about literally everything. as a child the environment they grew up in could have lack a lot of structure or had wayyy too much rules they had to follow, they feel as if they always have to stick to a certain way of life to stay sane🥺

not rly the type to say it but they'd rather show you.

observant in terms of people. their understanding of human minds are kinda scary tbh😀💀 could have been sooo into psychology

attentive. you'd be surprised. they remember everything you said to them. the good AND the bad. don't be shocked when they pull up with a yellow piñata just because you told them that one time a million years ago that you wanted one. yes they remember. (cancer 11H)

when they're under the influence they become someone else. pArTy animals. will jump on the table and start showing off moves you didn't know they could pull. "go big or go home" mentality when wasted. (leo 12H)

will regret everything the next morning. will act as if they don't care tho🤣

randomly walk down the memory lane for fun: get embarrassed by thinking of that one time they did something embarrassing.

SO SOOO sensitive and sensible. this is probably true to most earth rising! strangely, virgo rising in particular has the power to see through one's words to predict their "real" emotions and intentions.

knows when you're lying. they can smell the guilt in the air 10 minutes before you start to speak. i don't know how they do this, they just do. will start pressing you for answers if they can tell you're being sketchy

tight circle of my friends > a lot of acquaintances

don't get me wrong. they're extremely sociable when needed, are SO good with their words and the way they carry themselves just scream professional!!! 😆

need a lot of independence to work efficiently. probably somewhere they're not able to hear others and too much random noises. they also tend not to stick to one's outdated routine for too long, constantly looking for methods to improve productivity (6H Aquarius)

will judge you for your mess of a life😀😄but will still love&accept you. way more comfortable with emotions than typical earth rising.

ROUNTINES. the type of people who religiously follow a certain routine. for example another friend i know that has virgo rising takes her shower at 8 and then will maker a glass of tea by 9. I feel like she has been repeating the same rountine, exact to the minute for a couple of years now....

in love with the smell of fresh linens, clean sheets, shiny countertops and windows. they may not always be a clean freak but a lot of them find cleaning to be very relaxing?? it's like an emotional outlet for them😭 watch these individuals starting to dust the shelves and mop the floor when they're having some slight in inconvenience in their life as a way to destress HAHHA

may come from a very religious family too!! could have lived apart from their parents when younger! (Sagittarius 4H)

education FIRST. they understand how important their education is and the weight of what a reputable diploma/degree can do to their professional life. may be very traditional when it comes to education. (taurus 9H)

health conscious people. always learning about cool tips to improve their health. the first to get a supplement after doing an extensive research on the product!!

grammar nazi. there i said it don't even fight me on this 😃😃😃

sexually assertive. look like prudes but will fuck your brain out. they like to be on top. SUPER FREAKY SO DAMN DOMINANT AND DEMANDING IN BED LIKE i'm never taking this back. (aries 8H)

even in dating scenarios, they need some kind of established connection before having casual sex with someone. not that they can't get any, they're just super freakin picky(capricorn 5H)

SEXY WITHOUT TRYING. do you know how those movies about "nerds" taking off their glasses and braces and instantly become attractive? y'all Virgo rising don't even have to do all that🤣 their charm is so unique and elegant. SO GOOD WITH WORDS I REPEAT SO SO GOOD WITH WORDS

i have to stress it again. can someone please explain to me what is it about then thats so seductive?? like i'll beg my friends who have virgo rising to let me include their pictures to show y'all what i mean. their beauty is like Scorpio rising's intimidating nature + Cancer rising's angelic aura 🥺

if placed with even more beneficial placements they'll demonstrate a crazy amount of management skills and administrative abilities.

once developed, they make spectacular writers, singers, content managers, literally anything that relate to communication (gemini 10H)

pretty good w their own finance but spend millions on their loved one and on self care. (Libra 2H)!

a need to always look put together. so if you get to see them looking crusty, they love you.

they tend to have this BIG need to nurture, to take care of people. omg did i mention that they may also have to take care of their siblings when they were little?? parents for sure put a lot of pressure on them.

attracted to people who lean more on the loner side, who are "different" in some way, people they can save, people with pure goodness in them but rather not show it, people who are lost (pisces 7H)

i'm sorry but virgo rising, especially with libra/7H influence yall attract so much drama for what. and like since they're nice and HATE conflic, they wouldn't just lose it on you. they'd document everything you said and done, screenshot every message before converting everything into a pdf and transfer it to a cloud file. cross them again and everything will be send to your employers.🥰 one step ahead of you dear. ( i'm not even jk guys i saw sooo many virgo risings do this remind me never to fw them in the future🤣 )

like most earth rising, they're fiercely protective of their friends:) however, virgo rising literally see their friends as their family (cancer 11H) or the family they never had in some way, they would try to show you love by fixing all of your problems.🥺🥺🥺

realistic. yes the idea of running off with your lover to neverland sounds nice but it won't pay this month's bills.

complex relationship with their siblings, very defensive of them too (scorpio 3H)

their dream is to be rich. why you ask? so they can travel and continue to thrive in knowledge. they're actually so adventurous🕊

i notice virgo risings can pull off darker colours. they can wear a wholeass black outfit but would still look good

they just look so clean😭😭😭😭

their sense of humour is so fucked up. like i thought my gemini mercury was sick until i met a virgo rising💀💀 gosh they'd make fun of you and you'd b like wait what😀 and they say it with a dead serious face too sklsks I CANT- (scorpio 3H)

honourable people. when they did something wrong, they carry the guilt with them forever😭 omg come here babies lemme hug yall

THEY LOVE PEOPLE WHO LIVE LIFE WITH NO REGRETS. they think thats the best mentality. but they highkey dislike people who are disloyal, who have literally no boundaries

oh alsoooo boundaries issue🥰 if you're a hugger they'd be speechless and look physically uncomfortable but dont worry they probably aren't use to it HAHAHAH

I wrote this in 8 hours and have not proofread this yet but I'll post it anyways so my virgo rising bestie can see it and respond to me heheheh🤣 have fun reading this guys! lemme know what yall think!

heres my rising series

love,

saint jenx🥀

[suspiciouslackofclowns]

Here are some of my fav personal harringrove headcanons bc I’m bored at work (if I’ve said any of these before, no I haven’t)

Steve normally prefers to drive, but when he’s with Billy he 100% becomes a passenger princess. Like, feet up on the dash, he’s in control of the stereo, has a secret stash of snacks, etc.

Billy is mean in the fun way, where he’ll try to round up the kids for some reason and call them assholes, and just gets giggled at. Steve is mean in the mean way — if Billy playfully starts being a dick, Steve starts being a dick for real because he can’t help it. This almost always ends in Billy’s feelings getting hurt and Steve profusely apologizing with kisses and compliments until his crybaby boyfriend is feeling better.

They both have serious commitment issues and have difficulty professing their love for each other for a long time. Billy is scared to get attached to people because he doesn’t trust that they’ll actually stick around, and Steve is afraid of being too clingy and driving people away.

In addition to that last one, I’m a big believer of Steve’s parents not being super involved in his life, but I hc that he has an aunt on his mom’s side that he’s really close to. I have a whole backstory for her and everything, just haven’t gotten around to putting it in any fics yet. Essentially, she’s the other black sheep in the family, has gone through more divorces than anyone can count, is too “eccentric” to be invited to most family gatherings, and Steve adores her, which pisses his mom off a lot. Steve learns a lot about love languages from his aunt, let’s call her Cheryl, and how he can certainly convey that he loves Billy without outright saying it. I think they’d make a lot of progress with little gestures and signals to let the other know that they care, and they’re here to stay.

When their relationship is better, Billy becomes super protective of Max. Not in the “you can’t date until you’re 30” way, but more in the “that guy’s giving you a hard time at school? I’ll be waiting for him out in the parking lot” way. Steve is protective of all of the kids, including Max, but he often tries to talk things out rather than jump straight to violence.

Billy really likes fist fighting and Steve does not. It doesn’t take much to push Billy into that direction, because he’s still in the c’mon, hit me first so I can end you mindset, and is willing to pummel anyone that bothers to light that fuse. Steve often has to calm him down Chris Pratt Jurassic Park style.

Kind of on the flip side of that, Billy sometimes exhibits these random Burt’s of strength when he gets frustrated or angry, and on a few occasions has picked things up that seem too heavy for one guy. Those things include the refrigerator when it got stuck in the doorway, their neighbor’s cement mixer, and Jason Carver. Steve thinks it’s really hot every time this happens.

Billy’s like a big cat. He’s little spoon, and will always look for excuses to seat himself in Steve’s lap and curl close.

Steve is super into voyeurism and Billy is a capital “w” Whore, so it really works out when they mess around with a third party. The third party in question is typically either Tommy or Eddie (whichever floats your boat).

I think that out of all of the older adults, they would both get along well with Murray.

Steve cooks, Billy eats. Sharing food is one of their discovered languages, and since Steve is so giving and Billy enjoys more than his fair share of comfort food, it works.

As always, chubby Billy rights because I love him. He deserves to have a doting boyfriend who adores and worships him, what can I say? He also deserves to put on some happy relationship weight.

They’re each other’s favorite person in the whole world, and they tell one another as much as often as they can.

[she-who-seek-happiness]

Final score keeps fluctuating between 32 and 37 tbh. It depends on the site and how I interpreted the questions. Because some are really ambiguous or changed as I grew up.

For instance this question. Not really? But yeah, sure? I didn't have any friends, so I'd jump into any opportunity that I had to try to make friends since it was so difficult to me. If it was playing house it doesn't require a lot of imagination, I remember being embarrassed because I couldn't pretend very well. At the same time if it was something more complex, like play pretend of the animes and games I liked it was difficult to me to participate because I couldn't come up with moves and powers, if that make sense. I didn't know how to move my body topretend to be using the powers and was embarrassed to do so. I didn't know what power to use because it I over thought a lot like, ok this things counters that, but would that be useful in this situation, or I could do this. So in the end I just ran around following the others. Not my favorite activities.

Now this one, frequently I ask my mom or people talking to me "is that a question?" Because I'm not sure and have to confirm in order to know it's my turn to speak or I'm expected to talk. But isn't like that to everyone? It's my turn to speak when a) we are in a conversation and someone stop talking. That's my cue. B) i have something to add and there's a pause on which it seems the person is done talking for the moment. C) I really need to say whatever I'm thinking, it may add value to the conversation. In this case I interrupt people. It's rare and I only do this when I'm I a hurry somehow.

Second to last. When younger, I used to be a very literal kid. I understood things as it was spoken and had a hard time with figurative language. As time went on I understood and learned to associate things, so now if someone say "it's raining knifes" I can understand, it's a heavy rain, so heavy that once it hits it may feel painful due to the force of the impact. I'm not sure if I'd understand a new metaphor.

Something that I like a lot it listening or watching those 40+ minutes videos about random subjects, from the really universally useful ones, to the video game/story analysis. Those critics are the ones I love the most, I love to see the hidden meaning behind the art, I don't know how to do that so I watch other people do and explain that to me. I didn't understand the boy and the heron. I wad confused about the themes and topics it was talking about. Now I understand that not only is a movie about the war, as it's normal for the studio Ghibli to do, but also a movie about the director himself. But I spent a day thinking about the movie before giving up and searching abiut the movie. Although I love those analysis, symbolism and things like that, it's not something that I really can do.

Last, I watched a video about.mssking, of "I'm autistic, now what?", a YouTube channel, one of the things she said that really scared be was the internal monologue, which is you thinking about every action and little things you do in social interactions, paying attention about posture, tour face, you whole body, I genuinely thought everyone did that.

I asked neurotypical friend to do the test to see if it was possible for the tests to come back negative. It did. 24 points actually, and also asked her if she had this monologue and no. She doesn't. It's not normal behavior this one.

All of the things I said, I ask now myself. Is it autism or is it me? When one thing starts, if it does, and when the other ends? That's why I'm so worried if I'm or not autistic...

For those who have ADHD and/or autism.

I wanna to do a test to see if I'm autistic, have ADHD, both or neither. For some reason I'm terrified of knowing the truth. Sorry if I sound offensive at some point, I'm just writing about myself and don't mean to be mean at any point.

ADHD, the name changed right? Gonna use this one because I'm writing this quickly. If I have ok, that'd explain why I'm so forgetful and nothing catches my attention unless I'm interested in the topic. And why is so hard to focus. And why I never finish my projects. But I'm not hyper active. I'm a pretty calm person, I can't reall5sit and focus for too long, but give me a hair elastic thing and I'll play with it for hours while listening to you. And I'll be able to actually listen.

Don't ask me to look in your eyes tho, I will. But only for 5 minutes if you are lucky.

My mom a lot for times aska me for things and I completely forget about them, things that are important and I feel bad for forgetting.

But all of this could simply be me and no ADHD. I don't know.

Autism

Frankly I don't think I have autism. But the reports are just so relatable it scares me a bit. I was bullied a lot during my childhood. I remember in the first grade, I tried hard to make friends but I never was able to. To this day I don't know why. Why people didn't like me? I have a timeline of events in my head of my entire life, things that happened when I was 2 y.o. but I don't have details. I don't remember if i did something or not to be not liked. The first school that my parents put me in I was there for a year. In this whole year I didn't make a single friend. I remember I asked my parents for help to do a lost of people who were and weren't my friends simply to try to uncover the reason for that. Is this a sign of autism? Idk. Maybe I'm just out of the norm, but not autistic. Doesn't seem like autism. Autism is something that affects your day to day, every day life. I'm not sure if I have signs everyday.

I have trouble socializing. I have trouble making friends. I have trouble maintaining friendship. But I can understand sarcasm, jokes and I'm able to tell when people are sad or uncomfortable. so there's goes signs that the internet sites gave me. Sometimes I do have troubles talking and truly understanding what my parents say. Not because they are complex, but because I don't get it. There are easier ways to do things and they won't for some alien reason.

I have trouble understanding relationships, in the sense what it means to be in, part of or the different aspects of relationship. People expect things. Sometimes it feels like mathematical equations on which I have to be constant aware of. I gave to do this to get to that. A lot of times I feel like I'm manipulating the few relationships that I have big I can't see another way.

Don't you dare change my routine. I'll be messed up and although not cry, I'll be very close to. Unless the change is "we are not going outside of the house anymore", sudden things messes my little planned time. At the same time I can't really organize myself very well.

I do have some subjects on which I'm very passionate about. But I'm no genius on them and although I'd love to, I can't keep going on them for hours and hours because, as said before I can't communicate very well. My social skills are terrible, I don't know what to say most of the time but I feel like I should.

I don't think I have autism. I don't think I have ADHD. I think I'm only different from other people but can't put my finger exactly on what exactly. I don't feel like I really fall into the spectrum because I lack the usual signs. But I don't know how much of this is stereotyping both those conditions.

[arrowflier]

Lovely Arrow, a random plot bunny appeared and I just know you could do it justice: what if Franny has some friends over at Mickey and Ian's place when she's older and one of them is new to the group and wants to learn a little more about her uncles? And Franny starts waxing poetic about how they're made for each other and complement each other so well and both Ian and Mickey overhear and it makes them tear up a little. Just a thought 😋🥰

Evie, thank you! I've decided that Franny's friends love her uncles almost as much as she does, so that's kind of where this went.

---

“Why are we here again?” Tiffany asks as they crowd onto the stoop of the little southside worker’s cottage. Franny doesn’t bother to answer as she knocks on the door, but one of the other girls takes pity.

“It’s her Uncle’s house,” Susan says. “Jesus, Tiff, pay attention.”

Well, not too much pity. There was a reason she’d never been invited before, after all.

“Yikes, Suze,” Tiffany mutters with a frown. “I just meant why weren’t we at her actual house.”

“Because my actual house is loud as shit,” Franny finally chimes in, not even looking back. “My mom gets lonely so we live with like three other families, it’s a nightmare for schoolwork.”

“You’d have known that if you paid any attention,” Susan adds, and they all ignore Tiffany’s pout.

It doesn’t last long anyway, because the door creaks open not a moment later.

“Hey Fran,” Ian says from the other side. His hair is longer than usual right now, and looks windswept—or like someone had been carding hands through it all morning. His shirt was tight-fitting and a little too short, like it didn’t belong to him, and the socks on his feet didn’t match.

“Hey Uncle Ian,” Franny greets, then gestures to her friends. “It still cool if we take over the living room for a bit? This group paper is a beast.”

“Of course,” Ian agrees with a wide smile. “Anything to help my favorite niece.” He opens the door wider to let them in.

“Nice to see you all again,” he says as they start to file inside. “John, Rachel,” he greets them individually. “Susan, that new haircut is fantastic, I told you it would be.”

“Thanks, Mr. Gallagher,” Susan says with a grin, tucking a loose curl behind her ear.

Ian grimaces at her, playfully.

"Ian, please," he begs. "I've never met a Mr. Gallagher I didn't want to punch."

Susan giggles, and moves inside.

“I don’t think I’ve met you,” Ian says with a thoughtful frown when it's Tiffany's turn, and Franny jumps in with an introduction.

“Uncle Ian, this is Tiff,” she says. “She got put with us for the project.”

“Nice to meet you,” Ian says, and holds out a hand.

Tiffany takes it, and when Ian lets go, her hand just hovers there.

“Make yourselves at home,” Ian says as he closes the door behind them. “I’ll be in the other room if you need anything, but—

“Try not to need anything,” they all chorus, with the exception of Tiffany.

“Good kids,” Ian laughs, and then he’s gone, disappearing through the archway that leads through to the rest of the house.

They settle quickly. John and Rachel take the love seat, as they’re always wont to do, sitting just a little too close. Rachel giggles as their knees brush, and Franny rolls her eyes at John’s blush.

She takes her own usual spot next to Susan on the floor, notebooks spread out across the ottoman, and startles when Tiffany suddenly appears on her other side.

“Dude,” Tiffany hisses, poking Franny in the shoulder. “Your uncle is so hot.”

Franny frowns, staring down at the wrinkle Tiffany left on her sleeve.

“Yeah,” she says idly as she smooths it. “So I’ve heard.”

“I mean I mean I always thought red hair looked weird--no offence," she tacks on hastily, "but it really works for him."

Franny focuses on arranging her things to avoid smacking Tiffany in the face.

"Does he have a girlfriend?” Tiffany asks, biting her lip. She toys with the ends of her over-crimped hair, bright nail polish flashing between blonde strands.

“No,” Franny answers, and doesn’t give Tiffany any time to think about that before adding, “he has a husband.”

Tiffany pouts, shimmery pink lips sticking out comically. Franny exchanges a look with Susan, who mimics the expression in a way that has Franny trying to swallow her laughter.

“So not fair,” Tiffany whines beside them, crossing her arms. “Why are all the cute ones taken?”

“Hey!” John protests from across the room, but they all ignore him except for Rachel, who hits him with her three-ring binder.

“Mickey would probably kill you for looking at him,” Susan chimes in, “so you should probably keep your eyes to yourself anyway.”

“Yeah,” Rachel agrees, even as she rubs John’s arm in apology. “He’s been to jail, you know.”

“Ew,” Tiffany says, wrinkling her nose. “There’s no way he deserves someone like Ian, then.”

Franny grips her pencil too tightly. Susan sends her a warning look, but she ignores it.

“Actually,” she says casually, hiding her irritation, “they’re perfect for each other.”

Tiffany‘s brow wrinkles.

“No way,” she disagrees. “You Uncle seems so sweet, he deserves someone nice at least.”

Franny’s pencil snaps.

“Shit, she’s done it now,” John mutters.

“Uncle Mickey is nice,” Franny grits out between clenched teeth. “He’s a hell of a lot nicer than you, actually.”

“Franny—” Rachel tries to interrupt, but Susan cuts in over her.

“She’s not wrong,” Susan says. “You’re in the man’s home, Tiff, have a little tact.”

“Besides,” John speaks up, “Mickey is great. He helped me with my math homework last week.”

“Come on!” Tiffany cries. “There’s no way some ex-con should be married to that hunk out there.”

“Ian’s an ex-con too, though,” Susan says. “Right, Fran?”

Franny smiles.

“That’s right,” she confirms gleefully. “They were in jail together, actually.”

Tiffany pales.

“No way,” she mumbles, but they aren’t done.

“Yeah, it’s the most romantic story!” Rachel all but squeals. “Mickey wasn’t even in the country, but he heard Ian needed him and he came right back!”

“They’d been together for like, years already,” John contributes. “High school sweethearts or something like that.”

Rachel latches onto him at that, and he flushes again.

“And they take such good care of each other,” Susan adds. “Last time I was here Ian wasn’t feeling too good, and Mickey made us all be quiet so he could sleep. Then I helped him make some soup, ‘cause he isn’t good at that stuff.”

Tiffany is biting her lip again, staring at them each in turn.

“But Ian seems so—”

“In love with his husband?” Franny cuts her off dryly. “Sounds right to me.”

The others all agree, but Franny isn’t done.

“My Uncles have the best relationship I’ve ever seen,” Franny continues, “and I was a little kid for most of it. So if you think they’re gonna care what some random kid their niece hangs out with thinks about their marriage…” she trails off.

Tiffany’s eyes are downcast.

“Didn’t mean anything by it,” she mutters, then looks up through her eyelashes. “Sorry.”

Silence, broken by Franny’s tired sigh.

“It’s okay, I guess,” she says. Then she hands Tiffany her notebook. “Here, you can write the introduction.”

——-

Behind a half-closed door down the hall, Mickey stands quietly, eyes wide. He startles when the door creaks open an extra inch, Ian slipping inside.

Ian’s eyes are soft when they fall on his face, and Mickey blinks hurriedly to hide the wetness in his own.

“You heard all that, I take it?” Ian whispers, and Mickey nods.

“Yeah,” he says hoarsely. “Kind of hard not to, those kids are fucking banshees.”

Ian laughs, soft and quiet.

“Banshees that love you,” he says, stepping closer. “As they should,” he adds when Mickey lets him wrap strong arms around him.

“Sounds like one of ‘em loves you more,” Mickey mumbles into Ian’s chest, and it shakes as Ian huffs.

“She’ll learn,” he says, holding Mickey tighter. “They all do eventually.”

“That I’m the better husband?” Mickey jokes, even as he rubs his face into the fabric of his own shirt over Ian’s broad chest.

“That we’re best together,” Ian corrects, and Mickey smiles.

“Yeah,” he breathes out, pressing a kiss to Ian’s sternum.

“Yeah, we really are.”

[cqlfeels]

@lansplaining encouraged me to finish this random meta nobody asked for, so let's talk about Meng Yao, Meng Shi, and 孟母三遷 (mèng mǔ sān qiān), a proverb about good parenting.

A warning: this is super long (even for me!) and is less quality meta and more my ADHD brain jumping around a maze of loosely related ideas. Proceed with caution!

Let me start by briefly going through why I decided to write this, because it’s important. In haunting Meng Shi’s tag in my starvation for Meng Shi content, I’ve multiple times come across the idea that Meng Shi pushed Meng Yao too hard, that she should’ve been more careful with teaching him to seek his father’s approval at any cost, and that she was too naïve. I’ve never reblogged this kind of post because 1) I personally think it’s rude to go out of your way to ramble about how much you disagree with someone on their own post and 2) if this was an isolated incident I wouldn't care either way, so I didn’t want to direct this rant at anyone in particular. It’s more to do with a tendency, primarily (as far as I can tell) from fans who haven’t had much contact with Chinese culture, to oversimplify Meng Shi and make her relationship with Meng Yao slightly disturbing, and I think part of it is due to CQL basically cutting out her entire storyline (so fans simply don’t have info about her to assess her fairly) and part is due to misunderstanding what a good parent is supposed to act like in the context of Ancient China.

[Of course, Ancient China is not a very useful historical concept, not any more than “ye olde Europe” - things change a lot based on time and place - but you know. It’s fantasy. Extremely broad trends are okay in this case.]

Anyway, the idea behind the posts I mentioned is, basically, that Meng Shi (usually through no fault of her own) is to blame for Meng Yao’s obsession with power, since his desire for approval was inherited from lessons she taught him. Just to start with, I’d argue that Meng Yao isn’t power-hungry as much as he craves security and respect, but that’s a different meta. Let’s assume that she really did teach him to be Like That. Was she wrong to do so? I’m not looking for “does that make for a happy, well-adjusted childhood?” or “would you raise your own son as Meng Shi did?” - I’m trying to figure out, would she have been considered a bad mother in the context of the society she lived in? I don’t think she would’ve.

It is surprisingly hard to find texts about the obligations of parents in Ancient China. Their main obligation is to raise filial children, but I feel like that’s not very useful: whether or not parents are good parents, children are expected to be filial, so a child being filial really says more about the child than about the parent. Maybe the parent completely missed the mark and society at large was what taught the child to be filial!

We can assume, of course, that parents were to raise good people, and that by learning what a good person looked like, we could figure out whether the parent was successful, but once again, I feel like that’s pinning things on the outcome, not on the process - the best of parents can end up with an awful kid and vice versa.

While thinking about all this, it took me a frankly embarrassing amount of time to remember the story of Mother Meng and Meng Zi, but once I did, it wouldn’t leave my mind - in part because the Meng here is the exact same Meng of Meng Shi and Meng Yao (yay! fun if useless parallel!), and in part because this is a story about how a woman can successfully raise a son by herself.

Okay, so important note: one of the most influential ancient Chinese thinkers is Meng Zi (孟子 Mèng Zǐ), who is known in the West as Mencius. If you've never heard of him - he's perhaps second in importance only to Confucius. When Mencius was still a young child, his father died, so he was raised by his mother, who is usually known only as Mother Meng (in Chinese, 孟母 Mèng Mǔ.)

Mother Meng's story is told in Biographies of Exemplary Women (列女傳 Liènǚ Zhuàn), which for around 2000 years beginning around the 18th century BCE, was the most commonly used book used to educate women. The book is divided into sections, each one showing a different way women could be honorable and good. Mother Meng's story is told in the Maternal Models section (母儀傳 Mǔ Yí Zhuàn.) The story has a few parts, some of which I'll quote, always from Kinney's 2014 translation.

Before I go on to quote it, though, I'd like to establish that Mother Meng's story is so, so famous that even if Meng Shi had never read this particular book, I'm almost certain she would've been familiar with at least the outlines of Mother Meng's story. I'm not cherry picking a suitable chapter from the book, I'm literally going with the most famous story in it because Meng Shi would be most likely to know this one if she knew no other story.

Okay, the first part of the tale takes place when Mencius is a young boy and Mother Meng is a widow raising him.

The mother of Meng Ke of Zou [a different name for Mencius] was called Mother Meng. She lived near a graveyard. During Mencius’ youth, he enjoyed playing among the tombs, romping about pretending to prepare the ground for burials. Mother Meng said, “This is not the place to raise my son.” She therefore moved away and settled beside the marketplace. But there he liked to play at displaying and selling wares like a merchant. Again Mother Meng said, “This is not the place to raise my son,” and once more left and settled beside a school. There, however, he played at setting out sacrificial vessels, bowing, yielding, entering, and withdrawing. His mother said, “This, indeed, is where I can raise my son!” and settled there. When Mencius grew up, he studied the Six Arts, and finally became known as a great classicist. A man of discernment would say, “Mother Meng was good at gradual transformation.”

According to the translator's footnote, "gradual transformation" is "a childrearing technique, whereby a child is morally formed through daily exposure to correct models of behavior."

From this story comes the proverb 孟母三遷 (Mèng Mǔ sān qiān) - "Mother Meng moved three times." It's come to mean that a parent - especially the mother of a male child - should spare no efforts to provide an environment that will give their child a good education, paying particular attention to what models are surrounding them.

I'm sure I don't need to say if Meng Shi was at all familiar with this proverb (and she would probably be), she must have been very stressed out over literally raising her son in a brothel. (Here I must mention sex workers in ancient China were often essentially owned by the brothels, so literally "moving three times" wasn't really an option for Meng Shi even if she could miraculously pick up another trade.) Meng Shi did however at least try to surround Meng Yao with the accomplishments appropriate for the son of a cultivator:

Xiao-Meng, are you still learning those things lately? [...] The things your mom wants you to learn, things like calligraphy, etiquette, swordsmanship, meditation… How are those things going? [...] His mom’s raising him as a young master of a wealthy family. She taught him how to read and write, bought him all those swordsmanship pamphlets, and even wants to send him to school.

Meng Yao actually talks a little bit about “those swordsmanship pamphlets” in the only time in canon he directly shares memories about this mother:

Lan XiChen, “Your [guqin] skills are also considered quite fine outside of Gusu. Were they taught by your mother?”

Jin GuangYao, “No. I taught myself by watching others. She never taught me such things. She only taught me reading and writing, and bought a handful of expensive sword and cultivation guides for me to practice.”

Lan XiChen seemed surprised, “Sword and cultivation guides?”

Jin GuangYao, “Brother, you haven’t seen them before, have you? Those small booklets sold by the common folk. First jumbled sketches of human figures, then deliberately mystified captions.”

Lan XiChen shook his head, smiling. Jin GuangYao shook his head as well, “All of them are scams, especially to fool women like my mother and ignorant children. You won’t lose anything by practicing them, but you definitely won’t gain anything either.”

He sighed in a rueful way, “But how could my mother have known this? She bought them no matter how expensive they were, saying that if I returned to see my father in the future, I had to see him with as much competence as possible so that I don’t fall behind. All of the money was spent on this.”

See what’s happening? Meng Shi cannot physically take Meng Yao to cultivators, but she spares no efforts in giving him the closest thing she possibly can -- figuratively, we might say she moved three times.

Of course, these booklets don’t work, but as Meng Yao says, how could she have known this? The cultivation world is very closed off - think of how the entire Mo household gathers to see Lan juniors, and how Wei Wuxian mentions once that “Cultivation families, in the eyes of common folk, are like people favored by God, mysterious yet noble.” Not just noble, but mysterious. That tracks, too - I mean, they live in inaccessible households and mostly leave to night hunt or visit each other, neither of which is an activity that would allow commoners to get much more than an occasional glimpse of them.

Now, if Meng Shi doesn’t even know that a pearl for Jin Guangshan was just a trinket, if she doesn’t know even the wealth of a major sect, how can she read booklets and decide whether that’s genuine cultivation or not? All that she sees is a chance for Meng Yao to be surrounded by the ideas and skills of the people she wants him to emulate - cultivators - and therefore she does everything she can to get him that chance. Mother Meng moved three times.

Okay, but maybe the argument is not “Meng Shi shouldn’t have pushed Meng Yao to cultivation” but rather “she should’ve pushed him, just not too hard." To that, I present another tale from Mencius' childhood:

Once, when Mencius was young, he returned home after finishing his lessons and found his mother spinning. She asked him, “How far did you get in your studies today?” Mencius replied, “I’m in about the same place as I was before.” Mother Meng thereupon took up a knife and cut her weaving. Mencius was alarmed and asked her to explain. Mother Meng said, “Your abandoning your study is like my cutting this weaving. A man of discernment studies in order to establish a name and inquires to become broadly knowledgeable. By this means, when he is at rest, he can maintain tranquility and when he is active, he can keep trouble at a distance. If now you abandon your studies, you will not escape a life of menial servitude and will lack the means to keep yourself from misfortune. How is this different from weaving and spinning to eat? If one abandons these tasks midway, how can one clothe one’s husband and child and avoid being perpetually short of food? If a woman abandons that with which she nourishes others and a man is careless about cultivating his virtue, if they don’t become brigands or thieves, then they will end up as slaves or servants.” Mencius was afraid. Morning and evening he studied hard without ceasing. He served Zisi [a great scholar whose grandfather was Confucius] as his teacher and then became one of the most renowned classicists in the world.

Notice that Mother Meng moved three times to ensure Mencius would have the highest of aspirations - to become a scholar. But just aspiration isn’t enough. Not by any means. Now that Mencius is actually studying, Mother Meng is willing to take an extreme action to ensure he's taking it seriously. Mencius doesn't have a father to smooth his path to success. He has to learn that aspiring to greatness isn't enough. He'll have to put in the effort as if his life depended on it. And if he doesn't persist in his hard work, everything he's done thus far will be useless. Sounds like a lesson imparted on young Meng Yao, doesn’t it?

A lot of fandom rage towards Meng Shi would apply to China's Best Mom Contender, Mother Meng. She gives her son big dreams, and teaches him how to go about achieving them in a society where failing is easier than succeeding. Yes, it's fair to say that Meng Shi taught Meng Yao to refuse to settle for anything less than being “Jin Guangshan's son, a respected cultivator.” Yes, it's also fair to say that she probably didn't allow him much time to play like children his age did. But unfortunately, in the world of MDZS, poor children probably wouldn't get to play anyhow, the difference is that they'd usually be working, not studying. Studying is a privilege! It’s a privilege Meng Yao could not afford but was given to him anyway, through his mother’s many sacrifices. We can even say that while she was alive, Meng Shi was trying to ensure Meng Yao would one day have a better life, at the expense of a fun childhood - and that's very Mother Meng of her, whatever our modern Western sensibilities might have to say about that.

Finally, I’d skip other tales (which show Mother Meng and an adult Mencius) and go straight to the poem that ends the Mother Meng section:

The mother of Mencius

Was able to teach, transform, judge, and discriminate.

With skill she selected a place to raise her son,

Prompting him to accord with the great principles.

When her son’s studies did not advance,

She cut her weaving to illustrate her point.

Her son then perfected his virtue;

His achievements rank as the crowning glory of his generation.

I’d like to focus on the last verse - “His achievements rank as the crowning glory of his generation.” All that Mother Meng wanted was for Mencius to not completely ruin his life, but he became great. You can so very easily see a parallel with how Meng Shi hoped Meng Yao would be a cultivator but he became Jin Guangyao, Chief Cultivator, styled Lianfang-zun, one of the Three Venerable, hero of the Sunshot Campaign.

Of course you can say “Jin Guangyao did many Very Wrong Things to get there, though!” Which, sure, okay, fair point. How many and how wrong depends on which canon we're discussing, and your own interpretation, but there’s no version of the story in which Jin Guangyao is 100% an innocent child uwu. But blaming that on Meng Shi is just... straight up weird? I don’t see anyone going “If Jiang Fengmian hadn’t adopted Wei Wuxian, he’d never have dared become Yiling Laozu!” and that’s pretty much the same logic. Would street kid Wei Wuxian have invented a new type of cultivation if he had never been taken in by the Jiang? Probably not, but raising undead armies is very much not something Jiang Fengmian could’ve predicted. In the same way, how could Meng Shi have predicted that teaching her pre-adolescent son “You are the son of a cultivator, act like one and earn your place in society” would’ve ultimately resulted in innocent deaths? How could she predict “You’re not destined to having the same horrible life I did, you can get something better than this” was a bad thing to teach? I quite honestly don’t know.

Finally, I'd like to point towards a much flimsier evidence that Meng Shi did great as a parent. And that is Meng Yao’s love. Nie Huaisang at some point comments Meng Shi is someone who Meng Yao "cherishes more than his life," and I think his assessment is correct.

Even putting aside the fact he built a whole temple to get his mother to reincarnate into a better life, and even putting aside how he refuses to flee the country without her remains, there's still crystal clear evidence that Meng Shi must've done something right. Because a lifetime of people using his mother to bully him doesn't seem to have made Meng Yao resent her. Had their relationship not have been very strong, odds are he'd feel bitter and/or ashamed of her. That doesn't seem to be the case. He's attached to her even decades after her death.

I want to be very careful with equating mutual affection with good parenting, though. When I was a rather rebellious teenager, my mother (in typical Chinese fashion) used to say that parents and children don't have to love each other as long as they're dutiful to each other, by which she meant that a parent-child relationship isn't informed by warm and fuzzy feelings, but by whether you'd be willing to do anything for each other. Specific to my case, she meant "I don't care if it makes you hate me, you will do as you're told because that's what's best for you." (That may also be the reason why people more familiar with Chinese culture see the Jiang family less as outright abusive and more as #complicated, but that's another meta.)

Whether your kid wants to hug you every time they see you is of no consequence to traditional Chinese thought - raising them to be the best they can is all that matters, because at the end of the day, you won't be around forever, but you can definitely set up your kid's life so that it goes smoothly and virtuously. How that's accomplished varies depending on many factors, but to have the goal be "I want my child to love me" rather than "I want to raise my child right" would've been considered selfish as hell.

So even if all that Meng Shi had given Meng Yao had been stern lessons about the need to go get his birthright, she would've still have been considered a good mother!! In fact, she would've been doing everything she was supposed to do, under extremely difficult conditions! (Remember the importance of environment? That Meng Yao grew up to want to be a cultivator despite having probably never even met one speaks wonders about Meng Shi's childrearing powers!!)

But just based off how over the top Meng Yao's filal dutifulness is, I'd go a step further and say that even as she did the impossible, she was also loving enough to inspire genuine affection. This is complicated because children who have present fathers could expect their mothers to be tender with them. The first century BCE text 禮記 Lǐ Jì or The Classic of Rites says that:

Here now is the affection of a father for his sons - he loves the worthy among them, and places on a lower level those who do not show ability; but that of a mother for them is such, that while she loves the worthy, she pities those who do not show ability - the mother deals with them on the ground of affection and not of showing them honour; the father, on the ground of showing them honour and not of affection.

But when the father figure is lacking for any reason, the mother must abandon her tenderness because someone must guide the child, and without a father, the role falls to the mother. A single or widowed mother had to be very careful to not smother their children with affection and raise useless, spoiled kids, or so it was thought. (The presence of Qingheng-jun and Lan Qiren is why Madame Lan can be so affectionate with the Lan boys, by the way - if she was raising them by herself she would've been expected to be much more practical. AUs where she just gets her kids and runs away could do very cool things with this idea. But I digress!)

Where was I? Oh, okay. Because Meng Yao seems to not just respect, but actively miss her, it seems that Meng Shi somehow managed to deal with her son on the ground of both honor and affection, to paraphrase.

So basically, all things considered, it seems not only would Meng Shi have been considered a great mom (if people could look past her being a prostitute, anyway) but she also went above and beyond the bare minimum. She truly spared no efforts on any front to make sure her son had everything your average gongzi would have - someone to teach him and someone to love him, access to education and confidence in his birthright. That she couldn't actually make him a cultivator, that she couldn't actually raise him in a proper home with no one being cruel to herself or him - that's immaterial. Even Mother Meng couldn't control what her neighbors did, only what she taught her son! The key point is Meng Shi tried. She did everything she could to educate her son right. You couldn't ask more of her, and quite honestly, you should probably be asking less.

Of course we can't err on the other extreme and say she was Perfect. Given MXTX only ever writes flawed characters, we can safely assume that if we'd known more about Meng Shi, we would've seen many flaws. Indeed, just the fact she didn't teach Meng Yao the guqin when he apparently wanted to learn it might point to some conflict we don't know enough to speculate about (maybe she focused too much on cultivation when Meng Yao's interests lay elsewhere? Maybe she wasn't able to sufficiently shelter him and he felt it'd be a burden to ask her to teach him anything? Maybe maybe maybe, go wild with your fics.) Nevertheless, I would never hold a female character to a higher ideal than a male character - if the male cast of MDZS can be a hot mess and still be admirable for what they're trying to do, then so can Meng Shi.

At the end of the day, when I look at Meng Shi - and I've made myself a document with all the references to her in the novel canon so I could easily contemplate her life and character - all I see is a woman every bit as determined and resourceful as her son, willing to do everything it took to raise her little boy into the sophisticated and ambitious man he became.

Finally, here's a fun little parallel that I'm 100% sure was unintentional but I still love. I said Meng Shi couldn't have moved three times. She couldn't, but I think maybe she taught her son he was worth moving three times for. Qinghe Nie. Qishan Wen. Lanling Jin. Isn't that super fun to think about?

Alternatively, tl;dr: Oh My God I Can't Believe We're Blaming Women For The Actions Of Their Adult Children In The Year Of Our Lord 2k21, Meng Shi Was Doing Her Best, Chill!

[mostlycompetentwriter]

Domesticated Drabble

Pairing: Bang Chan x Y/N

Genre: Marriage AU; Sequel; Drabble

Warnings: So. Much. Fluff. (small smut scene at the beginning); language

Request: 

A/N: Finally finished this one! Please enjoy another taste of my favorite AU!

5 Years Later

“We’ve got five minutes,” I whispered against the pulse point on Chan’s neck, the throbbing vein pumping hard as he panted for breath from above me, eyes shut tight together as he moaned.

“I’ll blow at any second,” Chan cursed, laying sloppy kisses wherever he could reach while fucking me hard and fast.

“Your cock feels amazing,” I practically purred, digging sharp nails into the milky white skin of his back, legs closing in around his waist to keep him close. 

“Oh, sweetie, you’re laying it on thick this morning, aren’t you?”

I clenched a vice-grip around the length pumping inside me in response, sending Chan’s hips stuttering against my own. “I’ve got kids in the next room who can wake-up at any second. Excuse me for trying to inflate your ego.”

“That’s not the only thing inflating,” Chan gasped, curling his fingers through mine.

“You’re gross,” I huffed, closing my eyes and throwing back my neck as best as I could in this position: laid out under my husband, orgasm approaching at a meteoric-level speed, and sweat coating my skin in a delightful sheen as the muscles around my abdomen worked overtime to milk Chan for everything that he had before the moment was ruined by my kids. 

I half-expected them to burst into the room unannounced at any second, oblivious to their parents fucking in much of the same way that created them in the first place. Locked together with limbs intertwining, sucking in each other’s air, and kisses rough and demanding. 

Fuck it had been far too long since Chan and I had last done anything even remotely this intimate, and it was still necessary for us to go at it as fast as possible to prevent unwanted eyes from accidentally catching us at the height of our passion. 

I couldn’t help but glance at the clock, realizing that we had been fucking for almost ten minutes, and the alarm had been set for 7:00 AM so that I could somehow wrestle my kids together for their first day of school. 

Damn, this is gonna turn out to be a very long day.

“Are you close?” I asked Chan, connecting our lips for a sweet kiss since I personally knew that they were a weakness of his.

“Yeah,” he said, features collapsing into a look of pure concentration as a guttural moan found its way crawling up his throat to release itself at the same moment when I could feel his release emptying into the condom separating us from complete skin-to-skin by a thin layer of latex.

But I insisted on wearing them now.

“You’ll cum too, sweetie,” Chan whispered, laving his tongue across the pad of his thumb before reaching down to connect with my clitoris, drawing rough circles in random patterns to snap the physical breaking point: holding my tongue to prevent myself from screaming as I rode the waves of pleasure until nothing was left but a delicate haze and the sensation of Chan’s cock still stuffed inside my spent pussy.

As it turns out, aftercare with Chan was the equivalent of my husband spewing my praises while insisting on letting his cock soften completely before pulling out: cock warming at its finest.

“Do you plan to pull out?” I asked him, smirking when he whined and buried his face into the side of my neck.

“It’s been a while since we’ve been like this,” Chan remarked.

“The kids need to get up soon,” I said, although there was a sleepy pull weighing down my eyelids. A good fuck tended to wear me out. “They’ve got their first day.”

“Yeah,” Chan agreed, but he made no effort to separate us. In fact, I could imagine us both easily falling back to sleep.

“You’re coming right?” I asked around a yawn. “To their Kindergarten orientation or whatever the hell they call it.”

“Of course,” Chan said, and he finally lifted his head from my shoulder, gaze soft as he took his time to explore my features. “I can’t miss that.”

“What? Watching the teachers drag them away for the first day of the education system they’ll be stuck in for the next thirteen years?”

“You have a way with words, sweetie.”

I grinned. “Maybe I’m just using words to deny the weirdness of my kids starting school and making me feel like I’m 100 years old.”

“It feels like they were just born,” Chan agreed, and he slowly rose himself into a sitting position, climbing out of bed to give me the best view of his naked ass.

“Your ass looks great by the way.”

“Thanks,” Chan snorted, reaching for a pair of black slacks from the floor. “I’m taking a shower.”

“Fine,” I groaned. “I guess I’ll go awaken the sleeping monsters.”

“Let the chaos begin,” Chan announced, closing the bathroom door behind him as I reached down deep into the reserves to muster enough energy to finally get out of bed.

At the risk of sounding too long-winded, the best way I could describe my twins was with a touch of irony. Because, despite looking identical to one another, my girls couldn’t be more opposite in terms of personality. 

Leah, the eldest by one minute, was boisterous, loud, and unapologetic when it came to being herself. She was the epitome of a social butterfly, jumping from one person to the next and asking questions that occasionally raised a few eyebrows because of their brazenness.

Her sister, Rose, was nothing like that. In fact, Rose hardly spoke at all, choosing to listen instead, and offer her voice only when she truly felt the need to include it. Of course, side-by-side, they were another thing altogether, far too energetic for me to handle.

This morning was no exception, chasing Leah around the house because she refused to change out of her pajamas, questioning me relentlessly on why it mattered that she had to change.

“I should wear what I want!” she insisted, and I had nearly lost my patience with her until Chan entered the room, and he was one of the only people who could talk through to Leah.

Him and Felix, of course.

Before Felix moved out, he and Leah were practically inseparable, and I could see her uncle’s influence in a lot of different ways.

“You want to look your best to make new friends, right?” Chan asked her, and after a laughable look of concentration, Leah nodded and allowed me to change her into a much more suitable dress.

“There,” I grumbled, turning my attention to Rose who was more willing to be dressed.

“Let’s go have breakfast, yeah?” Chan whispered to Leah, and she smiled and giggled at her father as he took her hand and led her into the kitchen. 

I scoffed at how easy he was able to manage her, glancing at Rose who was even more quiet than usual. “Aren’t you excited for your first day?”

She shrugged, looking down at her hands. “I don’t want to leave you.”

I could feel my heart breaking at her sweet words, cupping her face between my hands as I tried to reassure her that she would still see me in the afternoons and evenings. “It’s just a little break,” I said, but I knew that Rose was harder to convince.

In the meantime, Chan and I worked together to have both twins fed and ready to leave the house, packing them lunches for school before ushering everyone out the door because we were teetering on the edge of being too late. 

At least Chan had the wherewithal to warm-up the car, and it gave us more time to fasten everyone into their car-seats before pulling out onto the main road, speeding into the downtown district with the clock ticking away. “Well, at least the other parents will think we’re irresponsible.”

“I’ve got this,” Chan said, and I shivered as he toed the gas and grazed just going over too fast. 

“At the risk of getting a ticket-”

“Relax, sweetie,” Chan interrupted, reaching over to take my hand. “I’ll handle everything.”

“Uh-huh,” I murmured, glancing up into the rearview mirror to see Leah and Rose engaged in their learning tablets. Even if they were a few minutes late, my kids would still be the smartest. I had made sure of that, spending countless hours with them reading as many books as I could buy, digging out paper and pencils to practice their names and alphabet letters, and reading tons of online articles about the best methods to ensure your child’s early learning set them up for the most success.

Right? So what if we were a little late.

“Mommy? Why can’t you both stay with us at school?” Rose suddenly inquired from the backseat.

I sighed, turning around to face her. “Mommy and Daddy both have to go to work, okay? We’ve already had our turn at school.”

“Our turn?” Chan chuckled, and I pivoted in my seat to glare at him.

“That’s the kind of language we should be using with them!”

“Did you read that from an online expert?”

“As a matter of fact, I did!” I huffed, and I caught his smile, letting me know that he was just messing around.

“I just want them to do well,” I whispered, and his expression instantly softened at the sound of my tone.

“You’ve done so well, sweetie,” Chan reassured me, squeezing my hand even tighter as he turned into the school’s parking lot, finding an empty spot near the back.

Immediately, I was at the back door, reaching inside to help Rose out of her seat, spinning her around to help her with her brand new bookbag. “There,” I said, once her attention was on me again. “You’re ready.”

“I don’t know...” Rose trailed off, and her eyes held all the uncertainty of a five-year-old who was used to staying at home with her parents and uncle. Not the unfamiliar presences of her peers. 

“Hey,” I said, kneeling down to meet her gaze straight-on. “I know it seems scary, but I promise that you’ll really love it. I was the same way too on my first day, but my mom gave me the same advice, and guess what? She was right. I ended up loving school, and if there’s a little piece of me in you, then I know that you’ll have so much fun that you’ll forget all about your mommy and daddy.”

Rose’s eyes grew bigger, shaking her head in a manner that was quite endearing. “I won’t ever forget you.”

“I know, sweetheart,” I said, pulling her close for a hug as Chan and Leah emerged from the other side.

“Everything okay?” Chan asked, looking between me and his daughter.

“Just fine,” I said, ruffling Rose’s hair before standing tall again. “Let’s go inside.”

The classroom was already full of students, and I was glad to see some parents lingering, which meant we weren’t as late as I had thought.

“Told ya,” Chan snickered, and I gave him a playful glare before turning my attention to the approaching teacher: an older gentleman with a head of pepper and salt colored hair and kind eyes.

“Hello,” he said, addressing me first. “I’m Mr. Park.”

“Hi,” I said, accepting his handshake. “These are my daughters: Leah and Rose Bang.”

“Ah!” Mr. Park remarked, glancing down. “I’m excited for our twin students! Please, have a seat wherever you’d like.”

“Go on,” I encouraged them when I caught their matching looks of insecurity. “You have each other,” I added, reaching down to wrap their fingers together, giving them one last smile before Leah bravely led her sister further into the room, selecting an empty table near the back.

“Well, it’s so nice to meet you,” Mr. Park said, and I noticed that he had grown a little too close, gaze lingering for far too long. 

“Yes,” I agreed, “And this is my-”

“I’m Chan,” my husband interrupted, inserting himself between me and Mr. Park with a brusque movement. “The father.”

I rolled my eyes at his tone, watching as Mr. Park hesitated before nodding and shaking Chan’s outstretched hand. “Nice to meet you.”

I smirked, waiting until Mr. Park had moved on before leaning in to Chan. “What was that, dear?”

Chan scoffed, searching the room for a moment. “He was flirting with you, sweetie. What did you expect me to do?”

“Well, it could be from our morning romp, but it kinda turned me on.”

Chan raised a suggestive brow at my comment, but I gave him a cheeky smile in response before walking in the direction of Leah and Rose’s table. “Look at you two,” I remarked. “I think you made a good choice.”

“I like seeing outside,” Leah said, and I nodded and tucked away a wayward strand of hair. 

“You’ll both stay together, right?”

I received synchronous nods in response, and there was a lot of relief on my end knowing that my girls would be just fine. 

“We’ll be here to pick you up at 2:00,” Chan said, pointing to the analog clock above the door. “Okay?”

Two more nods. “Remember to have fun. You’re gonna learn so much, and maybe you’ll even be smarter than daddy.”

I managed to elicit two laughs in response to that, and Chan chuckled as he wrapped an arm around my waist. “Be good, alright?”

“Yes, daddy,” Leah replied diligently while Rose nodded her head, attention drifting to a book sitting at the edge of the table.

I smiled knowing that she was showing interest, and then I realized that there was a deeper part of me that was having just as much trouble leaving the girls as they were having with leaving me and Chan. But the other parents were starting to leave the room, and with one more exchange of our goodbyes, Chan and I were walking away from our girls, keeping our own hands locked together as the door closed behind us.

“Woah,” I sighed once we were outside in the hallway. “That was harder than I expected.”

“It’s a big step,” Chan said, and he wrapped an arm around my waist to pull me closer. “But they’ll be okay because they’re ours.”

“Oh,” I laughed. “Is that so?”

“Of course,” Chan said, giving me a perfectly serious look before a smile overtook his features, and any previous doubts were vanquished by the sincerity in that smile, and I knew that as long as I had Chan, then nothing would ever be too difficult to overcome.