#I love summer bc it’s basically eternal free time

[malachitezmeyka]

It is. 37 degrees outside. And the fan is only helping so much. And I haven’t had anything since breakfast but it’s too hot to be hungry. I’ve been trying to draw all day bc I’m bursting with ideas but the heat is leaving me completely unable to make anything look even half decent. If I die bury me in the depths of Siberia so I never feel heat again

[yanderepuck]

Just had an idea for something to write… Basically, you’re taking a class about Shakespeare, I’m in college, but I guess the setting could be at any stage of schooling, and little do you know, the professor is Will himself…

Feel free to (plz) make it nsfw 😏

Honestly, head went brrr first time I read this. I'm not into the student x teacher thing but head went bRRRR BC POSSIBILITIES. I mean. The man would be like 500 years old, everyone is too young for him.

I took a Shakespeare class way back when I'm 23 wtf am I saying.

WAIT THO. INSTEAD OF A CLASS ON HIMSELF WHAT IF HE'S THE THEATER TEACHER. NO

B O T H

I had a teacher that had a stage in his classroom and we would act out the stories we read and he also had a theater class.

Never forget the post where someone talks about how they did A Midsummer Night's Dream but it was a Coffee Shop AU.

When we did Romeo and Juliet we had wooden swords.

Will would be a very chaotic teacher tho.

Student: I heard a theory that Shakespeare was multiple people. Will: *sips tea* Go on.

~

*portrait of Shakespeare is on the screen* Will: ugly bitch

~

Student: I love Sonnet 18 Will: Have you read any of the others? Student: well yeah, but its romantic Will: ....wrong Student: what Will: Eternal summer? sounds horrible. Too hot. What do you do when you look at the sun? You squint and try to block it so you don't have to look at it.

Okay I should actually get to the ask tho, lmao.

Wait, one more

Student: I don't think Shakespeare was straight Will: obviously

Most take this class because they want to, not because they need the credit. Most hear Shakespeare and get scared of that old fancy way of talking. The thing is, once you actually start reading Shakespeare, its a lot of insults and dick jokes.

If it says sword...it's probably not a sword. Hamlet is just an emo teenager. Macbeth was really just about his wife daring him to kill someone.

Other than that, the teacher was really cute, fairly young too. He wasn't like English teachers you're had in the past. You've learned that Shakespeare isn't pretentious, just your English teachers.

It's also fairly easy to understand the way it's written if you just take your time, and if you know just a little bit of the slang of the time.

But instead of trying to find the meaning of things written, he asks how everyone interrupts it all. You understand Romeo and Juliet's love a lot more when you realize you fall in love with anyone who shows you affection in anyway.

When someone said that they think of The Lion King when Hamlet is brought up your teacher sat there in silence for a few minutes connecting all the dots.

He once gave the entire class a project on finding their favorite insult in any of the plays.

He's super interesting and a conversation is never boring. He tells the entire class just to call him Will, and never tells you his whole name, which for such a laid back professor is odd. He looks like he should be in college himself, but here he is teaching a college course, and he's been there for a few years from what you understand. For someone so young, and someone who teaches, he talks about so many things he's experienced.

You end up spending a lot of time with him. You're taking an English class as a needed credit and ironically you have to do an essay on Shakespeare. But since it if for an English class it isn't nearly as laid back, and wants sources. Will should be a good source though, right? He's a Shakespearean professor after all.

The two of you spend some time in the library and Will is just still information you haven't heard before. You form it into an essay and make a draft. Apparently your information is fake since it can't be sourced from anywhere but your teacher.

You keep asking Will for help. He obviously doesn't want you to fail, but nothing he tells you is going to be good enough for an English teacher.

You're in a room in the library with him listening to him talk about one of the plays and you can't help but get distracted. God why is he so hot. He's talking about all of this without having to reference anything. He just knows it all. Listening to someone talk about their passion is just...attractive.

Writers note: this has been in my drafts to this point bc I just got stumped. I have a hard time doing a natural teacher x student thing, and I just can't seem to go anywhere with it, but I don't want to delete this. So I think I'm just going to leave it how it is. I wanted to try to make it nsfw, but the topic is just hard for me to write since its not something I'm into, so she's just a student hella attracted to her teacher. Sorry for the disappointment, but I tried >.<

[willow-lane]

I saw [WILLOW LANE] at a coffee shop in [BROOKLYN] today. I forgot how much [SHE] looks like [MADELYN CLINE]. They are a [TWENTY-THREE] year old [WAITRESS] who’s been in NYC for [A YEAR] now. Every time we run into each other, they are always [SPONTANEOUS AND FREE SPIRITED] but I’ve heard people say they can also be [NON-COMMITTAL AND SELF-INDULGENT]. [OUT OF THE BLUE BY KATIE PRUITT] reminds me of them every time it comes on the radio. / @villagestart​

Hello everyone! I’m Ella and I’m super excited to be part of this roleplay and introduce Willow to all of you, she’s a new muse but she’s based on an old muse of mine so I think I have her figured out or mostly lol. I’d love to plot with all of you, so please like this or hmu. If you want my discord, I’d be happy to give it to you, just ask :D

basics

NAME: ava willow lane

NICKNAME: will, lolo, pillow

GENDER: cis female

PLACE OF BIRTH: burlington, vermont

DATE OF BIRTH: september 28, 1997

AGE: twenty-three

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: bisexual

OCCUPATION: waitress

NEIGHBORHOOD: brooklyn

background

Burlington was a dream within a dream, the station next to heaven. A town in love with itself and whose residents gloated about the wooded land, creased by hills, and threaded by streams. 

The Lanes were living the typical American dream: the big house with the white picket fence, a large backyard and two perfect children. It was dreamlike.

Their kids could count themselves lucky and Willow Lane certainly did for most of her life. As the youngest daughter of a successful surgeon and a renowned psychotherapist who taught at the University of Vermont, she was taught that receiving an education was the only way to get ahead in life.

Her parents made sure to set their kids to success and while most of the kids from her street were out there playing, she was holed up in her room, reading the stacks of encyclopedia books her parents bought me for her birthday. 

As a young child, Willow was filled with a sense of wonder, and encouraged by her curious personality she wanted to learn everything.

By the time she was in the sixth grade, she was smarter than most of the kids in her class, still her parents reminded her every day that she must outrank them all. Her parents took pride in her achievements. They were quick to boast about it in public, but they remained strict in private. Anything less than gold didn’t deserve a place on the wall.

Her afternoons were always full. Whether it was ballet class, french lessons, piano lessons or soccer practice. She had no time for herself.

Then high school started and by then she was overworked. Tired of chasing perfection and only being met with a “try harder”. 

TW: DRUGS, ADDICTION, VOMIT MENTION, PANIC ATTACK: While she was still number one at her school, it was taking everything in her to keep it that way. Her parents didn’t know about those panic attacks she suffered at night or how she threw up before any competition. To them, she was handling well and she was very good at pretending but she also had a little secret. In her sophomore year, she was introduced to Adderall and she was quickly hooked. END OF TW

When she got accepted into a prestigious university, her parents didn’t hesitate to brag about how their kid would attend an Ivy League but Willow was mortified. 

Back in Burlington, she was the biggest fish in the sea but at Princeton there were students who were better and shone brighter than her. 

Maybe it was because she was suddenly cast into a whole new world that was so different from the one she grew up in. Maybe it was because she had harbored a bit of resentment towards her parents for her wasted youth. Whatever it was, by the end of her freshman year, university had swallowed her up. 

TW ALCOHOL, DRUGS, DEPRESSION She got into a bad crowd, drank herself into oblivion, partied harder than anyone, and developed a penchant for bad boys who were much older than her. All this while trying to maintain a perfect GPA. Thanks to her magic pill, she was able to function and not feel guilty about not being as perfect as her parents wanted her to be. After all, she was only trying to recover the freedom that they took from her. 

But this coping mechanism only turned to worse. The more she tried to drown her feelings in alcohol, the harder it came to bite her in the ass. It was clear as water: Willow Lane, picture perfect daughter, was depressed and had been for a while, and now it had caught up to her. 

She was fighting a battle she was slowly losing. Willow was in a constant state of helplessness, staring into the void, and completely unable to pull herself out of it. If it hadn’t been for the upbringing she had, she would have been completely fine with self-destruct. END OF TW

The summer after her freshman year, she came back home and decided to have a talk with her parents. Her parents sat across the table, and they were not celebrating the end of a successful first semester, instead, they were fuming with betrayal. 

Willow told them that she had dropped most of her classes and she explained to them how she was exhausted beyond repair. They were displeased, so disappointed that looking at them was painful. For the first time in their life, their perfect daughter had failed them.

By the end of the evening, her father was livid. Threatened her that if she didn’t take more classes and got excellent grades he would stop paying her tuition. That’s when it hit her. To her parents, she was nothing but an object, an accomplishment to brag about to her friends. That was not love, that was selfish and a wake up call.

She packed up her stuff that evening, went back to Princeton and emptied her dorm as well as she dropped out completely. 

Freedom at last. With only a few bucks in her account, she bought a random bus ticket that took her to Montreal, Canada where she stayed for a couple of weeks, while working as a waitress before she moved to a new location. For the past three years, Willow has been living off a backpack. 

She moved to New York a year ago, but she comes and goes. Whenever she gets bored or too attached to someone she escapes. 

She’s been clean for three years when it comes to Adderall, although she still drinks but only socially.

personality

Despite her strict upbringing, Willow is a free-spirit! She’s always looking for a new adventure and she wants to live her life to the fullest, she doesn’t care about rules or schedules. She lives a pretty hedonistic lifestyle, always chasing a high in life and sometimes that makes her take some reckless decisions. A naturally loving person, Willow is always there to lend a shoulder to cry on or offer to wipe off your tears, however, she does struggle with connections. If she feels a deep connection with someone she runs away as she believes that being attached to someone will tie her up to one place and as we know, Willow lives a pretty nomad life. She keeps coming back to New York because she loves the vibe but when she gets bored or overwhelmed she leaves without warning. As loving as she is, she can also be ruthless and cold, especially when feeling vulnerable. She has a sharp tongue and it’s not afraid to hurt some feelings if that means shattering the pristine image some people have of her.

headcanons

She has a rib cage tattoo that reads “Eternity bores me, I never wanted it.” It’s a quote from Sylvia Plath.

Speaks French fluently and sometimes she likes to pretend she’s a lost French tourist just for fun.

Volunteers at the animal shelter. Because she doesn’t have a set home, she can’t have a pet but she loves animals.

Never has enough battery on her phone and sometimes she sings in the subway to earn some coins because she tends to forget her wallet.

Really good friends with the homeless woman who lives down her street, she brings her food from the restaurant.

Keeps many scrapbooks from the places she’s been.

Sometimes she goes to music stores and plays the piano, one of the few activities she enjoyed as a child.

Loves reading and whenever she’s not getting in trouble or working, she’s at the library.

Wears too many rings, so don’t try to mug her.

connections

Older brother: Willow has an older brother who followed her parents’ plan. He graduated college and now has a very important job. Willow hasn’t spoken to him in three years, even if he’s tried to contact her. She just doesn’t want any ties to her old life, including her family.

“Best Friend”: I put it between quotations because she doesn’t stay in one place long enough to actually form long lasting friendships but this person is the closest to that. She adores them and actually sends them a postcard when she leaves.

Partner in crime: As stated, Willow is pretty reckless and she does a lot of stupid shit but she’s always seeking for someone to be her partner in crime and just go crazy with them.

Co-workers/Clients: She works as a waitress at a restaurant (if your character has a restaurant let me know, bc idk where she would work). 

Neighbor: She lives in a small apartment in Brooklyn with two other roommates, it’s not ideal but it’s what she has.

College friends/hook ups: Oh during her college year, she was a party girl and she made a lot of “friends” (She attended Princeton btw) and also hooked up with a lot of people (f/m/nb), most of them were older than her.

Flirtationship: She is a natural flirt and she doesn’t even try to hide it.

Unrequited: Maybe your character has a crush on her (and depending on chemistry maybe she does as well but since she moves often she tries to ignore it). It’s angsty, it’s fun, give it to me. (f/m/nb)

Hook ups: Y’all know the drill

Bad tinder date: Willow thought it would be fun to go on a tinder date and she proposed some crazy scheme and they both had to spend the night in a jail cell.

Roommates: She lives in Brooklyn with two more roommates.

[signetxego]

The twst dorm leaders playing gbf, purely for meme purposes, something i spent too much time on. below the cut for long post.

Riddle

⁃ Rank 101

⁃ Plays casually but consistently, riddle is a perfectionist and wants to make his teams good, but he’s also realistic and pragmatic. He knows he’s a busy guy, and can’t join trains all day to bust up all his grids at once

⁃ The type to focus on one team at a time based on a predetermined order. Probably not in a crew (if he is, it’s just him, Cater and some of Cater’s friends) so he doesn’t worry about guild wars and building his teams based on that.

⁃ f2p, he’s responsible with his money. probably mains light since he likes the comfort of a high hp pool + stamina, and the typical light play style is reliable and safe.

⁃ Has only recruited one eternal—funf. Her voice probably drives him up the wall, but he likes the security of her heals to his light team. Is planning on 5*ing her!

⁃ favourite class is doctor. Practical, and he won’t admit it but sexy as fuck

⁃ He plays for the gameplay rather than the story/characters, the one exception is sandalphon, who he is incredibly fond of!!! he reads stories if the plot interests him, however, and if he’s got some spare time.

Leona

⁃ Rank 1

⁃ Leona doesn’t play he’s in it like a collecting game and so ruggie can use his randomly lucksacked mlb shiva as a support summon

⁃ like vil, plays on roulette season

⁃ reads some stories, but on ruggies account bc he cba to unlock them himself

⁃ ruggie made a joke about leona being percival ‘if he lost his sense of honour’ which made leona go and read the dragon knights stories

⁃ bruh he fucking stans percy so hard after reading between frost and flame but he won’t admit it

⁃ frequently throws money at the game just because he feels like pulling in gacha. ruggie is crying. leona don’t buy the scam star draw set you don’t even play the game please

⁃ is always really lucky in gacha

Azul

⁃ Rank 200

⁃ Only started playing recently, but was determined to catch up to Idia and become the best player so he got the twins and some poor unfortunate souls to help him grind and pay his way to instant victory

⁃ Doesn’t care for the plot, is purely driven by competition and wanting to have the best grids at any given time. Mains water for the Octavinelle Aesthetic and bitches about having to play the summer cagliostro crit setup to compete with other elements.

⁃ Likes quatre because they are both driven purely by spite and revenge, and is desperate for him to get a rebalance so he can run him w/ a clear conscience

⁃ Also likes Six, probably cried like a bitchboy during seeds of redemption which is to this date the only story he has read but you didn’t hear it from me

⁃ In a crew with idia and is waiting to overthrow him as captain

⁃ Has a weird spreadsheet showing exactly when to cast a status effect for it to land with the highest success that’s virtually unreadable to anyone aside from him

⁃ Plays chaos ruler as default bc he thinks it looks cool

⁃ sparks for the weapon rather than the character

⁃ hates farming for mats and gets the twins/his slaves to do his dailies when he’s busy a lot of the time god i wish i had slaves to farm ubaha host mats for me rn

Kalim

⁃ Rank 50 but his grids are the best of anyone in the game bc haha money go brrrr

⁃ He is cursed with bad gacha luck, and managed to deck himself out with the sexiest primal grid possible (puts idia’s to shame) thanks to jamils help, and a lot of money spent on trying to get Vikala’s ssr (before realising the spark function existed...)

⁃ He doesn’t favour any element, because he likes all the characters! He has a soft spot for Anila and Vikala though, since they’re so adorable and fun!

⁃ Doesn’t play seriously and mostly just reads the stories, idia wants to cry when he sees his fire grid with four flb ixabas going to waste

⁃ He likes Sarasa, and thinks she’s really funny, so when he does play it’s mostly grinding to recruit her!

⁃ Actually likes Vyrn and doesn’t find him annoying! has actually read the main story.

⁃ solos as soon as he has 300 crystals, he literally can’t save, i hate it here

⁃ his favourite class is lumberjack, but he hasn’t unlocked it yet ;-; ccws are hard to forge for rank 100 and below ;-;

Vil

⁃ Rank 25

⁃ seasonal player, shows up for roulette season and then leaves

⁃ downloaded the game because of the pretty art and the cute character designs, but can’t be bothered to learn how to play—he’s a busy man!

⁃ Europa was his first SSR and is still one of his favourite characters, she’s so pretty! He also loves michael and gabriel, and would start playing properly if they became playable mark my words

⁃ won’t admit it but probably wants belial to smear his makeup a little

⁃ kinda a basic bitch, has only read the wmtsb series cried at the ‘i’ll be waiting’ scene

⁃ criticises the fashion choices of every character he pulls, summons included. Won’t go into raids if the boss is ugly.

⁃ Does his makeup with zero playing in the bg and once parades lust...

Idia

⁃ Rank 275

⁃ that insane player who has soloed faasan hl in every element, has all the eternals 5*ed + the sexy blue skin, and all the evokers

⁃ a legendary figure in the community

⁃ plays as tormentor in every team bc he’s that bitch and also has a damascus knife mh for every element even if he doesn’t always use it

⁃ is both serious abt gameplay and the characters, watches all the gbf channel episodes and keeps up with news

⁃ was probably in a gbfvs tournament

⁃ his favourite character is caim, who reminds him of ortho with his childish innocence! Second is Nio, who is quiet and cute! He’s fond of a lot of characters though, like esser, funf, ferry and narmaya.

⁃ Strictly plays with his faves, but his grids are so good that he manages to make any setup meta.

⁃ Has siero scratcher ptsd bc it didn’t give him his third flb blue sphere but got tempted with it so. many. times.

⁃ Is in a guild w/ azul and ortho + some internet friends and if anyone doesn’t meet the gw quota in a day he screams at them w his hair all red and angry

⁃ owns the gisla body pillow.

⁃ He mains all elements. He has a primal whale grid for every element. His favourite to play with is probably wind, because he thinks it has the most flexibility in its play style. Hes a little mad that winds evoker is not as good as most of the others...

⁃ Idia: “i play for strategy” also idia: ‘gets fraux before alanaan bc the waifu is too strong’

Malleus

⁃ Rank 200

⁃ he can’t play, he’s just been farming tiamat omega raids daily since the games launch

⁃ he downloaded it to get closer to lilia, who is really *really* trying to teach him how to play with... little success

⁃ Still, he doesn’t give up!

⁃ Used his free gold bar uncapping a celeste horn

⁃ forgot to collect his free eternal

⁃ used parazonium as skill fodder (dw malmal i did the same and i live with the guilt)

⁃ uses auto select for his grids

⁃ lilia is crying in the background and often steps in to make the grids himself, but malleus always accidentally deletes them...

⁃ his favourite character is vania, she reminds him of lilia! and also, himself, in a strange way...

⁃ he also likes song, and has worked very hard to recruit her! he almost cried reading about how she was ostracised in her village for her talent at archery, and how lonely she feels, even in the eternals.

⁃ whenever the characters give him a seasonal message, he cries

⁃ gives valentines/white day/christmas gifts to every single character he has

[ditch-witches]

Insufferable (i) - George MacKay x reader

(PART 2) (PART 3) (PART 4)

requested: yes/no (im so sorry this took so long holy scheisse, there are so many parts too)

Thank you so much to our first Instagram request! @/okay.l0z I had a lot of fun with this and had to channel Ryan and Hannah's angst to help me.

"Hi! I've been reading your fics and I love them so much bc there's hardly any around. I was wondering if you take insta requests and if so can you do one with George and the reader are like enemies to loves and they have really cute moments but then end up fighting all the time and then it escalates and they end up having sEx and then get together or something bc I will THRIVE IF YOU DO!" ... "Is it bad if I want it long ass?"

also I thought about this like,,, a lot,,,

pairing: George MacKay x reader

warnings: slow-burn introduction bAsIcalLy, I think there are swear words?

word count: 2,629

a/n: There are several things to be addressed...

accuracy to George's life is like 0/100 - scratch that, they have the same hair color

think of this as an AU because idk how else to explain it

it's a slow burn. if you need something that isn't, check the next imagine over and give it a reblog.

You put your chin in your hand and furrowed your brows as you listened to the actors in front of you. The bright stage lights kept you at a suffocatingly hot temperature, but at this point, you didn't mind. What your main concern for the scene was simple: your leading actor was George MacKay. You had spent constant, stressful hours trying to convince the director of the show that he was not the choice, yet when it came down to it, what he said went, and you had to deal with the cleaning up. Today was not like any other. An almost two-hour practice, script work, lighting, etc, were all thrown at the actors still attempting to memorize their lines.

But it was this part, in particular, that was becoming the most difficult. Maybe it was because you were the ghostwriter of the script and the director was trampling on all of your ideas and dreams with a man that you could one-hundred-percent deem an enemy. Your lead character, Charlie, had a soft side to him, despite having an overpowering sense of the dangers of the world and a body to match. George wasn't Charlie. George was one of the lost boys from Peter Pan and that's all you could see him as. He needed to grow up and be a pirate with only two motives: breaking the chains of the dystopian government regime keeping him away from his wife and captaining the deadly sea creature infested waters and getting back to his wife in one piece.

But George's motives seemed to be entirely set on getting into his co-star's pants.

His cocky attitude and facade of charm made you want to rip your hair out. Sure, he took his job seriously and had several esteemed colleagues of yours raving about him, but this role wasn't his. It didn't help that you knew him from primary school, of all places, and once he found out, that's all he could bring up around you.

George rolled his sleeves and dragged a hand through his thick, red hair, the veins in his arm becoming rather predominant as he did so. He was damn near playing footsie with the girl in front of him; their flirty gazes bouncing from each other to the crumpled scripts in their hands. You rolled your eyes, feeling as if your team could see the steam rolling off your shoulders. The director was doing nothing, merely smiling giddily at the two tearing the scene to shreds. "Stop," you took the reins, standing up from your position on stage and tossing your script down. You stepped over to the two and the director didn't move an inch. "What are you doing?" You nipped, crossing your arms and stepping between George and his co-star.

He towered over you by miles; you weren't sure if this made him feel the superiority he exuded, but you always made sure to square your shoulders when you talked to him. "What do you mean? We're practicing," he slyly stated, sending a wink over your head to the girl.

You took the script from his hands, flipping a few pages to the scene they were supposed to be working on. He smirked down at you, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he watched you scan the page. His script was well-loved and worn as if it had been in his back pocket repeatedly, flipped through, folded, torn and taped, highlighted and annotated. You tried not to blush at the notes he had taken as if he had actually cared about his role. Notes such as movements and relative emotions were noted as if they were suggestions. You wet your lips, feeling George's easy-going gaze on you the whole time. "... Charlie, we have to get out of here..." You began, your eyes meeting his deep blue ones.

His face fell into a stern expression, his arms crossing heavily with a furrowed brow. "We've only just got here. I'm shipping out tomorrow. There's no way the Republic-" His Scottish accent was surprisingly thick and consistent. He was settling into Charlie.

"I don't care anymore. I'm tired of sitting idly by and watching you throw yourself away for a debt your brother can't repay." You swore you saw an actual feeling of hurt flash behind his eyes.

He chewed the inside of his cheek. "That debt is just as much mine as it is his. You're asking me to uproot and leave him, you know? I can't leave him."

"You'll die. You'll end up like the rest of the mariners haunting their wives for the rest of eternity. You're a slave." George took a few steps to stand in front of you, he was close enough that you could smell his cologne now: a sweet mix of sandalwood with hints of lavender. He smelled like a summer day spent at a cabin in the middle of a meadow. You hated it, but you wanted to bury yourself in his chest and bask in his scent for the remainder of your days.

He rested a hand on your neck, angling your face towards him as he whispered, "Look at me..." You attempted to ignore the beating of your heart in your ears and the sweat that began to spread across your back. "I'm free. I'm choosing this debt because, without it, he would die. He's the last piece of my father I have left."

You reached for his hand, covering it with your own. "What about me, Charlie? I'm here now. I'm flesh and blood in front of you. What about our child?"

"He'll be here when I get back." He pushed away from you, turning his back on you and settling his hands on his hips. "I'm not changing my mind." He looked over his shoulder at you. "Eden, I have to do this." You closed the script with a raised eyebrow, hiding how impressed you were that he actually knew his lines. The emotion he was conveying was nothing like how he had previously let on. You walked towards him and he turned back around. You pressed the script back into his hands and gave him a small glare.

"Practice how you play. I'm done with wasting time," you said more to the group than just him. The rest of the cast members weren't as proficient in hiding their amusement back as you were. The last thing George needed was another inflate to his ego. You went back to your spot, grabbing your clipboard and flipping over a few pages. The group began to gather around you slightly. "I need Eden and Charlie in with wardrobe now, the rest of you keep practicing your lines. I'll want to hear dialogue from Dane and Jack tomorrow. Give me another forty or so minutes and we'll call it?" The director nodded from the first row of seats. The crowd dispersed but George swam against the current of thespians, approaching you again.

He gave you one of his charming smiles. Be professional, you thought. "I was just wondering how that sounded to you?"

You thought for a moment, drawing the clipboard to your chest. "Yeah, it was good. Your accent's a bit dodgy, but the emotion is good. Why don't we see that during actual rehearsals?" You tilted your head at him and he looked at his shoes slightly, tucking his hands in the pockets of his jeans. Was he pretending to be humble?

"I don't know. I guess I like you more as Eden," he jeered, causing you to roll your eyes and he smiled wider.

"You're insufferable," you muttered, walking past him.

He chuckled. "Don't worry, I'll grow on you."

You scoffed slightly. "Go get fitted for suspenders and leave me alone, MacKay."

The next few days were full of constant rehearsals both in costume and script memorization. You had to admit that for some reason this show had you wrapped in a bundle of tension and anxiety. George slowly tore away at your nerves, becoming his own mess of anger and frustration as he picked up more and more on the fact that you weren't going to take his shit. You were serious about this job and you were serious about this play. His humor had diminished as it had gotten closer and closer to opening night and you weren't surprised when he would snap back at you for making an adjustment to his tone or a note on the delivery of a line.

"Stop being such a bitch!" He groaned, tugging at his hair as you crossed your arms.

"Calm down, primadonna! All I'm saying is quit pacing! Charlie isn't pacing! Where in the script does it say he's pacing-"

"THAT'S RIDICULOUS. IT DOESN'T MATTER." He moved to stand in front of you, his teeth gritting slightly. This was what your discussion had grown into, one hissy fit flaring up the other.

"FUCK, YOU'RE RIGHT. I TOTALLY FORGOT YOU WERE THE ONE IN CHARGE, MR. MACKAY. SHOULD I JUST SUCK YOUR DICK RIGHT NOW SINCE WE'RE ALREADY ADDING IN UNNECESSARY ACTION," you would bite back causing him to glare up at the ceiling with his jaw clenching in a sarcastic smile. He wore your patience thinner than tulle. And you were hoping to be doing the same to him.

On the eve of opening night, a storm broke out over the city. You hadn't received word from your ride at all---a man you had been seeing on and off for a while, but still managed to keep him at enough distance that the two of you weren't official. You glared at your watch, deciding to say fuck it and just walk the five or so miles it was to your apartment. Your rain jacket was already soaked, your umbrella proving to be no help whatsoever. But you persevered knowing full-well that if your character, Eden, were in the situation, she wouldn't have batted an eye before dropping him and his lack of communication. As the water soaked into your boots and chilled you rather quickly, you bit your tongue, regretting not waiting for the bus. Cars past you at rushed paces, wanting to get home to their loved ones if the rain worsened---you figured.

Your heart began to pound as a car pulled up beside you, causing you to wrap your hand around the bottle of mace in your coat pocket. The window rolled down, but you kept walking. "Do you need a ride?" Hollered an almost too familiar voice.

You crossed your arms and continued to walk. "No!" You called back.

The car rolled forward and you heard the driver door open. George stepped out slightly, drawing his jacket up to fight against the biting wind. "Come on! Look at this weather!"

"I'm good! Go home, George!"

He tilted his head at you with a deadpan expression. "Don't make me throw you over my shoulder." You furrowed your brows and rolled your eyes, sliding into the passenger seat of his car and taking down your hood. George watched as you did this. He slipped off his jacket. "Here." He pulled his hoodie over his head. "Take your shirt off. You'll get hypothermia."

"Excuse me?" You nipped.

It was his turn to roll his eyes. "I won't look. You're soaked. Take my damn hoodie." You looked out the front window and then let out a huff. You peeled off your upper layer, no longer giving a fuck if George saw you in your bra. You looked over to him while he leaned his arm against his door, his cheek resting against his fist as he held his hoodie out to you. You pulled the garment over your head and couldn't help but snuggle into it. It was oversized and warm, smelling just like George. Your cold skin seemed to sigh against the soft material and you felt tears prickling at the corners of your eyes at how content you were. George put the car into drive after he had made sure you were taken care of. You slipped your hands into the long sleeves and fought not to dig your nose into the neckline to breathe him in. His scent was like kryptonite to you and you hated it. "Are you hungry?" He asked, looking at you briefly and flipping the heat more to your side. He smiled almost proudly to himself at the sight of you enjoying his hoodie and the safety of his car.

You quickly braided your hair, attempting to combat the wet feeling of it against your neck. "No, I'm fine thanks."

"Come on. My treat? I've been a dick to you all week."

"Fine..." You mumbled. He found a nook of a restaurant jabbed into a part of London you had yet to explore. The rain had finally let up to a drizzle as the two of you made your way inside the softly lit eatery. The two of you tucked into a booth and ordered almost instantly, you now realizing just how hungry you actually were. "What were you doing in that part of town so late?" You finally asked after they brought out a hot tea for him and topped off your coffee. His large hands cradled the steaming mug in front of him, his nose slightly red from the chilly weather outside.

He chuckled slightly. "I forgot my script in the theatre and---for some reason---couldn't stop thinking about it." You nodded hesitantly. "Why were you walking home?"

You shrugged nonchalantly. "Such beautiful weather we're having. Thought I would take an evening stroll," you joked, causing him to chuckle lightly. George's face seemed to glow slightly under the cozy lights of the restaurant, his hair slightly disheveled and damp from the rain. You now got a full sight of the t-shirt he was wearing that commemorated a football team from the graduating year ahead of yours.

There was a beat of silence between you two. "Why..." George tugged his bottom lip between his teeth, attempting to find the right words. You furrowed your brows. "Why do you hate me so much?" If you weren't looking at him, you would have sworn he was smiling behind his question.

"Seriously?"

He nodded. "Seriously."

"You dated my best friend, Sophie, and broke her heart," you answered bluntly.

George sent you a puzzled expression for half a second before grinning slightly. "Yeah, but I was ten."

"Yeah, but now she's twenty-one and we still talk about it," you quipped, taking a sip of your coffee.

He exhaled. "I was... I was ten..." He furrowed his brows. "She was pretty. Hasn't some other guy broken up with her since me?"

You shrugged again. "No, she has this mindset where if she starts getting the feeling that things aren't working, she cuts out."

"She's been dwelling over me for how many years?" He couldn't fight the grin threatening to creep across his face.

You bit the inside of your cheek in thought. "I guess that would be twelve years." He whistled. "We're good at keeping grudges."

"Well, if I ever run into her, I'll apologize." He added a lump of sugar to his tea. "Is that the only reason?"

You debated ripping him a new one, but the tiredness you felt reflected in his eyes. "It's the kick-off point. Why? Do you wanna be buddies now?" You joked, sticking your spoon in your mouth.

He rested his hand in his chin. "Nah," he pursed his lips in thought. You furrowed your eyebrows at his answer, letting a titter escape your lips. "You're too young for me." You laughed a bit harder.

"Age is just a number, baby," you hummed and he smirked at you, a sparkle in his eye.

Comment if you would like to be tagged in the next part! Let us know what you think!

[nako-doodles]

hi! I was wondering if maybe you might have any mandarin song recs? I know I found a song by mayday from your blog, and unfortunately I don’t know anyone else who might have recs in chinese... sorry if that’s totally not even anything you listen to

OFC I HAVE MANDARIN CHINESE SONG RECS FOR YOU BUBS I Gotchu Fam *finger guns*

(a lot of these are by taiwanese/华侨 artists bc a lot of mainland china music is just….propaganda and im not really about that life. also for an (partially) ethnic chinese….I really should listen to more chinese music but alas 😔😔😔)

ok songs below the cut! (bc this is gonna Be Long ok)

the first mandarin singer you need to know is 邓丽君 Teresa Teng. shes so so so so good and also one off the most famous mandarin singers. ever. theres a saying in chinese that is basically: there is no place that chinese have gathered and teresa teng’s songs arent playing. she is also super famous in japan, and thats why I listened to her songs growing up. a lot of chinese who go to Korea to promote and stuff are often asked to sing her songs too so dont be surprised if some of these are really familiar

her most famous songs (that I listen to religiously) are:

甜蜜蜜 tian mi mi 

月亮代表我的心 the moon represents my heart

你怎么说 ni zen mo shuo

爱人 ai ren/ai jin

再见我的爱人 good bye my love

何日君再来 when will you return?

我只在乎你 i only care about you

honestly all her music is Great so here’s a playlist (x)

JJ Lin, Bibi Zhou, Faye Wong, Rainie Yang, Ivy Yan, Yao Beina, Han Hong, GEM etc etc are all really talented artists too if you wanna go down a rabbit hole, or look up some good medleys, like this one (x)

–

a non-comprehensive list of other songs I love to bits in no particular order:

mayday ft. gem - eternal summer

mayday ft. amei - 未来的我们

姚贝娜 - fish 鱼

姚贝娜 - where has all the time gone 时间都去哪儿了

姚贝娜- stolen red dye 红颜劫

姚贝娜 - the river of life 生命的河

王菲 - legend 传奇

郑淳元 - hidden fragrance 暗香

郑淳元 - 听海

赵传 - 我是一只小小鸟

逃跑计划 - 天空中最亮的星

黃明志 ft. 王力宏 - 漂向北方

kimberely - 爱你

michael wong - fairy tale

胡夏 - 那些年

嚴藝丹 - 三寸天堂

wanting - you exist in my song

林俊傑- 豆浆油条

周深 - 大鱼

吴秀波, 李健 - 爱江山更爱美人, 一剪梅

陸虎 - 雪落下的聲音

方大同 - 小方

zhang li yin - agape

zhang li yin - set me free

christine welch - 一百萬個可能

周筆暢 - fascination

周筆暢 × adinda - 最美的期待

[dr0wnedatsea]

Im rewatching movies I used to love and stumbling across new ones bc a lot of free time and global pandemic so I want to keep track:

Stuck in love: cried bc I forgot how dark it gets. Lily collins will show up on this list a lot.

The first time: cheesier than I remembered but still a Dylan O’Brien Stan

Drive: The bathroom scene in the hotel made me gag

Jennifer’s Body: how does Megan Fox look good even when she looks bad ?????? Forgot how weird this one was

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind: one word and it is pain

Place beyond the pines: a lot of unexpected twists- I couldn’t stand the cops sons character. Appreciation for Ryan gosling with tattoos.

Little women: recommended by Ralph. This one was heartwarming but also sad. I enjoy watching stuff in older time periods.

Remember me: I forgot how dark this one is too. If you don’t cry at the end you’re not human.

Her: Ugh, one of my favs. I like the futuristic aspects of it even if some of the scenes are a little weird.

Like crazy: Part of my top 3. This movie hurt my heart then and still does now.

Love, Rosie: Hmmm. Top 5? Lily collins again. The hurt on her face in some of the scenes makes me emo.

Dash&lily: not a movie. I binged the season in one day. Incredibly cheesy. Cried.

The art of getting by: I enjoy movies with Emma Roberts so she’ll pop up a lot too. I forgot i rewatched this one so I wanted to add it.

It’s kind of a funny story: I think this movie is important and should be shown in high school. Emma roberts again. The performance scene makes me laugh.

The fault in our stars: book made me cry. Movie made me sob and I swore to never watch it again but here we are. I’ve quoted a line in this movie to someone. I’ll see Amsterdam one day.

Nick and norahs infinite playlist: top 5. I used to love Michael cera. Would still die if someone made me a personal playlist.

After we collided: I’m all for a sappy romance movie but this was ... very bad lol.

Midsommar: Like hereditary (which I want to rewatch) this movie will live in my head rent free. This type of horror is so much better than your typical jump scare ones IMO.

Chemical hearts: The soundtrack is good. This one was really sad but worth the watch.

Life in a year: sad once again. It was alright. 10/10 for the big Sean pop in.

Bridgerton: Binged the season in a day. Wondering why we don’t get courted like this today??? I really enjoyed it.

Call me by your name: This was a rewatch. Makes you want to spend a summer in Italy with how it’s shot, fall in love and cry all at the same time.

Whiplash: Miles Teller. I wish I could play an instrument.

Normal People: Hit me right in my heart.

Blue Valentine: I cried when he set up the old mans room at the nursing home because it was so kind. 🥺

Hereditary: this movie is so fucked up but I love it

The notebook: My first time watching this. My grandma had Alzheimer’s so I avoided it for many years. My heart.

A teacher: a series. I wish they showed more of the psychology behind what was going on. It’s an uncomfortable watch but very good.

Love and other drugs: appreciation for Jake. It felt like just another romcom really

Comet: weird but good. I can only see Emmy as Fiona though.

Before sunrise: 1 of 3. I really enjoyed how it is basically just one long conversation between two people.

Before sunset: 2 of 3. I liked this one better than the first. Realistic.

[lwbluedice]

Masterpost for my Stories and Ocs!!!

A spoilerfree list of most of my Ocs and stories (reuploaded here on my main blog)

Includes:

- Name of the story and state it’s in

- short summary/facts

- Character names

If you want more information abt any of them(like a description or a pic) or abt the stories, just message me/ ask me!  Also feel free to ask me to draw them ( for example in the color scheme thing or sth)!

Note: The stories are all written in german so if you don’t speak that language i can’t send you the original documents but i can try summing them up for you!

I bet this is not everything and i will add stuff but yeah!!!!

Hotaru (first draft is finished)

- Abt two men that are linked through a surgery called “synchronisation”, which basically connects their minds and bodies, so they are forced to work as a team. Ea is an ex-soldier and Cain was a hacker, but due to the fact that they can’t stand each other, they also didn’t share their pasts with each other. To pay someone to unlink them, they become bounty hunters and kidnap the girl Ai and her robot Subaru, which is one of the old military robots, called Hotarus (high technologised, operating, transforming, artificial intelligence, ranger units). They are connected to a human ranger and can transform into what the ranger wants them to transform into.

The Hotaru headquarters exploded 10 years ago and since then the Hotarus are super rare on the black market.

The two men plan on selling both the girl and her robot and let’s just say it all doesn’t work out that well.

Ai Hoshino

Ea

Cain Bishop

Subaru

Dr. Chandra Natarajan

10 A

10 B

and other synced pairs

George Watton

Asha Watton

Elaine Bishop

Christopher Bishop

Haruto Hoshino

Shiori Hoshino

The Pleiades. A Hotaru Unit.

Atlas/ Emmett Hunter

Maia/ Ilya Neverwinter

Elektra/ Hailey Gray

Taygete/ Daiyu Ghou

Alcyone/ Charlotte Gryffith)

Caelano/ Sora Aurora River

Merope/ Imogen Harrington

Sterope/ Elizabeth Bresley

Additional Characters for the (maybe Sequel) in which the grown up Ai will try to find out who attacked the Hotaru Headquarters

- Skya

The day the world turned white ( first draft is finished, working on it)

To stop global warming some scientists basically caused a new ice age. On the long run this might be very effective but the former countries, now sectors, are hit by strong ice storms, called snow white. To stay safe huge bunkers, the Safe Cities, were built and the local fauna and flora were stored in Arks, to preserve them.

Usually an alarm sounds before all citizens are brought into the SCs, but this time Reese and her best friend Yuki dont manage to get to the vehicles on time and are left behind. They seek shelter in a private bunker outside of town that Yuki found out about recently. Suddenly a group of boys their age knocks on the door, because they were also left behind and followed the girls.

Al, the brothers Eli and Isaac, Gil and Henry become the new bunker-mates and the group has to survive one year in the bunker, until the storm is over.

( I have a blog for this story, just search for The day the world turned white! There are pics and some posts for example abt which patronus/spirit animal the charas have!)

Reese/ Therese Wells

Al/ Alexander Glover

Yuki Sarah Brooke

Eli Green

Isaac Green

Gil de Santos

Henry Summers

The Sun will always rise (The sequel, probably forever unfinished)

About a group of rebels, the Sun Children, that are sworn enemies to the government and its ways to cope with Snow White.

Takes place abt one/two years after Tdtwtw.

Lucy and Aidan are kicked out of an underground organisation that stays in the cities underground system during the storm phases and the two wander around in the snow until Michael and Rin pick them up and bring them to the Sun Children. From looking into the snow directly to maneuver, Lucy has turned snowblind.

Yeah the plot is… not 100% existent.

Characters:

Lucy

Aidan

Michael

Kate

Gil

Bo

Finya

Rin

The XII Games ( First book is finished, i started the second one, unfinished)

A story abt spaceships that let slaves fight in games, if they win a certain number they are “free”. Cassidy makes it and is sold to a women, Trisha, that takes her home onto her home planet, where Cassidy lives a nice life and learns abt her heritage. One year later she meets Tobias again and she and Trisha are brought to a planet that is basically the universes capital. Cassidy has to take a more important role in the uproar of a war, than she ever imagined.( The cast members are mostly human looking but are other, non human, races)

Cass (Cassidy ) E’ Alandril

Tobias

On the slave ship:

Neala

Sam ( Samuel)

On Anterra:

Trisha  Willowrish

Max ( Maxwell)  E’ Alyndral

Lukas

Tori

Khorr

Keri

Wil

Quinna

On the Space sparrow:

Zach ( Zacharyas) Gryaan

Benj ( Benjamin) Bottledom

Rashka Hyrelian

Oreadh Urunna'ur

Butcher

Kagrim

Kyluur

Irian Ashcott

On Capital Estellar:

Galea ( Galeandrih Fiyur’ Ihal)

Iyal

Wren Fawell

Luasia  

Luminor the Shining

Fallen Angels ( A trilogy, one and a half books were finished, reconcepted)

We don’t talk abt this but it was one of my first stories i truly wrote.

Abt fallen angels saving the world or sth. It’s super clichee and just ugh.

The newer version would cancel some charas and make it abt rebalancing Darkness and Light in the worlds. With a more diverse cast and also different magical races. And a way less creepy Adam.

Eve/Evelyn White

Adam

Peregrine/Perry

Ray/Raven

Sera

Colin

Robin

Raphael

Ky/ Kyron

Gabe/Gabriel Frost

Bree/ Gabriella Frost

Indigo ( haven’t written it yet and i don’t know if i ever will, but have drawn stuff. I lowkey wanna see this as a comic)

A story abt a clan of shapeshifters, called Indigos. They are basically human that can shift into dolphins and their clan lives on an island near Australia. Its a modern story and the gang consisting of our local gay dolphin girl Keerie, her cousins Akash and Arjuun (younger brother, older sis), and Ky ( adopted as a child, japanese heritage, a different breed of dolphin idk) lives their “normal lives” with lots of shenenigans and drama.

Some day Keerie falls in love with Navy, the daughter of the owner of the local Aquapark (that the clan suspect also does illegal stuff like snatching wild animals).

Keerie

Arjuun

Akash

Ky

Navy

“Neo Alcatraz” ( reworks of a very old story)

To put it simply, there is a pack of scientists that bionically enhance children and send them off to different countries to basically be local superheroes. Our gang was kinda left behind bc the countries rather took the newer, better versions and here they are now, a bunch of supernatural teens facing the (not so) everyday struggles of life.

Atalanta

Chi

Callie

Lee

Victor/Konrad

Gemsona (just art)

Larimar

- has water powers and her backstory bases on my private/old Squads life story and a lot of me thinking of drawing music videos for her but never doing it

Anthea (art and headcanons)

- my Dnd Oc

The Bender Girls ( art and headcanons)

- basically some Avatar the last Airbender Ocs i made once

Daiyu

Hotaru

Yura

Sündenfall / Sinfall (short story)

A short story i wrote for a competition which is basically every crime series but magic.

Harvey is immortal, he dies and is revived, and solves crimes through it. Paige is basically his assistant and the case they are on is abt a person that kills magical beings and “arranges” the victims fitting to the seven sins.

Ilya Winter

Harvey

Paige

Delphi

Sphinx

The concept charas, that had a different storyline ( they were basically a team of magical beings that would solve cases… rather unconventional.) I considered reworking them into the new Fallen Angels concept:

Ilya

Harvey

Timothy

Worth mentioning:

Project Alpha (script, some art):

The script for a shortfilm i once made with my friends. A school class has a plane crash and only a few students survive, they all embody a different character archetype (the sunshine, the soziopath, the smart one etc.) They try to survive and are put through weird psychological mind experiments like the trolley problem.

To be honest, the concept had and still has a lot of potential and we just hadn’t the opportunities to rly set it the way we anticipated. The shooting day was super fun, though! Still laughing about the outtakes

Astral Chronicles (some art and a few chapters, unfinished)

A story Idea i still like but probably wont write like this because of copyright problems. Its basically a giant Crossover.

Its abt people who have an Astral( mostly a literature figure) they embody when they are dreaming. Their body stays in bed and is vulnerable but the Astral can basivally run around and has special powers. If the Astral dies, the person wakes up but i think when the body dies the person dies too? idk.

The Protagonist embodies Alice and there are also the White Rabbit, Peter Pan, Tinkerbell usw.

There was also some kind of conflict? I dont remember.

If i would ever rewrite it the Astrals would be embodiments of the Zodiac signs.

(does this even fit?)

The Fanfiction thing i wrote abt Peter Pan/ Jack Frost

- like i have tons of short drabbles and the start of a fanfiction and honestly i liked the ideas i had a lot

The ones we better not talk abt:

Part Hunter

Basically there was a being named eternity/aeterna that was shattered into oarts (like in TRC)

and chosen ones have to reclaim them.

The ones that basically die are turned into guardians, like Time and Space ( they had animal companions they were fused with i guess)

Melody is the current part hunter and has a tragic love story, her animal is a tiny horse thing??????

Idk

basically a long story in which i used my dreams as base for the episodes

The nameless story

Actually super interesting but too many charas and a too tiny will to draw action scenes or write them.

Like its based around a super popular game in huge spheres/buildings and the teams wear some anti gravity outfits and shoes and can walk on the walls and shit and can basically attack using elements/illusion/ conjure monsters idk.

And the main team had an opponent team that basically specialized in the 25272 other elements and some day they just fused teams idk.

There also was some prophecy shit abt the anchors, ppl that can control all elements the same???? Idk

Element guardians

- basically four teens that control the elements and do shit together

- at some point i gave all of them dragons

- still thinking abt this sometimes

- The originals:

Luna: the shameless self insert , earth, pony girl, bland blonde i think

Katy: Air, best friend, bubbly

Dan: The jock. Fire

Nick: The emo. Water

At some point Katy became Skye and Dan and Nick got other names but yeah-

Talent Academy

The story thats basically a ripoff of Alice academy. Like a school with hierachie between the students and ranks and shit and different houses and the students have powers IDK

If you read through all of this, bless you for showing interest in my stories ;) And hey, if you want me to rant about any of them, just send me an ask or a message!!!

[captain-oblivious]

oh shit I actually caught this one on my dash; thank you, @yuurikatsuke !!!

name: call me perry

nicknames: ...perry, I guess? (technically it’s my nickname bc it’s my middle name which I use online to keep my irl identity semi-secret, muahaha)

zodiac sign: aquarius

height: 170 cm / 5′7″ on the short side (for dudes at least), but not short enough for it to be really noticeable

orientation: something like panromantic ace, though I rarely even experience romantic attraction tbh. -shrug-

ethnicity: polish; both my parents were born there, though I was born in and live in canada

favorite fruit: avocado!

favorite season: winter, because I love winter sports

favorite book: the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy

favorite flower: shit, that’s a tough one. orchids, maybe? snapdragons are also pretty great.

favorite scent: cedar forests. the summer camp I used to go to was in one and it was fantastic

favorite colour: purple

favorite animal: birds. birbs are great. I love them

coffee, tea, or hot cocoa?: tea, followed by hot cocoa; never coffee bc I’m not a fan of the taste and bc it has too much caffeine for me to handle

average sleep hours: 7, though I aim for 8

cat or dog person?: cats probably; I like dogs as well, but having pet-sat them multiple times, I can say that they can be quite a hassle to take care of :P

favorite fictional character: oh geez that’s a hard one. since I’m basically stuck in YoI fandom for the next eternity or so, can I just say that it’s a tie between yuuri and victor? honestly, I can’t pick one, and they’re inseparable anyway

number of blankets you sleep with: 1, very rarely 2 if it gets really cold, though now that I live alone, I tend to just turn the heat up instead, haha

dream trip: japan; honestly I sometimes entertain the idea of becoming an english teacher in japan for a bit bc I love teaching and it would be a cool experience, but idk if I could handle that

blog created: sometime around october 2016. I’ve lurked on this site for ages though, and I had a couple of older blogs that I abandoned some time ago, haha

number of followers: 576

I’m a lazy piece of shit and there weren’t any instructions to tag in this, so if you see this meme and want to do it, feel free!

[planets-and-prose]

Ten is Back!

That's right, y'all, I have Emerged!

So, I've been on like, just about full hiatus for like a year now, and there have been Attempts to come back, but they've all failed, and basically I'm here to be like "hi this one will be successful!" So tl;dr, look out for some updates bc I'm gonna be doing Camp Nano in July and I have a queue FULL OF WIP CONTENT SET UP! So yeah!

Now for the "what happened," feel free to skip if y'all don't wanna read my ventpost!

Tw: general bad mental health and stuff

So basically the super short version is that once the c*vid hit real bad in march, lots of shit happened, like I had a v stressful summer job and started my senior year of college with distance learning but with profs who already did a semester of this and in many cases expected it to all be exactly the same as normal (one prof made me cry on a biweekly basis), I had a death in the family, the Whole World Happened, and all in all over the year my mental health went from the "this is fine" dog meme to "get thee to a crisis counselor." Like after school I could manage maybe One Chore and then was just sleeping all the time or maybe doing something mindless, when i wasn't actively wanting death. I didn't write for myself for like a year because I was writing Big Hecking Capstones and final projects and god it gives me hives thinking about.

However, now I have two BA's, an adjusted medication for my depression/anxiety, and am doing like ten thousand times better! I'm doing a gap year to rediscover how much I love the field I'm studying and combat the burnout, so hopefully in this gap year I'll be producing more content! I at least have content prepared for just about the rest of June, so I'll at the very least be quite active for the month if not for July and on!

Thank y'all who are still here with me after like, an eternity of inactivity <3 I so appreciate it and hope you'll stick with me for what's to come!

[nightbts]

i’d love some advice :”)

hi my lovelies! throughout my time on tumblr, this has been one of the best communities where so many of you guys have helped me through numerous things I had been going thru, and here we go cause I'm here for another :”(

feel free to skip along, it’ll be a bit long....

so where do i even start *sighs for eternity and beyond*

backstory: throughout highschool, I had a friend group of girls and we were pretty tight-knit, we went to school dances together, threw parties together, had our own group chat, and even all our parents were friends for the most part; now some of these girls I actually knew since elementary (two in fact), the rest came along during middle and high-school so in conclusion: these are long-ass friendships

and like any friendships, we all had our issues and small fights every now and then, but they were always resolved especially because me (the mom of the group) hated conflict and I would always try to bring peace to the group

so here’s the present: we’re all in college now, 3 of us go to one, and the other 2 go to 2 different colleges....however, slowly but surely, things changed

so imma make a quick ass key

A: me

B: same college as me

C: same college as me, friend since elementary

D: diff college, friend since elementary

E: diff college, B’s best friend

in essence, this all started during the summer before college...suddenly girls B, C and E started doing things together and leaving me and D out; when college started and we were doing rooming, despite B+C being my friends, they in the end through some loophole of an excuse managed to be suitemates together, leaving me out

so that’s kind of when things began to get rocky, B + C (especially B who i was really close with during highschool) stopped hanging out with me, would hang out with each other and their roommates or new friends and I was left to basically fend for myself and it got upsetting BUT i thought ya know, this is college, this is inevitable ppl grow but...during breaks, they would try to make plans that wouldn’t align with me and D’s, and when me and D would make plans they would all coincidently not be able to attend

during the first sem of freshman year, me and B got into an argument that developed due to a concern over her mental health and through that argument we unleashed a lot of feelings that had developed over time and i truly felt i had resolved the distance between me and B however i soon came to know that my long time friend C had a shit ton of “built-up issues with me” that she didn’t really want to try to bridge that friendship however through that, she has simultaneously deprived me of the friendship i had with B and E

reminder: B was best friends with me and D since literally 6 years old

this started to become really extreme throughout my freshman year of college because it was to the point where nobody talked as much in the group chat, B, C and E would do things by themselves, they wouldn’t comment as much on our insta posts, i know these all sound trivial but this was crazy due to HOW CLOSE we all were during highschool like unreasonable crack-head level close with each other

and the thing is, while i have other friends now, it still makes me genuinely angered and upset simultaneously that all this happened because i know that during the friendship we had with each other, it was geNUINE! and now suddenly, the world has shifted a whole 180 and i feel so angry and hopeless about it still

i don’t know whether to move on or confront them again...me and D have talked about this bc right now we’re in the same boat against the rest of the girls and we feel like they wouldn’t even care bc this is what they want but a small part of refuses to believe that and rather things it is the actions of B that have warped the minds of the rest of the girls to being so against us and the friendship we used to have

that was so long im so sorry but if you have anything to say, any advice, any more question or anything ill answer them i just i feel like i have no closure and that this will bother me till the day i die

[copyanddestroy]

Hippies by Denis Johnson

It felt like the International had one last trip left in it. Two shocks had blown and the frame was cracked and quite a bit of the electrical system had gone dark. This thing’s from 1970 and it’s been a while since it went on a ride. But you could feel that last trip coming. And Joey said these people he knew from Austin intended to pick him up in Long Beach on their way to the Rainbow Gathering in the national forest over in north-central Oregon. The Gathering of the Tribes, it used to be called, tens of thousands of hippies in the woods, seven days of Peace and Love. Four hundred miles to over there where it is-a distance the International could surely make and even possibly manage to retrace back home. You could feel that one last trip coming.

Peace and Love! This tall skinny mean guy in Iowa City in the seventies had a poster on his wall of a peace sign, the upside-down Y symbolizing peace, which he’d altered with a Magic Marker into a lopsided swastika, and he’d added words so that the Peace and Love slogan beneath it read PEACE OF THE ACTION / LOVE OF MONEY. I never forgot it... I who have had so much of peace and so much of love, I have never really believed in either one.

•

The Magical Mystery Message to see the Rainbow was coming from a couple of directions, wasn’t just coming from Joey and the teenage past. All spring Mike O, a friend of mine from north Idaho, had been bothering me I should go. Mike O, a regular Mr. Natural: Barefoot Mike, Underground Mike, one of the originals, close to sixty years old now; his white hair hasn’t been cut or combed since youth and his white beard looks inhabited. How did we all get so old? Sitting around laughing at old people probably caused it.

•

How long since I’d seen Joey? We’d taken our first acid trip together, Carter B and him and me and Bobby Z. Hadn’t seen Carter in nearly thirty years. Joey since-wow, since 1974. That summer of 1974 I was with Miss X. Bobby Z and Joey came to see us on the second floor where we lived in this place like a box of heat. They owed me a disruption-Joey did anyway, because Carter and I had invaded him two years before, when he’d been living on the side of this mountain in Hollywood and studying to be, or actually working as, some kind of hairdresser. “What do you want?” I said when I answered the door. “You’re not gonna stay here.” The place had only one room to sleep in, and a kitchen the size of a bathroom, a bathroom the size of a closet. There weren’t any closets.

Miss X and I were always fighting. Every time a knock came on the door we had to stop screaming and collect our wits.

“We’re economizing on space,” I said when I saw who it was this time.

“Obviously,” Bobby said.

Joey had his guitar case leaning up against him and his arm draped around it like a little sibling. Miss X stood behind me breathing hard with the mascara streaking her cheeks, radiant with tears and anger and her wet eyelashes like starbursts.

In short, three weeks or two weeks or one week later I made loud vague accusations in a scene, basically the result of the August heat, that ended with Bobby Z and Joey heading north for Minnesota, taking Miss X. I was stabbing through the windowscreen with a pair of scissors as they headed down the back stairs, and I didn’t see Bobby again until he was sick on his deathbed five years ago in Virginia.

It’s funny, but Joey called me from Huntington Beach just last night-two years after this trip to the hippies I’m describing-just to say hello, partly, and partly because his band broke up and he’s just started AA and begun a program of meds for his depression and needs a place to lay back, because he’s homeless. He mentioned he’d heard from Carter B. Carter said he’s got hepatitis C and thinks I probably have it, too, because he must have picked it up way back during the era we were sharing needles when we were kids. I feel all right. I don’t feel sick. But it’s funny. Thirty years go by, and the moves we made just keep bringing this old stuff rolling over us.

•

The International throws a tire down in the tri-city area of Hanford, Washington. It’s so hot on the tarmac I get confused in my head and forget to put the nuts back on when I change the flat, and the loose rim tears up the wheel a good bit before I figure out what’s happening and pull over, and I have to roll the thing in front of me a half mile to a garage and get the whole business straightened out. But the truck still works when all is said and done. After I’m in the mountains I start getting glad I agreed to go. Our vehicles, our hamlets and commerce miniaturized in the shadow of these mountains...RU FREE--Minnesota plates on a VW bus in the one-street town of Mitchell not far from the beginning of the Ochoco National Forest. Five youngsters all around twenty years old and a dog, gassing up.

The eastern end of the Ochoco Forest seems quiet enough, a showcase for the public administration of nature, having narrow roads of unblemished blacktop with level campsites scattered sparsely alongside them. The Rainbow Gathering’s website has provided a map leading out toward the wilder part of the mountain and down a dirt road toward a cloud of dust where hundreds of pickups and vans and tiny beat-up cars have parked at the direction of a bunch of wild-looking toothless young pirates under a plastic awning with a handheld radio and a dirty illegible flag. Even down here where people wait for the shuttle vans that take them up the mountain to the gathering or where they shoulder their frame backpacks and start up the hill on foot, all dressed up in the ashes of their most beautiful clothes, in their long skirts and tie-dyed shirts, just like the hippies of thirty years ago, even down here there’s a feeling of anarchy third-world style, the pole and tarp lean-to, the people with shiny eyes, the lying around, the walking around, the sudden flaring madness, only this is celebratory and happy madness rather than angry or violent. The shuttle van climbs up past further checkpoints where serious authoritative hippies make sure nobody’s just driving up out of laziness to park all over the mountain and get in each other’s way. Past the first camp-the A Camp, the only place where alcohol is permitted, although this segregation has been accomplished voluntarily and nobody would think of enforcing it. Past other camps of teepees, dome tents, shacks of twigs and plastic tarp to where the WELCOME HOME sign stands at the head of the footpath. The path heads into the series of clearings and copses where a whole lot of hippies (nobody can accurately count how many) have come to celebrate themselves, mostly, right now, by walking around and around, up and down the trails, past the kitchens set up under homemade awnings and canvas roofs, food centers staffed by those who want to give to those who need to take. Mike O has instructed me to equip myself with a big enamelware cup, a spoon and a sleeping bag-to come as a taker, and be confident I won’t need more. No money changes hands here, at least that’s the idea, everything is done by bartering. But I’ve brought a couple hundred dollars in my pocket because Joey and I might look for mushrooms and seek some sort of spiritual union together through exotic chemicals like in the old days, and I don’t care what they say, I’ve never seen anybody trade dope for anything except sex or cash.

You hear wildly varying figures, eleven different guesses for everything-4,000 feet elevation, 6,700 elevation, 8,000 elevation. Claims of anywhere from 10,000-50,000, as far as attendance. But let’s say 10,000 or more hippies touring along the paths here in the American wilderness just as we did up and down Telegraph Avenue in Berzerkeley almost thirty years ago. Yes! They’ re still at it!—still moving and searching, still probing along the avenues for quick friends and high times, weather-burned and dusty and gaunt, the older ones now in their fifties and a whole new batch in their teens and twenties, still with their backpacks, bare feet, tangled hair, their sophomoric philosophizing, their glittery eyes, their dogs named Bummer and Bandit and Roach and Kilo and Dark Star. And as they pass each other they say, “Loving you!” -Loving you! It serves for anything, greeting and parting and passing, like aloha, and might burst from a person at any time as if driven by a case of Tourette’s, apropos of absolutely jack. Everybody keeps saying it.

Scattered over about one square mile of Indian Prairie in the Ochoco National Forest we have the pole-and-awning kitchens and camps of various tribes and families and impromptu more-or-less hobo clans: Elvis Kitchen, 12-Step Kitchen, Funky Granola, Avalon, Greenwich Village. The billboard map near the welcome entrance lists and. vaguely locates the groups who wish to be located and who have notified someone among the oozing anarchic strata from the elders down to the children as to where they’d be:

Aloha

Bear Fish

Bliss Rehydration Station

Brew Ha-ha

Cannabis Confusion Cafe

Carnivores Cafe

Cybercamp

Faerie Camp

Eternal Book Assembly

Madam Frog’s Dinkytown Teahouse

Northwest Tribe

Ohana Tribe

Omklahoma

Shama Lama Ding Dong

Rainbow Solar Bubble

Deaf Tribe

Jesus Kitchen

Ida No & Eye Don Kare

Free Family Sacred

Head Church

BC Tribe Twelve Tribes (w/ star of David)

Thank You Camp

Camp Discordia

... and the infamous A Camp, the only region whose temporary residents have agreed that among them alcohol shall be one of the chemicals of happiness.

Alcohol: Near the parking area there is a place called “A-camp.” Rainbow says, “We love the alcoholic, but not the alcohol.” Personalities change on alcohol (and hard drugs).

Sometimes people can’t control themselves as well. Therefore you are respectfully asked to leave the alcohol in A-camp when you hike in to the main gathering space.

—so says the unofficial Rainbow website. The whole region commandeered by the Rainbow tribes, as always without benefit of permits from the U.S. Forest Service, parking and all, covers about four square miles. The givers, the ones who hand out food and take care of things to the extent they’ re taken care of, the putters-up of portable toilets and showers and medical stations and crude signs like the directory and map or the small billboard illustrating how germs get from dog shit to flies to foodstuff and into human fingers and mouths, along with advisos to interrupt this process by keeping your hands clean, these who make it all possible arrived and started erecting their camps a week or so before the general celebrants showed up, the takers, the bunch of us who just arrive and stash our stuff under a bush and hold out our blue enamelware cups for hot cereal offered every noon by, for instance, the orange-garbed bald-headed Hare Krishnas, who ladle out three to four thousand such lunches every day of the party.

Joey and I have planned to meet up at the camp of the Ohana tribe, a nomad family of twenty or more who caravan around North America living only in government-owned forests like the Ochoco. I don’t find Joey right off and have no real explanation for my presence among them, but the young teenagers who seem to make up the most of the Ohana don’t care where I put up my tent and don’t seem to hold it against me that I look like somebody from a TV news team, olive shorts, khaki shirt, baseball hat and jogging shoes. Hey. Even socks. On the other hand nobody seems inclined to talk with me, either. At a glance they see there’s no sense asking me for reefer. Ghana means something in Hawaiian, they tell me. Peace, or Love, they’re not sure.

•

I’ve located Joey. He looks the same, only older, just as sad or perhaps more so, having lived thirty years longer now and found more to be sad about.

Joey and I sit out front of my tent in the dirt while he tunes up. He’s played professionally for decades now, and he doesn’t do it just for fun very often anymore. But just to oblige me... We sing a few of the old ones while the teenage Ohanans get a fire going about six feet away and start good-naturedly hassling whoever wanders past for drugs.

It’s the second of July and anybody who’s coming is probably here. The woods aren’t quiet. You can hear the general murmur of thousands, as in a large stadium, just a bit muted by the forest. The sky turns red and the day dies and Joey has to put away his guitar thanks to competition: drums start up all around, they call from far and near and not quite anywhere in the forest, they give a sense of its deeps and distances and they sound like thoughts it’s thinking.

We stumble through the dark woods amongst them: the drums, the drums, the drums. All over the forest pockets of a hundred, two hundred dancers gather around separate groups of ten or twenty maniac percussionists with congas and bongos and tambourines and every other kind of thing to whang on loudly, and the rhythm rises up from all directions into the blackness of space, until the galactic cluster at the center of Andromeda trembles. The yellow strobing light of bonfires and the shadows of the dancers on the smoke. Naked men with their penises bouncing and topless women shaking their beautiful breasts. Every so often when the mood gets them a cry goes up and a hundred voices lift in a collective howling that really just completely banishes gravity for a moment and dies away.

We hear it rained quite heavily two nights ago, but this night is all stars and stillness, the smoke of fires going straight up in the orange light, and the ground isn’t particularly uncomfortable, but just the same camping out always feels wrong to me-to sleep outdoors feels desperate, broke and lonely-brings back those nights under a billboard on Wilshire where Joey and Carter and I found a bush to hide us, panhandler punks moving up and down the West Coast drunk on wine and dreaming of somewhere else, brings back those nights in a bag in the hills above Telegraph Avenue when I literally-literally, because I tried-could not get arrested, couldn’t land a vagrancy charge and a bed and a roof and three meals of jail food. In my tent on the earth of the Ochoco Forest I don’t sleep right. Neither does Joey. By next day noon we’re already talking about finding a motel. The morning’s too hot and the party’s bumping off to a bad start, we keep running into many more people looking for dope than people who look stoned, and the Krishnas run out of gruel twenty minutes after they start serving. Joey and I join what they call the Circle, about a thousand people sitting in a pack on the ground-no standing allowed, please-getting fed with one ladleful each of spiceless veggie broth, courtesy, we believe, of the Rainbow elders.

Once upon a time in the cataclysmic future, according to Rainbow lore, which filters down to us from the ancient Hopi and the Navajo through the cloudy intuitions of people who get high a lot, once upon a time in the future “when the earth is ravaged and the animals are dying,” says the unofficial Rainbow Internet website, claiming to quote an Old Native American Prophecy, “a new tribe of people shall come unto the earth from many colors, classes, creeds, and who by their actions and deeds shall make the earth green again. They will be known as the warriors of the Rainbow.” I spot hardly any blacks, hardly any Indians from either continent, but it’s astonishing to see so many youngsters on the cusp of twenty, as if perhaps some segment of the sixties population stopped growing up.

The Rainbow Family, consisting apparently of anybody who wants to be in it, not only has a myth but also has a creed, expressed succinctly, way back when, by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay “Self-Reliance": Do Your Thing; and with great reluctance they’ve allowed to evolve out of the cherished disorganization of these gatherings a sort of structure and an optional authority, that is, an unenforced authority, which defaults to the givers, the ones who actually make possible things like this gathering and many other smaller ones around the country every year since the first one in 1972; and the givers defer to the tribal elders, whoever they are.

An online exchange of letters headed “God can be found in LSD” winds up urging that those participating in these experiments in spontaneous community-building only

1) Be self-reliant

2) Be respectful

3) Keep the Peace

4) Clean up after yourself

and that anything else going on is nobody’s business unless someone’s getting hurt. “In that event, our system of PeaceKeeping (we call it ’Shanti Senta,’ not ’Security’) kicks in, and the unsafe situation is dealt with.” Speaking as a congenital skeptic, I have to admit that no such situation occurs all weekend, as far as I can learn. And nobody can tell me what Shanti Senta means, either.

I go walking in the woods with Mike 0, who’s spent the last few days under a tiny awning dispensing information about the Course in Miracles, a heretic son of gnostic brand of Christian thinking that doesn’t recognize the existence of evil and whose sacred text is mostly in iambic pentameter. He’s a grizzled old guy, wiry and hairy, lives in the Idaho mountains in an underground house he dug out with a shovel, never wears shoes between April and October. He stops a time or two to smoke some grass out of a pipe, a couple of times also to share a toke with passersby, because Mike is a genuinely unselfish and benevolent hippie, and after that he has to stop once in a while and rest his butt on a log because he’s dizzy. We pass a gorgeous woman completely naked but covered with black mud. She’s been rolling in a mud hole with her friends. I guess I’m staring because she says, “Like what you see?”

“In a day full of erotic visions, you’re the most erotic vision of all,” I tell her. To me it’s a poem, but she just thinks I’m fucked.

Somehow these flower people sense I’m not quite there. They see me. And I think I see them back: in a four-square-mile swatch of the Ochoco Forest the misadventures of a whole generation continue. Here in this bunch of ten to fifty thousand people somehow unable to count themselves I see my generation epitomized: a Peter Pan generation nannied by matronly Wendies like Bill and Hillary Clinton, our politics a confusion of Red and Green beneath the black flag of anarchy; cross-eyed and well-meaning, self-righteous, self-satisfied; dose-minded, hypocritical, intolerant—Loving you! Sieg Heil!

Joey and I have discovered that if we identify ourselves as medical people ferrying supplies, the Unofficials at the checkpoints let us pass and we don’t have to bother with distant parking and the wait for one of the shuttle brigade of VW vans and such, and in the comfort of Joey’s pretty good Volvo we can come and go as we please. Coming back up from a burger run in town, we pick up this guy hitching. He says he’s staying in the A Camp. “I’m not the big juicehead,” he says, “but at least those folks understand I like cash American currency for what I’m selling.”

“And what’s for sale?”

“Shrooms. Twenty-five an eighth.”

I don’t ask an eighth of what, just—“How much to get the two of us high?”

“Oh, an eighth should do you real nice if you haven’t been eating them as a steady thing and like built a tolerance. Twenty-five bucks will send you both around and back, guaranteed.”

And this is why certain people shouldn’t mess with these substances: “Better give me a hundred bucks’ worth,” I say.

It makes me sort of depressed to report that as we accomplish the exchange this man actually says, “Far out, dude.”

We now possess this baggie full of gnarled dried vegetation that definitely looks to be some sort of fungi. Back at my tent I dig out my canteen and prepare to split the stuff, whatever it is, with Joey, while he finds his own canteen so we can wash it down quick. And here is why I can’t permit myself even to try to coexist with these substances: I said I’d split it, but I only gave him about a quarter. Less than a quarter. Yeah. I never quite became a hippie. And I’ll never stop being a junkie.

For a half hour or so we sat on the earth between our two tents and watched the folks go by. In a copse of trees just uphill from us the Ohana group had started a drum circle and were slowly hypnotizing themselves with mad rhythm.

Joey revealed he did, in fact, eat these things once in a while and probably had a tolerance. He wasn’t sensing much effect.

“Oh,” I said.

In a few minutes he said, “Yeah, I’m definitely not getting off.”

I could only reply by saying, “Off.”

I was sitting on the ground with my back against a tree. My limbs and torso had filled up with a molten psychedelic lead and I couldn’t move. Objects became pimpled like cactuses. Ornately and methodically and intricately pimpled. Everything looked crafted, an inarticulate intention worked at every surface.

People walked by along the trail. Each carried a deeply private shameful secret, no, a joke they couldn’t tell anyone, yes, their heads raged almost unbearably with consciousness and their souls carried their bodies along.

“Those are some serious drums.”

Anything you say sounds like the understatement of the century. But to get hyperbolic at all would be to hint dreadfully at the truth that no hyperbole whatsoever is possible—that is, it’s hopelessly impossible to exaggerate the unprecedented impact of those drums. And the sinister, amused, helpless, defeated, worshipful, ecstatic, awed, snide, reeling, happy, criminal, resigned, insinuating tone of the message of those drums. Above all we don’t wish to make the grave error of hinting at the truth of those drums and then, perhaps, give way to panic. Panic at the ultimateness-panic at the fact that in those drums, and with those drums, and before those drums, and above all because of those drums, the world is ending. That one is one we don’t want to touch-the apocalypse all around us. These concepts are wound up inside the word serious like the rubber bands packed explosively inside a golf ball.

“Yeah, they sure are,” Joey says.

Who? What? Oh, my God, he’s talking about the drums!

Very nearly acknowledging the unspeakable! He’s a mischievous bastard and my best friend and the only other person in the universe.

Loving you!

According to the psychiatrists who have embarked together on a molecular exploration of what they like to to call “the three-pound universe” -the human brain-what’s happening right now is all about serotonin-5-hydroxytryptamine, or 5-HT for short, “the Mr. Big of neurotransmitters,” the chemical that regulates the flow of information through the neural system.

I read this article in Omni called “The Neuroscience of Transcendence” that explains the whole thing. Having ingested the hallucinogen psilocybin, quite a bit more than my share, I’ve stimulated the serotonin receptors and disrupted the brain’s delicate balancing act in cycling normal input messages from the exterior world-adding special effects.

At the same time, the messages outward to the motor cortex of the brain are disrupted by the same flood of sacred potent molecules, bombarding key serotonin receptors and sending signals unprovoked by any external stimulus. What’s happening in here seems to come from out there. The subjective quality underlying all of experience at last reveals that it belongs to everything. The mind inside becomes the mind all around.

Serotonin and the hallucinogens that act as serotonin agonists-like LSD, mescaline, DMT and psilocybio-also travel to the thalamus, a relay station for all sensory data heading for the cortex. There, conscious rationalizings, philosophizings and interpretations of imagery occur. The cortex of the brain now attaches meaning to the visions that bubble up from the limbic lobe-of burning bushes or feelings of floating union with nature. The flow of images is scripted and edited into a whole new kind of show.

EXACTLY!

YES! Bugs Bunny with a double-barreled twelve-gauge shoots you in the head with a miracle.

I watched helplessly as two beings encountered one another on the trail. Two figures really hard to credit with actuality. But they weren’t hallucinatory, just very formally and exotically got up as if for some sort of ceremony, covered in black designs and ornamental silver. They greeted one another and transacted. It was brief and wordless with many secret gestures, the most sinister transaction I’ve ever witnessed, the most private, the most deeply none of my business. Initiates of the utterly inscrutable. My eyesight too geometrically patterned to allow them faces. They had myths instead of heads.

That is very definitely it for me. I crawl into my tent. It’s four feet away but somehow a little bit farther off than the end of time. It’s dark and dosed and I’m safe from what’s out there but not from what’s in here-the impending cataclysm, the imploding immenseness, the jocular enormity.

It’s been between twenty-five minutes and twenty-five thousand years since I ate the mushrooms, and already we have the results of this experiment. The question was, now that a quarter century has passed since my last such chemical experience, now that my soul is awake, and I’ve grown from a criminal hedonist into a citizen of life with a belief in eternity, will a psychedelic journey help me spiritually? And the answer is yes; I believe such is possible; thanks; now how do you turn this stuff off?

Because what if the world ends, and Jesus comes down in a cloud, and I’m wrapped in a low-grade fireball all messed up on chemicals? Is the world ending? God looms outside the playroom. The revelation and the end of toys. The horrible possibility that I might have to deal with something.

And: ludicrously proliferating mental-cartoon sausages fat with a sly and monstrous significance-OH so significant and EVER so coy about just what they mean to impart. And the drums, the drums, the drums. Fifty thousand journeys to the moon and back in every beat.

Four hours later I succeed in operating the zipper on my sleeping bag: tantamount to conquering Everest. I got in and held on.

Sure was raining hard. Sure was looking bad. Sure was dark and twisted in the soul. Sure was wild in the mind. And the drums like ruthless neon, like busted candy.

Me and this sleeping bag! People, we are going places now!

And that strange lifting away of the illusion of discontinuity- I am not a story of eras and epochs, of beginnings and endings, deaths and rebirths, not “a route of occasions” as Alfred North Whitehead claimed-no. I’m the same person I was the day I was born. The one I was inside the womb. I am not my thoughts, not my mind, not my ideas of myself-I am the place and time through which parade those passing things.

After several hours I crawled out into the universe and took up my rightful position in outer space, lodged against the surface of this planet. It wasn’t raining rain, it was only raining starlight.

This musician friend of Joey’s from Austin, this guy named Jimmy G, sits down beside me with a magic-mushroom guitar and serenades me with his compositions until almost dawn. He’s about fifty maybe, white-haired, very skinny, with a variety of faint colors washing over him ceaselessly. It’s incomprehensible to me that a genius of this caliber, whose rhymes say everything there is to say and whose tunes sound sweeter and sadder and wilder and happier and more melodic than any others in history, should just live in Austin like a person, writing his songs. Songs about getting our hearts right, loving each other, getting along in peace, sharing the wealth, caring for our mother planet.

By then, all over the world, the drums have stopped. Teenage Ohanans in the tent across the trail make tea on a campfire without uttering a word amongst them. Nobody talks anywhere in the Ochoco Forest; it’s a time of meditation. Today is the Fourth of July, the focal hour of the Rainbow Family’s gathering. Despite all the partying, this is the day of the party. The idea is to enter a silence at dawn and meditate till noon. Then get real happy.

Joey and I walk around watching folks start the day without talking. The strange silence broken only by two dogs barking and one naked man raving as if drunk, really raving, feinting and charging at people like a bull, stumbling right through the fire-pit down by the Bartering Circle.

Noon sharp, the howling starts. The wild keening of human hippies emulating wolves. Minutes later, the drums. In the big meadow where the Circle gathers for meals everybody jumps up dancing, some naked, some dressed in clothes, others wearing mud. The sun burns on them as the crowd becomes a mob the size of a football field. A guy pours Gatorade from a jug into people’s upturned open mouths, another sprinkles the throng with a hose from a backpack full of water, like an exterminator’s outfit-he’s a sweatbuster. Higher and higher! I crash under a bush.

Just before sunset I wake up and get back among the Circle and encounter a definite palpable downturn in the vibes. There’s not enough food and not enough drugs. The party has scattered among the various camps, the drum circle that must have included a hundred or so wild percussionists mutters back and forth to itself from just a couple places hidden in the woods.

As the sunset reddens the west, black thunderheads form in the south: a lull, a dead spot, a return of the morning’s silence as the Rainbow Family watches a squall gathering, bunching itself together in the southern half of an otherwise clear ceiling.

Then a rainbow drops down through the pale sky. The sight of it, a perfect multicolored quarter-circle, calls up a round of howling from everywhere at once that grows and doesn’t stop, and the drumming starts from every direction. Then it’s a double rainbow, and then a triple, and the drums and howls can’t be compared to anything I’ve ever heard, it’s a Rainbow Sign from Above-Loving you!-then a monster light show with the thunderheads gone crimson in the opposing sunset, the three rainbows, and now forked lightning and profound, invincible thunder, every crooked white veiny bolt and giant peal answered by a wild ten-thousand-voiced ululation-a conversation with the Spirit of All at the Divine Fourth of July Show! Farfuckin out! The Great MotherFather Spirit Goddess Dude is a hippie!

And this is why a certain type mustn’t mess with magic potions: I’m thinking, all through this spectacle, that I should have saved a couple buttons for today, I should be high to dig this. Forgetting how I dug the starlight last night by zooming around somebody’s immense black mind in my sleeping bag and almost never witnessing the sky.

But after the rainbows and the storm the night comes down and we get just a little flashback: I dose my eyes and remember that first ride on White Owlsley’s acid, remember surfacing behind a steering wheel behind which I’d apparently been sitting for some hours, trying to figure out what to do with it; and there was Joey, and Carter B, and Bobby Z, the four of us coming back to the barest fringes of Earth, a place we’d never afterward be able to take quite so seriously because we’d seen it obliterated, finding each other in this place now-none of us having ever taken acid before or even really talked to anybody about it, four teenage beatnik aspirants returned from an absurd odyssey for which none of us had been the slightest bit prepared and which we felt we’d just barely survived-remember watching Joey and Carter disappear into an apartment building and remember heading with Bobby, somehow traveling through streets like rivers behind this steering wheel-five hundred mikes of White Owsley’s!-remember steering magnificently through Alexandria, Virginia, in a gigantic teacup that once had been a Chevrolet under streetlights with heads like glittering brittle dandelions, remember letting it park itself and remember floating into a building and down the halls of the Fort Ward Towers apartments, down the complicated curvature of the halls, and finding, at the end of the palatial mazes, finding-Mom! Mom in her robe and slippers! Her curlers from Mars! Mom from another species! Mom who said, It’s five in the morning! I nearly called the police! WHERE have you BEEN, and remember turning to Bobby Z, who’s dead of AIDS, at his funeral I threw din onto his coffin while his sister, my old high-school sweetheart, keened and screamed, turned to Bobby Z and said, Where have we been?-and the question astonished and baffled and shocked him too, and we both said, Where have we been? WHERE HAVE WE BEEN?

Bobby, them drums are riding themselves up to the very limit and right on through like it was nothing. Where where where have we been?

Where did we go?