#all the love in the world to people who like tchotchkes but if my living space has too many things in my line of sight i'll just start

[gin-juice-tonic]

it was in vogue to make fun of minimalism for a while but if you're someone who has a hard time cleaning and find your living spaces overcome with clutter in a way that stresses you out, sometimes having very few possessions is good actually

[stevetonyweekly]

SteveTony Weekly - September 22 - Week 38

Hi, friends!! I hope you’re having a good week and reading lots of excellent things. Quick note that MTH is back! So if that’s your jam, sign up as a creator, or get ready for auction week coming at the end of next month! Ok, here we go with this week’s recs: 

rutted old road by meidui

It’s his loneliness screaming, out here in the mountains where nobody else is, begging to know—are you like me?

my thoughts: i didn’t know that this was @meidui’s work when I started reading it, which was very late at night and very very silly of me. It’s all the things I love about her stories, angsty and sweet and lyrically gorgeous. Read it. 

Buried by NotEvenCloseToStraight

When Howard Stark demands Tony work at a dig site in S.America one summer to "build character" and "learn about life", Tony is furious.

But then he meets soldier/archeologist Steve and falls in love with blue eyes and a perfect smile. Just as they are ready to move forward together, Steve leaves abruptly with no explanation and breaks Tonys heart.

Ten years later, Tony stumbles across the file for the old dig site. He's determined to visit and shut it down, but discovers that instead of a village, the dig has unconvered a temple and actually needs MORE money to stay open. A security team is hired to protect the staff and the artifacts they find, and Tony comes face to face with Steve Rogers all over again– except Steve is bearded and BIGGER and way more dangerous than he used to be...And Tony likes it.

When the camp is attacked, Steve jumps into action, snatching Tony and running into the jungle to escape and work their way towards safety.

But long days and nights together bring back old feelings, and one day Steve takes a risk and asks Tony to give them another chance.

Will Tony say yes? Or is his heart buried too far for the soldier-turned- archaeologist-turned-mercenary to find it?

my thoughts: i’ve read this before but I’m a sucker for trapped together life or death situations, and NCTS does it beautifully. 

The Tchotchke Cha Cha by Arukou 

What started off as one impulse buy souvenir snowballs into a constant flow of knickknacks from all over the world, and Steve is starting to wonder if it's more than just Tony being nice.

my thoughts: tony showing affection through random gifts is never not gonna hit. Steve being sweetly besotted and just a tiny bit jealous? Perfection. 

You and Me and Him by navaan for magicasen

If you live in the same house, it’s really hard to keep your secrets. Especially if you are good friends. He doesn’t mean to watch as closely as he does, but it’s obvious to Steve that Tony and Iron Man are in a relationship. Right?

my thoughts: identity porn!!! Who doesn’t love it. 

Dancing With Your Ghost by LunaStories

Tony never thought he'd be here, getting his wings groomed by Captain America of all people. It was too intimate, but Steve had offered and he was too weak to resist.

my thoughts: grooming as caretaking and steve neglecting himself and taking care of tony? Perfect. 

you're a bandit like me by Areiton

He feels, sometimes, like a junkie, waiting for the needle to slide in, for the poison to hit his veins, and then--

The portal clears, and Tony grins up, laughing at something Steve can't see, and the air rushes out of him.

Staring at his husband, a version of him--Earth 21982, he reads absently--Steve feels almost lightheaded with relief, and he whispers, "Hey, sweetheart."

my thoughts: a little morally grey Steve and grief? Sounds just about right. 

[kopivie]

fortunately, none of my teammates follow me here so i'm just gonna unload my thoughts.

i. LOVE. tchotchkes.

so, for context, i got poached into a splatoon team whilst play open clam blitz this past april. i was testing out a splatterscope because i'd never used it in anarchy before and i landed myself on a team with a three stack -- rev, rude, and tourist. we won two matches and then suddenly, as i started a new match with completely different people, i got an influx of discord messages.

at the time, my in-game name was my discord tag (prior to the user change policy). i hurriedly added one of them -- rude -- and he was like "hey we're in a discord call, join my server!" and let me tell you, i was TERRFIED because at that point, i'd already been added by a myriad of people who either wanted to exchange friend codes or tell me to kill myself.

(whether they were serious or not, who knows. at least that means i'm good enough to make people mad.)

rude introduced me to tourist and rev and in the call, explained that their team leader, apple, was absent for a while and they needed a backline to play open with them for some time. i was suuuper confused because i was like ???? why would you want me, some bumbling splatterscope user, to sub in for a competitive backline captain???? but they all reassured me that i was really really good! and they told me that they wanted to play with me more often. shortly thereafter i met apple and i became an official sub for the team, and now i'm a permanent member and...

wow.

there's a lot more to tell. there's so, so, so much. but... these people are like a family to me. like, actually.

as it stands right now, i'm the oldest on the team (not by much), but they're all like little siblings to me. (except tourist because i think he's older than me.. he's also taking a break bc of his busy life!)

apple is like the sibling i have to keep an eye on because she's a little self-destructive but i wish her all the happiness in the world with her and her endeavors.

rude is the silly little brother that i hope my own little brothers grow up to be – he's bubbly and chill, super fun to spend time with (although i still have yet to get comfy sitting in silence with him -- in due time), and i want to squeeze him and put him in my pocket.

and rev is quite literally the little brother of the group. he's a baby! (although i'm 99% sure he's taller than me. big ass kid.) he reminds me of my little sister and he's just a funny kid, i adore him.

we play splatoon together almost every day these days (i've been contributing more and more to the team and i think we've been improving!) and i know it's 1 am, but myself, rude, and apple actually just finished a private battle where apple and i did a 1v1 e-liter battle. we did this for HOURS. like everyone really sat and enjoyed laser tag with me. i'm the resident charger main/lover in the server and i just... wow.

tl;dr: i love tchotchkes so much. they're genuinely my best friends, and i wish them all happiness and love in their lives.

[aili-not-ally]

The Gumball Letters

Marshall,

If you're reading this, then my time has come.

Inside this box that Butterscotch Butler (hopefully) gave you, you will find photos, tchotchkes, and a smaller box. Just don't put on the cursed amulet we found four hundred years ago. Ha ha, wasn't that fun? Inside the smaller box is a necklace I've made for you. It's not much, but I hope you'll like it. The charm is made from a fragment of your old bass and the twine is from one of the strings. After we left the Glass Kingdom that day, I went out to look for the remains, hoping I could piece it back together. Those two bits were all I could find, sadly.

Marshall Lee, I love you more than anything in this world. Even though I'm not the best at showing it, it'll always be true. I don't want you to wallow in a pit of misery now that I'm gone. I know how you get. Instead, go out and make some new friends. Just promise that you won't forget Fionna, Cake, Evan, LSP, or anyone. And promise you won't forget me. Don't think of this as goodbye. I'll always be in the cotton candy grass you walk on and in the sugar smelling air you breathe. Don't weep at my grave. Be happy. Be free. Be you.

I love you, Marshall Lee Abadeer.

Sincerely,

Barnabas Gumball

P.S: Don't let Cinnamon Bun fool you - she has dibs on nothing. And don't worry about the Candy Kingdom. Mo-Chro will look after it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey, Bubba.

I don't know how you'd feel about me writing this. It's been two hundred years and I just still can't believe you're gone.

I wish that you would have let me do something to help. But at the same time, I respect your wishes to move on from this world.

I did my best to take care of Mo-Chro for you. And I checked in on Cycla and Gorion every chance I got. I also appreciate you assembling that box for me. But I made my decision: I'm going to look for some vampire hunters and allow them to stake me. I can't do it, Barney. I tried to be strong. I really did. But I just can't. You don't understand how lonely it is here in Aaa without you. Without Mo-Chro. Without Fionna and Cake. Without anyone.

So yeah. I'm just gonna wait around for some bozos to come and exterminate me. Hopefully it won't take long. I just hope people still believe in vampires. I know this is more of the coward's way out. But I'm tired, Bubba. I've lived since before the Great Mushroom War. And I'm just tired.

I'm tired of crying. I'm tired of killing. I'm tired of living.

I'm coming, Barnabas.

-M.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To whoever reads this...

My name is Ben, the former prince of the Pup Kingdom.

And I'm Shelly! His best friend!

We only know bits and pieces of this Marshall guy's story, but we think it's worth telling. So if you see the gravestone we've laid in the ground for him, please take some time to pay your respects.

And don't steal the necklace!!

"Great, Shelly, now all people are gonna wanna do is steal the necklace!"

"Then we better take it with us!"

"No! That would make us grave robbers!!! Do you want that on your conscience?!"

"Wazzat mean?"

"Shelly..."

-Fin.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Okay so for context:

The first letter was written a few decades after the events of Obsidian. Gumball got sick and made the box and the necklace for Marshall.

Marshall tried to convince Gumball to let him turn him into a vampire so he could live forever, but Gumball said no. Don't ask me why. There were a lot of tears that day though.

Anyway, Butterscotch Butler gave Marshall the box. And there were even more tears. Mo-Chro took over the Candy Kingdom, but he died about fifty years later. Marshall tried to go on for a while longer, but he pretty much just gave up by the time Ben and Shelly came into the picture.

Ben and Shelly received a commission to deal with Marshall. Guess who posted it.

So they go to stake Marshall, who surrendered. Shelly and Ben drop the stakes, feeling bad, and Marshall just takes the wood and does it himself.

After snooping through his stuff, Shelly and Ben figure Marshall out and bury it all. The necklace now hangs on a tree branch above his gravestone.

And don't worry - no one stole it.

[diaryofabeautyfiend]

🚨Warnings: Light p in v smut. Some angst. Lots of fluff. My grandfather’s name really is in the Smithsonian.🚨

Plain Gold Ring V:

Exactly Like You

“I know why I waited

Know why I've been blue

I've been waiting each day

For someone exactly like you” - Nina Simone

——————————————————————

Your last day in D.C. felt like the last day of your life. This life. Every article of clothing was packed. Every knickknack and tchotchke sent with the movers. You were ready for your next life. Did your next life include Andy?

The weather was beautiful. Sunny. Not too hot. You and Andy had planned on spending it outside seeing the sites. He had never toured any of the museums. You invited Jacob along. The second you said it you wished you hadn’t. You felt like a home wrecker even though Andy promised Jacob wouldn’t see you that way.

Andy was bristling with excitement. “He’s going to love you, baby.” You were not great with kids. You actively chose not to have them. You loved your nieces from a distance when they were little. Now that they are teenagers you feel a little more at ease with them. You are their cool rich aunt who spends an absolutely outrageous amount of money on them when you visit. You nearly fainted when Andy asked if you’d like to have children.

“Aren’t I too old for that?”

“You’re only three years younger than me. I know a lot of women who had their career before they had a family.” Your face snapped from terrified to anger real quick, “Not that you can’t have a career and be a mother. People do it everyday. Shut up, Andy.”

“You’re cute when you’re nervous. Have you thought of having children with me?”

He rubbed the back of his neck, “Well, yeah. I’d like to have a couple more.”

“Oh. A couple he says.” You could feel the hives forming. “This seems like a good conversation to have right before I leave.”

He ran his hands up and down your arms. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to pressure you. You haven’t thought about it? Not even a little?” The door buzzed in the nick of time.

“Jacob’s here! Hallelujah!” You wiggled out of his arms to grab your shoes.

He laughed shaking his head. “We’ll finish this conversation later, young lady.” he pressed the intercom button, “Hey come on up, buddy. This is going to be great, honey.” He loved your nervous laugh and the way you fidgeted with your fingers. Just the fact that you were nervous told him you would love his son.

You heard voices coming from the living area. Fucking hell. Was that Lori? You contemplated going out of the window. You went into the bathroom to grab some lip balm. You knew full well that it was in your bag on the kitchen island. You were just staying out of their way. When you heard the front door close you reemerged.

“Ready to go?” Your eyes were wide and you were way too smiley. If Andy didn’t know better he would think you were on drugs.

“Yeah. I think no more coffee for you ok?”

“It’s nice to see you again, Miss Y/N.” Jacob extended his hand.

“Nice to see you too. So! The Smithsonian. What part are you most interested in seeing?”

“Air and space I think.”

“Then that’s where we’ll start. My grandfather’s name is actually on a plaque. I’ll show you. He was in the navy and built planes that were used in Korea I think. And my dad’s picture is there. He works for a division of NASA back in Louisiana where I’m from. He developed this little part of the rocket booster. He’s literally a rocket scientist.”

“That’s really cool. I’d love to meet him sometime…..”

Andy was loving every second of this. You and Jacob really got along. You were making plans to visit your father and stepmother over the summer and maybe hit the beach in Florida. Jacob’s face lit up at the prospect of meeting your family. Both Andy and Lori were only children. Jacob didn’t grow up with cousins or really any kids his own age outside of school. He seemed pretty comfortable with the idea of you and Andy together.

Andy tested the waters a little by holding your hand. Jacob didn’t seem to notice. By the time you got to the next part of the museum he had his arms around your waist. He even kissed you a couple of times. Nothing but a tender peck here and there. Jacob didn’t seem to mind when he showed you affection.

After lunch Andy dropped you off and then ran Jacob back home.

“So, what are you thinking?” Andy asked with nervous trepidation.

“The museum was cool. I really liked the rockets. It’s cool that Y/N’s dad made those.”

“Did you like Y/N?”

“Yeah. Sucks she’s moving. Do you think you’ll move to Chicago too?”

“Kind of depends on you, bud. I know you’re getting older and you don’t need Dad around very much anymore. I don’t want to miss anything. You’re my only baby.”

“I could spend summers with you. You look really happy. I haven’t seen you this happy in a long time. Even before the trial. I’d miss you but you should be happy.”

The whole way inside Jacob talked about you. He clammed up when Lori walked in.

“Hey, guys. Did you have a good time?” She kissed Jacob on the forehead.

“We had a great time. Ok, Jake. You have the number where I’ll be. I’ll be back on Wednesday. If you’re not busy next weekend you can spend the night. I have your room all set up. Love you.”

“Ok. Love you. Have a safe flight. Tell Y/N I said bye.” He escaped to his room before the arguing started.

“If it’s ok I’ll pick him up from school Thursday. Did you sign the papers?”

“She went with you?” Her voice was deadly quiet.

“She did.”

“Didn’t want to tell me that before hand I guess.”

He sighed and wiped his face with his hands, “I’ll have him back Sunday night. See you later.”

“Fuck you, Andy. You can’t even give me the courtesy of telling me my son would be meeting his father’s whore!”

He slammed his fist on the counter, “Did you sign the papers or not?” She threw the manilla envelope at him.

“They’re signed.” He took the papers and walked out slamming the door. He contemplated moving again. He has a month to month lease on his place. It wouldn’t be hard for him to find a job. He knew Jacob would be fine. Chicago was looking better and better. After all the baby talk this morning he wouldn’t burden you with anything else domestic for today.

——————————————————————

You were zipping your last suitcase when you heard Andy come in. You packed all of your sleep clothes so you were wearing Andy’s t-shirt and panties. Dinner was ordered and he had a drink waiting on the counter. He called out for you. When you rounded the corner into the living room he caught you in his arms.

“Hey, handsome.” you cooed in his ear. He nuzzled your neck and stroked your back. “You ok? Was Jacob….he hates me. I knew it.”

He tightened his hold on you, “Honey, he loved you. He talked about you the whole way back.”

“Then why is your face all worried?”

“Because I’m keenly aware that this is our last night together in my place. That when I come home Wednesday you won’t be here. I’ll go to work on Thursday and Jeremy will be in your office. I have really good memories in that office and now they’re ruined. I don’t want to wake up without you.”

His hands traveled up your bare back then back down to cup your ass. “The delivery app says they’re going to be here in twenty minutes. Think you can finish in time?”

He lowered his head between your breasts and nodded yes. Before you knew it your panties were off, his pants were down and he was fucking you against the wall. His pace was relentless. You hooked your ankles at the small of his back and leaned back so you could rub your clit. Your fingertips brushed against his dick every time he pumped in and out of your cunt. You both came in fifteen minutes.

You ate dinner on the veranda loving the cool breeze on your bare skin. As much as he wanted his t-shirt to smell like you, he like naked picnics way more. Admittedly, a big chicken Caesar salad wasn’t the sexiest food in the world. Still didn’t stop him from licking dressing off of your chest when it dropped off your fork. He was determined to fuck you in almost every room in this place.

You slept tangled and sticking together all night. You had finally gotten over your need for bed space. You’d miss it when he wasn’t there. All night the two of you wanted to bring up moving in together. Neither of you had the guts to say it. You didn’t want to beat a dead horse. He didn’t want to freak you out. Good thing you’d be long distance for a while to work on your communication skills.

——————————————————————

Your new place was beautiful. You rented a big new condo close to Millennial Park. Your office was on Michigan Ave so you weren’t far from there thought walking was highly discouraged. It wouldn’t be possible in heels anyway.

You and Andy worked diligently unpacking and cleaning. When the last box was unpacked and broken down you both collapsed on the couch. “I feel disgusting.”

“You have that nice big bathtub. Bet we can both fit.” He raised an eyebrow at you and nudged your side.

“You are insatiable, Mr. Barber. Whatever will I do without you?”

“You’ll bust from horniness. Come on.” He hoisted you up from your comfy spot and pulled you into the bathroom. While he undressed you filled the water with soft musky oils and some bubble bath. You lit candles and eased in to relax. He washed your hair massaging your scalp with his fingertips. He held you in the warmth until your fingers and toes were pruned.

For the rest of the week, if you were sitting it was on Andy’s lap. If you were sleeping it was in his arms. By Tuesday morning, you had both finished up conference calls and responding to emails. You had cleared the rest of your day to spend together.

As the sunlight dwindled it had become harder and harder to part. You couldn’t take it anymore. You had to have the conversation you had been dreading since you stepped off the plane.

“Andy, I don’t want to sound like a nagging girlfriend but, I really want you to move in with me. I know it would be so hard leaving Jacob but I have plenty of room. He can spend every summer here if he wants. I’d love to have him. I feel really strongly that this is leading somewhere. I’ll even talk about babies if you want.”

His heart was bursting. You kept rambling on trying to convince him. Little did you know he was already convinced. “Stan is going to kill you.” He laughed and pulled you onto his lap. “Give me a few weeks to wrap up everything.”

When you dropped him at the airport there were tears but you knew you’d see him soon. “I love you, baby. I’ll call you as soon as I land.” He kissed you like he would never get to do it again.

“I love you too. See you soon.” He smiled through his tears.

“See you soon.”

——————————————————————

That weekend he spent all of his time with Jacob. He planned on spending every moment he could with his son. Jacob even had his first few weeks planned starting with meeting your family in Louisiana.

When he brought Jacob home on Sunday he worked up the courage to tell Lori the news. “Do you have all of your stuff for your English assignment? If not I can bring it by before school tomorrow.”

“I got it, dad. I had fun this weekend.” They hugged. He smelled Jacob’s hair and kissed him.

“Love you. Be good for mom.”

“Love you too!”

Lori stood in the doorway with her arms folded protectively over her chest. “So she’s gone?”

“Yep.”

“So what now? What does this mean for you?”

He pulled out the kitchen chair and rested his head in this hands. “This wasn’t a fling, Lori. I’m moving to Chicago. Jacob is real excited about spending summers with us.”

“Do you love her?” Tears shimmered in her eyes and her voice wavered. It would be cruel to lie to her.

“Very much.” It stung to hear. With nothing left to say Andy stood to leave.

“Andy!” she called after him. When he turned she wrapped him in a hug. The two of them embraced for several minutes.

When he stepped onto the sidewalk outside of the building his phone buzzed in his pocket. He saw your face smiling back at him.

“Hey, baby. How was your day?” He looked up at your old window and thought of how the two of you started, the past he left behind and smiled at the sound of his future on the other end of the line.

[artificialqueens]

Sober (Symnali) - Pazinae

Summary: College girl Symone and her house love throwing parties. Denali loves a fun time, and finds herself there every weekend. Just to get drunk and party of course. No other reason. (AKA pretty lesbians in denial)

AN: a drabble inspired by denali coming over to the house of avalon a while ago, getting v drunk and dancing w symone (the outfit symone wears in the fic is from that day www.instagram.com/p/CODlQtnp-KM/ denali is wearing the pink dress from one of her older posts). also the time they streamed and were just drunkenly complimenting each other is the absolute Cutest and symnali is underrated. i have a lot of ideas for this so if yall are interested ill write a whole thing of what happened that night <3. my first fic and concrit is very much welcome!! song is sober by lorde :>

—

//Night, midnight, lose my mind

Night, midnight, lose my mind

Night, midnight, lose my mind

Night, midnight−//

They called themselves House Of Avalon. They had all pitched in to rent a house near campus over the summer, and a place leased for a year consisting of young 20 year olds can only go as well as you can imagine. Yet getting ready for their parties surrounded by constant noise and the dozens of paintings, framed photos, and tchotchkes lining the wall, was a comfortable kind of chaos. As chaotic as they may be, they undeniably threw the best parties. Not to mention their outfits never missed, especially not Symone.

The madness of creative, raging queers all shoehorned together to form the most disorderly harmony was a type of home Symone wanted to bask in forever, and, quite honestly, the driving reason to stay in the boring hell hole that is college. The obligation of finishing this shit for a flimsy paper and bragging rights was a little more grounded when it’s the only reason her friends are currently living with her. One day this will all be done, and they can find a job with their degrees. Finish college like everyone wants her too, make everyone proud that yes, she did it, and together the House Of Avalon can buy a huge house with 5 guest bedrooms so everyone and their mama can visit. Throw the biggest parties, a pool in their backyard with an outdoor kitchen, a huge patio out front by the house gates, and they could even install a stripper pole in the living room. Until then she’ll be up at 7:30am to ride the train for her morning class. 

The thought of the a certain dimpled blonde helped make the week bearable because at least on the weekends she can fly to somewhere else. With someone else. 

Symone, Gigi and Rosy hung around the sofa together, getting tipsy as they waited for more people to pour in. They chattered mindlessly, the comfort between the three was an indescribable kind, so effortless and familiar. But in between each pause in conversation, when the laughs and talk of annoying professors and ugly hair trends came to a brief end, Symone couldn’t help but scan the room. Peeking out the corner of her eye for a certain pair of hooded eyes hopefully lingering around. A girl with the most distinct, beautifully symmetric face that can charm a room, and a sugary voice so addictive to listen to even without a sweet tooth. She could listen to Denali talk and ramble as much as she wanted about anything in the world, and she’d eagerly nod along. Her hazy tone when she’s slurring and half awake, to the chirps and goofy grins at the height of the night. The adorable glint in her eyes of passion and excitement when she drunkenly goes off about some kpop group Symones never heard of before, but might just happen to start coming across more. Her dancing like a duck that makes Symone squeal, and cheer, and hide her face in her shoulder so no one can see the smile she’s unable to bite back. She dawdles around with her infectious giddiness and smile so comforting it eases the absurdity and rushing high Symone constantly lives with. And it helps that she’s built like some athlete godsend with the prettiest arms and perfect curves and the most stunning thighs and calves and soft warm blonde hair with icy blue tips to frame her angelic face. She’s been drinking and it’s definitely just the alcohol that makes her head waiver and ramble. 

Time rushes by wedged between her sisters, and soon Symone holds an empty cup for the second already. The house has certainly been getting fuller and fuller. Glancing around, she finds the only person she could (and frankly would) look at for all of eternity, staring at her. Denali’s hair is scooped into two high ponytails at either side, and her body’s fit into a little off the shoulder pink mini dress that hugged her body all too well. Symone wanted nothing more than to just hold her, dance the night away until the jumble of noises and bodies fade out. Seeing her just standing there, perfect and still, a toothy grin is plastered on Symone’s face without her consent. She barely even knows Denali but her sheer presence brightens the room, sends butterflies to flutter around like she’s having some cheesy school girl crush. She can’t tell you what Denali’s favorite TV show, movie or season is, or how she likes her coffee. But if the world were to close in on them right now, have the walls disintegrate, ceilings crumble and the heaps of flesh around them melt into the floorboards under them- they’d still be yelling out the wrong lyrics while they twirl against the counter tops. Rush outside and run in the pitch black where nothing exists but each other in their hands- and that’s good enough for her. 

Denali just likes Symone because she wants to have fun, and Symone’s good at that. It’s okay that she won’t ever like Symone when she’s sober; When she’s quiet, and wrapped in a blanket over her hoodie starring at the ceiling. When she’s fidgeting with her nails and playing with her the tips of her hair instead of talking. When she burns mac and cheese and decides to have a bag of ketchup chips for lunch. Whatever it is they have; it’s still good enough for her. 

Damn maybe Symone does think a little too much. She winks at the dumbstruck skater. The night’s just begun, and the only exit signs in the labyrinth in her sinkhole of a mind is alcohol and/or Denali. Symone wants the and version. 

//Oh, God, I’m clean out of air in my lungs

It’s all gone, played it so nonchalant//

When Denali came through the door she not-so-subtly headed straight to the living room. She had barely glanced in their direction- but she saw her. She was laughing, in her little squad of pretty girls. The clique of long legged doe-eyed queens stand in the center of the living room in their mini skirts and low waisted pants- lifelike statues seemingly taking up all the air in the crowded room. She can’t help it if she stares a bit! They have cute outfits and Denali just wants some inspiration. Everyone’s gawked at the trio anyways. She looks at Symone, because of the cute fuzzy blue bucket hat adorned on her head. No other reason.

 But it’s hard to look away when her face- her makeup is so stunning. With a shimmery pink cut crease, and glossy lips, and dabbles of pink brightening her cheeks. Lashes that make her eyes pop, and the highlight on her glistening skin matched with her flimsy silver spaghetti strap crop top that made her shine even more like a radiant disco ball. The backless top is tied together behind, with a thin string leaving the space between her neck to ass as exposed skin. How could a person be so perfect? And addicting to look at? Unzipped jeans hung at the curve of her hip to show her pink thong, which rose to hug her waist. Pink wedge heels lie under her painted toe nails, and fuck was she a living bratz doll. It wasn’t Denali’s fault that she was objectively so head to toe stunning. It wasn’t her fault that she bit the inside of her lip a litte. It wasn’t her fault that her heart skipped when she was bent over in laughter and cupping her manicured hands over her mouth. It wasn’t her fault that she forgot to look away. It wasn’t her fault that when Symone caught her gaze she stood there frozen  (if the options are fight, flight or freeze, which do you think the ice girl is gonna do?). It wasn’t her fault that she forgot how to breathe when the enchantress gave her a wink. She smiles and waves in return. Someone taps Symone’s shoulder for her attention, and she looks busy. 

Denali pushes away, swimming through the sea of humans swarming the halls until she can identify the way to the kitchen. She needs a drink. It’s early and she’s far too sober for this.

//It’s time we danced with the truth

Move along with the truth//

There’s no reason why she’d be into Denali. She could literally get anyone she wanted, with her gleaming smile and cute laugh, and the way she can make you smile and feel important and wanted. The way she stops sipping in her red solo cup to look at you, to nod at every word and stare like you’re beautiful and matter. The way it’s impossible for her to not be the prettiest in the room. Denali takes a shot, the burning taste a welcome pain at the back of her tongue.

Five months ago when Denali took a sharp breath outside the main door, she made Rose come with her because, fuck, she wasn’t going to a party by herself. Not back then, at least. When she was a flustered freshman in October who didn’t know how to have a good time. Back when she first met the party throwers, and a certain captivating spirit with braided honey gold hair in a skimpy black dress took shots with her. Complimented her wispy hair dyed blue at the ends. Told her she looked amazing in slurred giggles. Because she was tipsy. The truth is the only time this will mean anything is when the world starts spinning, the room gets hot, and their minds start to blur. 

//Ooh (Hey)

We’re sleepin’ through all the days

I’m actin’ like I don’t see

Every ribbon you used to tie yourself to me// 

“You good diva?“ 

"Nnnm, gimme uh ‘nother few minutes"  Symone’s head is pounding, and the only thing on her mind is the dazy blanketing warmth of sleep. Her mind is a knotted, jumbled up mess and trying to think about anything other than passing out makes her head throb. Natural light from the outside pours through the windows, and through her squinted eyes, the wooden table across the room is glowing from the suns heat. A vague need to eat, drink water, and vomit creep up on her. She turns to lay on her side, wedges the blanket between her arms, pulls it higher up and tucks her hands under her head.

"You sure?”

“You still have your makeup you want to wash it off?”

“We can take it off”

“Girl its 2pm" 

"Let her sleep!" 

Half asleep, all the different voices mesh as one blob of noise. Indistinct chatter fades as Symone slowly luls back to sleep. Until-

"Where should I put the polaroids of Symone and Denali making out?” Peaceful slumber is very quickly forgotten when realization is drawn. 

“What the fuck happened last night?” Is the only thing Symone can muster out before throwing her head deeper into the pillow, all of a sudden quite awake. Focusing on the vague mist of memories from the night before, she replays it through her head starting from when she went up to Denali, taking shots in the kitchen.

[filmjrnl365]

#153  Rams (2018)

Director: Gary Hustwit

United States /German

“The best design is no design”- Dieter Rams

The world is a messy place. Our contemporary culture is pieced together in a bewildering ad hoc manner, it’s a wonder it is functions to the level of sobriety that it seems to.  To make my point, and offer up a contrast, watch a few episodes of Hoarders on Netflix. There you will witness just about every level of psychosis, filth and variety of trash that modern life has enabled. A condemned house filled with trash and tchotchkes, to the point of structural distress can be understood as the end point of the failure of design. Comedian George Carlin does a bit about us just building more spaces to put our useless stuff, and architect William Mc Donough talks about how any design, at the end of its functional lifespan, that winds up in the city dump, is a failure of design. It has become superfluous trash, a toxic layer of flotsam from modern culture’s ineptitude concerning waste within the specter of mass production.

Now watch the sparkling white Gary Huswit documentary of famous industrial designer Dieter Rams. Rams became best known for his painstakingly austere designs of modern products; record players, Braun shavers, furniture, etc. It’s a world view that despises clutter, unnecessary ornamentation, and shitty craftsmanship. Just for a moment, image a world like that.

People who are obsessively clean will love this documentary. It is a full expose on an uncluttered, well designed life. Everything is in its proper place and functionally considered. This point is driven home in the film by shots of Rams pruning his bonsai trees. Yes, it’s going to come down to those pesky details; the excessive packaging of products, the extra layers of paint to hide inferior construction, the mindless tchotchke on the shelf to help alleviate the expanse of ugly wall holding up the ugly shelves of our modern life. In the world of Dieter Rams, all this shit is pretty much gone, or addressed in such a way as to not continue to be shit. While Ram’s aesthetic –or anti aesthetic- might strike some as symptomatic of paranoia or fanatical control; I would welcome it as a fresh contrast to the quagmire the 21st century currently finds itself in. No point in clearing your mind in a yoga class only  to trip over the clutter piled up in your living space when you get home. Ever been frustrated with a product so poorly designed the better option is to just discard it? Ever confronted the bewildering array of components required to plug in or charge electronics. There’s miles of this stuff… years of it. Can’t we just step back from the acceleration and think it through a little better before we commit to a million of something. I think it’s dawning on us that we have the dangerous capability of taking bad ideas extremely far.  

I get the sense mankind is trying to sort some of this stuff out. Larger mechanisms and institutions in our global life, held over from the last half of the twentieth century, don’t seem to be aging very well. There is a lot that needs to be reconsidered, simplified, and implemented with more care. Dieter Rams stands as the epitome of high modernism in the world of design. The twentieth century was supposed to have cleared up a lot of unnecessary stuff, that was the main thrust anyway. Condescendingly, we can see modernism’s quest as somewhat quaint now – that noble but naïve world held up by gasoline, steel girders, and Helvetica, seems to have spun out of control. But here is where Dieter Rams and his monk like austery seems like a radical idea again. I long for simplified design. I think the world is getting over designed, and overly complicated, and this takes its toll on every level of our existence. I’m not a luddite. I enjoy and prosper from the technological breakthroughs, but too much is too much. Not everyone needs a cooking show, not everyone should be famous or noticed. At some point it might serve to nurture the essential.  Someone can design a good product that works and doesn’t break the bank. We can question planned obsolescence in pursuit of making something worth a damn, that’s not too much to ask.

Dieter Rams saw this coming. He saw it in the world around him and he did something about it. You may not like him, his vision or his products. Perhaps your world is world a little fuzzier around the edges; a world that prefers the musty dirty patina of time, the stained pages of history with its grimy fingers, and abhors the antiseptic whiteness of modernism. If so, Dieter Rams is not your hero. But the film is worth the watch to anyone. If anything it shows what modernism might have been, what kind of clean utopian organization it offered, a clean quiet respite in a world that was quickly succumbing to the effects of rapidly multiplying shittyness.

Worth the watch, worth the consideration.

 https://filmjrnl365.tumblr.com

[glassculptures]

An Expose on Tchotchkes

An impostor. A coward. She hides behind decorative words and metaphors, never truly immersing herself in what she writes. A style, she calls it, but in truth, it is all a guise. 

Don’t be fooled, she may lead you to believe she lays her heart open to read between the lines of her works but in truth every line in her essays serve as a prison bar keeping her true feelings hidden away from the world. Look at her. She can’t even bear to start what is supposed to be a personal essay in first person. 

Is this your hero? Is this your inspiration? 

They see someone brave, but all I see is a coward. They see someone great, but all I see is a fake. They see someone who tells the truth, but all I see is a liar. They see someone who is open about who she truly is, but all I see is an apparition of a person cowering in fear.

Today, I will show you what I see, what I truly feel, what I truly mean, and who I truly am. This is my truth.

I was once a little girl doing the things I loved solely because that is what made me happy. I was happy drawing whatever came to mind, writing whatever I thought, and wearing whatever I felt. I listened in class because I was genuinely curious and always looked forward to learning something new. I took every opportunity because I was in love with the world and wanted to learn and try whatever I could. Little did I know, a monster slowly came to life behind my back. I had created a version of me, and until now I remain unsure of whether this version exists only in my mind, or began in the minds of others.

There were expectations of me in the minds of others. To them, I was an amazing artist and a talented writer, someone who was smart and always reliable when it came to any task. People came to me for inspiration, for advice, in fact, people would even ask me for assistance in their projects, and soon I found myself doing theirs before I even started my own. To them, I was selfless and kind, always giving, always willing to help. They put me on a pedestal, and to some extent I liked keeping it that way, because it meant they saw me as someone good. This pedestal put a distance between myself and others. It was good because to me, nobody could get close and realize I wasn’t as great as they believed. 

People were convinced I was the sun. And I wanted to be the sun. I craved to be the brightest light, giving people warmth and lighting up people’s lives. The truth is, I was more similar to the moon, but people only ever saw what I chose to illuminate. There was a dark part of me, there is a dark part of me, and I detested it. I hid away all those negative thoughts, memories, and feelings; I evaded them, and whenever they’d come up I’d pretend they didn’t exist at all. I didn’t pay them any mind because to me, acknowledging them meant I was rotten. It meant there was something wrong with me. 

Soon, I grew scared. I couldn’t let anyone see anything but light. I believed that if they saw even one stain, even one black spot, everyone would feel the same disdain I had for myself. Without realizing it, it was this anxiety that fueled my thoughts and decisions. I no longer did things out of love, but rather horror.

Eventually, the darkness caught up to me. It pounced on me all at once, and I had no idea what the real problem was. All the negativity I had locked away, the pent up anger, the unpacked trauma, and disregarded anxieties came crashing down on me all at once. My world turned dark.

I lost everything.

I couldn’t bring myself to do anything, and I had no idea why. I had difficulty attending class, so I started becoming late, which turned to not going at all. It was so bad that I was to be suspended for the amount of absences I had. I recall there was even an instance where I was dragged to the shower as I clawed at the floor. At the time, I had no real idea of why I felt that way. So I did the only thing I knew to do: I ran. I ran away from home, twice. I wasn’t thinking anything, all I knew was that I wanted to go away. 

On top of all the suppressed emotions, I was at a new school and this time, nobody saw the light in me. All they saw was the darkness, and I couldn’t bear to think of what they thought of me. I couldn’t bear to show my face around anyone anymore. I was so sure that everyone hated me. I was pathetic. When I was given the choice to stay in school, they would disregard some of my lates and absences so I wouldn’t get in trouble, or to give it all up and leave. I chose to leave. 

To this day, I still do not understand my thought process behind that decision. I just knew that at the time it was what made me feel happy, like a weight was lifted off my shoulder. I proceeded to go to therapy after, and I realized there were so many problems I had that I never confronted. 

Today, I choose to see myself. For who I am. Not for a flawless version of myself, not for a dark and twisted version of myself, but just as I am. 

This is no happy ending. There are days when I still have these negative thoughts, there are days when I am still scared, but that is okay. I’ve learned to accept that it is impossible to live a life without darkness. It is completely human to feel negative things every once in a while. It is a lie to pretend to be positive all the time. My story will continue like this, but I will move forward, no matter what.

This is the truth.

[atomicfilm]

The types as people I know

ENTP: dnd enthusiast, trying to sell the world on his beliefs, owns like 69 :0 rubix cubes so people will know he’s smart, probably wears a cloak when he’s home alone, loves volunteering at bingo w/ elderly people, always trying to compete w/ me to finish our work first/best and usually looses because he overlooks something, 98% of people are annoyed by his presence, likes to start fights/debates, actually super sweet and big on respect but misunderstood

INTP: we all adopt really random catchphrases (mine is “that’s hot” and my friend’s is “j’accuse”), we have very specific interests (”your thing is learning about concentration camps in the Czech Republic? Mine is 18th-century poems about cats in fishbowls”), devoted to comedy, going to vote but doesn’t openly support anyone because the candidate will mess up, caught between dreaming and reality, doesn’t really understand other people’s perceptions of them, built to withstand anything (and I mean anything, more on that later), managing my bookmarks is my routine chore

ENFP: stereotypical gemini through and through, I love her but I can’t stand to be close friends with her, has a bunch of plans to marry people and move in with friends later in life, friends w/ everyone she has ever met (if you say you don’t like her then you’re on her hit list), very nice but definitely scheming, attention split between 8,917 things rn, falls in love easily and obsessively, so so creative, great singer, wants to go into advertising but will probably become a pediatrician, loves babies and taking care of things

INFP: lots of feels, really into the arts, nervous about talking, people pleaser, writes poems in their spare time, would adopt 500 puppies if it made financial sense and wouldn’t stress them out, stressed out anyway, sees the red flags but ignores them, either your literal mom or the mom friend

ISFP: aesthetics-oriented, their room is really clean except for one area with whatever they collect (shoes, tchotchkes from Asia, snowglobes, ect.), usually overshadowed in the art department but turn out to be the best artist in the room, speak French and/or want to move to Paris (except it’s dirty, wah), they typically measure in oofs (”big oof”, “little oof”, “8 oz. of oof”)

ESFP: a new boyfriend every two weeks, eyebrow game strong, funniest person in the room (or at least that’s what they think), extremely sassy, watches videos of tobacco spitting contests in the Midwest for fun, 9/10 times (this is a fake statistic) they’re a theatre kid, forget who you are if they haven’t seen you in a year (even if you were close friends prior), drives fast (and poorly), hot (and knows it), very confident, their default state is shirtless, dramatic 

ISTP:  everything is an adventure, their ideal romance movie is Baby Driver, wants to learn how to hot-wire a car, doesn’t realize they look punk but they do, should be employed as a makeup artist, probably pretty kinky (or at least act like it), either a fake f-boy or a very, very real one 

ESTP: wants to be an architect or CEO, mostly wants to be paid to do nothing, most-often found asleep during class or telling a story in a crowd at a party, drives drunk a lot, already dating someone but tries to get with you anyway, straight male w/ dangly earrings (queer vibes), very hilarious and everyone knows who they are, their closest friends are introverts who they force to share the spotlight w/ them, either don’t show up or show up late, fun to be around, class valedictorian but everyone thinks it’s someone else

ESFJ: once had a nightmare where all of their friends got drunk and they had to take care of them, brings you cupcakes on your birthday, all of their friends are social degenerates and they don’t know what to do, watches children’s movies their entire life, has more stuffed animals than friends, everyone knows who they are 

ISFJ: their catchphrase is “I need healing” (warning: they will steal your catchphrase), carries a singular band-aid at all times, makes lots of jokes about Communism, makes racist jokes against themself, their extended family lives with them, uncomfortable about breaking rules, always wants to pay for things, everyone’s boyfriend but only dating 1 person/no one, big on the American Dream, literally Captain America, appears to be a virgin at first, makes lots of sex jokes once you get to know them, n e r d, good at everything /  you thought perfect people didn’t exist? you were wrong

ISTJ: ESTP’s best friend, the obviously intellectual one, does everything with amazing skill, supports their friends tirelessly, great at math, understand systems really well, the designated driver, try to follow the rules as best as they can, laughs a lot at other people’s engineering mistakes, quiet and unnoticed most of the time, surprisingly funny

ESTJ: give you advice even when you don’t ask for it, seem like they’re judging every decision you have ever made, won’t speak to you if you lie to them, the stereotypical club president, takes initiative, likes to mention that mission trip they went on very frequently, shops at Dillards (always hunting for good deals), has a very traditional sense of fashion until you see their crocodile cowboy boots, they have a very idealistic sense of society and if you don’t meet their standards they’ll yell very loudly, remembers everything, constantly fact-checking, actually should be president 

ENTJ: control freak, but only because they don’t trust you enough to make the right decision, ready to race you at all times, could probably run a mile in 6 minutes without breaking a sweat, confident, prefer strategy games like Settlers of Catan, if they were a society they would be Ancient Rome, want to motivate you to succeed, see themselves as the best but want everyone to match them, running out of patience, seems insensitive and ready to cut you off but probably has a warm, beating heart (idk I haven’t dissected them, personally)

INTJ: I don’t think they really exist, supposedly everyone on Tumblr is one but they only make up approximately .8% of the population, if I met one I would probably think they’re a weirdly assertive/controlling INTP, I think people mistype as one because their ideal sense of self is being an effective problem-solver who challenges tradition from the comfort of their home and purposefully does things (i.e. learning a new language for business) but are they really

Idk 

I can’t tell if they have a high sense of self or are trying to demonize themselves

INTJs are textbook villains in the movie world but also probably a lot of detectives or something

ENFJ: don’t know any of them/anyone I think could be one personally but I wish I did / I feel like if I met one I would want to be as good of a person as them all the time

INFJ: not very reality-oriented yet in love with science, wants to be a writer, curious, wants to figure everything out but primarily wants to love everyone, passionate about a few specific projects that they talk a lot about (social issues), always reblogs positivity posts, once gave a ted talk about mental health, he’s the debate captain yet cries every time he loses a debate (because he has a lot of self-doubt), prefers to nap than to talk sometimes, eventually realizes they wants to adopt all of the people younger than him and protect them from the world, easy to love, they may reflect your personality, may also have very particular body movements (the one I know does a lot of fan kicks), actually make NTs feel (like a lot, like a lot a lot, like real crying), eventually dates their best friend and marries them, doesn’t draw but collects art

[sunnycurran]

i’ll be your girl

Ship: Maddie and Sunny

Words: 1,679

For: @maddie-swann

Sunny has some thoughts about her upcoming wedding; a chance encounter with an old friend helps her clear her mind and find her balance.

Sunny loved bright, clear days; she loved being able to prop open the door and throw open the cafe-style windows she’d had installed in the storefront a few years ago. It was a slow day, which was honestly okay because it wasn’t a great day, all things considered—her left side had gone wonky, so her cane was taking a lot of her weight, and everything her left eye saw was a little blurry. But it gave her time to sit with her face in the sunshine and soak up the feeling of sitting in her bookstore. Everything in here felt like Aunt Caro—like Sunny picking the wood for the bookshelves by teething the samples on the floor; like Caro and Sunny picking the rug by rolling on them together; like Aunt Caro letting Sunny spend an entire week over Christmas taking down every book and tchotchke from the shelves, dusting and cleaning and reorganizing her way through her latest break-up.

Everything in here felt like home. She knew it all, she’d touched every centimeter, and for the last few years it had been hers and hers alone. The thought of letting in someone new made Sunny’s chest tight in a way that had nothing to do with her other symptoms, and she didn’t have to be a writer to know that “letting someone in” wasn’t just a metaphor.

She liked Maddie. Their dates always ended in laughter, and they certainly weren’t a bad kisser. Sunny couldn’t help but want to be around them, and she’d never quite felt the same way about anyone else—she didn’t think the feeling blossoming under her ribs was love, not quite yet, but she had the sneaking suspicion it might come to it. Even sitting here, she was waiting for Maddie to come by so they could talk about their days; earlier, someone had brought a corgi into the store and the first person she’d wanted to tell was Maddie. They were everything she’d ever dreamed about in a partner: funny and witty and gorgeous and smart, someone who really seemed to want to know what she thought.

They weren’t going to be moving in for good until after the wedding, but they’d slowly been moving some of their things into Sunny’s apartment above the shop to make the transition easier. The nights and weekends they spent together were some of the best Sunny had had in a while, and she hoped Maddie felt the same way.

It felt crazy, four weeks ago when she’d called her Aunt Caro and said, “I need you here in July for my wedding.” Trying to explain the whole thing had taken a while, especially since Caro had been on the side of a mountain in Portugal with spotty service, but eventually she’d at least understood “please come home,” even if Sunny had to explain the rest of it again once she picked up Caro at the airport tomorrow.

Shuffling feet at the door made Sunny look up from her thoughts, and she smiled when she saw who’d come in from the street. “Kai!”

The tall man grinned and set an iced coffee on the counter, sliding it over to her. “Hello, sweetheart.”

“I didn’t know you were back in Portland! I would have called you for dinner.”

“Just a layover,” he shrugged. “I’m out again in the morning. But I couldn’t leave without coming to see you at least, kid.” He ran a hand through his long hair and ducked behind the counter and slouched down into the second chair, pressing a kiss to Sunny’s head on the way.

“Well that’s just not fair, and you’re going to have to make it up to me somehow,” she pouted. “It’s been months since I’ve seen you, old man.”

“I thought the coffee would be a good first step. And the fact that I’m in this god-forsaken city for less than 24 hours and I’m choosing to spend them with you.”

“Mmm,” Sunny hummed around her coffee. “Life as a rockstar is hard, hmm?”

“Fuckin’ terrible. I can’t believe I let you talk me into it.”

“I just wanted an album dedicated to me. Maybe a Grammy, who knows.”

///

Sunny rolled over, throwing an arm over her eyes and cursing the fact that her partner was a morning person who’d already opened the curtains. The bed dipped dramatically as Kai through all of his weight onto it, rolling to the center and throwing one huge arm around Sunny’s waist; she threw a leg over his hip and kept them rolling until she came out on top, pressing a kiss to his chin. “You’re ruining my life, you know.”

“Yeah, just terrible, having someone to lift all your boxes and reach the high shelves and cook you dinner all the time. Someone should turn me in for cruel and unusual punishment.”

“You’re a grumpy old man who hogs all the hot water and makes me get up at unreasonable hours even though you dedicate most of your energy to keeping me awake.”

“Eh, you love me.” He shrugged.

“I do, and I don’t know how I will ever get over the fact that you can’t love me back.” Kai pretended to grimace, like he always did when Sunny joked about his aromanticism, the way she did when he made bad pansexual puns. She rested her head on his chest and hummed thoughtfully. “Now please commence in making up this early morning hour to me with doughnuts.”

///

“So what’s really happening with you these days, kid?” Kai gestured to her with his beer bottle, grinning as he took another drink.

“You’re going to think I’m crazy.” She stared down into her bowl of pasta, trying to figure out whether it was the same size as her head or bigger. Maddie had been fine spending an evening back at their apartment bingeing netflix—and they’d even promised not to finish The Good Place without her—so Sunny could go to dinner with an old friend. She couldn’t figure out whether she felt guilty or not for explaining her relationship with Kai to her fiancé, but how did one casually talk about her aromantic ex-boyfriend with whom she’d once been madly in love before they’d decided to be platonic (and maybe a little sexual) life partners and continued to live together for two years and then stayed best friends when said ex-boyfriend left to be a sort-of-famous musician? It wasn’t lying to say they were friends, but her stomach twisted a little at the thought that she might have misled Maddie. She took a sip of her water. “I’m getting married next week, actually.”

Kai barely contained a spit-take; the couple at the next table over looked over in concern. “No shit! You’re kidding. Tell me everything.”

She did, over the course of dinner and several courses of dessert, explain the whole thing to him, and yes, it did sound a little crazy. But the more she talked, the more she hoped he would see how excited she was; no one really knew her like Kai, and she hope he trusted her judgment enough not to think she was stupid. He stared at her in silence for a while, one eyebrow raised as he watched and waited to see if she was going to add anything else.

Finally… “Good for you,” he said.

“Really?” It was Sunny’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “You’re not going to lecture me on stranger danger or making rash decisions or marriage being a sacrament that I shouldn’t step into lightly?”

“Am I going to say anything Caro hasn’t already said?”

Sunny snorted. “No.”

“Don’t worry, she’ll come around. She’s just still upset we didn’t make babies while we could.”

“I mean, she’s right, they would have been gorgeous, but we never could have managed it, in the end.”

Kai reached across the table and took Sunny’s hand, rubbing her knuckles slowly. “Look. You’re an adult. And would I have done the same thing? Definitely not, but that doesn’t mean you made a bad decision. We’re different people. And I think, if you’re as comfortable and happy as you seem, then you’re doing what’s right for you. You’ve never been good at being alone, even though you’re good at pretending you are.”

Sunny dropped her head to the table and groaned. “Caro said that, too. At least, like, generally, and after a lot of truly obscene language she’s been learning from sailors around the world.”

“Sounds about right.” He shrugged. “What else is up in Sunny World?”

Exhaling through her nose, Sunny sat back up and took a purposely huge bite of pasta so she could think. “Honestly, that’s kind of it, babe. Sorry I can’t provide you with more delicious drama—you’ll have to actually use that big brain of you for an album.” The waiter came over as Kai was whining like a child, and Sunny could see him trying not to laugh at the sight of such a large man making such an incongruous sound. “Please ignore him,” she said. “He’s never been fit for polite company in his life.”

///

Sunny laid in bed that night and thought about the ring waiting in her jewelry box for Maddie’s hand, which Sunny was kind of obsessed with—the way they talked with their hands, the way they made a living creating something with them, the way their fingers twined with hers.

She felt ready to give that ring to Maddie in front of witnesses, to smile and kiss them and start building something with them. She felt ready to give Maddie more than a couple of drawers and an extra toothbrush—maybe not to give them everything of her just yet, but to start. To build something with another person who she cared for.

Sunny fit here, in her bookstore, with her cats and her traveling aunt and her bizarre partner-ex-partner.

Sunny fit here, in her bookstore, and she thought that Maddie just might, too.

[mermaidmafia-official]

☽ BLOOD GETS IN YOUR EYE

i walk the plank, not a tear in my eye / i won't go down, your blushing bride / under the water, I'll be sharpening my knife

B A S I C S .

NAME: Yinmei Zhang (张银妹 / Zhāng yín mèi). Name lit. translates to “silver girl”, or “silver sister”. ‘Grandmother Zhang’ as a joke, with Ysa.

APPARENT AGE: 35

ACTUAL AGE: 2251 (born in 231 BCE)

BIRTHPLACE: Changsha, China, in a rural area that is now a textile factory. She hasn’t been back in centuries - or perhaps, millennia? - and she doesn’t intend on visiting anytime soon.

CREATOR/CREATRIX: Jinyang Chen (陈金阳 / Chén jīn yáng); his name lit. translates to “golden sun”. Ironic, considering that he was a vampire.

FC AND FEATURES:��Rowena Xi Kang. Wears a glass eye with a ruby iris in the socket of what once was her left eye.

LIKES: pretty, delicate things of all sorts!, flowers, scaring people with her glass eye >:)

DISLIKES: people who insult her fashion choices, dealing with mortals, her Creator (that stupid-ass motherfucker!!!)

GOALS: To enjoy the rest of her long, long life in any way possible, and to help Ysa protect the rest of the Coven. Oh, and she still hasn’t found a perfect perfume yet. Hmm.

FEARS: Losing Ysa and the rest of the Coven, whom Yinmei has grown attached to, through the centuries. And though she won’t admit it to anyone, she is lowkey terrified of facing her Creator again.

RUMORS: That she’s immune to religious iconography (in reality, having literally been born - as well as Created - before Christianity existed, Yinmei finds that Christian crosses and such have no effect on her, but ancient Indian and East Asian religions are a different story. Buddhist mantras make her nauseous). That her glass eye is ~magical~ in some capacity (it’s not. But Yinmei’s certainly not denying the rumors, at least not openly ;D).

T Y P I C A L S .

WARDROBE: Very lacy and delicate, and a bit frilly, sometimes. Yinmei has a penchant for reds and whites (black is also fine, if the occasion calls for it), and likes billowy gowns with sheer, wispy pieces of fabric that float prettily around her when the breeze picks up, or when she levitates. Yinmei doesn’t like things that pinch her feet too tightly, so when she wears heels, they’re usually a size or two too big - in fact, she’s not too fond of showing her feet at all, so she wears a lot of floor-length skirts (unlike her dear friend Ysabelle). She’s also very fond of jewelry, and all the pretty sparkly things that one can wear. Yinmei frequently accessorizes with dangly earrings and bejeweled hairpins, to hold up her waterfall of black hair (she’s very proud of her hair, really). Recently, she has taken to wearing razor-sharp sterling silver hairpins.

PLACES MOST LIKELY TO BE FOUND: In her rooms, perusing her extensive closet(s). Or out shopping for yet another set of pretty but useless trinkets or tchotchkes for either the house itself, or to decorate her own rooms. And, of course, hanging out with Ysa.

PEOPLE MOST LIKELY TO BE WITH: Her beloved friend Ysa, of course, as well as all the other vampires in the Coven. She has one enthralled mortal - a teenage boy who had no future beyond the violent street gangs in a city half a world over - that she uses for sustenance purposes, and for sustenance purposes only.

STRONGEST CHARACTER TRAIT: Frivolous (or, guarded. Hmm.)

MANNERISMS: Throughout her extensive lifetime, Yinmei has played the blushing bride, the dainty doll, the coy seductress, the enigmatic beauty...but now that she’s over 2,000 years old (and as safe as she’ll ever get, she thinks), she doesn’t have the patience for such games. Yinmei has always been quick to anger, and these days, she doesn’t bother to control or hide it, the way she had done for the past centuries. She walks with her head held high, her steps brisk and purposeful, and although she's not particularly tall - about five feet and three inches, or 160 cm - her curt, clipped voice is enough to get the entire room to pay attention to her. She’s blunt and unapologetic, despite her very obvious frivolity. Yinmei also has a bit of a flair for the dramatic, and when she decides that walking is too much work (or when she wants to make a particularly attention-grabbing entrance), she’ll usually opt for levitating a few inches off the ground, letting the flowy skirts she’s so fond of flare out around her.

B I O G R A P H Y .

[BLOOD GETS IN YOUR EYE - if the rumours are true, her origins are in ancient china. she claims that her small, porcelain doll-like features garnered her much attention in her day, but after her creator tied her up by her ankles to drain her and then took her lovely left eye “as a prize”, she considered herself irredeemably marred- cursed and so enraged she could swallow her own tongue. however, a short but gory reign over her old hometown followed by a good piking of her much-loathed creator did much to lift her self-image. (besides, the glass eye with the ruby iris isn’t so bad- it’s fearsome.) but, recently, it seems she may not have finished the job all those years ago.]

Yinmei was once the daughter of a wealthy provincial official in Qin Dynasty China. Polite, pristine, and perfect, commoners and lords alike compared her to a delicate porcelain doll. And for a time, Yinmei was flattered.

Yinmei was rather sickly as a child, and having her feet bound - standard practice for highborn daughters, at the time - certainly didn’t help. 

Yinmei’s demure beauty meant that her parents had plenty of suitors to choose from, and when she was seventeen, she married a regional governor ten years older than she was. As his first wife - and from a rich and powerful family at that - Yinmei was treated well enough, all things considered.

Yinmei bore him many children, which did nothing for her already delicate constitution. Her last pregnancy was when she was thirty-five, and she would have died in the process of birthing the child, had it not been for her Creator.

Jinyang Chen was a moderately powerful politician working with Yinmei’s husband, at the time. He somehow managed to keep his true nature secret, and as Yinmei lay dying, one of the nurses taking the stillborn child away, Jinyang managed to turn her, just in the nick of time.

Jinyang took Yinmei with him back to the town that Yinmei had grown up in, strung her up by her ankles (so that he could better admire her dainty, perfect feet, he said), and gouged her left eye out of its socket, keeping it as a twisted trophy of some sort. 

Understandably, Yinmei was angry. As her vampiric powers set in, Yinmei shapeshifted into a bat and escaped. She managed to integrate herself into the powerful vampire circles within China, even with the rise and fall of multiple dynasties, and a century later, she - along with some of her newfound allies - hunted down Jinyang, drove a pike through his heart, and cut him to pieces, burning what was left. Yinmei went on to reign over her old hometown (at least until the armies of the Han emperor decided to investigate the bloodbath the normally peaceful town had turned into), resolving to forget everything from her human life.

Yinmei then spent some time traveling around Asia, flitting aimlessly from place to place. In her mind, she’d suffered enough, as a human. She was going to do what she wanted, now, and that mostly meant killing shitty men, robbing wealthy landlords, and buying the most beautiful things, all for herself.

She left East Asia for Europe around six or seven centuries ago, and hasn’t been back since. With the spread of Buddhism into the continent, the spiritual and the secular had become too tightly intertwined, you see. It was annoying when even architectural features and natural landscapes had some sort of symbolic and quasi-religious importance; even now, Yinmei is loathe to return to East Asia. Pop culture is saturated with all kinds of ancient Daoist and Buddhist influences - what’s up with a fictional monk chanting his mantras all day when the TV adaptation of a Tang Dynasty novel comes on daily at 1 PM?!

In Europe, she found someone to help her finally, finally, fix her feet. Yinmei hates exposing her feet or wearing shoes that pinch them too tightly, to this day.

She also met Ysabelle Vavassour, who would eventually become her best friend. In truth, they got off to a bit of a rocky start because of a slight miscommunication (Yinmei takes perceived slights very seriously, you see - she’s petty like that), but once they cleared it up, it wasn’t long before Yinmei began to appreciate Ysa’s iconic aesthetic. And, if she’s going to be honest, it was nice to have a friend again. 

Ysa and Yinmei fell into bed together, for a brief period of time, but that was centuries ago.

Yinmei moved to the States with Ysa and the rest of the Coven. She has stayed there ever since, the only things bringing her pleasure being 1) Ysa and the Coven, and 2) pretty things (with the third being shopping for pretty things).

Yinmei has never let herself think too much about the past. But recently, she’s been feeling a stirring in her consciousness, a niggling at the back of her mind - slight enough to ignore, for now, but she can’t help but to wonder. She can’t remember everything clearly, of course, because it was two thousand years ago, but she thinks that maybe, just maybe, she didn’t finish the job completely when she killed her Creator.

R E L A T I O N S H I P S .

with THE BLOODMOTHER aka YSABELLE VAVASSOUR - Yinmei and Ysa met quite some time ago; it’s hard to say exactly when, with lives as long as theirs. They jokingly bicker about the two-centuries difference in ages (’Grandmother Zhang’ has become an inside joke in between the two of them), and Yinmei is basically Ysa’s second-in-command (though she’d never want to be the leader of the house, herself; do you know how much work that’d be?!).

with A COLLAR OF SPIKES  - text

with FUNERAL FEAST  - text

with SLEEPING EVIL - text

E X T R A S .

pinterest

moodboard

P L A Y L I S T .

psycho // red velvet

ancestors // dumfoundead

devil, devil // milck

gangsta’s paradise // coolio ft. lv

castle // halsey

praise the lord // a$ap rocky

moonsea // phildel

[nitewrighter]

Gency Week Day 6

Forget-Me-Not

A little late but here’s some Genji and Mercy reminiscing with photos!!!

----

Genji stood in the doorway of the apartment--their apartment--well, it was about to be their apartment, before, it had just been her apartment, but now with Genji staying over practically every night, they figured they might as well make things official. 

“...You have to have more than that,” said Mercy, putting her hands on her hips.

“I... lived with monks and was raised by ninjas,” said Genji with a shrug as he adjusted the duffel on his shoulder. There was a single box in his arms with some of his things as well. A handful of the things in the box were just things he had picked up since answering the recall and coming to the Watchpoint. There were some wooden frames of his disassembled sword stand sticking out of the box, but not much else.

“I mean, I knew you were always a bit of a minimalist, but...” Mercy trailed off.

“You’re minimalist too,” said Genji.

“I... I decorate! I have my relief tchotchkes!” said Mercy.

“I love that you travel and save lives all over the world and people pour their heart outs to you and give you heartfelt gifts for your relief work and you just call them ‘Relief Tchotchkes.’” He craned his neck to look into her office, “Most of them are in one place though, anyway.”

“...I just... this is going to sound weird and obsessive, but if we’re both living here, I.... I want this place to feel... lived-in, you know?”

“Your office is definitely lived in,” said Genji, smugly.

“Har-har,” said Mercy, rolling her eyes.

“We could do the college dorm thing--hang up christmas lights, get some tacky movie posters...” Genji walked past her with a smile in his voice, “You like ‘They Came From Beyond the Moon,’ right?”

Mercy huffed and snickered. “...Pictures,” she said after a few beats.

“Mm?” said Genji.

“We should put up pictures--like, in frames.”

“Like an old couple?” said Genji. 

“Athena can make some high-quality prints--we have pictures of ourselves, right?”

Genji paused and put his box down on the table. “Do we?” he tilted his head.

----

“Agents--It’s been a while since you’ve made your way back to my primary terminal,” said Athena.

“Well you are everywhere, technically,” said Mercy.

“I do like having you take the time to come here, though,” said Athena.

“We like the big screen,” said Genji.

Athena giggled. “What can I help you with?”

“This is going to sound odd but, do you have pictures of us?” asked Mercy.

“Many Overwatch agents dump their photos into my data stores when they run out of storage on their own comms but won’t delete them. I can run a cursory facial scan?” Athena suggested.

“That would be wonderful, Athena, thank you,” said Mercy.

“Scanning,” said Athena, the screen blipped for a few seconds, “Excluding official and bodycam footage, I have 249 image results for Agents Shimada and Ziegler. I can filter it by photos containing both of you where you are among the center subjects?”

“That works.”

“Right. I have 45 photos from the ‘general’ folder of other agents, and 11 photos from a file recently dumped by Agent McCree titled, ‘Watchpoint Cryptids.’”

“...’Watchpoint Cryptids?’” repeated Mercy.

“I believe it’s a joke on how difficult it is to get a photo of either of you,” said Athena.

“Well.. scroll through what we have?” said Genji.

“Understood,” said Athena.

There were very few photos from Genji’s Blackwatch days--both for the obvious reason that Genji was in Blackwatch, and the fact that back then Genji didn’t like having his photo taken. Mercy looked frazzled and overworked in nearly every photo of the old days. There was the old lineup of Winston passing the physical for active agent duty with Tracer cheering next to him, but both Mercy and Genji were practically on opposite ends of the photo there. From there photos of both of them seemed to be taken more frequently, no doubt thanks to being put on a strike team with Tracer, who tended to take a lot of photos to deal with gaps in her memory from Chronal disassociation. 

There were a handful of group photos. There was a photo of the first time their strike team was all suited up---Genji seemed more confident in this photo than almost all the other previous photos combined with his new prosthetics. They agreed to frame that one. There was one photo of Mercy and Genji sleeping on each other’s shoulders on the orca with Tracer in the foreground holding a marker. Then there was a blurry bluish selfie of Tracer, still holding the marker, with Genji chasing her in the background with a crudely drawn mustache on his faceplate and Mercy chasing after him. There was a photo of Winston and Tracer victoriously holding up empanadas after the Havana mission (it would have been a nice photo to frame if it hadn’t caught Mercy mid-chew.) Then there was another selfie--apparently taken by Genji given the angle of his arm, taken within Mercy’s lab. Mercy had dark circles under her eyes and was dramatically posing at a petri dish.

“...I don’t remember that one,” said Mercy.

“You don’t remember that one? You were half-crazed from caffeine overdose and what must have been 30 hours without sleep. You had just cracked a new compound that would reduce the number of individual nanobots in the biotic tether without sacrificing healing output and you had me take this photo for posterity.”

“You remember that?” said Mercy.

“You passed out two minutes after this was taken,” said Genji, “I had to carry you back to your on-site apartment.”

Mercy reddened a little. “Oh...” she said quietly, “Sorry about that.”

“I didn’t mind. You’re carrying the team half the time, someone ought to return the favor now and again.”

Mercy smiled, then looked up at Athena’s screen. They scrolled through a few more---Reinhardt grinning with his arms wrapped around them both, easily dwarfing them.

“I like this one,” said Mercy, “I could see it framed.”

“I think he cracked a rib of mine when we took that,” said Genji.

“I healed you,” said Mercy, “Let’s frame it.” Genji just chuckled.

“What was the first one we ever took together?” said Mercy, scrolling back through the archives.

“This one’s from you, Agent Ziegler,” said Athena bringing up a photo of Mercy looking sweaty and frazzled in a sweatsuit with Genji’s arm strung over her shoulders. Genji had his very first prosthetics, rudimentary leg blades and a somewhat omnic-looking prosthetic arm. Genji’s face was covered by a surgical mask and several bandages. Both were giving a thumb’s up. It was clearly a clumsy selfie being taken by Mercy.

“...Your physical therapy,” said Mercy.

“I can’t believe I didn’t make you delete that,” said Genji.

“It was your first steps since the--since we met,” said Mercy.

“I was on so many painkillers...” muttered Genji.

“Oh you can tell,” said Mercy. She looked at Genji and smiled.

“What?” said Genji.

Mercy nodded her head at the photo on the screen.

“That one?” said Genji.

“It’s our first photo together!” said Mercy.

“I look like a disaster,” said Genji.

“We both look like disasters!” said Mercy and then she said, with deep ache in her voice, “It’s our first photo together!”

“’Greasy topknot and sweats’ is a very different disaster from ‘freshly tenderized pork loin wrapped in metal and bandages.’” 

“Genji...” Mercy squeezed his arm slightly. 

“...we’ll make one print, but that doesn’t mean we’re framing it,” said Genji, folding his arms. He gave a glance to Athena, “What about something more recent?” asked Genji.

“This one was... 5 months ago. In Nepal,” said Athena, bringing up a photo of Genji with Mercy next to him, Zenyatta on the other side, and several Shambali monks behind them. Genji’s mask was off and his scars were crinkling with his smile.

“Oh that one’s much nicer,” said Mercy, “We can frame that one.”

“It will be nice to have a piece of Nepal in our home,” said Genji with a slight smirk in his voice. 

“Our home,” Mercy repeated the words and looked at him. She couldn’t really place last time she called a place ‘home’ let alone said the word ‘our’ in front of it.

“And this one,” said Athena, bringing up a photo of just Mercy and Genji, also a selfie, being taken in front of one of many of Nepal’s mountainous vistas.

“That one’s beautiful...” said Mercy.

“That one’s my comm lockscreen,” said Genji.

Mercy snorted. “So we’re framing that one,” she said with a smile.

“I can live with framing that one,” said Genji. He started counting on his fingers, “So there’s the group photo with our strike team, the photo with Reinhardt, the physical therapy photo---which, we are not putting that one up in the living room---and the two pictures in Nepal. I’d say that’s plenty!”

“That’s only five,” said Mercy, folding her arms.

“Well... we’re going to take a lot more, and so many of these are just work-related. We should take pictures of us on dates, on vacations, pictures at parties, holidays, wedding photos--”

“Wedding photos?!” Mercy sputtered.

“...hypothetical wedding photos,” said Genji.

“You’re just moving in and now you’re talking about wedding photos,” said Mercy with a smirk. 

“Hypothetical wedding photos,” Genji said a bit more insistently, “What if we get married and I say, ‘Oh Angela, I want to put this picture of us at our wedding up, but then where will we put this photo of our Strike team eating empanadas?’”

Mercy snickered. “You’re thinking very far ahead.”

“I’m a ninja. We pride ourselves on being prepared,” said Genji.

Mercy just smiled and looked back at the screen. “I suppose home is a thing you build, then--we shouldn’t just push everything out there all at once...”

“Well, yes,” agreed Genji, “At the same time, looking at these photos... you’ve been home for me for a long time, Angela.”

Mercy blushed and tucked her hair back. “You’re home for me too,” she said quietly. There was a beat and then she elbowed him. “We are not putting the empanada picture up.”

“No we are not,” said Genji with a chuckle in his voice.

[marginalgloss]

mankind revolved

In 2011 I bought a PS3, in part because I really wanted something on which I could play Deus Ex: Human Revolution. This was the long-awaited sequel to a PC game series which I once loved; for many years it was thought unlikely that anyone would make another game called Deus Ex. So I had to see it for myself. And to do that I had to buy my first ever games console. So that game was the incident that led to games becoming a more regular part of my life again, as they are today. 

Mankind Divided came out in 2016. I waited until now to play it, maybe because I was slightly underwhelmed by actually playing the original. I didn’t dislike it but I suppose I never felt the urge to play it again. (As it turned out, Dishonored and its sequel did most of the same things much better.) And playing this now I was reminded of all the things I didn’t love about Human Revolution. The protagonist is still embarrassingly self-serious — ‘unsmiling’ works well for him as an adjective because his face seems crafted out of something entirely inflexible. But then this is the sort of game where very few characters have emotions beyond a sort of world-weary impatience. Everything is over-stylised, and mostly this isn’t done in a way that contributes to meaning. Everything about it is devoted to making you feel like a cool, powerful guy, cutting his way through a bleak world.

Most of the game takes place in a near-future version of Prague, which sometimes looks great, but feels flat. Traversing this semi-open world isn’t particularly fun. There is a lot of purposeless traipsing back and forth, especially near the end of the game. One can only break into an uninhabited identikit apartment so many times before scrounging through peoples’ cupboards feels like a bit of a chore. (And if you’re playing stealthily you never feel like you particularly need any of the gear you find. So why do it? To see what’s there, of course. You have to see what’s there.) 

I’d almost forgotten that Mankind Divided suffered a bit of controversy on release; the story is set in a world where cybernetically-enhanced people live alongside everybody else in a situation that approximates apartheid. This is not wholly uninteresting, even if the marketing of the time did a pretty awful job of promoting it (‘Aug Lives Matter’ etc). As it turns out the game doesn’t do much with these concepts. You see a good deal of suffering, but it’s always from arm’s length, presented in the classic style of the video game ethical dilemma: do you help person X if it means hindering person Y, and so on. It won’t surprise you to learn that there are never really any ‘good’ outcomes. It feels significant that the player themselves is never especially hindered by their status as an ‘aug’. The worst of it is a gentle telling off from the police if you get on the non-augmented carriage on the subway.

There’s a lot to criticise here. But the heart of it is still tremendously entertaining. Once you get into the missions, the level design is excellent. It’s still hugely satisfying to find yourself on the outskirts of some vast multi-level facility, and have to pick through it one room at a time, avoiding cameras and hacking systems and knocking out guards. I might almost say that this kind of thing is what I enjoy most, in all of video games: being confronted with a thorny multi-dimensional problem and using an array of tools to pick it apart, piece by piece. 

Still, I found myself daydreaming of a better alternative to the open-world stuff: everything between the mission areas happens inside your apartment. You read your emails, do all the character interaction stuff from the comfort of your computer. Maybe there’s a weird VR hacking interface, like in the original System Shock. Maybe you can rearrange the tchotchkes on your nicely modelled desk. And then once you’re ready you go off and do the mission and come back. You would lose nothing about what makes the game good this way!

Who can say what would lead me to believe that things would be improved by never leaving one’s home.

[honeylikewords]

What’s this?! My favorite writer is now trying her hand at Peter 🅱️ Parker?!?! *i place an offering of candies and honey at your feet* Please, if you have any: some hcs for this foolish soul...

Aw, shucks, I’m your favorite? That’s so darn sweet of you to say! I feel so honored to be someone’s favorite writer! I accept the candies and honey and, in return, here are some Peter B Ponderings for you!

( @regrettablewritings, It He)

General, Non-Romantic Thoughts/HCs:

Peter is actually lowkey lactose intolerant. It was worse pre-bite, meaning he basically could never have cheese or milk without getting horribly ill, and while it’s better nowadays (with the combination of age, practice, and enhanced health from the spider bite), he still gets a tummy ache if he ingests too much dairy. That being said… he always ingests too much dairy. He just loves that good, good pizza cheese too much to resist. 

Peter collects a lot of knick-knacks and tchotchkes. He makes jokes about it being tacky to own one’s own merch, but he does admit he has a fondness for some of the Spidey memorabilia he sees around New York. He’s been known to go to conventions (as a photographer for the paper, documenting the events with his press badge) and end up wandering the artists’ alleys, sometimes buying their unlicensed Spidey stickers or handmade plushies. He thinks it’s sweet that people care that much.

On a similar note, if a child EVER gives him ANYTHING meant for him/Spidey, he keeps it. Every time. Even in his lowest, grouchiest state, he always kept things made for him by children and never declined them. He keeps everything in a filing cabinet in his home, and a couple more in the Spider-Shed/his hideout. The Spider-Shed is wall-to-wall covered in drawings children have made for him, letters from kids he’s saved or who admire him, pictures of him posing with kids who asked for a photo op with their favorite hero. It keeps him motivated: do it for the people who look up to him.

Speaking of his hideout, which is technically on May’s property, Peter B. owns Aunt May’s home. After she passed away, she left the house to him in the will, so he does own it. The only reason he didn’t immediately move in there (and instead got that crappy loaner apartment) was because he felt it would be too big to be in all alone, much less all alone with all the painful memories. He was in a dark, hurting place in his life, and the idea of living in his childhood home without his mother figure, without his loved ones… it ached too badly to even think about. So, instead, he put all of May’s things in storage and rented the house out temporarily. However, after the events of Spider-Verse, he decided to move in, feeling better about himself and his future. It’s what May would have wanted: for him to go home.

Peter is an 80′s kid (born in 1981!), so he has a fondness for the stuff he grew up with, while still being able to enjoy newer things. That being said, he’s a bit of an old coot and codger about certain things. For example, he hated the Star Wars prequels and, if probed, will go on a rant about how they almost destroyed the Star Wars franchise and how, if he could, he’d go back in time and slap George Lucas silly for trying to make all that happen. “Mace Windu is the ONLY good thing about the prequels,” he hisses. “The O N L Y good thing.”

On that note, Peter does actually still own VHS tapes and a player that he keeps fully functional. He’s very techy, very gifted with computers, and very capable of keeping up with every detail of the technical realm, but he also has a fondness for older, clunkier, almost ‘analog’ machines. Plus, there’s just something pleasing to him about the pop and crackle and fuzz of a VHS tape. He has all of his childhood/teenage tapes still, and insisted May never throw away their tapes. Every movie they ever owned is preserved, and he can go back and revisit them any time he pleases. Sometimes, when he’s working on a new gadget, tinkering away at his workbench, he’ll put on a VHS in the background and just let the movie play itself out while he works. He often plays the original Star Wars films, The Goonies, or Jurassic Park. Sometimes he’ll pop in VHSes he recorded of original Star Trek episodes or something like Quantum Leap. He likes sci-fi stuff the best.

Peter’s hair is Like That because it’s the one thing he actually bothers grooming. May used to always get on his case as a kiddo because he had messy hair, and it was the one aspect of his grooming he could control (he didn’t grow facial hair for quite some time, so this was just about the only thing he could do for most of his adolescence and young adulthood), so he knows to at least bother to brush it over. Every time he does it, he can imagine May standing in the bathroom door, watching him brush his hair, and remember the way she’d pinch his cheek and call him “the handsomest boy in Queens”. It makes him smile.

Peter is slightly far-sighted, needing reading glasses. His eyesight was, for the most part, fixed with the spider-bite, but that mostly just gave him incredible long-distance vision. Up close, however, especially now that he’s a touch older, he needs a little help.

Peter B. Parker is, of course, Jewish. He still practices and regularly visits synagogue, and has done a number of community efforts both in and out of the suit. Spider-Man is welcomed at a number of institutions of faith in New York, and Peter has been to at least one service at each (he’s attended church, mosque, temple, synagogue, et cetera) while in the suit. He’s very proudly Jewish, as evidenced by his wedding, and happy to be part of the community.

Peter likes going to the movies, but has found that, now that he’s getting older, if the movie isn’t very good, he might just doze off and fall asleep. It’s embarrassing how many times he’s been caught at the local theatre, slouched in his seat, snoring into his half-empty popcorn bucket. Sometimes the workers will mistake him for a homeless man, and the number of times he’s had to show ID and prove that he’s not homeless is… even more embarrassing.

Peter doesn’t eat too exotically, but he’s willing to try lots of things. He lives in New York, after all, one of the most densely interculturally populated cities in the world! He’s open to experimenting and seeing what lies in the unprobed realms of cuisine. But don’t offer him anything like live animals, slimy stuff, “prairie oysters”, eyeballs, et cetera. Sometimes, you just need to pass on the more questionable dining experiences.

Peter, absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, cannot dance. This video is a reference to how he dances.

Peter thinks white chocolate tastes like grease, dark chocolate is too bitter, and only super processed milk chocolate is good. This guy eats whole boxes of Goobers, too, just because he likes the chocolate. “I try to ignore the peanuts,” he says around a mouthful.

Peter B. Parker has been hit by several taxis. He now hates taxis.

Peter B. Parker has a love-hate relationship with the new Star Wars sequels. He also thinks Poe Dameron is mad hot, but somehow familiar. Where does he know that voice…?

Peter’s favorite time of year is winter. Summer is a b o m i n a b l e in New York, spring’s fine, autumn beautiful, but Peter loves a good, chilly, brisk winter’s day, and the promise of snow. He doesn’t get especially cold in the suit, either, since it’s perfectly designed to always maintain thermodynamic equilibrium. 

Peter loves a good, hard hug. Especially if it’s hard enough to pop his back a little. He’s more of an ‘acts of service’ affectionate kind of guy, but he can really appreciate a good, strong, loving hug. And if it alleviates a little of that pressure in his spine? Well, all the better!

[shemakesmusic-uk]

Getting to Know...

Rosa Bordallo.

Rosa Bordallo fka Manett is a singer-songwriter and musician based in Brooklyn. She is a CHamoru from the island of Guam in the Marianas, an archipelago in Micronesia. She came to New York at the age of 19. She was a member of the band cholo.

Last month Bordallo released Reef Walker, a deeply personal indie rock record with poignant lyrics that investigate identity, loss, belonging, society, historical trauma, and hope.

We had a chat with Rosa all about Reef Walker, her background and influences, creative process and more. Read the Q&A below.

Hi Rosa. Please tell us a bit about yourself. What led you to make music and who/what are your biggest influences?

"Hi! Thank you for this opportunity to share my work! I’m a singer/songwriter based in New York City. I am also a Pacific Islander, specifically an indigenous person from Guam who identifies as CHamoru. I was born and raised there, and I started playing guitar and writing songs as a teenager. I came to NYC in the early 2000’s for film school, and I have been living and working here since then. The first year I was here, I joined a post-punk band called cholo that was formed by Felipe Flores. We played in small clubs and venues around town for almost ten years. We also released three full-length albums and one EP. Around 2010 I started making music by myself under the alias Manett, and I also released a few solo EPs under that alias.

"Making music was a natural progression for me since listening to music has always been an important coping mechanism. They say imitation is the best form of flattery, so I try to emulate my heroes and hopefully something new and interesting comes out of it. I’ve always been someone who needs to express myself, whether writing in a journal, writing poetry, doodling or dancing. I think making a record, as a creative endeavor, suits me in a lot of ways because I can draw on those other forms of expression. Also I get easily distracted and I’m not terribly disciplined so it’s nice to have a record - an artifact, a piece of evidence - to show that I didn’t just waste all my time surfing the internet!

"In terms of influence, there are too many to list, but I draw a lot from rock & roll and all its derivatives and revivals particularly psych rock, garage, punk, post-punk, new wave, and grunge. I’ve always been drawn to women with loud guitars and loud personalities -- PJ Harvey, Björk / The Sugarcubes, Dog Faced Hermans, Bikini Kill, Slant 6, Cyndi Lauper, The Breeders, Babes in Toyland. I love unapologetically weird women like Lene Lovich, Lydia Lunch, Nina Hagen, and Siouxsie Sioux. I can go on! Other major influences from my youth are the Pixies, David Bowie, Nirvana, and the Velvet Underground. I think what they all have in common is an irreverence, a willingness to break norms and do something unconventional while keeping a certain integrity. None of them were trying terribly hard to be different - they were just drawing inspiration from their personal frustration and observations of the world and creating something special from that.

You recently released your album Reef Walker. What is the record about, what does it mean to you and what do you hope listeners will take away from it?

"Reef Walker is my first full-length album as a solo artist. I picked that title because I see myself as being able to navigate a gulf that is psychological, cultural, and emotional in nature. As an indigenous person who has lived the first half of my life in my native community and in a remote part of the world, and then spent the second half in this metropolis on the other side of the world, I grapple with the guilt that my loyalties are divided and that I am not spending enough time with my family and native community. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be who I am today if I didn’t leave my place of origin and to live in this new and wildly different place. I think there are many people past and present who have my experience of alienation but it’s not represented in our culture - or if it is, it’s an inadequate representation. I often think about the Japanese castaway Otokichi, later known as John Mathew Ottoson, as well as the Inuk man Minik Wallace, when I need to remind myself why I’m doing what I’m doing.

"I also like the imagery that is evoked from that title. I spent a lot of time at the beach and on my dad’s boat as a kid. It’s actually treacherous to walk along the reef during low tide, because the high tide can come in unexpectedly and drown you, or a rip current can pull you out to sea. It’s also not good to touch or step on coral. Not only is it a living organism that should be protected, but some coral can sting you. But snorkeling and swimming along the reef is a transcendent experience. My ancestors were expert fishermen and seafarers. The album title is as much an homage to them and to all the CHamoru people and other Pacific Islanders who have ties to Oceania.

"All I ask of anyone who hears my album is to have an open mind. I think one reason music is powerful and interesting is because it can be appreciated across cultural divides. I try not to concern myself with how my music is received. I just try to make music that I personally enjoy so if someone else enjoys it, it’s a nice surprise. As for your readers, if you anything about my story sparks your curiosity, I would ask you to explore the histories of indigenous people because much of it has been suppressed and erased.

"There is much needed attention being given to climate change but we should remember that indigenous communities have always been putting their bodies on the line to protect the land, water, and other natural resources. In my own homeland of the Marianas, the U.S. military is about to expand their presence to build two live-fire training ranges that would drastically impact our main aquifer and our wildlife as well as desecrate important ancestral lands. In North America, there’s the oil and gas cartel, and there’s the missing and murdered indigenous women crisis (aka MMIW) which disproportionately affects trans and queer native folx. In South America, the Amazon is being burned down to benefit illegal loggers and farmers. It’s easy to get overwhelmed, but if you consider yourself a moral person, it’s your responsibility to educate yourself about these things. If you’re in North America, there’s a great online resource (native-land.ca) where you can learn about the tribes and nations that first settled the land where you currently live. The International Indigenous Youth Council (indigenousyouth.org) is another good online resource because it shares news from indigenous communities around the world."

What was your favourite part recording Reef Walker?

"It was really fun to record in three different spaces that were also living spaces. We started tracking in Duane Lauginiger’s old basement studio, which was right below his garden apartment in Brooklyn. He called that place Time Castle, hence the name of the cassette label that released the album. Then we went to a private house in Piermont, NY, for the second tracking session. And then finally did a day and night of recording in a converted church in Craryville, NY. Each space had its own quirks and novelties but Duane (the producer-engineer) was really nimble about setting up and adapting. I really like working in a place full of paintings and objets d’art and tchotchkes as opposed to a sterile recording studio that looks more like the set of a bad sci-fi movie."

Please talk us through your songwriting/creative process.

"I have a full-time day job so I just try to make regular time for myself to clear my head, and any ideas I get, I will record it on my phone or my computer. Then I spend a lot of time listening and thinking about these initial ideas. I try to give them enough space to breathe and present themselves to me. I don’t like to exhaust myself working on song ideas that are not particularly compelling to me. If I like hearing it over and over in my head, then chances are it will be interesting enough to sustain my attention long enough to develop it into a complete song and recording.

"I almost always come up with the music first before I think of any lyrics. Sometimes I will have an idea for a melody and lyric together, but I don’t get too attached to the first lyrics I come up with. I also take random notes all the time, about anything and everything, so sometimes I have a poem or a musing that I’ve written down which will get repurposed for song lyrics.

"It’s useful for me to have a theme or concept in mind, something that will spark my curiosity and help me be emotionally invested. With Reef Walker I initially had Woman in Suitcase as the working title. That was the force that brought it into being. I meditated on that a lot while writing the songs. I currently have a working title for my second album, so I’ve been meditating on that. I also did this for my first EP, The Sea Urchin, which was my first stab at making songs that were very personal, as opposed to hiding behind a group project which I did with cholo, my previous band. The sea urchin was a powerful image for me at that time, because I felt very vulnerable putting myself out there. Imagining a shy sea creature with crazy-looking spikes, just chilling in the water and paying attention to its surroundings - that kept me motivated to finish the recordings and put it out into the world.

"In general I just try to stay inspired and curious about things. The urge to create comes out of frustration but also out of appreciation for and communion with other people’s creations. And there are so many wonderful creations out there. I see this as a creative practice, rather than a creative process, because for me it’s more about being grounded and responsive to what’s put before me, rather than about checking off items on a to-do list or making sure that a particular set of actions is followed."

Finally, what are your plans for 2020?

"I plan on touring and writing my second album. Stay tuned!"

Reef Walker is out now.

[therewatcher-blog]

Introduction to The Re-Watcher: First Up, Gilmore Girls

Recently, I’ve accepted something about myself. I love re-watching television. I don’t think this is unique. In fact a good chunk of the streaming business model is predicated on the fact that most of us like what we already know. I started my third? fourth? rewatch of Gilmore Girls at the beginning of the month, and decided that rather than just mindlessly blazing through these rewatches of shows with the random tweet reinforcing the viewpoints I’ve always had, I thought I’d try to be a more active viewer. It will never be the first time again. I will always know what is going to happen to the characters in my beloved shows that merit this amount of hours devoted. So instead, I decided that each time I rewatch a show, I will choose a topic and focus on it in a mini-write up for each episode. Not only will this stop me from watching too quickly, I hope it will help me in forming skills writing about TV and maybe I’ll learn something new about the shows I love as I watch with a specific goal in mind.

 We’ll start with Gilmore Girls. The topic I’ve chosen is, The Best Underrated Scene. I want to focus on the scenes that don’t get necessarily quoted as much or that catch me off guard in my rewatch with their depth, brilliance, and significance. Amy Sherman-Palladino has finally gotten some awards and recognition with her newest show, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but her talent was evident from the beginning and her cast in Gilmore Girls certainly did everything they could to take it to the next level. I want to look beyond the big fights and big cries and find those nuggets that offer depth to even the more cartoonish of Stars Hollow characters or reveal an important character trait and dynamic in a subtle way. Let’s see how this goes!

 1x01 – Pilot

 Pilots are difficult. I know this from watching many and from hearing screenwriters talk about it. Comedy is particularly difficult, it seems. With the exception of Veep, Cheers, and maybe Arrested Development, I have a hard time thinking of comedy pilots that operate at the same level of the show in its prime. Gilmore Girls was marketed as a typical WB teen drama, but also, it’s really a smart show about family and class. It’s a comedy, a family drama, a small town fantasy. It’s so many things and the pilot has a LOT of exposition to get through in as smooth a way as possible for a show whose premise is deceptively simple. As such, finding a truly great and understated scene that isn’t bogged down by introducing our big dynamics and long arcs for the season and series (Lorelai and Rory, Lorelai and her parents, Lorelai and Luke, Rory and Dean, the Inn, Stars Hollow, etc, etc, etc.) is difficult.

 With all of this in mind, my first pick for Best Underrated Scene is maybe a bit of cheat since all the scenes in this that are really worth talking about are all a bit iconic.

Lorelai Asks Her Parents for Money

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njZo0lvgCsY

This is almost halfway through the episode. It’s the turning point and the whole premise for the show. While Lorelai and Rory are interesting and fun and I enjoy their dynamic, Lorelai and her parents (Emily and Richard) will always steal the episode away with their interplay. The strain between these two generations is painted so beautifully and delicately from the beginning. The transition to this sequence comes from a picture that Lorelai keeps on her mantelpiece of herself as a young child in front of her parent’s mansion that seems dark and cold compared to the warm, tchotchke–riddled home that Lorelai has built for herself. Lorelai is looking at this picture as she realizes her only option to pay for Rory’s new fancy school is to borrow money from her parents. We cross-fade from this small token of Lorelai’s childhood to the present-day real deal. But even the fact that Lorelai has this picture is telling. For every bad thing she has to say about her upbringing and her parents, a part of her still holds ties. As the series continues we will see in which ways Lorelai is really a lot like her parents, but for now this maybe is just a slight hint that nothing has ever been as black and white as Lorelai likes to act like it was.

Lorelai waits with her coffee, next to her Jeep (which obviously stands out against the backdrop of her parents house…”HELLO! I’m different from you!” Lorelai loves to scream with all of her purchases). She is gulping down her pride, finding the courage to go in and do what she never in her lifetime wanted to do. Cut to Emily opening the door, clearly surprised to see her daughter who only lives forty minutes away. “Is it Easter already?” she jokes. While we constantly have instances throughout the show of Emily and Richard not understanding Lorelai’s jokes, we can see from this first interaction that she probably got much of her wit from them. Emily is hilarious. She is maybe a bit harsher in her sarcasm, a bit drier than Lorelai’s hyper-joking mannerisms, but it is there and we see it right away. I love even more so that Richard makes the same joke when he first discovers Lorelai there unexpectedly (“What is it, Christmas already?”). Emily and Richard’s marriage has it’s ups and downs in the show, but they are solidly made for each other in many ways. They have a partnership that has lasted for decades and it shows in the way they at times seem to have one mind.

 As Lorelai and Emily make their way to the living room, making awkward chitchat we are greeted with maybe the longest pause in the episode yet. Pauses are a big deal in the famously wordy Palladino scripts.  It speaks volumes how little these women seem to be able to say to each other. “I’m sure I told you,” Lorelai tells her mother answering in a bit more detail about her business class. “Well if you’re sure, than you must have,” Emily bites back sarcastically. We get no answer to whether Lorelai did or not (my guess is that she didn’t), but either way we see so clearly the miscommunications that bubble up between these two who have so little faith in the other’s ability to understand the other. They don’t make this one a big fight, but it is part of the fight we will see later in the episode. Emily resents that Lorelai shuts her out of her life. Lorelai resents her mother’s controlling nature which causes her to avoid telling Emily anything rather than risk criticism or involvement in her choices. It’s a vicious cycle. Every bit of Emily’s dialogue is dripping with sardonic disbelief as she explains to Richard that Lorelai decided to just “drop in to see us” after her “business class” that “she told us about it, dear, remember?” “No.” Richard demures. He doesn’t play the same games that Emily and Lorelai do with each other. No, he doesn’t remember. This could be because he doesn’t listen, but it could also be a point in the column for the theory that Lorelai never told them.

 Just this small part is enough to make this scene practically perfect. We got the back story before this for the most part in a scene between Lorelai and Sookie, but so far this has given us so much of the relationship between Lorelai and her parents (and a bit into the relationship between Richard and Emily). It soars in it’s ability to shed exposition and get to the root of what this dynamic has been for the last 16 years. It’s even better than the first Friday Night Dinner that happens towards the end of this episode, in my opinion. But now we have the discussion of money and the loan. Gilmore Girls at times handles the class dynamics between Lorelai and her parents so well it approaches Mad Men in what it is saying about whiteness and power and inherited wealth and those that reject it. Other times it is a magical place where money and finances make no sense. But that’s down the line. Here we have the simple act of a child asking their parents for money. Something many people have done with various degrees of injured pride. For some it’s easy, for Lorelai it is immensely difficult. Her saving grace is that it is for Rory, not for her, that she asks. It is interesting to note, that while Lorelai is adverse to the moneyed class her parents are in and the trappings of the white, wealthy elite she still wants her kid to have those advantages that she turned down by having Rory and leaving her parents. She still wants Harvard. She still wants Chilton. She is asking her parents for the money to buy her and Rory’s way back into the world she left behind. Of course she believes that it won’t have to affect their quaint little life in Stars Hollow, but it is interesting nonetheless that this is what she wants for her child and what she believes Rory deserves and needs in order to be what Rory wants to be.

 Before Lorelai can even ask, Richard repeats two times “You need money.” Again, Richard doesn’t mess around and he doesn’t play games (at least not when it comes to calling his daughter out). He doesn’t need to hear her explanation, but Lorelai won’t leave until she gives it and says what she came to say in the way she wants to say it. It’s for Rory, for Chilton, she explains. Emily’s eyes brighten and she notes how close the school is to her house. “So…you need money,” Richard again chimes in, cutting through the bullshit. “Yes,” Lorelai has to admit. But it’s Rory, she repeats, and she will pay them back. “I don’t ask for favors, you know that.” (Lorelai’s anthem) “Oh yes, we know,” Emily admits.  Emily’s voice is rife with bitterness and sadness. She wants to help her daughter, but she’s not allowed to. “I’ll get the check book,” Richard says. It is a sweet moment that is cut short by Emily’s proposal, but sweet regardless. Despite their past and hurt feelings, there is love between these people. Richard does not hesitate and he knows that Emily agrees. Rory binds them all together and certainly they are willing to do this for her, but they are obviously just as willing to do this for Lorelai. 

 And here we have Emily’s proposal that sets up the backbone for this generational family drama. Emily wants to be actively involved in Lorelai and Rory’s lives. She wants dinner once a week and a weekly phone call in exchange for the loan. Kelly Bishop is honestly so pitch perfect in everything in this show. She has that pose and demeanor here that seems almost villainous. It’s why on first watch you might want to always side with Lorelai. Emily is controlling and privileged and she has many faults, but honestly she just loves her daughter and granddaughter and sees an opportunity to force a connection that Lorelai would have denied her for eternity if she had not jumped on it. There is a softness in this. She doesn’t comment on Lorelai’s inability to provide this schooling for Rory herself, or honestly do anything to make her feel bad (in this moment) about her life’s choices. She just wants to be a part of that life now.  Of course it gets messier the more we go into this episode and the series, but for now that’s all there is. We see again Lorelai’s pride, “I don’t want her [Rory] to know that I borrowed money from you.” But that’s not the only fault of Lorelai’s we see in this scene. We see also her stubbornness when it comes to her parents and her oftentimes inability and unwillingness to see the ways they demonstrate their love and their longing for her. She brushes past her mom’s request and agrees to the weekly dinners, but she is annoyed by it. She seems to see it only as her mother controlling her (of course it is this too, but as is often the case with the best scenes in this show people’s motives are both-and. Emily is controlling and vulnerable in this one). She doesn’t see that longing to connect as the simple love of a mother for her daughter that it is.

 And that’s that. So much is revealed besides the plot in this elegantly written and brilliantly acted scene. It is simple and yet I could probably go on about how much this one scene says about this show as a whole. So much is revealed and set up for the series. Of all the iconic scenes in this episode, this one stands above the others and for that reason I think it is underrated.