#Oliver Pathos

[sammywolfgirl]

Oh btw lawyer oc in connection to that ramble post.

As stated I don’t have a first name for him yet but I feel like the last name would be Pathos.

Serious boy with chronic baby face

Design is still a wip but I feel like green would be a good suit color for him? Also blonde he’s probably blonde

Edit- he has been named! it’s Oliver Pathos

[d-criss-news]

See an exclusive first look at Darren Criss’ return to Broadway in Maybe Happy Ending

The "Glee" actor stars as a Helperbot named Oliver, opposite Helen J. Shen making their Broadway debut as Claire.

There’s nothing new about an awkward meet-cute turning into a love story… But what if that love story is between two robots?

That’s the question posed by Maybe Happy Ending, a new musical coming to Broadway this fall, starring Emmy-winning Glee and The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story actor Darren Criss. The show also marks the Broadway debut of Helen J. Shen (The Lonely Few) and Dez Duron (The Voice). Featuring a book by Will Aronson and Hue Park, with music by Aronson and lyrics by Park, Maybe Happy Ending is helmed by Tony Award winner Michael Arden (Parade, Once on This Island), with scenic design by Dane Laffrey (A Christmas Carol).

Ahead of its debut, Entertainment Weekly has your exclusive first listen to the show, with a music video of Criss and Chen’s emotional duet, "When You’re in Love.”

Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen in "Maybe Happy Ending". MAYBE HAPPY ENDING THE MUSICAL/YOUTUBE

The musical — a big hit in its native South Korea, winning six 2016 Korean Musical Awards and the Richard Rodgers Production Award for the English-language version — made its American debut at Atlanta’s Alliance theater in 2019. Now the show is coming to the Great White Way with Criss and Shen as Oliver and Claire, two outcast HelperBots whose initial awkward encounter evolves into an unexpected relationship.

“There's a real pathos that kind of snuck up on me with these two,” Criss told EW of the HelperBot romance. “You think, 'Oh, cute, like androids falling in love, that sounds sweet.' But there's a lot more to that when you start to examine what it is to not only love something or someone, but the inexorable, unavoidable back end of love, which is loss.” Oliver is living the simple life of an outdated HelperBot when the story begins, tending to plants and listening to jazz in his one-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Seoul. Then Claire comes by to borrow a charger, and changes everything. The video finds the HelperBots united by emotion, yet far apart as they process the swirling feelings of being in love for the first time. “When you’re in love, you’re never satisfied,” they lament. “The thing you want is always out of reach.”

By the end, they’re piecing together both the joys and painful realities of their newfound feelings. They sing, “Now I’m hoping that you feel all the things I feel / Wishing that you want me to sit beside you /Wanting now to learn all the things you are / Waiting for a chance to invite you in my heart.” If the prospect of seeing two bots find love isn’t enticing enough, Criss jokes that empathizing with the characters will at least give audiences a leg up in the AI apocalypse. “If there's any incentive to come see the show — other than a wonderful theatrical experience with a lot of beautiful universal themes and all that great stuff and fantastic music, and hopefully good performances — if not that, it's at least to soften the punishment and wrath of the AI takeover,” he laughed. Maybe Happy Ending begins previews at the Belasco Theatre on Wednesday, September 18. Tickets will go on sale to the general public beginning on Thursday, June 6 at 10AM.

Watch the "When You're In Love" music video above and read more of Criss' thoughts on the HelperBot romance below.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Can you start by telling me a little bit about Oliver and what's at the core of this character for you? Well, I'll tell you what, this is the first time I'm ever really doing any kind of talking about a show that I haven't had much familiarity with yet. And I'm not saying that to avoid talking about it so much as to highlight the unique nature of my involvement in this show because, at least if we're talking about the theater, specifically Broadway Theater, every show that I've ever done came with something of a legacy and was a show that I would have been very familiar with, and I think audiences at large, for the most part would've had a history with it.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was my Broadway debut, massively popular, classic Broadway show, people knew it. Second one was, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, I grew up as a teenager loving that show. And then the revival of American Buffalo, that's now a standard contemporary American classic and studied that in drama school and yada yada yada. So when talking about the show, I had a really good handle because the show had lived with me for most of my life. [Maybe Happy Ending] is a brand new show, which is wildly exciting. But I have yet to figure out that answer. I can tell you what his core is on paper, which is that Oliver is a Helperbot, something like a hundred years in the future where our technology helpers — in the way that we have our Alexas, and our Siris, and our digital systems, and our smart assistants — have evolved into more humanoid representations. He is a Model 3 in the world of Model 5's and is very much outdated, and kind of running the last of his powered up life in the world that we're watching him and coming to grips with the things that left him behind.

We got a little taste of it in the music video, but what do you think it is about the Oliver and Claire relationship that people will respond to? Or what did you respond to? There's nothing like being able to look at ourselves by looking through the eyes of things that aren't us. I find the most I'm ever moved about the human experience comes from animated films where you have non-human characters trying to figure out human emotions. It's a really great way for audiences to subconsciously look at their own experience objectively. It's funny that it takes inhuman characters to examine humanity in a way that feels somehow accessible. If you see yourself up there, it maybe hits too close to home. But you might think about it a little differently if you're suddenly looking at things through the objective lens of a true outsider — be it a cartoon fox or a mermaid wanting to be human.

So having said that, this is a story about two HelperBots, two robots “falling in love." Of course, they're not human, so they can't physically, literally intimately actually fall in love, but they have to sort of figure out what that means by way of how they've experienced human beings themselves, by cues they've gotten from their own owners and from the world around them. And when you start examining things like love, things like loss through the eyes of non-humanoid things that are trying to computationally analyze and synthesize those things, you sort of start to look at them in a different way. There are many things about the show — the premise was very interesting, and I think the design is exquisite, it's a wonderful theatrical experience. Getting to work with a longtime friend, Michael Arden is such a joy, and there's so many things about that that make this appealing to me. And of course the music is fun, and it's cute, and funny, and charming. But there's a real pathos that kind of snuck up on me with these two. You think, 'Oh, cute, like androids falling in love, that sounds sweet.' But there's a lot more to that when you start to examine what it is to not only love something or someone, but the inexorable, unavoidable back end of love, which is loss. And how do we deal with that? How and why do human beings willingly enter this contract if we know that on the other side of it, there is something that will hurt and that can hurt because love does come with loss, whether it's loss of self, loss of wholeness.

And this show really shows a really beautiful balance of these beings trying to suss out thousands of years of human meditation — of all the hundred thousand songs and poems and stories that have tried to help us understand this balance of love and loss, and the highs and the lows of it are pretty profound. er. In “When You’re In Love” there's the sentiment that being in love is the loneliest you can be. Is that something that you immediately connected with, or was that surprising?

I think that song's very interesting because it's them putting the pieces together. Many lines in the song that talk about how being loved does just constantly leave you with a sense of longing. Which I think goes back into the main thesis, which is love in many ways is loss. They kind of coexist in this yin-yang. It's just one's much more fun and more accessible to talk about, but they kind of come hand in hand. Again, the systematic exploration of all of the ones and zeros of what love is — it's a lot of ones, but it is also a lot of zeros, and one of those things is being lonely and the feeling of not being whole without a certain thing. Which I think is a really good connector to what this show talks about, which is the function of the things in our life that we lose. It is funny that we are getting closer and closer to the realities of what this show presents and suggests. The idea that Siri could be a person in a hundred years isn't absurd, it's not a crazy idea. Even talking about things like robots or artificial intelligence, it's an immediate thing that is part of the cultural fabric and a continual discussion about how and where and why it's going to be part of our life.

But even without talking about those sort of more sci-fi leaning things, technology is in many ways, like people in our life. I mean, people treat their phones like babies. We have attachments to our phones and the way that we need them in our lives and the way we care for them and the reliance we have on them. And the idea of shelf life and things being outdated, we're pretty comfortable with. It's more comprehensible with tech and objects. But it's funny that we have this cognitive dissonance between that and the idea of things being outdated and out of its prime is harder to grasp and a harder pill to swallow with people, and it's a harder journey to go on with people. But what happens when our objects become closer in likeness and experience to people? How are we going to wrap our brains around that and how will they wrap their brains or their programming around that? And how will they feel? Will they feel at all? How will they feel about their impermanence as it relates to ours and vice versa? So there's a lot of really, really nice questions being asked in this show.

Are you finding that it's changing your relationship to Siri and Alexa and your technology? As of now, absolutely not. Well, maybe in the future. Maybe. I'll bite my tongue… In a few years, who knows? She's listening. I'll be nice to you Siri, I promise. As long as you're nice to me when you decide to take over the planet. Well, after you've played a Helperbot, you've got an in. Hopefully that'll soften the AI takeover, they'll let us loose. If there's any incentive to come see the show — other than a wonderful theatrical experience with a lot of beautiful universal themes and all that great stuff and fantastic music, and hopefully good performances — if not that, it's at least to soften the punishment and wrath of the AI takeover. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

[sunflowerdigs]

Y'all, the cinematography of the shooting scene went so hard. I fear we aren't ready for another Buddie Disaster Event with that level of pathos and drama. Especially if they're pining after each other in canon at that point, so Ryan and Oliver don't have to hold back even a little? We're all gonna die with them in that car.

[rei-ismyname]

1602 X-Men

After some Neil Gaiman time travel nonsense centred around Steve Rogers posing as a white native American (sigh) we get to meet the X-Men of this time.

Dreams of the Danger Room, subtle.

Carlos Javier runs a private school that's secretly for Witchbreed. Here's the O5, with Jean pulling a Sweet Polly Oliver. Scottish James refers to King James I, who burns mutants at the stake (and Doc Strange, bc he's a dick.) He's also revealed to be Wolverine. All the characterisation is pretty thin - the size of the cast leading to heavy Flanderisation. Scott is a gruff dick, Warren is a gay himbo, Chuck is a dreamer and pragmatist, Bobby and Jean are more background characters. Oh and Hank is verbose.

Magneto is the Grand Inquisitor with a really dubious plan to throw non-passing mutants under the bus. In this he's aided by Sister Wanda and Brother Petros. The Grand Inquisitor basically just sucks, a mega fanatic, which is a shame. Minimal pathos there.

We meet Werner first as he's about to be burnt alive for having wings. Not looking good for him.

Never fear, the X-Men roll in and fuck their shit up. Mags can't stop them without outing himself.

Scott blows up the troublesome wall by lifting his blindfold. BOOM!

They benefit heavily from Chuck's wealth and influence here too. Jean propels the boat with her mind.

It seems Chuck will moralise at anyone in any time period, telling Nick Fury to stop smoking. Curiously, Logan is anti tobacco in 1602, but he's also the King of Scotland and a Protestant.

Yep, Mags is a real dick. Although, he's working with Wanda and Pietro and he's never treated them very well. He is explicitly Jewish, though he hides that as well.

The Pope sends some chumps to kill the Grand Inquisitor (as a CK2 and history enthusiast, very accurate) but sadly for them their knives are metal. Looks like the jig is up. Honestly I don't really like this mini and it's spinoffs very much, but I do like the X-Men. I read it so you don't have to.

[justforbooks]

Shelley Duvall

Film actor who starred in The Shining and made seven films with Robert Altman

Toothpick-thin with bingo-ball eyes, a Modigliani face and a tremulous, broken-doll voice, Shelley Duvall, who has died aged 75, would have been an unforgettable screen personality at any point in history. That she began acting in the 1970s, when the unorthodox and the eccentric enjoyed a brief window of opportunity in US cinema, was fortunate. Falling into the orbit of the maverick director Robert Altman was even luckier.

Altman said she could “swing all sides of the pendulum: charming, silly, sophisticated, pathetic – even beautiful”. She became part of his unofficial repertory company, appearing in seven of his films.

Her most widely seen performance was for Stanley Kubrick in his adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining (1980). She played Wendy Torrance, the terrorised wife of a psychotic aspiring novelist (Jack Nicholson). Almost as famous as the film itself was the emotional battering she took on set under the director’s regime of relentless, punishing takes – 127 of them in total for the scene in which Wendy is pursued by her taunting husband up a vast staircase, limply swinging a baseball bat in his general direction.

“It was gruelling – six days a week, 12- to 16-hour days, half an hour off for lunch, for a year and one month,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1991. “The role demanded that I cry for, whew, at least nine of those months. Jack had to be angry all the time, and I had to be in hysterics all the time. It was very upsetting.”

The film tips into irony and even outright comedy at times, but one shot of Duvall’s pink, frazzled, tear-stained face is all it takes to be reminded that the stakes were high for her at least.

It was Altman, though, who tapped into her complexities, promoted her adoringly and helped extend her range. In the same year as The Shining, for instance, audiences saw her inhabit a character who seemed to come from another planet entirely.

Duvall’s physiognomy and physicality made her the ideal choice to play the gawky string-bean Olive Oyl in Altman’s delirious live-action musical Popeye. The director, who called her casting “a deal-breaker” when studio executives suggested hiring the Saturday Night Live star Gilda Radner instead, reflected that “nobody else could have played Olive Oyl like Shelley. Nobody else looks like that.”

But it was Duvall’s bottomless empathy that helped make this cartoon character far from cartoonish. Her mastery of slapstick, as well as the pathos in her delicate, wobbly rendition of Harry Nilsson’s song He Needs Me, resulted in a performance of Chaplinesque sublimity.

Altman first met her when he was casting the wacky Brewster McCloud (1970). Associates of his had run into Duvall at a party in Houston, which she was throwing to sell paintings by Bernard Sampson, who was soon to become her husband.

The director called her in for a meeting, and thought she was feigning bewilderment when she seemed not to understand why she was there. He asked her to read for him. “What’s that mean?” she said.

“She had these eyelashes painted on her face, weighed about four pounds,” he recalled. “I decided to shoot a test, so I took her out in the park and put a camera on her and just asked her questions. I was really quite mean to her, as I thought she was an actress. But she wasn’t kidding; that was her. She was a truthful, untrained person.”

The producer Lou Adler, who was also at that meeting, noted that she “looked like a flower”, and said: “She had the most amazing amount of energy I’d ever seen in anyone.”

Altman cast her as a Houston Astrodome guide who sleeps with and subsequently betrays the film’s title character, a young dreamer yearning to fly. A small part as a mail-order bride followed in the elegiac western McCabe & Mrs Miller (1971). Duvall was taken under the wing of that picture’s star, Julie Christie, who, Altman said, “taught her a lot”.

It was on the Depression-era crime drama Thieves Like Us (1974) that Duvall first proved that she was more than just an unusual face. Adapted from the same Edward Anderson novel that inspired Nicholas Ray’s 1948 classic They Live By Night, it starred Duvall as Keechie, the unwitting moll of a goofy amateur gangster (Keith Carradine).

She was raw and uninhibited, her eyes crowded with love-hearts, her nerve endings seemingly exposed. The critic Pauline Kael fell hard for her: “She melts indifference,” Kael wrote. “You’re unable to repress your response; you go right to her in delight, saying ‘I’m yours’… she seems able to be herself on the screen in a way that nobody has ever been before … Her charm appears to be totally without affectation.”

Lily Tomlin, who starred with her in Altman’s next film, Nashville (1975), where Duvall played a country music groupie, called her work in Thieves Like Us “transcendent. She’s sitting on the porch drinking a Coke in a swing, and Keith Carradine is coming on to her, and she’s so innocent. The way she played that – so sweet and funny and heartbreaking. It just killed me.”

She had a minor role as the wife of President Grover Cleveland in Altman’s irreverent western Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976). But it was in his woozy psychological drama 3 Women (1977) that she did her most layered and mysterious work. She plays Millie Lammoreaux, a bossy-boots carer at a Palm Springs rehabilitation facility for elderly people. Taking the innocent Pinky (Sissy Spacek) under her wing as co-worker and room-mate, Millie is a picture of delusion, fancying herself a gal-about-town and the belle of the ball. A narrative fracture midway through the film heralds an abrupt reversal that puts Millie in the submissive role.

Duvall, who wrote extensive diary entries, letters and meal recipes in character as preparation, won the best actress prize at the Cannes film festival. It was this performance, too, that inspired Kubrick to cast her in The Shining. “I like the way you cry,” he said.

She was born in Fort Worth, Texas, to Bobbie Ruth Crawford (nee Massengale), who worked in real estate, and Robert Duvall, who was a cattle auctioneer before working as an insurance salesman. The family moved around constantly during Shelley’s early years; by the time they finally settled in their first house in Houston, the five-year-old was so used to living in hotels that she asked her mother where the elevator was.

Her father trained as a criminal lawyer and eventually became a judge. Shelley was educated at Waltrip high school where she showed an interest in performing at an early age, but once fled the stage during a talent contest after forgetting her lines. She later heard her parents outside her bedroom door, speculating that she may not be talented after all.

“That was definitely a turning point in my life,” she said. “I guess that might have inspired me to be an overachiever. I never felt the need to prove myself out of revenge; I wanted to contribute something, to make my life count.”

She pursued an interest in science at South Texas Junior College, but dropped out after a fellow student held a vivisected monkey close to her face.

Most of her first decade as an actor was dominated by her work with Altman, although she also made the occasional television appearance, including the lead role in Joan Micklin Silver’s adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1976).

In Annie Hall (1977), she had a memorable bit-part as a vacuous rock journalist who describes sex with Woody Allen’s character as “a Kafka-esque experience”. She was bags of fun in Terry Gilliam’s century-hopping comedy-adventure Time Bandits (1981), in which she and Michael Palin formed a daft double-act playing two pairs of upper-class twits in different centuries.

She also became known to a new generation as the creator and host of Faerie Tale Theatre, which ran from 1982 to 1987. The series reinterpreted classic stories, helped popularise cable television, and featured performers such as Joan Collins, Carrie Fisher, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, Vanessa Redgrave and Christopher Reeve; among the directors Duvall hired were Tim Burton, Francis Ford Coppola, Roger Vadim and Eric Idle. As well as introducing each episode, she appeared in a handful of roles, including Rapunzel opposite Jeff Bridges as the Prince and Gena Rowlands as the Witch.

The show was the first in a string of projects for children – including albums, further series and the 1990 TV special Mother Goose Rock’n’Rhyme – which were all originated by her.

She starred in Burton’s morbidly inventive short film Frankenweenie (1984), which put a canine spin on Mary Shelley, and was a joyful addition to Roxanne (1987), Steve Martin’s comic update of Cyrano de Bergerac, in which she played the hero’s confidante.

She had despairingly little to do in Suburban Commando (1991), a vehicle for the wrestler Hulk Hogan, but later appeared in Steven Soderbergh’s thriller The Underneath (1995), Jane Campion’s film of Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady (1996) and the Canadian avant-gardist Guy Maddin’s Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997).

After that, there were no roles of note, and no screen credits whatsoever between the comedy Manna from Heaven (2002) and the horror film The Forest Hills (2023).

It was during this two-decade gap that articles on the theme of “Where Is She Now?” surfaced periodically. Curiosity was replaced by pity and horror after her appearance in 2016 looking confused and bedraggled on the daytime talk show Dr Phil. The episode, widely regarded as exploitative, was titled A Hollywood Star’s Descent Into Mental Illness: Saving The Shining’s Shelley Duvall. She was heard claiming to have received messages from her late Popeye co-star Robin Williams. She said: “I’m very sick. I need help.”

It was true that she had serious problems, including diabetes and mental health issues. In the absence of more concrete explanations, rumours that her fragile state could be blamed on The Shining began to fill the vacuum. But a New York Times profile from earlier this year made it plain that Kubrick had nothing to do with it, and that a likelier explanation for her protracted disappearance and decline was a series of shocks and traumas including a 1994 earthquake that had damaged her home in Los Angeles, and the pressure of having to return to Texas to care for one of her three brothers, who was ill.

She is survived by the musician Dan Gilroy, her partner of more than 30 years. Her marriage to Sampson ended in divorce in 1974.

🔔 Shelley Alexis Duvall, actor, born 7 July 1949; died 11 July 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[lina-vas-dom]

Не хочется пафосных хитросплетений: Оливковых сумерек, бронзовых скул… А плыть бы тихонько бревном по течению, Туда, где к полуночи месяц сутул. Там звёзды купаются в омутах чертовых, Там птицы ночами не спят, И в душах, до тёплого света расстёгнутых, О чем -то с улыбкой молчат… /Aksutta

I don't want any pathos and intricacies: Olive twilight, bronze cheekbones. I'd like to float quietly down the stream, Where the month is slouching at midnight. Where the stars swim in the bloody pools, Where the birds don't sleep at night, And in souls unbuttoned to the warm light, They are silent about something with a smile… /Aksutta

[ladyluscinia]

Ok yeah continuing thoughts re: that gifset of Sam and Dean's conversation in 1x16 Shadow

Like. Ok, so the obvious takeaway is that Dean's being unreasonable here. And he is! Because S1 Dean is a scared little kid who literally just wants his family to all live together and not fight because he's cripplingly lonely and starved for affection and that's not a realistic goal because they aren't kids anymore and they can't just mentally stay kids until John remembers how to be a dad and gives Dean a real childhood. Yeah. Objectively that is unreasonable no matter how sympathetic.

Also unreasonable because Sam's bouts of John apologism up until now have been gestures toward forgiveness for their childhood, NOT a desire to actually go back to following John as patriarch (...and on a meta level it's the spn writers just never knowing how abusive they wanted John to have been, and therefore unable to ever have Sam reckon with whether he would be better off breaking from John entirely). So, yeah, obviously Sam doesn't want to go back to the way things were. That's a good and healthy boundary for him to draw while speculating "life after demon", and shutting down Dean on the idea that he's gonna fall back in line as a member of John's three man army makes sense.

But then Sam's half of the conversation feels like a good chunk of it is just missing.

Like he asks for Dean's problem, gets the teary eyed confession of Dean's feelings, and then offers absolutely nothing substantial back??? There's a really obvious space between "I'm going back to school" and "I'm not gonna live this life forever" and "you're gonna have to let me go my own way" where it would make sense for some sort of indication that he's not looking for Stanford excommunication Round 2 - but he doesn't actually say that. No hint of reassurance that he'd even call sometimes. Keep in touch. Want to grab a beer if Dean was in town. And Dean's mini-breakdown has that period of zero-contact at the forefront of your mind, so it's obvious what two extremes he's thinking of.

Like this whole thing just feels way colder than I suspect anyone would be trying to make Sam come across as right now, and I'm trying to put my finger on why.

Honestly my best theory at the moment is that it's an artifact of Kripke's intense S1 Main Character Syndrome around Sam? Like in the Main Plot™ episodes he writes Dean becomes way more of a caricature of Kripke's weird masculinity ideas + a foil for Sam and less of a character of his own (this is present in Home, for example), and therefore Sam vaguely saying "we're family" like. Covers it? That counts as the mature middle ground or olive branch or whatever that is contrasting Dean's stuck-in-the-past unreasonableness without needing to go into whether Dean actually feels reached out to?

But no one passed that memo on to Jackles especially so the audience is watching teary eyed Dean (who they just watched a few episodes ago go through the immense pathos that is Faith) and he's wrestling with the idea of his brother leaving for good after they just reconnected and he's getting emotionally stonewalled by conspicuous silence

[anonymousewrites]

Special (Because I'm Bored): What My MCs would think of One Another

Key:

Red=Adolescent Antichrist MC

Ginger=Clan of Three MC

Gold=Logos and Pathos MC

Green=There's a Will; There's a Way MC

Blue=Portal to My Heart MC

Azure=Burden of Truth MC

Purple=A Study of the Heart and Brain MC

Pink=A Not-So-Disastrous Romance MC

Ebony=A Good Day for Dead MC

Silver=Of Two Worlds MC

Felis=One Hell of a Love MC

Briar=Nature of the Human Soul MC

Red

Ginger: Would like their fighting spirit but not their willingness to kill. Teenage rage against society would make them bond, though. Anarchy. Both avoid responsibility from God/Mandalores of old–don’t want to be Chosen Ones, both have weird dads

Gold: Would like how kind they are and how good they are to others

Green: 10/10 would love how motherly Green is to others and would search for it

Blue: Red would love her sarcasm and rebellious attitude. Also, they would bond over being surrounded by idiots they have to clean up messes for

Azure: Red would understand Azure’s desire to have a family and purpose but wouldn’t understand their devotion to a god or serving another

Purple: Red gets having a terrible biological parent and having a great adopted one. Red would be impressed by how smart Purple is

Pink: Would think they’re too soft for the world but would like their friendliness since it reminds Red of Olive

Ebony: Red would like Ebony’s abilities and relate to being nervous about them. Queerness bonds them. Alternative style. They are like one another’s love interests (Red is like Wednesday in sarcasm and intensity, Ebony and Em are both protective and helpful to others and more outgoing)

Silver: Silver’s willingness to kill would put Red off, but they would respect her ferocity when it comes to protecting her friends and looking for a place in a world that doesn’t want her (like being the Antichrist)

Felis: Wouldn’t like Felis’s manipulation of others but would relate to the world not wanting them to be queer and their gender

Briar: Would 100% trade jokes about Hell and God and all that, would relate to Briar’s religious trauma and respect their desire to become stronger

Ginger

Red: Again, both have found families, Ginger would really respect Red’s ability to fight with words while they rely on phasers

Gold: Wouldn’t get the whole “avoiding fighting” thing but would be reminded of the Armorer’s calm demeanor and focus on what must be done versus what could be done, would like them

Green: Confused about not killing, ever. Thinks that’s silly in a dangerous world. However, would probably like her overall

Blue: Likes rebellion, likes Blue, would disapprove in choice of partner

Azure: Doesn’t understand how their brain works but respects their desire to find their place in the world like them

Purple: Thinks Purple should use their heart a bit more and not be so focused on logic all the time

Pink: Thinks they’re naive to how dangerous the world is but wishes they could be like that

Ebony: Likes their optimism in the face of danger, respects their ability to step up and fight when necessary

Silver: Ginger respects that Silver is able to hide their anger at society but still fights for what’s right

Felis: No. Just no. Ginger would hate how Felis uses others

Briar: Ginger would love Briar’s abilities since they were a farmer, would want to kick Briar’s ass into gear about getting over religion's hold on them

Gold

Red: Would disapprove of their constant snark in the face of danger, but would fondly see some of Bones in them

Ginger: Would worry for how much a teenager feels the need to fight, would avoid the amount of anger that still burns around them until Ginger starts to get a hold of it at the end of Book 3, Gold would really respect Ginger’s decision to break the darksaber so their new home couldn’t be harmed

Green: Besties, literally. Green can sing, Gold can dance. Both are kind and the parents of their idiot friends, both dislike violence

Blue: Would see Bones’s snark, would disapprove in their choice of partner since too much like Khan in the beginning, but overall would like Blue

Azure: Would be able to read them due to practice with Spock (autism), would want to protect them and guide them

Purple: Would fondly see them as a mini Spock with a little more meanness (Spock and Bones lovechild)

Pink: Loves the kid since so bright and happy and warm with good, positive emotions. Reminds them of Kirk

Ebony: Would love their brightness in the face of adversity due to people not liking their parentage

Silver: Would want to help them with the emotions they don’t understand

Felis: …The really nice, empathic one who seeks to understand and change people for the better versus the mean, manipulative one who seeks to destroy those who do not approve of them? Yeah, not getting along

Briar: Huge hug to them, poor kid

Green

Red: Would help with powers since can’t control the, would want to make sure they don’t have to fight since shouldn’t as a kid

Ginger: Dislikes how easily they kill but respects natural ability to lead and willingness to fight for family

Gold: Again, besties. They would bond over their shared experiences, the way people think they shouldn’t be dating their partners (empath and Vulcan, unwilling to kill and ex-Mafia member), and they’ve both got hearts of gold

Blue: Green would just see Akira with a different body. Slightly unhinged partner? Check. Sass? Check. Powers? Check. Yeah, Green would immediately be fond

Azure: Would be reminded of Kyouka and how lost she was without Port Mafia in how Azure struggles to find themself after Ma’at, instantly protective older-sibling mode activated

Purple: Sees Dazai’s cold, calculating personality, worried over how emotionless they are at times

Pink: Adorable. Loves them. This is what a kid should get to be–happy and free from worry other than the basic teenager angst. Would bake and read with them

Ebony: They’re both cheerful, nice, friendly people, so Green would instantly like them

Silver: Dislikes her willingness to kill but would see Akira’s desire to have a place after her dad abandoned her and would empathize

Felis: Sees a bit of Akira’s ability to use others to her advantage, especially in the looks department, but wouldn’t trust them

Briar: Again, Green just wants to wrap this poor child in a giant hug for being put through so much

Blue

Red: Their sass would have legendary battles, Blue would be absolutely delighted by them and their ability to handle idiots around them. Would 100% give them a bunch of blessings once she’s a god

Ginger: Take down the establishment, hell yeah. Blue would applaud them for running into danger instead of doing literally anything to stop them

Gold: Wouldn’t get the whole golden-heart thing Gold has going on but would respect them once she sees that Gold doesn’t stand for injustice

Green: Doesn’t get why she doesn’t kill but respects that she has boundaries, definitely likes Green’s boyfriend since he’s sassy, loves Green’s intelligence

Azure: (Blue and Azure are not variants of each other, btw. They exist in the same universe and since they are both (Y/N)s, they would technically just be people with the same name, which would interest Blue) Has probably seen Azure through her ability to see all timelines and universes at once, definitely is rooting for Azure, probably wishes they had a little more sass and through a god’s control off more, definitely laughed about the irony of Loki being a god of lies and this kid not being able to lie

Purple: Doesn’t get the whole “logical actions” stuff since Blue likes to wing it, would like their cunning

Pink: Would be fond of Pink because they’re a sweetheart but wouldn’t be able to relate to them much

Ebony: They can bond over gods and their antics, Blue would like Ebony’s optimism and quips in fights

Silver: Loves her fighting spirit but wouldn’t be a fan of her avoidance of just letting go and going ham with powers (which does change)

Felis: These two would get along. They both have morally grey outlooks on the world and morally grey partners, they’re both queer, and they both have extraordinary power. They would sass one another (and probably flirt with each other). Also, saying “fuck you” to gods and oppressive powers is their thing

Briar: Would tell Briar to get off their ass and kill some more people for wronging them (would enable their demonic side)

Azure

Red: Would be nervous of how forward and sarcastic Red is but would want to be more like that since they have a good friend group, would relate to having a complicated found family. Azure would look up to Red a lot

Ginger: Sees Marc in Ginger since both ferocious and willing to fight, would be nervous about how aggressive Ginger is at times, would also wish they had the same purpose Ginger has since they know what they’re aiming for and have a secure family that they know is family

Gold: Would like how calm and stable Gold is, would be glad Gold can read how they feel since they don’t express it the best

Green: Would, again, like how kind and motherly Green is, would feel comfortable having her to talk to about how they feel and needing direction

Blue: (Blue and Azure are not variants of each other, btw. They exist in the same universe and since they are both (Y/N)s, they would technically just be people with the same name, which would interest Blue) Would be unsure of Blue at first since she’s a god and Azure has been used by the gods, but once they realize Blue is very much into freedom, they’d like her and would honestly go to her as a god if they needed to speak to one

Purple: Point blank autism radar would bond them immediately. Sure, Azure has more of the “I don’t understand social cues but think that makes me weird” while Purple is more of the “I don’t understand social cues but I hate them anyways” flavor, but they both have special interests (Egyptian mythology versus crime) and they’d really easily ramble to one another. Also, they’d bond over weird father figures. Azure would feel super comfortable talking to Purple because they have a similar outlook on the world

Pink: Would understand how Pink is so cheerful and expresses everything so vibrantly but would like to sit and listen to them ramble happily while they bake. Azure needs a friend like them

Ebony: Would be reminded of Steven’s kindness and warmness and like them pretty quickly, would be a bit intimidated that Ebony is the child of a god

Silver: Autism over not understand social cues is once again clicking, but Azure would be intimidated and skittish around Silver’s more intense battles and willingness to really battle people with all her effort

Felis: Too much manipulation like the gods, makes them nervous and skittish, would admire how much Felis just acts like themself without a care for others’ perception of them

Briar: Would bond over mistreatment from gods/heavens and all that, would relate to wanting more from their life than what they had (especially family)

Purple

Red: Dislikes how emotional they can be but respects that they handle bad situations well

Ginger: Again, doesn’t understand constantly acting on emotion, but once they see Ginger can lead and speak logically, too, (Mandalore chosen one stuff), they respect them

Gold: Doesn’t understand empathy being so helpless since prefers to be objective but respects them because they prove they are intelligent and can solve problems through logic and their heart

Green: Likes how kind Green is and how hard she works to protect her family like they want to

Blue: Likes how quickly Blue faces up against danger but disapproves of not having a plan

Azure: Autism bonding, likes how they see the world like they do, relates to their search for their own place since Purple fights to be detective and Azure looking for purpose

Pink: Thinks they’re too optimistic and not realistic enough but likes how observant they are

Ebony: Likes their strength and the way they respect other ways of thinking/neurodivergent thinking

Silver: Understand her lack of emotion but doesn’t understand why she wants to feel things more, likes how much she fights for her family

Felis: Respects their fight to be respected but doesn’t trust them since clearly uses others, respects their intelligence and cunning, both clever

Briar: Would be way too willing to give Briar tips on how to pick out people’s weaknesses so that they can get out of the control of others and not be weak

Pink

Red: Their constant denial of friendship and positive feelings reminds them of Saiki, they’d like how much Red tries to help people

Ginger: Unsure of how much Ginger fights but respects that it’s for family and friends and to help those who are people oppressed and hurt

Gold: Really loves their kindness and gentleness. They are more bubbly than Gold so they appreciate a calm approach to things and look up to them

Green: Again, loves the calm energy she brings while still having a fierce protectiveness. Pink would be like her if they had powers

Blue: Not sassy themself so unsure how to approach that but would really enjoy joking around with Blue

Azure: Would encourage them to come out of their shell and be more confident in their feelings and who they are instead of thinking they need to act a certain way to be respected, overall would like them and want to be their friend

Purple: Doesn’t understand the constant logic and desire to have less emotions but likes the way they help people while saying its just stimulating (reminds them of Saiki)

Ebony: They are both cheerful so they’d like Ebony and how kind and helpful they are. They’d see a lot of similarities and bond over it

Silver: Not a bit fan of Silver’s ability to kill and fight but wants to help her feel better in her place in the world

Felis: Wouldn’t like their ability to just let people get hurt and kill people without a care in the world so wouldn’t like them

Briar: Would feel bad for all they’ve gone through and try to help them build their self-confidence

Ebony

Red: Would like their sass and find it hilarious, would totally like going on an adventure with them (even if Ebony would be one of the idiots Red deals with)

Ginger: Both have a fierce desire to protect others, so they’d like each other, even if one is more aggressive than the other

Gold: Loves their calmness and kindness and would really look up to them as a good example of using abilities for good

Green: Would really respect her decision to not kill and see her kindness as a good thing to strive for

Blue: Would love to discuss different gods with her and make jokes about them since they have all the family drama from the Greek side and Blue has the Norse side, also, they’re both chaotic

Azure: Would feel bad that they had bad experiences with the Egyptian gods and would totally support them breaking it off with Ma’at, would also be totally down for helping them get out of their shell and meeting new people (they have experience with wearing down Wednesday)

Purple: Would see their personality as similar to Wednesday, down to the crime interests, and would instantly be fond, and they’d be impressed by how they handled everything without powers or abilities

Pink: Would be besties with them since they’re so similar and Enid is like them, too, with the bright colors, so Pink and Ebony would bond over sweets, warmth, and kindness (and tsundere crushes)

Silver: Would be nervous about their fighting and killing and all that but would try to be kind since it’s clear Silver’s been through some stuff

Felis: Wouldn’t like their manipulative and demonic side but would respect that they don’t change themself to fit into society’s rules, however overall dislike

Briar: Would talk them through the whole being dead thing and try to help them process that, would befriend them and give the encouragement they need to stick it to the man

Silver

Red: Would be confused by their ability to just be themself and tell others to back off since she always has to hide who they are–would also envy it and try to emulate it in some way (would also be reminded of Megumi because of umbrakinesis)

Ginger: Would understand their desire to fight for what’s right and their place in the world after people took it away from her and them

Gold: Wouldn’t get the whole “calm and kind” thing since the people she knows aren’t like that, but looks up to it and sees Nanami’s kindness in it, longs for it

Green: Again, sees the mark of a mother figure that Silver lost and would look up to her, would be really sad that she can’t follow Green’s “no killing” rule

Blue: Likes how confident and snappy Blue is, is amazed a human came so far, doesn’t understand why she’s with Loki, who is way too much like a curse in Silver’s mind

Azure: Understands the whole “not getting emotions and how to express/react to them properly” and bonds over that (neurodivergency who?) and understands the want to get out of people’s control/standards (Ma’at versus Jujutsu society), they would bond

Purple: Again, the emotions thing would be similar, but Silver would be unsure about them because super-intelligence is a Ren–Sukuna’s wife–thing, and she is an enemy. However, Purple would instantly dismiss that idea by being a detective for others, and then Silver and them would be fine

Pink: Reminds her of Itadori pre-Shibuya trauma and likes their kindness, wishes she could have more of that sweetness in her life

Ebony: Half god and half curse’s would bond over people being afraid/not understand them, would respect Ebony’s ability to remain kind and compassionate even when disliked by others

Felis: Would really dislike them since demons in the Black Butler world feel like curses in the Jujutsu world, secretly, though, Silver would be envious of the freedom to just be themself that Felis has (and would respect the clear distinctions they have when choosing a contract). Ultimately, though, she wouldn’t like them

Briar: Can relate to people hurting her/abusing them and deciding to start fighting back, found family is important, would like Briar but think they should get stronger

Felis

Red: Adopted child of Lucifer? Dating a demon? Fighting angels left and right? Sarcastic and clever? Sticking it to the gender binary and society? Felis adores this kid (the sense of style helps, too)

Ginger: Thinks they should have a clearer purpose instead of always running into fights they may not win recklessly but likes their ferocity and force of will

Gold: Thinks they’re entirely too soft and aren’t going to make it in the world, has to begrudgingly admit they have powerful abilities

Green: No killing? Hilarious. Stupid. Doesn’t understand it at all. Thinks Green is blind to the evil of the world and is going to get herself in trouble for it

Blue: Would be unsure of the whole godhood status but then would learn she became a god after being human like how they became a demon after being human, then they bond. They both don’t care about straightforward morality and have their own ways of doing things, will (again) flirt with each other because, hey, hot person alert, and they love her sass and quips

Azure: Finds it distasteful to serve a god instead of yourself, approves of leaving Ma’at to have their own life and purpose since that’s what Felis does

Purple: Impressed by a simple human teenager being so intelligent, likes their cunning (Moriarty-like) qualities

Pink: Thinks they’re naive and way too nice and trusting

Ebony: Likes the whole goth thing and child of Death thing, doesn’t think they should be as optimistic as they are due to life and people treating them badly

Silver: Thinks she should let go and get revenge on those who treated her badly instead of holding back her curse side since it could be so powerful

Briar: Would encourage them, like Alastor, to just go crazy and teach people a lesson about underestimating them, gets the whole religious trauma/being pushed into a role they don’t fit thing, would take them under their wing

Briar

Red: Would be confused about another universe’s child of lucifer being so intense compared to Charlie and their powers being like Alastor but would like Red’s “devil may care” attitude towards people and ability to handle their shit

Ginger: Would relate to the desire to rage against the system, wishes they had their leader skills, would like their tenacity

Gold: Wishes they knew someone like them in life since they’re kind and calm, would see a parental figure potential there

Green: Would be ashamed that they had to kill people in life to free themself and couldn’t do the whole “no killing” thing Green has going on, is not like her since more aggressive and willing to let go but would look up to her

Blue: Sees a bit of Angel Dust in her and is intimidated of her power but would look up to her as an example of a human gaining power and would really want it, likes how fierce she is

Azure: Relates to the whole “wanting to be out of someone’s power” thing, would work with them to become stronger, likes their even emotions since easy to deal with and doesn’t have to worry about volatile emotions

Purple: Would be impressed by their intelligence and freedom, would want to emulate that ability to see through lies and tricks in order to keep from being controlled

Pink: Would see a lot of Charlie in them and be fond of the warmth, friendliness, and optimism, would be friends with them because of that and needing some softness in their life (they deserve it)

Ebony: Wouldn’t understand the whole Greek god thing due to their fundamentalist upbringing but would like Ebony’s attitude towards life and people, would like their kindness and helpfulness

Silver: Would like their strength and want to learn to fight like them, would understand how Silver feels when people treat her differently just for being born since their own family made them feel wrong for being who they were, bonding

Felis: Would like them because, despite their demonic nature, Briar sees a lot of some of their friends in Felis and sees that they have careful choices when it comes to contracts so isn’t a completely terrible person, just very uncaring about morals and “good” versus “evil,” wary of their power, though

[athousandmorningss]

& there's love pouring out of my eyes.

{I wrote this letter for my friend, and I'm sharing it here, too. It's probably full of misused words, too many comas, lengthy sentences, etc}.

Sunday, November 24. 6:40 PM

Dearest Y,

This letter has seen numerous starts & stops. Mostly, stops. You ask of/about my writing (of books or for your magazine). While these utterances encourage toothy smiles on my end, I can’t quite get beyond myself to sit down and write. I’d ask my poet/sister/friend some time ago if she still wrote poetry and attended open mics. No, she’d said. “I’m too old,” she’d offered as an explanation. Ah, yeah: that thing. That thing which encourages a dull ache in my left hip when I put too many miles under my feet, that thing that tugs at the heavy weight of my tits until they inch lower, then lower still. That thing which encourages a specific and reoccurring experience marked as weariness, which my other friend explains as “Crys is a cynic.” In her collection of essays titled What If This Were Enough? (which you would like, btw) Heather Havrilesky writes briefly about a term the Japanese use, mono no aware, “which translates literally as “the pathos of things,” but means more broadly, “a melancholic awareness of the transience of existence” (p.81). The common visual by way of an explanation, I think, is that of the existence of cherry blossoms: their blooming is brief, and as the petals fall, we are made more aware of this reality. It is their briefness of being which enflames this feeling of mono no aware: that they exist, and then they do not. Beautiful and brief all at once: we ache and bear witness.

-

The other evening, I attended a poetry reading that featured New Mexico’s Poet Laureate, Lauren Camp. The event seemed a direct response to a lack I’d recently voiced to my lover: that I missed attending poetry readings and pubic talks that often occurred on campus. This was a Zoom call, though: the black, faceless boxes and lack of physical proximity of bodies and voices seemed (and was) a dreadful way to host a reading. But oh, it was so lovely to listen to the Lauren’s voice rise and fall as she read, the smoothness of her voice buttery and soft as she recited to us. She noted that she had, early on and into the remainder of her life thus far, rejected the use of a journal or diary and preferred instead to keep memories in poetic form instead. I inquired about this, and her response was that after her mother had died, poetry allowed her to “write horrible poems, but I was grieving and manipulating the words. Poetry was a container for my experience.” Later, she described it as a practice of paying attention and a practice of patience. Later still, she reminded us that we can write as a way to figure something out and— this struck me— as a way to please yourself via the process of playing with writing. Later still, she recalled asking her students to describe an experience or observation with a greater richness: the sky is blue? Blue like what? Blue like what?

It was all a retort, in a way, to my cynicism; to the mono no aware I feel; to my increasing agedness which encourages me to consider, and believe, that nothing matters. That we are untethered; that nothing is permanent; that this lack of permanence renders most things inconsequential. I am grappling with and living within this feeling of flatness; of emptiness; of banality which has begun to touch all and everything in my life. It makes me resistant to the process of writing: because I can’t see any meaning for it, other than a place to store my own self-obsession.

-

My marriage & subsequent divorce & first year spent alone during the holidays, during which I had to put down my beloved cat Oliver (my best friend since my early twenties) who was dying of cancer, made me feel wild and wide-eyed in my grief. I felt crazed. Like I was walking around in grey. Everything had this fuzzy, distant, far away feeling. It was the same feeling I’d had when my father died, and then my mother: this realization that what you had can never be again; that your life has fundamentally shifted; that the experience will be a reference point for all of your other experiences until you die. It was deep grief. It was a portal.

-

I’m sitting now on my lover’s bed. I walked the short distance from my apartment to his, removed my boots and pants and bra and fed his cat while he is out of town. His cat, Abbey, paces slowly to the kitchen and then joins me atop the soft comforter. She is an unusual cat. When I come to visit I find her laying in the center of the hard living room floor. She often rejects the couch; the bed; the chairs and chooses instead to nap in-between my lover’s stove and kitchen wares. Sometimes she sleeps on the bathroom closet floor. I once brought over a soft blanket for her to lay on in there, which she rejected with a stubborn swiftness. She sits near me but never on me, such that when she recently placed her paws gently in my lap, I gasped in surprise. When she lets me rub the expanse of her inky black tummy, the curls of her fur soft and slightly matted, it feels like a great honor. To be trusted in that way. She comes to me when I call her now: responding quickly to the click of my tongue and my encouragement: “come on, Abbey.” To be trusted like that.

I live my life in extremes, and so after the divorce I did a year of celibacy. Felt sick at the idea of touching and being touched. Then, I engaged in a non-monogamous triste with two men at once: one, a boyfriend; the other, a lover. They knew of each other. We all grappled together with what it meant and how it could look and how we felt. I am in my lover’s bed now and, after several months with said boyfriend, left him a few weeks ago. We kept skirting around our differences but it became clear that he would want to move in together. And, because I can’t see beyond my own cynicism; because the idea of cohabitation both bores me and scares me; because I don’t want to do anything I’ve already done; because I’m probably fucked a bit in the head by the ex-husband (who, coincidently, still contacts me via rejected phone calls/emails/ letters every other month or so), I couldn’t suspend my disbelief long enough to give it a go. He was lovely enough (a bit of dehumanizing here is required in order to fully move on. If I linger too long on the memory of him always bringing the soft grey blanket to the bed and making it for me before we went to sleep together; or consider the way he used to bring me coffee and plant my forehead with kisses; or think of the way his father used to laugh loud and sweetly when I’d say “hi dad!”; or how his cat used to lay heavy on my chest and purr in my face when all lay together in rest, I will be rendered immobile, I will be stuck in and with memories, and so I dehumanize and reject them as a way to make it easier), but it felt that he was making me his world, that I was a placeholder for his own experiences, that there was a lack of self-actualization there, that I was filling a role as someone he could take care of.

And so here I am now, pantless and braless and caring for my lover’s cat, in bed with my pile of books, having snuck one of his cold lattes from the fridge. I don’t know what we are doing: we skirt and skirt and skirt around our affections for each other until I finally named it as love. We both went home and pulled up the dictionary to offer us definitions for what we feel, as if looking for evidence for our affections: an alignment of the world’s definition with our own. I told him once that it felt like, when I met him, a kind of “oh, there you are” sort of feeling, an experience of familiarity, like oh, there you are; you’re one of my people. there you are. There you are. We walk a lot; he bought us the same book so that we can read it in tandem and compare notes; he is a dear friend and a comrade in adventure, thinking, talking, lovemaking. But I don’t want to build my world around him. Because that would ruin it. I can’t see beyond my own cynicism enough to even imagine it…

-

But I can’t give in, entirely, to this feeling (which I am not articulating well enough here). Perhaps it is a sort of mid-life crisis. No, here’s what it is: I am rejecting many of the institutions that I have been told my entire life will prop me up and give my life meaning and some semblance of structure and maybe, a touch of happiness. Marriage/motherhood/normative partnerships/an emphasis on work as my singular identity/religion/family structure as stabilizing center (this has largely been removed from me as a possibility by force, not by choice). This is at once freeing as it is terrifying: it necessitates constructing my own meaning-making that goes beyond living in the ways that I am supposed to, and I grapple frequently with a feeling that if I don’t have these things, what do I have? What is the structure and shape of my life…what propels me forward…what gives it meaning? Where do I find an identity in light of all this abjection? There. that’s it. That’s what I mean.

But anyways. I can’t give in, entirely, to this feeling. It exists in tandem with a kind of giddiness, an excitability, that feels more present in my life than it ever has before. Yvet, I learned how to do archery! I tried non-monogamy! I’ve been going to these once monthly full moon ceremony sessions, where two and a half hours of breathwork makes me wiggle on the mat with such delight I can’t contain myself, and Deb notices and gives me a drum so that I can bang the feeling out! Every time I see the full moon it’s like it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it! I tutor this woman from Cuba and though there are some marked differences there between us, she feels like a sister; a friend: last week she read poetry in the sun with me and asked me what certain words mean and we laughed together, so loud. I’ve made friends with another older woman in the building. We go for coffee and she tells me stories about how she believes in reincarnation and that her friend was once told that he was a Frenchman with gastric problems in his past life: the specificity of this made me laugh with such pleasure. I scoop her some vegetarian chili into Tupperware and a few days later she leaves the Tupperware at my door, sticky note attached: thank you! <3. I met another woman through a meetup group that is also navigating a divorce and we meet a few times a month to adventure (tomorrow we’ll go thrifting and do a long walk by the river, this weekend we may visit her cabin). Dude. I know this older guy because we walk the same trail at night, and we’ve become so familiar with each other our conversations end in hugs now: he tells me he ain’t seen me on a bike in a while and when I lament the expensive one I’m eyeing at the local shop, he tells me to stop by, he’ll give me his, he never uses it. I’m still teaching, and have been in contact with the dean of the English department here, asking/reminding/asserting heyyyy I can probably cover some comp. classes for you. The paperwork got processed on Friday and I’ll start teaching it in the Spring. I’m scared. I’m still going to try. I wrote the other day that “can I do this? let’s find out!” is a fine mantra, because it is.

And today, when I walked the short distance from my apartment to my lover’s, I noted a mole working its little figure in and out of the dirt, creating a sizeable hole to burrow itself inside, its little nose poking out as it did its work. And there, on the power line, the birds were gathering along it: pairs of two covering the length of it.

Havrilesky writes, “my father’s wallet reminds me that nothing lasts. Just when you’re starting to get comfortable, you disappear. And maybe only one or two of your things will seem important to someone else when you’re gone.

That’s sad, but it’s also a reason to wake up to the enormity of the moment, to the unbelievable gift of being alive, right now. You don’t need more than this. all of heaven is within you” (p.81).

When I arrive at my lover’s house, I strip my clothes off and pat his cat and crawl under the delicious softness of his comforter. I imagine we’ll meet again in a few days, and maybe we’ll lay together underneath it, he’ll pull it up to his chin. We’ll look at each other, quietly, with such tenderness, then reach for each other, our mouths meeting, slowly and finally.

It won’t always be like this. That is the gift.

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | The Curse of the Werewolf (Fisher, 1961)

Terence Fisher is too classy a director to go full bozo mode and have non-stop Oliver Reed running around as a werewolf. Instead he has things like story and what have you filling up most of the runtime. To his credit, the story stuff is pretty involving, and this does not paint an especially flattering portrait of society. And as he'd done a few of these things before, he has a great handle on the production design and makes this look pretty tasty.

We actually don't get any wolfman or even wolfboy for the first third of the movie, which takes place before the wolfman is born, and instead dramatic investment depends on Yvonne Romain, who plays a mute servant girl who finds herself at the mercy of a cruel nobleman played by Anthony Dawson and is raped by a drunken beggar played by Richard Wordsworth, which leads to her giving birth to the wolfman. Given that she has no dialogue and her characterization can be summed up as "swarthy heaving bosoms", she brings a surprising amount of pathos to the role. Anyway, drunkenness and losing control prove to be recurring motifs in the movie, so Reed's casting makes a lot of sense in retrospect.

Anyway, Oliver Reed is a very intense performer, and he pours a lot of that into the character, getting a lot out of his character's sweating and squirming pre-transformation, and making his werewolf mode rampage scenes extra physical. So yeah, you do eventually get Reed running around as a werewolf if you stick it out until the end, and these scenes certainly deliver.

[aristotels]

Sorry for tree posting and i understand that "what about palestinian olives" is epitome of pathos in middle of genocide but i remember seeing comments about those olives; "they are just trees 🙄" but you dont understand it, you really dont, you dont

[sammywolfgirl]

Well shit this ace attorney au case whatever thing has a rough outline.

Frick.

Well I’ll get down what I got now before I forget when I get back into the persona zone:tm:

This is beyond just like playing with giving Bobby a niece this turned into a future fic sort of situation so uh yeah imma ramble

There will be spoilers for AA5 below soooo

So this would be another time skip game which takes place roughly 8 years post duel destinies (spirit of justice is acknowledged I just haven’t played/watched the game in a while so all that matters is Apollo is off doing his own cool spinoff game adventures)

Our protagonists are Athena Cykes who’s mentoring the newest attorney to join the wright anything agency!… currently unnamed guy who I’ve been calling Pathos because I kinda want that to be his last name.

I’ll list down themes and the general vibe I want this ‘game’ to have since uh at most it might be a future fic.

‘Gameplay’

For all intense and purposes this is the closest we’re getting to Athena cyckes ace attorney, depending on how the writing goes it might actually just be my pitch for the game but some ocs are here because I’m normal about them. The pov would swap between Athena who’s come into her own as a lawyer (it’s been 8 years) and is mostly trying to do her best to mentor the young attorney who sought her out specifically because of her psychology specialty.

And then there’s Pathos, who since Apollo isn’t here is the new punching bag straight man! I’m still developing him but he’s a more serious/level headed attorney, who’s biggest flaw is he can’t be as unbiased as he wants to. Like it or not he’s swayed by his own emotions more than he wants. Pathos’s ability is that he can read peoples expressions and tell if they’re hiding how they truly feel/if their expressed emotions don’t line up with their words/can pick up if someone is trying to smother theirs emotions. Idk the specifics might change but my idea is it’s like an investigation version of apollos lie detection and Athena’s mood matrix, but instead the contradiction you point out is if their emotional response doesn’t line up with their words.

Pathos grew up in a situation where learning to read if someone was about to snap was how he survived, he learned this skill as a means of survival, it’s not something he was born with.

Aaand that ties into the overall theme.

Emotions.

How they’re expressed, how they’re smothered, and how they drive someone.

Listen if the main mentor is Athena there’s gonna be a lot of emotion talk, I’m thinking her mood matrix is primarily for the court room while Pathos’ thing is for investigations primarily, but they can cross over.

Uh anyways what’s the big case:tm: for this ‘game.’

That fucking spy orginization duel destinies can’t just drop that and NOT ELABORATE so I will and am. The past case is that a few years ago a deal was made with the phantom that got interpol names and locations of the phantom’s handler and others who worked for the unnamed spy orginization. A raid was done and many criminals and spy agents (assets??) arrested, however not all were captured and importantly in this story, the phantoms main handler (and trainer??) wasn’t caught. And the background story is that Simon is working with Interpol to track down those stragglers.

Notably, Poppy Fulbright (who’s a detective now that’s she’s grown) has also been helping but she’s uh… kinda been doing her own investigation. She wants Justice for her uncle and isn’t afraid to get involved in stuff she shouldn’t to that end. Sure hope that doesn’t get her in trouble haha!

Uh anyways other notable things I’m turning over in my head-

The main prosecutor is Eustace Winner/Sebastian Debest. Because I love him and I’m biased. I think at this point he’s come into his own as a prosecutor but he very much isn’t the best around. He still gets hung up on his words or how to say what he means, but he searches for the truth and always aims to do his best on every case he works. I just think the prosecution team being goofballs who genuinely want to find the truth would be a fun contrast (plus with Pathos being more serious the side characters get to be more goofy as a treat)

The assistant to pathos is a school friend who I think is studying to be a judge? Idk she’s planning to go into law at least, she’s also only a little younger than pathos (lawyer oc is 20 while assistant is like 19) I’m still figuring out her personality dynamic but leaning towards she’s the middle ground between the serious Pathos and energetic and bubbly Athena.

I love the judge but I don’t think he can survive another time skip, he can retire, therefore Juniper Woods is the new judge in this essay I will- (I’m not against judge Courtney who I’m forgetting the new offical localized name of being the judge either but listen listen lesbians. Gay people if you will. Plus it’d be funny for pathos to witnes his mentor and the judge lady flirting outside of court he’s just ????? It’s great)

Pheonix is around but at this point is very much letting Athena handle things, wt most he gets a few camios, this is Athena’s ‘game’ he’s off with his husband edgeworth or something. Trucy is also around and I think is doing well. If she doesn’t show up say she’s on tour for a magic show or something and pheonix is so proud.

Apollo is mentioned only at the start and it’s a framing device for the introduction as Athena is writing him to tell him about the newest rookie she’s going to be mentoring. Again, he can be off doing his own spin-off adventures.

Honestly it’s a running gag that pathos keeps getting thrown off by how many people poppy has claimed in her weird found family thing, she calls his mentor auntie, prosecutor winner uncle (playing with the idea Eustace and Bobby are half siblings for my au stuff so bringing that in here), the scary samurai lawyer uncle, some dead detective is her uncle, and it keeps getting weirder and pathos just is so lost. (And a little jealous she’s got such a connected support network)

Also. The fate of the Phantom is kept vague until it’s revealed for certain towards the end of case 4 leading into 5. Because it was a bit of a touchy case internationally a lot of things were kept tight lipped about the phantom and wether they were executed or not. Officially, the phantom was executed for their crimes after giving all the information they could.

Unofficially, they cut a deal to work with Interpol to take down the spy organization they came from, and any future ones (though they are essentially working off their sentence)

Honestly idk if the phantom would have a ‘true face’ at this point or has claimed one that looks suspiciously like Bobby Fulbrights idk this would tie into some investigation game thing with Simon and also au stuff and I have not thought about that too much just yet. This is all vaugly thought out and subject to change.

If it wasn’t clear the lead detective is Poppy Fulbright. Though Emma could show up for forensics idk I’d need to double check what she’s up to post spirit of justice

There’s either a new youngest Payne brother or the first case prosecutor is the son/nephew of one of the Payne brothers. I’m undecided if it’s funnier if there’s just more brothers that keep spawning and becoming prosecutors or if this has become a family occupation the next generation of Payne’s are continuing. Dealers choice.

Uh… ok final note

I’m still really vague on the cases of this game but I want an underlining theme to be emotions being surpreased/hidden causing harm.

Like a disgruntled wife finally snapping, or secrets being held for the sake of feelings causing a bigger blowout than if things were communicated, someone hiding their true feelings under a mask of indifference that sort of thing.

Ties into the theme and means I can justify mood matrix scenes because fuck you I love that gimic a lot and I’d this is ‘Athena’s game’ the fic then I get to shove in all the court therapy!!!! Nobody can stop me!!!!

Uh anyways yeah that’s what I got so far, any comments or questions are appreciated.

Like I said I won’t be working on this seriously for a while I got other writing projects I wanna finish/plan out before sitting down to work on a fic that has at least 5 to 6 mysteries in it when I’ve only written like TWO at this point.

So yeah ramble over hope you enjoyed ^_^

[deadmegumi]

Finally finished tma after ummm three attempts to make it through s5 since it began airing here are my collective thoughts.

- Jon innocent... JON INNOCENT!!!!!

- I think martin was quite endearingly pathetic and I liked when he got cuntish but he and jon together mean nothing to me. And I hate him in season 5. I DONT CAAAARE HOW MEAN YOUR MOMMY WAS

- TIM 5EVER only person who actually had legitimate grievances with jon that led to interesting conflict + the added benefit of him and jon's pre-existing relationship that makes them falling apart so goooood

- sasha bad bitch oat

- I enjoy basira but I wish they let her be unequivocally shitty more, she was at her best when she was trying to rationalize away daisy's terribleness and daisy had to be like, no I did know what I was doing and I liked it. That kind of cognitive dissonance is really interesting. I think painting her like the single rational one is a massive disservice to her character and also plain wrong. Hate her in s4&5

- daisy. Hated her for a really long time and I still do but i think she has the most interesting relationship with jon. Like they start off with her using her murdercop privileges to brutalize and almost kill him and that can never be erased but then in his s4 suicidal doom spiral he decides to save her or kill himself trying and then they survive the buried together and there's the inexorable bond between them and they understand each other better than anyone else in the world. And yet he is and always will be terrified of her even though she no longer is a threat. Someone who did you irreversible harm but is also the one you trust the most.... That's JUICY there's real pathos there

- melanie.... well she's melanie. Good with everyone else but when she's in a scene with jon in s3/4/5 it makes me want to stop listening. Cutting out her own eyes was extremely ballsy and swagful I cant lie shes iconic for it. I feel like this makes it seem like I dislike her its just I sided with jon in the divorce (nonconsensual surgery). If we count s5 in canon I dislike her.

- I like georgie a lot but I think her relationship with jon is more fascinating than her relationship with melanie so I don't care for her direction post s3. If we count s5 in canon she annoys me.

- elias. teehee. I've already said too much

- plukas... What do you want me to do? Say I don't like shitty old men? Because that would be a lie.

I think that's all of main cast. Uhhhhh salesa hot distortions hot nikola hot. Oliver iconic. Don't really care about most of the other avatars or one-off characters. GERRY KEAY GOTH LEGEND. OH. gertrude and her 24/7 dom/sub insane unsafe dubcon yet consensual workplace relationships with all her archival assistants and also agnes.... that's where it's at baby. I was a gertrudesasha warrior for a good few months there. Anyway. S5 had almost no redeeming qualities and I'll be pretending 160 was the finale. Okay. I finally exorcised this demon. PLEASE CLAP.

[twistedtummies2]

The Price May Be Right - Number 19

Welcome to “The Price May Be Right!” I’m counting down My Top 31 Favorite Vincent Price Performances & Appearances! The countdown will cover movies, TV productions, and many more forms of media. Today’s choice might be a bit confusing. I give you two performances for the price of one, with Number 19: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.”

The names of Vincent Price and Edgar Allan Poe are practically synonymous, at least in cinematic circles. While Price made many, MANY movies in his long and storied career, arguably the ones for which he became best well-known were the special movies produced by AIP for what is now referred to colloquially as “The Corman-Poe Cycle.” This was a series of eight films, all directed by Roger Corman for the company, which were based – some more loosely than others – on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Vincent was the nominal star for seven of the pictures within the octology. The only one which DIDN’T feature Price was the third film of the bunch, “The Premature Burial.”

Most of the movies in the series were treated as more or less straightforward horror films of the time. However, the one exception was the movie inspired by the great author’s most famous “Poe-m” (I am so sorry), “The Raven.” The original poem is easily one of Poe’s greatest pieces of work, telling in short verse the story of a lonely man, mourning the loss of his beloved wife, Lenore. He receives a visit from a mysterious raven, which turns out to be a supernatural harbinger of doom and despair. It’s a tragic, ambiguous, deeply perturbing poem, and still a classic to this day. Corman’s 1963 movie interpretation, however, eschews much of the pathos, as the film is actually a horror-comedy, with emphasis on the latter half of that equation. In essence, the picture is meant to be a tongue-in-cheek spoof of all the others in the eight-part series, which is sort of a clever idea. In the film, Price plays the main protagonist: Dr. Craven, a physician and ex-sorceror who, like the narrator in the poem, has seemingly lost his precious Lenore. Also like in the poem, he is visited by a talking raven…but this is about where all similarities cease, for the raven turns out to be a fellow dark wizard, by the name of Dr. Bedlo. He reveals to Craven that Lenore is apparently still alive, and in the grasp of their shared nemesis, the evil Dr. Scarabus. The two magicians thus set out on a quest to confront Scarabus, so Bedlo can get revenge on him for past humiliations, while Craven ascertains if his wife is, indeed, still breathing…and if so, what she is doing with the evil wizard. Much like “House of the Long Shadows” would do many years later, the film acts as something of a “Who’s Who?” of classic Gothic horror pictures. Not only does Price play the lead role, but the perpetually-drunk Bedlo is played by Peter Lorre, while the redoubtable Boris Karloff tackles the part of the slimy Scarabus. Future Joker and star of “The Shining,” Jack Nicholson, also appears in an early role, playing the part of the romantic interest for Craven’s daughter, who is played by the much-less-famous (but no less talented) Olive Sturgess. It’s more fun than frightening on the whole. Price’s Craven is an interesting protagonist for the story: despite being very gifted in magical arts, and coming from a long line of distinguished warlocks, he’s a very mild-mannered individual, most of the time. The film gives him a story arc of essentially growing more of a spine, as he learns to fight more fiercely against the injustices around him, and accepts his destined place in the world: an atypical hero’s journey.

All this is well and good, and the movie is definitely worth checking out, if only for the novelty of the adventure and its stellar cast. However, this was not the only time Price would tackle Poe’s Raven onscreen. Many years later, Price would get a chance to theatrically perform a reading of the original poem for a Halloween Special during the 1980s. Unfortunately, I cannot remember what the name of the special was, nor the exact year it came out: I actually tried to look it up, since I DID learn that information…but I can no longer find the source, and I sadly never wrote it down, dummy that I am. Whoops. Whatever else is in the special in question, however, it’s hard to believe much could top Price performing Poe’s greatest poem the way it was always meant to be performed.

In my opinion, Price’s reading of The Raven is the definitive interpretation of the poem. He brings the right amount of melodrama and emotion to the work, giving the Narrator a sense of both decadence and dismalness befitting the story as it happens. From his tragic nostalgia to his wonder at the appearance of the talking bird and even to his moments of desperation and spooky loss, he runs the whole gamut of the poem’s emotional breadth with marvelous aplomb. Others, such as Christopher Lee and James Earl Jones, have done masterful interpretations and readings of the poem in their own rights…but for me, Price is the eternal voice of Edgar Allan Poe’s work, and no single take on the poem has ever matched his reading for me. Bottom line: whether it’s the movie or the poem, when I think of “The Raven,” I think of Vincent Price. End of story. Tomorrow, the countdown continues with Number 18!

[jules-writes-stories]

Even though you didn't reblog the truth or dare post, I'm a tad bit nosey and have decided to ask anyway. So if you'll indulge me here are my questions:

🔪🍓🦴

No pressure to answer 💗 love all of your work and I'm just curious to learn a bit more about the process that goes on behind the scenes 💕

Aww thank you! Ok here goes…

🍓 ⇢I’ve always loved creative writing, but gravitate towards poetry and flash fiction. Azris is the first time I’ve felt inspired to write fan fic, and “Just Enough Light...” is the longest piece I’ve ever written— (so anyone reading, pls be kind 🥹). I was inspired after devouring others’ Azris fics, when so many ideas came to me. There’s something special about their dynamic— the pathos and poetry, the push and pull. They just keep giving.

🦴 ⇢ I’m obviously inspired by Fantasy. Love world building and magical lore. My cousins and I would sneak my teta’s (grandma for all the Spanish speakers 😉) romance novels and giggle over all the bodice busting, so I attribute those adolescent memories to my soft spot for SJM and the romantasy genre. I adore Magical Realism like Salman Rushdie and Isabel Allende, anything to do with mythos, and my favorite poets are Mary Oliver, Rumi, and Ocean Vuong. I also love music of all genres and wish I was better at making playlists!

🔪 ⇢ Probably how a Caesar cypher works. Runner up is how quickly one could hand knit a blanket. Or maybe where one would have to be stabbed for blood to come out of their mouth? My search history is pretty wild, haha.

Thank you for asking 🫶🏽

[scarletgiry]

Miley and Jake and Teddy and Spencer

Something I find interesting when thinking about old Disney couples is how much Miley and Jake almost never come to mind. Compare that to Teddy and Spencer and I am so ready to let out my grievances about them at any time, just say when.  Whenever I think back to “That one time Disney touched on cheating”, my mind automatically jumps to Teddy and Spencer, and then eventually remembers Hannah Montana did it first. But I guess I could argue that Good Luck Charlie did it better, at least the episodes themselves. And I think that's especially weird since Miley and Jake had WAY more build up and episodes to them than the other couple. But I think the answer lies in the pathos.

When the audience found out that Jake cheated, it was through Lily’s eyes. Oliver and Lily kept it from Miley for most of the episode and then when she eventually found out, she beat him up offscreen (I haven't seen the episode in a long time so I could be remembering things wrong, I admit). But even as she beat him up, the laugh track still played, they were both dressed in silly costumes, and I think we were watching Lily’s, Oliver’s, and maybe her dad’s (along with the horrified children’s) reaction to it as opposed to seeing it ourselves. And then we never see Jake again.         

Meanwhile with Good Luck Charlie, we see things from Teddy’s pov and are questioning alongside her every moment. And when she finds out the truth, especially after she apologized for not trusting him and Spencer straight up lying to her face, it’s devastating. And we not only get her reaction but Skyler’s too, something that was missing from the Hannah Montana episode. Teddy is genuinely crushed by the revelation, she cries, and has a nice heart to heart with her mom, and the episode really respects her grief. I don’t think there were any unnecessary laugh tracks during that moment and I think that was really effective. Even as a little kid watching I felt sad with Teddy (and Skyler) and I also really liked the way they didn’t demonize Skyler too. Spencer was the guilty one, Skyler and Teddy were victims, end of story. Seeing the girls come together and give us the (iconic) “Two Timing Pig” song was honestly really cathartic, even if they didn’t release it in the end. They still got some things off their chest, they got to become friends, and the both of them allowed themselves to move on  with their lives… for the most part.

While I like the build up and revelation of Spencer’s betrayal a lot more than Jake’s, I’ll give Hannah Montana credit for letting Miley move on. I think by the next episode Jesse came back and Miley was ready and willing to date him (which, same). But Good Luck Charlie milked the drama between Spencer and Teddy way too much for my liking. From the moment it was revealed that Spencer was a cheater, he was DEAD to me and I could never accept the fact that Teddy took him back even as a kid. Like, NO GIRL! RUN! Why aren’t you running?! To this day, I mourn the fact that they reunited because it feels so icky. I get that she forgave him and that’s fine but I think they should have just left it at that. I had kinda stopped watching by the time Beau came along but even with the little knowledge that I have of their brief relationship, I 100% believe she should have picked him (or herself), no question. Anyone but Spencer. 

      All in all, I just think it’s interesting to look back with a more critical eye and be able to pick up on storytelling details that make a lot more sense to me now and understand why something worked for me/why it didn’t. Kudos to GLC for giving Teddy space to feel and kudos to HM for giving Miley the freedom to move on.