#also he canonically loves cars. like in sing 2 you can see him admiring them as they go into the hotel

[hoperays-song]

Quick Johnny Doodle

He saw a fancy car:)

[ch1-kasak0]

CUP HEAD HEAD CANONS GRRRR

A hahaha this isn't very child friendly :3 18+🔥🔥🔥

‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️🔥🔥🔥🌞

Cup 100% spent way too much time staying up all night looking at the stars, has been punished multiple times by hat for staying up and not being awake for training :3

Cups fav dates would be staying up and stargazing or spending time walking through forests and around lakes and skimming rocks or playing with the animals at shelters

Always carries various animal treats and toys

Had a favourite pencil and would get emotional when it was taken off of him as a kid

Ambidextrous

Has tried to stack things on his dick, it worked but some almost got stuck and he panicked so much he cried

Considering bendys kick to his crotch he's probably not gonna have kids for awhile.. Or ever bendy has a really strong kick . _.

Likes driving near mountains so he can admire the scenery

Absolutely dispises people who leave their lights on for no reason at night (light pollution)

Is probably a tits man, likes laying on ur chest, man or woman since he likes listening to ur heartbeat, occasionally squeezes ur titties/chest for a giggle, makes a honk sound when he does and dies laughing everytime

Went to Scotland once and some dickhead asked him if he knew Swahili (it's a saying) and he learned Swahili just to spite the guy

Strangely likes the taste of cum... ( ͡ ͡° ͜ ʖ ͡ ͡°)

Can run through trees ninja style

Drives like a dad

Bendy sometimes likes to just hug cup for the warmth #walking heater

Is really good at massages, got a tense spot? Go to cup and it'll be gone, might even get a hug as well

REALLY likes Eskimo kisses, he loves them sm

Yells train everytime he sees one, no matter who hears him

Has tried to lick one of the pea shooters before, nearly burned his tongue off and it's still kinda scarred around his mouth n shit, couldn't eat for like a month or 2 after (this was when he first got the bullets btw)

Really scarred and veiny hands, yum

Has probably been attacked by a succubus before

Sleeps like a "paint me like one of your French girls" when he isn't hugging smth

Prefers sweet n salty popcorn over just sweet or just salty

Likes looking out of the window when on car rides

Jonathan Sims core

Really likes sushi

"Gimme a hug :("

":3"

Jewelry.

Tried to read Wilsons journal once, no thanks.

You gotta be his fav person under mugs if he can trust u to protect him while he sleeps

Has weird hobbies and interests, he could rant about cannibalism for hours and if you trust him he'd ask if you can help him w bondage stuff (just, helping him tie u up or u tying him up) he's fascinated by bondage,

Can sleep upside down

Hates summer and winter, only likes autumn and spring

used to sound like will Stetson before he started smoking, so lowkey a TINY bit why he did, he thought he didnt sound threatening:P

Unironically moans a little when he's out of breath, no one has told him yet bc regardless of how lewd it is he just has a nice voice, his vocal cords are very moanable it's amazing

Also moans a lot when he sings, dunno why, no one has tried to stop him

gynecomastia (man boobs)

One time broke into a bar, drank most of the bars whiskey and then gave himself a concussion by falling into a pool table

Doesnt like tofu for whatever reason

Can easily fall asleep in a car if he's comfortable but doesn't bc he's not

Cannot sit still

Cannot stand still

Cannot lie still

Dispises people who talk when they eat

Gets sick when he sees chewed up food in people's mouths

Really wants a pet vulture idk

Tried to drink out of his straw, thought nothing of it, then asked dementia to try... It was weird.. It felt weird.. He didn't like it

Has really tense shoulders and back, physically incapable of massaging himself but can do it perfectly for others, it's a struggle

Likes rain, doesn't like getting wet

Will flood a bathroom if he uses a bath, cannot keep water in it for some reason

Likes cuddles, might have said this in another post but who gives af

Would 100% listen to MSI, Will wood and jhariah frfr trust

HIP DIPS. he has hip dips you can't change my mind/violin hips idk idgaf

Central heterochromia 100%

Used to hum the same song as demi did to help mugs sleep when they were younger, now does it for dying animals he finds and can't help save

If it was acceptable, would wear sleeveless turtle necks n shit like that trust (would make it easier to touch his boobs as well frfr)

Is the type of boy best friend to carry tampons n shit just incase one of his bsfs get her period #slay

[haledamage]

Kira Grace Kingston

female, she/her

5'6”, slender build

shoulder-length, straight dark-brown hair

pale, lightly freckled skin

light brown eyes

bisexual (though I play her in-game as straight because I just really connected with the all-male Unit Bravo for some reason)

Taurus, born 28 April 1992; 25 at the beginning of Book 1, turns 26 between Book 1 and 2

left-handed

Romance: all of them, I’m using the same Detective for all routes

(infodump about her under the cut, for my own purposes mostly but also for anyone interested)

--Was inspired to become a cop to help people after having one help her when she really, really needed it. Wanted to pay it forward, so to speak.

--Kira is a natural leader and very good at deduction and problem solving (it’s her second highest stat, after people/psychology). She would have likely gone out for detective soon anyway, but didn’t think she was ready or old enough to be in charge of the whole station yet and was surprised when the promotion came. The rest of the station had been secretly considering her their boss for years before Detective Reele retired, but Kira somehow has no idea.

--Totally shot Adam. Feels really bad about it but would never tell him that.

--Will drink tea or coffee, but prefers tea. Her favorites are cinnamon tea and masala chai. If she’s drinking coffee, she prefers the sugary, flavored, Starbucks-like variety, but will sometimes drink it black just to unnerve people (people mostly being Tina).

--Doesn’t wear much make-up, but likes to paint her nails. Usually black or some other dark color, a “layover from her misspent youth.”

--Wears contacts. Has gold-framed glasses that she wears when she has to, but hates them. She’s farsighted, so if for some reason she can’t wear her contacts, she only puts on the glasses for reading.

--Plays guitar and lap steel guitar. Prefers to play blues music, but can play just about any genre. A pretty good singer, but very shy about it. Probably only Rebecca and Tina have ever heard her sing as far as she knows. (she sings to herself at her desk sometimes, but doesn’t realize it. All of UB have probably noticed; Felix definitely has, and is likely waiting for a good opportunity to tease her about it)

--She’s always been very close with Rebecca. They’re both rather independent-minded, so she didn’t mind her mother’s absences so much. Mum was always there when she needed her, and always willing to listen, and that’s what mattered. Now that she knows what she does, Kira is sure that she’s called her mother while she was on a mission before, but Rebecca still always answered, and that fact makes her respect and admire her mum even more.

--Lost a bet to Verda in regards to The Reveal. Verda had said the Murphy case and its oddities were supernatural in nature, Kira said it was science experiments gone awry. Technically, they were both right, but Verda was more right. Kira looks forward to one day being able to tell him, even if she’ll be out £50 for it.

--The only reason Kira isn’t some reclusive hermit is because of Tina Poname. Tina and Kira met when they were both in a very low place, and have lifted each other up and helped put each other back on their feet. Their friendship is very important to Kira, and the fact that she can’t tell Tina that the Hot Secret Agents they’re working with are Hot Secret Agent Vampires is the hardest part of The Reveal. She’s not used to keeping secrets from Tina.

--Tina and Kira have a monthly movie night. One of them picks the movie and the other picks the food, then they swap the next month. It’s more like an adult slumber party than anything else, really, lots of wine and gossip and venting if need be. It’s a tradition going back years now and neither would miss it for the world.

--Is very good with people, it’s her highest stat, but doesn’t actually enjoy being around them much. Very much an introvert, prefers silence and solitude or the company of close friends only. She works very hard to be as approachable as she is.

--Curses like a sailor. Poor Nate.

--Loves to read. Anything and everything. You put a book in front of her and she’ll read it. Mysteries are a favorite.

--Her favorite color is wintergreen like Adam’s eyes.

--Apartment style would be somewhere between cosy and dark. Kind of a Spooky Grandma’s House vibe. Lush fabrics and textures, soft sofas and chairs, but subdued colors. Black, gray, navy blue, with pale blue and wintergreen accents. Artwork is mostly made by locals or by friends from university. Bookshelves nearly overflowing. Apartment is kept clean, but always looks a bit cluttered.

--Preferred clothing style is casual but professional. Jeans, most often paired with a t-shirt or button-up shirt. Mostly long sleeves, but with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Usually black, sometimes white or gray, very, very rarely dark green or dark blue. Black leather jacket when it’s cold. Almost always wears black boots; she paid more for those boots than she did for her car (but that says more for how little she paid for the car than how expensive her boots actually are).

--Speaks seven languages. English, Sign Language, Spanish, French, German, Welsh, and, because someone dared her to at university, Sindarin Elvish. With the exception of the elvish, she learned most of them out of necessity or exposure.

--English literature major. Doesn’t serve much in her job, but she’s still proud of it.

--Very shy when it comes to flirting. She hates it about herself. She’s very confident and self-assured in almost every other situation, but if someone starts showing the slightest bit of genuine interest in her she flusters very easily.

--Dated Bobby in year one at university for a couple months. With him in journalism and her in English lit, they had a lot of class overlap early on, and he was familiar and clearly interested and that was enough, for a while. She regrets that she fell so easily for his flirting and has resolved since to not be such an “easy mark” in the future. Hasn’t dated anyone since and hasn’t wanted to (until UB barge into her office, obviously). Kind of hates him, but would never let him know that; she is, instead, very meticulously polite to him, never any more or less.

--At the beginning of Book 1, she has 4 tattoos. Gets a 5th one during the 2 months between Book 1 and Book 2.      -a small, stylized crown on her right wrist (Rebecca has a matching one that she hides under her watch band at work) because Kingston     -bars of music wrapped around her right bicep (watercolour-style effect behind it - the music is Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down”)     -a quote on the inside of her left bicep (“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein)     -a large full-color floral piece from her left hip almost to her knee (forget-me-nots for her father, lupines for her mother, lavender roses and verbena for herself)     -new tattoo is a simple, black crescent moon on the back of her neck to symbolize a new beginning (keeps it hidden under her hair most of the time, especially at work).

--Preferred method of working out is rock climbing/wall climbing. Has some combat training, mostly just from the police academy, but she tries to attend aikido lessons when she has time. She likes that it lets her defend herself without being stronger than her opponent, especially now that she deals with the supernatural so much.

--Kira didn’t realize how attached she’d grown to Unit Bravo until the attack on her apartment. She wanted to stay to help her team; on every route, she has to be dragged away in order to get her to leave. Completely, 100% ride or die for all of them.

Kira is my only Detective and I’m using her in all four routes (sorry, folks, I can’t do the Love Triangle. I tried, but I can’t, it already hurts and I’m not strong enough). It’s been very interesting, since she has the same personality no matter what, to see in what ways she connects with each member of Unit Bravo, and the slight changes in her personality stats based on how she responds to romance-specific scenes.

Adam: arguably my “canon” romance for her, though I legitimately and completely love all of them. On his route, her stats skew a little more toward Stubborn and Impulsive because she’s spiteful and he’s kind of an ass, especially to start with. 

They’re both headstrong and natural leaders, so they butt heads a lot in terms of authority. She doesn’t like that Adam tries to order her around, he doesn’t like that she refuses to listen to orders sometimes out of spite. But when they actually try to get along, they agree more often than not and could probably make an amazing team given time. 

She’s completely, head-over-heels in love with him, but she hasn’t figured it out yet, though she knows she feels something for him. He makes her feel safe, which is how she knows that she’s in deep. 

On Adam’s route, Nate is Kira’s best friend. Poor guy’s gonna be stuck between the immovable object and the unstoppable force for 7 fucking books.

Nate: On Nate’s route, Kira’s stats tend more toward Cautious, and also a bit more Heart on the Heart/Mind scale. 

Of all of them, Nate would be the one Kira would be most surprised to find herself falling for. She’s not much of a romantic, generally, but she’s also never had anyone look at her like Nate does, or treat her like she’s something precious and important. She feels completely off balance with him and has no idea how to react. She has never been so overwhelmed with a desire to kiss someone before. 

Personality-wise, they have a lot in common, both are good with people, compassionate, linguistically talented, and avid readers; to anyone except Kira, them getting together makes perfect sense. He probably doesn’t like how stubborn and foul-mouthed she is, but between Adam and Mason, he’s used to dealing with it. 

On Nate’s route, Mason is Kira’s best friend. No one is more surprised about that than they are, and they aren’t really sure how that happened.

Felix: On Felix’s route, Kira skews more toward Easygoing and Impulsive. 

In a word, Felix helps Kira relax. She’s a bit of a workaholic and he brings her out of her shell and reminds her that she’s more than just Detective Kingston. It’s refreshing and overwhelming. Romance with Felix is easy. 

He’s the only one where she doesn’t end up 100% shy because, even though she still gets horribly flustered by him, he doesn’t make her as tongue-tied as the others do. Maybe it’s because he’s so much less intense than the others, but also she kind of feels like she’s always known him. 

She wants to show him the world, all the little things about being human that she’s always taken for granted but he never had in Echo World. Paper airplanes and creepy travelling carnivals and movie theater popcorn and photo booths and everything. They’ll be good for each other, but them joining forces is probably very bad for everyone else. 

On Felix’s route, Nate is Kira’s best friend. Unlike with Adam, he isn’t so much trapped between two opposing forces as he is an exhausted parent trying to corral overly-curious children.

Mason: On Mason’s route, Kira’s stats tend even more toward Genuine than they do on other routes, as well as Stubborn. 

On the surface Mason and Kira probably don’t look like they’d work, but really I think they’re the pairing that makes the most sense. Mason doesn’t drain her social batteries as much as the others, even at the beginning when he’s as hostile toward her as possible. They both enjoy the quiet, and that’s where the first romantic feelings from her would form, in the calm and silent comfort she feels with him. 

But obviously, it doesn’t start romantic even a little bit. At the beginning, she’s neither intimidated nor put off by his sharp, brusque personality, and she’s very flustered and intimidated by his intense manner of flirting, though she’s not really put off by it either. She doesn’t know how to respond to it (though he clearly enjoys how she reacts), but he makes her feel desired in a way she never has before. There’s a certain comfort to knowing that he only wants her physically, that he’s straightforward in his interests. 

I imagine that she figures out she’s falling for him after he does something small that should be innocuous, some little off-hand affection that he didn’t even think about and she just goes “oh shit, I’m in love with Mason.” 

On Mason’s route, Felix is Kira’s best friend. He definitely sees them falling for each other long before they see it and does everything he can to get them to stop being idiots and realize that they’re in love.

[blarfkey]

For the OC ask: 🥀 💫 for Dear Fen’Harel, 🌹 🍂 for greasemonkey!Rey in Code Ren, or 🌾 🌸 for Thick as Thieves? (No pressure to do all of them, but I find that a selection of options is helpful when I get blocked)

I am answering all of them because I am blocked on all of them! *maniacal laughter* Also bless you for always giving me asks. I love you.

Anyway! More under the cut!

Dear Fen’Harel

🥀 How would your OC decorate a notebook or journal? What kind of things are written in there? Could you give an example of a nice entry? 

Ellana’s a nerd, right. So she doesn’t keep a journal or diary, but she definitely hand-writes all of her notes even with her fancy laptop because that’s how she’s always done it.  She’s not really an artist, even though she loves art, but she would definitely color code them by class or subject and label them. As a kid, she definitely would have been one those types who made the collages out of cut up magazine pictures.

💫What is your favourite fact about this character and why? 

Something I love about Ellana because it’s something I admire in real life is her practical knowledge. I believe that Dalish and my version of Modern Dalish know how to make anything out of anything. They would not be a consumerist culture. Even in the modern era, the Dalish make their own clothes, furniture, and now how to repurpose just about everything. Ellana is a sort of jack of all trades. She’s not specialized in anything, but she knows how to wood work, metal work, solder, sew, work on older cars, ect. She can take pieces of broken machinery or furniture and jerry rig it into something useful.

It’s endlessly fascinating to people like Josephine or Dorian, who grew up with such silver spoons that they would just go out and buy a brand new whole replacement unit. Meanwhile, Ellana would take it apart, find out what’s broken, and figure out a replacement.

Code Ren

🌹 Where in the world does your OC feel most at home? Is there any reason why? If it’s not the place they were born, where were they born? Is there a certain somebody that makes them feel at home where ever they may be? What does home mean to them?

I think the Falcon would be the place Rey feels the most at home, even in regular canon. For my fic, it’s a legendary classic and dependable, it’s old enough for the tech to look and feel familiar to her, and it’s small enough to fee protective and big enough not to be claustrophobic. I think growing up in the desert in that AT-AT, Rey would feel exposed and vulnerable in wide open spaces. I know that the Finalizer felt like an endless maze to her and she didn’t much care for it.

I don’t think people make Rey feel at home because she’s grown up alone. Even with Finn and Ben and Han, she would prefer to have a place to herself. That’s another thing she didn’t like about the Finalizer -- all the people around her all the damn time.

🍂 Does your OC enjoy hugs? What do they do as a show of affection for: their friends, their family, their significant other(s) or for strangers? Over all what are they like with recieving affection from others? 

Lol, you can tell in TFA that Rey is very unused to and uncomfortable with physical affection (stop holding my hand!). I think she is someone who prefers to initiate touch rather than have a hug sprung on her. But I think once she gets used to the idea of having another person to care about, she would crave physical affection like any other touch-starved person. I think Rey’s love language is acts of service and words of affection, but Finn’s is definitely affection and touch so she would get used to it, haha.

Thick as Thieves

🌾 Describe your OC through the eyes of someone absolutely head-over-heels in love with them 

Lol this is just Solas the entire damn fic! He is very much fixated on her smile and how it reaches her eyes and lights them up,  which is probably something he’s not used to seeing, dealing with the Evanuris and their dangerous court intrigue. He also is obsessed a little bit with her hair, which is wild and curly and barely under control and nothing like the aristocratic elf hair he grew up seeing.

Solas makes a lot of comparisons between Shay and the sun, which can be very apt. She’s warm and bright, but if you’ve lived in the dark for a long time, it’s a brightness that hurts to look at. And it’s dangerous to spend a lot of time exposed to it. Yet it feeds him a nourishment (which we all know is vitamin D!)  that he can’t get anywhere else. Once you’re used to the sun, it’s hard to go without it. Really the metaphor writes itself.

🌸 What are some of their favourite things and why? List as many as you can think of!

Shay loves --

1. Card games, especially the kind where you can cheat or lose clothing

2. Hot fresh bread

3. The color yellow

4. Dirty jokes

5. Jokes that sound like the punchline will be dirty but then it’s clean and you’re dirty for thinking that it would be dirty

6. Stories, especially tall tales

7. Shiny rocks

8. Art

9. Climbing up to very high places so she can feel tall

10. Singing, especially the bawdy song variety

11. The sky and fat fluffy clouds

[nidhoggssoultrap]

My "Headcanon" (Nidhogg, Louie, and Yvette. Mostly Nidhogg) Part 1

This one is a long one, so I'll be splitting it into parts. I don't think I have ever had a headcanon list this long. Jesus...anyway,

I ship him with Louie shamelessly and without apology. I know that they are adopted brothers, but well, it doesn't stop me, and I hope you don't read Game of Thrones or Angel Sanctuary because BLOOD incest is CANON in both. Anyway, I started out shipping them in a "bitter ex" sense, but it quickly became a situation where Nidhogg wanted more than being a "brother and a friend" and Louie did not and it's unlikely that he ever would. This leads to a lot of heartache for Nidhogg, but he loves Louie very much and while he has attempted erotic things with him, he backs off when Louie refuses. The fact that Nidhogg is unwilling to set aside his feelings for Louie has actually saved him.

The outcome? While they do eventually reconcile, Nidhogg accepts the fact that they will never be anything more than brothers/friends. Louie ends up with Yvette. Nidhogg? Well, I dunno. Shade, for some reason, is creeping up.

Plotbunny: Louie visits Nidhogg at a base and tricks him into thinking that he has finally "seen the light" and it willing to not only side with the Dark, but to become lovers like Nidhogg wanted. They do what is known as a "grudgefuck" with Louie in control (alternate: Nidhogg tries to kiss him but Louie rebuffs him). Either way, Louie grabs Nidhogg by the chin and says, "There'll be a chance for 'us' when you bring Lunar back to me." (Alternate: After they kiss/grudgesex, Louie stabs Nidhogg in the heart and gets shot in the heart by Nidhogg. They die in each others's arms. "As it should be..." (well, according to Nidhogg).

2. I DO NOT ship Nidhogg/Yvette. She deserves better. That being said, she was never interested in him in THAT way. She only liked "the idea of him." In reality, while she did admire him and legit like him, she had no romantic/erotic interest in him at all. Nidhogg also was not interested in her in that way as well, in my headcanon, "he prefers the company of men." He viewed her as someone who was not only an image, but someone to "vent his spleen on". He did, however, come to view her as a friend, sister and maybe even a daughter. It's why he ended up getting "cold feet" and chose not to keep her and send her home. She was supposed to be sent elsewhere as part of a "quest" in order for Nidhogg to gain even more power. If he fails, then he will be "doubly cursed" with both the Blood Curse and a "Fail Curse."

He figured that there is still time and when he is on the losing end of the war, he kidnaps her again which leads to a very long and intense car chase between him and Nikki's group(Louie driving). This is basically a Louie vs Nidhogg and due to Yvette's actions at the end(she bites Nidhogg and tries to fight him, not caring about the blood curse or dying as she DID not want to end up "in a box" for the rest of her life), the car chase ends and a knock down drag out fight between Louie and Nidhogg begins. It ends in the latter's defeat, and he ends up "doubly cursed", humiliated by Louie(needlessly), and banished out of Miraland through a "transport tree". At least for awhile.

3. Speaking of kidnapping, I honestly believed that he actually drove out of Lilith with her. I thought that he "kidnapped" her because someone was after them and he took her to protect her. Hehe...yea, right. Still, I kept the idea that he drove her out of Lilith to the North Kingdom. As for kidnapping, I cringed how it was handled in canon, so I decided that he would be the one to knock her out with a sleeper hold and that kidnapping was 100% his own choice. She "knew too much" and well, see above.

4. Interesting to see Yvette as a "White Knight" because before I saw that, I did decide that she would become something like that. Like Louie. Nice coincidence. :)

5. Nidhogg speaks in a tenor with a soft-spoken tone. He has a tendency to whisper the final parts of his statements and is capable of sounding very sharp. Some say that he does that as a form of control. Louie says that he has always done that and admits that it sounds good. Nidhogg was a wonderful voice. When he actually sings(and in my headcanon, he does lolol), it's a high tenor range. Louie also sings, but it's lower.

6. Nidhogg drinks vodka/vodka drinks and Jaegermeister. It's one of his few "poisons/weaknesses". He does not, however, smoke or do any other kinds of drugs, except caffeine and vaped nicotine/cbd. He vapes though, but not heavily and it's not common to see him with any kind of mod/e-cig.

7. He has a tarot deck which people think odd considering his attitude about destiny(that, ftr, I generally agree with), but he does not view the tarot as destiny, but only guidelines/advice/warnings. The forecast is like the weather to him. Either way, it's not etched in stone. He likes the art anyway. His tarot deck is military themed. He does NOT overindulge in them as to him, such a thing is weakness that needs to be fixed. He is like that with a lot of things.

8. Like Louie, he can drive/fly anything. Louie is a better pilot/biker, Nidhogg is a better driver. Nidhogg drives a sleek, black, powerful, manual shift sportscar. I want to say BMW, but it could just as easily be a Jaguar. It's the car he was driving when he kidnapped Yvette both times. FTR, Louie was chasing him in a white Porsche. Okay, my biases/kinks are showing, but whatever. :p

9. I hope that Nidhogg ends up like Shield Anvil Itkovian (I highly recommend Memories of Ice and the Malazan series entirely):

"We are all pushed into a world of madness, yet it must now fall to each of us to pull back from this Abyss, to drag ourselves free of the descending spiral. From horror, grief must be fashioned, and from grief, compassion." - Itkovian

Itkovian was a warrior who served a war god. He was a mercenary and he was also the Shield Anvil. He fought in war as one of the leaders, but he also took the pain and suffering from others, took it upon himself and gave it to his God. When his god disappeared, he chose to take the pain of thousands of souls into himself. Because he is THE SHIELD ANVIL. I'd get more in detail, but I don't want to spoil too much. Itkovian is a cinnamon roll. Nidhogg is more of a "problematic fave", but still...

Anyway, I say this because I am aware that Nidhogg willingly took on the Blood Curse and refused to dull it. He, like Itkovian, knew that war causes suffering. The Shield Anvil alleviates that suffering and I suspect that Nidhogg would not mind doing the same thing:

"I did it. I should be the one to undo it." In my headcanon, Nidhogg wants to try to bring Lunar back. Yes, he has ulterior motives(See: Louie and he readily admits this), but he wants to do it anyway as it is still the right thing to do.

10. Nidhogg loves the moon and prefers silver over gold. He LOVES Onyx. He had his ears pierced since he was a teenager and got it done at a tattoo parlor. He tends to wear boot jewelry too.

11. His "animal totem" is the wolf. His temperament is similar to Griffith's of Berserk. However, there might be disagreements about dreams, depending on what one means by dreams. In Nidhogg's mind, ambition and dreams are two different things. You want to compare bad deeds? If you've read both Berserk and Love Nikki, then I think you can take a few guesses. To put it simply, externally, both are cool, calm and collected. Internally, there is a great deal of intensity that only shows in certain circumstances. Otherwise, they are both very laser guided and "tight-vested" with their hearts.

12. He has issues with Locco due to her well basically saying "If I must choose between being weak and being dead, I'd rather be weak for the dead have no dreams." She has her own "Fountain Scene" with Yvette. Nidhogg did not like this but he chose to leave it alone. He found it amusing when he found out that she suggested that Yvette make a "March Hare" design. He found it even more amusing when Yvette won an award for it.

13. After Yvette returned home from her first kidnapping, she developed a Jesse Pinkman attitude towards Nidhogg. What I mean is "HE CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS!" Breaking Bad fans will know what I'm talking about. So, I wasn't surprised when I later found out that Yvette did want him brought to justice for pretty much ALL of his actions, but especially against Lilith Kingdom.

14. Nidhogg has a foul mouth, especially when stressed. He is, however, no match for a sailor, but he can try. Heh. Obviously, as Prime Minister he is a lot more "clean."

15. His interests are actually similar to Yvette's but they have different tastes. Example: when it comes to say, the fantasy genre, Yvette prefers the more light-hearted fantasy in general. Nidhogg, otoh, prefers "darker fantasy" that is more rooted in reality.

16. He does not hate the clothing he designed for Lilith, he just does not generally wear them himself unless it's modified to his actual preferences.

17. I call his real name Heinrich, which is the Germanic version of Henry. FTR, I cannot stand the name Henry and prefer the NON-English version of the name. And really, I think Henrik is more suitable anyway. FTR, the name means "Ruler of the home." Nidhogg means "Curse-Striker." The name definitions are rather fitting for him.

18. He has a "Victory not Vengeance" philosophy(check out vnvnation.com) mentality. This means : "One should strive to achieve, not sit in bitter regret." He has lived by this all of life. One of the reasons why Louie is not dead.

19. Nidhogg is his "second name" that his parents had given him because he would suck on "Ygdrassil" licorice when he was a baby. He loves licorice and most often eats that brand. He also loves butterscotch, coffee(of all kinds), and peanut butter. He does not, however, have much of a sweet tooth beyond that.

20. Nidhogg was blamed for the death of his adoptive father. Not by Louie, but by other rumor mongering sorts. Reality: He had nothing to do with his adoptive father's death.

And yikes...I think that'll do. I do have more, but I can just make another post.

[theostry]

TW Script liveblog - Season 1 Episode 1: Wolf Moon

Or, as it is otherwise known:

Teen Wolf Scripts!

Check it out, Wolfiends. This is a loooooong post consisting of screenshots of the Teen Wolf script alongside my own rambling commentary. I'm not here to review the show; finer minds than myself have got that covered. Nor is it a photo-recap; that has been done by crazier bastards than myself. What I am here for is scraping the bottom of the barrel so hard I'm eating splinters, give me that Teenage Lupine content, give me ALL OF THE CONTENT--

*ahem*

Excerpts have been selected based on the following criteria: 1) It did not make the final cut; 2) It substantially altered; 3) It offers extra detail not apparent from the show, such as description and direction; and 4) I felt like including it. 

Fun times (and, obviously, a hell of a lot of spoilers) below the cut.

(What the heckie do these colours mean? We may never know)

So let's get started.

Answering the real questions here: Scott's shirtlessness was script mandated, not just a case of Posey being slightly allergic to clothes. Let's all take a moment to think about Scott's lithe frame and then go to jail reminisce over how it felt when we had no idea what he would come to mean to us. Sigh.

Aaaaand paydirt! Here is a lovely little scene we never saw on screen.

Doesn't really tell us anything we didn't learn soon enough, but any McCall family time is time well spent. And I'm not sorry they deleted the casual clumsiness from Scott's intro, so I can keep my headcanon that he had mad lacrosse skills from all his practising but just couldn't play due to asthma.

A wild Stiles appears!

And it is the perfect intro to his character, easy to see why they didn't change a thing. DOB nailed it. 

Before long, we are introduced to--

-- Wait, hold up, who? Looks like Stiles's dad got a promotion sometime between "Double Buff" and filming. Congrats, John  Michael  Noah!

Seriously, though, consider the extra layer of politics and secrecy that would have been going on if he was just a deputy rather than Sheriff.  What a different show it would have been, especially in later seasons. 

WHY, JEFF DAVIS?  WHY ARE YOU COMMENTING ON THE ‘BEAUTY’ OF A GHASTLY SEVERED CORPSE?  HOW IS THIS WOMAN'S ATTRACTIVENESS OR OTHERWISE RELEVANT TO THE SITUATION?  DID SCOTT PAUSE MID-PANIC TO THINK "WOW SHE IS HOT (ALSO DEAD AND BISECTED)"? /end rant

But now it's time for--

--and that means

Back to school time!

Setting the scene. Californians, is this a fair representation of your high school experience? Asking for research purposes.

Also, petition for girls and girls also to be able to hold hands. Down with the patriarchy.

It's everyone's favourite juice enthusiast! Looks like the Sheriff wasn't the only one who moved up in the world over the course of the script revision process - Jackson only had a BMW here instead of his Porsche.

As with Stiles's intro, we achieve Peak Jackson in his very first scene:

*snort*

And while we're doing intros--

But wait, this is a game changer -- you think you know how it does, right? Breezing past Stiles as if he wasn't even there, completely ignoring him? Well THINK AGAIN!

Yeah I lied.

So this is new - Scott's hearing was going to be much stronger here, perceiving the caller's voice as well from that distance! What secrets shall be revealed from the other half of this conversation?

Huh. Yeah, that contributed nothing, and would have had absurd implications for werewolf hearing. Also would have been a totally banal first glimpse of Victoria Argent, which is just unacceptable. 

Did this happen? I don't recall it. Would have been a cool shot. 

*Curiosity is piqued*

I confuse. Is this an editing fail? Two versions of the scene that got smooshed together? Or does Lydia swoop twice (possible Banshee prefiguring)?

 I like the book-spilling version. It establishes Allison as kind.

But this bit --

-- I do not like. It seems to suggest that there was always something about Allison that helped Scott control his shift, or even suppressed it? Rather than it being his feelings for her that reminded him of his humanity and strengthened his will. Nopity nope.

Now for another intro:

It's Harley! 

Yeah, I didn’t know either. I guess she got shafted for some reason…which is a pity, because the girl has got snark.

SHOTS FIRED.

Meanwhile…is Harley into Scott? Were we going to have a triangle of luuurve? Not sorry we didn't, triangles are an overrated romantical shape (unless they're equilateral ones, but for some reason teen shows are all about the isosceles and I am over it), but Harley could have been an actual character. RIP, girl I could have liked.

Also RIP Harley's heart, because

Thus far we have had character intros that were Peak Stiles, Peak Jackson and Peak Lydia ('s queen bitch façade). Now we have one that is a massive understatement:

Oh, sweet summer children. We ain't seen nothing yet.

Do you sometimes forget how mutually toxic Lydia and Jackson's relationship was? Ugh.

Excellent priorities, Scott. But so far so canon.

A FIGURE

Who's it gonna be, ohmigosh mysterious figure--

Ohmigosh, is it--

*ahem* sorry

Okay I think I'm beginning to understand why we absolutely had to know about the ravishing beauty of corpse-lady:  Jeff Davis is simply incapable of giving a description of anyone without reminding us how attractive they are. HEY EVERYONE!  THIS IS A SHOW FOR HOT PEOPLE!  EYE CANDY OVER HERE!

…waitaminute, back the truck up. 

WhaaAAAAAT?

*thinking forward to skeevy Kate plotline, Hale fire was 6 years ago, runnin' the numbers, doin' the math*

19 minus 6 equals …KATE you EFFING PEDO GET in the BIN RIGHT NOW--

--nah just kidding, they obviously decided to age him up sometime after this edit. Also, as has been observed, Jeff Davis inhabits a world blissfully innocent of such things as calendars.  

Now I hope I have sufficiently distracted my audience with squicks and figures, because I want to sneak this one through without getting crucified.

Okay we're done here, on to--

Really, there's nothing--

One million hardcore Sterek shippers:  *collectively lose their shit*

One innocent liveblogger:  *hides*

All twelve Scerek shippers:  *are validated*

Someone sensible:  It's just one line of direction in a first meeting, it doesn't mean--

One desperate liveblogger:  OKAY, MOVING ON

This is such a great scene -- the terror of all those panicking cats, Scott wanting to calm them but, realising he is the problem, freaks out himself -- and it just got even better, because there's something missing here that we saw on-screen.

While it could have come in a later revision, I choose to believe that singing "hey, kitties!" in greeting was just Tyler Posey's natural instinct upon walking into a room full of feline friends.

But now Allison is here, and Scott has passed off the panic baton to her.

Woooo Scott is getting his wolf on! But he doesn't seem to know it yet. I wonder from whose perspective Scott's calm is supposed to be 'odd', because I wouldn't have expected him to get worked up about an injured dog given his job. And how many wolves has Jeff Davis met? I don't think their eyes typically glow, outside of tapetum lucidum reflections. But what do I know, I'm not a zoologist.

Also -- they were supposed to have an umbrella? Budget cuts are brutal.

Do you ever forget how adorable Scallison were before things got complicated? Can I get an "Awww"?

It's also nice that they gave Allison reasons to be interested in Scott beyond 'he's cute' and 'he noticed me'. She admires him for his competence and gentleness here, she's seen him excelling at sports without being a douche about it, and their first interaction was one of generosity. This is why it's disappointing that they cut the bit where Allison helps a stranger with her books -- it's a pity they didn't show us Scott's reasons for liking Allison beyond 'she's pretty'. A sadly typical imbalance in Hollywood: boys are admirable for what they do, girls for how they look. Thank all the gods and little fishes that Allison subverts the hell out of this trope later on.

Is this or is this not the cutest interaction? It gets better:

Cats are one thing, Scotty, but you gotta think about your choices when dogs are judging you.   

Now who’s being judgemental

'Litigious', Scott? And before the word-a-day calendar regime, too. Insert comment about American litigation culture here.

Scott is definitely talking about the dog not at all about himself why would you say that--

Okay so Scott's having his weird woodsy sleepwalking dream now, and I have to go back and check because -- white? Why are the Alpha's eyes white? Sure enough:

Did they retcon the Alpha red eyes thing after the Pilot/Wolf Moon was shot Even in the earlier scene where Scott was bitten: 

White eyes. What gives, Jeff?

While we're here, let's just take a second to appreciate Peter the Cartoon CGI Gorilla-Wolf. LOL.

Get back to the scripts woman, the photo recap thing has been covered, stay in your lane

AWKWARD. Anyway that's the same as in canon, but I initially read that as 'mysterious smile' and freaked because was that pool owner person supposed to be significant??, but no, never mind, carry on.

Meanwhile, this ep is just FULL of iconic moments.

All together now,

*sighs happily*

Was it as good for you as it was for me?

Later, at the lacrosse scrimmage:

I checked the episode, and…nope. No Derek stalking around on the field in this scene. That we saw.

 Oh good, we hadn't seen a naked torso in a while, I was starting to worry

Who can get enough of Melissa--Scott moments? Not me, that's for sure. But wait--

Voices becoming TINNY what is happening

Someone's  creeping

*sings* ‘Who can it BEEE no-ow?’

*snort*

In other news, Jackson is not the only one who got a vehicular upgrade. I don’t know enough about cars to discern the mystical significance of these changes. Experts please?

Ah, can't believe they cut this! Is he just embarrassed to have an inhaler in front of Allison, or does he realise on some level that his asthmatic days are over? 

Oh yikes, is this another scene of which we were ROBBED? I want my absolute and agonizing awkward teen silence!

ROBBED, I say! Robbed of canon confirmation of Scott's dorky music taste!

Awww.

I liked Scallison well enough, but if these scenes had been included I would have been 200% sold on it from ep 1.

Confused Scydia moment! I wonder if Lydia greeted Stiles like that too, and if so how hard he flailed.

Harley again! In the version that made it to screen she and Stiles both ask Scott if he's okay. That girl should have stayed a character. *grumpy face* 

"Deep black eyes"? "Strangely hypnotic"? Preeeeetty sure he was just standing there with his regular (insanely pretty) ambiguously green-hazel eyes; and while that was a fair attempt at a charming smile (for Derek), "hypnotic" it wasn't.

That would have been a cool visual.

“Powerfully muscular”; “strangely seductive”; “He's given into it” 

I'll tell you who's into it, Jeff Davis is into it And you know what?

So am I.

*Curiosity intensifies*

A nice little moment of realisation we never got to see

This is changed up a bit -- in the show the dialogue comes before the wrestling, there's no throat-gripping (Derek holds Scott down with a hand on his chest), and we have yet to see those shiny blue eyes.

Also, demonic. *shivers* 

That's interesting - obviously was going to be more support to the false lead of Derek being the Alpha, but they walked it back.

A bit of added urgency here

"Steps out of the darkness" -- from what we saw, Derek was just standing there next to Scott, no added drama. Add this to the 'hypnotic deep black eyes' we never saw -- can it be that the creeper-wolf that graced our screens was actually the less spooky version??

I guess they forgot to talk to the sun’s manager about their filming schedule.

Well that answers my question about how Stiles knew where to find Scott. Sort of.

Also: Aaaaaaaangst.

Aww, my heart. The bromance.

I love how it's "instantly recognisable," but in the final cut they can’t help throwing in a flashback to all of three minutes ago just to make sure we recognise him. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Teen Wolf.

Yes, apparently that is Chris Argent's idea of a 'friendly smile'.

Also, sworn enemy. Lol.

Great ending to a great pilot episode! And what extra-delicious and not-at-all mouth-perforating splinters of teeny wolfy goodness does our script-reading scrape up for us?

Well, we have extra delightful domestic scenes with the McCalls; extra adorable baby flirting between our star-crossed lovers (not that they know the heavens hate them yet, shhh); a wonderful character who could have been in Harley (will she show up more in future scripts? At what point did they decide to consign her to the trash can of oblivion? Or did she just disappear because she realised she had no chance with Scott now that Allison is here?); and honestly, it ws worth it for Jackson’s favourite word alone. 

But clearly the most important thing we leaned from the Teen Wolf Pilot script (Double Buff edition) is that the

we know and love is NOT, in fact, the creepiest, most melodramatic, most stalkerish version of himself. He could have been worse. Watching Scott at practice earlier than we knew eavesdropping on him shirtlessly discussing sex with him mum, using strangely hypontic deep black eyes on unsuspecting teenage girls, emerging theatrically from the shadows -- just imagine, if he'd been behaving like that from the get-go, no way would Scott have trusted him. Good job toning it down, Jeff Davis!

Exeunt.

[dandelionpie]

Okay @mentalwires all I can say is you fucking asked for it. This is

Madeline’s Lengthy and Mostly Very Positive Track-by-Track Review of

Off to the Races

by Jukebox the Ghost

(feel free to follow along at home on your Personal Listening Device; it’s all on Spotify or wherever)

(and I’m not going to follow any formatting rules because this isn’t being graded so fuck it quotes are in italics)

I don’t know if it’s just because I listened to it over and over again, but this album is an album. Friends, there are motifs in this album. There are themes. There’s something that’s not quite a narrative, but a strange awakening to the crises that plague people who have reached a certain stage of human development just beyond the beginning of real adulthood. 

1. Jumpstarted

Our speaker is awfully self-aware for someone who admits to a chronic lack of self-awareness. This song is like the “I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You” by Tom Waits for a new generation, except instead of tragic it’s just, like…incredibly goofy. It also follows in the footsteps of many other songs (the Temptations’ “Just My Imagination” springs to mind), it rehashes a very familiar theme: Young Man sees Young Woman*; young man becomes instantly fixated on an imagined future with her; young man admits that his imaginings are the product of his deranged imagination but, though he fully admits to his own emotionally compromised state in great detail (and your gravity / my depravity / won’t take my advice), he refuses to relinquish the fantasy and face reality, even as he does so in the utterance of the lyrics. Rather, he accepts his eventual heartbreak to be as inescapable as the laws of physics - what goes up must come down, after all, and as foolish as his infatuation seems, it’s even more foolish to try to change something as immutable as that. It’s too ridiculous to be properly sad, but we feel for him all the same.

There’s definitely a gender element happening here. I’ve been that guy, but far more often, to greater and lesser extents, I’ve been that girl. We have this idea in our culture that women are obsessed with love and will throw themselves into relationships with men at the drop of a hat, but I’ve seen it played out far more often the other way. In my (limited! human! biased! don’t @ me!) observation, women may throw themselves into the emotional side of a relationship, but the planning part (this person fulfills everything I want from a spouse/life partner/parent of my anticipated children) and therefore it must be Fate)…well, I haven’t done that since I was about ten. I’ve seen grown-ass men do it on multiple occasions, to me and many of my female friends. So like…make of that what you will.

The song also does that cute thing where it name-drops the title of the album in the lyrics, and I love that.

*the object of the speaker’s affections in this particular song remains mostly ungendered except for one she pronoun in the bridge. If you ignored that one tiny “she” (or changed the gender of the speaker), it would be easy to make this song about a very real and serious problem facing today’s LGBTQ Youth: Queer and Here syndrome**. That is, when you see another person of more-or-less your persuasion and they are around your age, breathing, and moderately attractive, you tend to fall in love with them regardless of actual chemistry or lack thereof. Again: I have been the speaker, and I have been the object.

**EDIT: Ben Thornewill, who wrote the song…might be queer? I can’t find any info either way, except for he helped with a fundraiser for Everyone is Gay one time. Someone with a longer attention span should google this for me.

Enjoying this nonsense? Click below for the rest!

2. Everybody’s Lonely

This track continues the theme of powerlessness in the face of one’s own self-awareness (dragged into another heartbreak / like a moth into a flame) while implicitly making the way for a gentle interrogation of the music industry. Are we programmed for broken romance? Probably, but we’re sure the hell not going to stop singing about it. And we have to admit, it’s more than a little diverting. The singer is having a marvelous time with the vocals for how much he’s complaining, and the track switches up the speed and time signature more than once (there’s some sophisticated musical term I’m failing to call to mind here, but dammit Jim I’m an English major not a music doctor).

The title itself is a simple statement on the nature of humanity, and a somewhat comforting one (to me, anyway). It’s hard, but if everybody’s lonely, then…well, no one is, right? And, of course, the lyrics could also be read (heard?) as a comment on the content of this very album, as well as the greater Jukebox the Ghost canon, which, self-admittedly, mostly concerns either love or drinking too much (and often both). Lampshading? Probably a little, but I think it works.

3. People Go Home

I will admit: I hated this song until I saw the album performed live. It’s just so damned cynical, and at the same time describes a lifestyle (car! boss who wears a watch! wife and children and a house and a dog!) my generation seems to have given up on aspiring to. Because the American Dream is an illusion, etc. But the thing about it is, despite its dour outlook on the life of its subject, the song itself is just so much fun.

The metaphor of the calendar pages being torn off and thrown away would be a bit too cliché in a more serious track, but the irrepressibly catchy beat makes it work somehow. The repetitiveness is really artful - of course it’s repeating itself; it’s a song, but it also evokes the passage of time and the subject’s own mortality (the tick of the clock / and the tick of the clock / mark the moments ’til the ticking stops). And the abrupt end of the song is…well, actually a little unsettling in light of its lyrical content.

Another motif arises: are we becoming who we hate? Is it inevitable that we should do so in growing up? And, again - if there’s nothing we can do about it, should we perhaps make an effort to enjoy the ride?

4. Fred Astaire

First, a confession: this song is primarily for me about the Blupjeans pairing in The Adventure Zone, so like…I’m gonna do my best to ignore that aspect in my analysis but no promises.

I love this song.

I think it’s the strongest track on this album From the very first bars, it’s psyching you up for something, and the powerful opening vocals do not disappoint. This is an excellent showcase of Ben Thornewill’s raw vocal power.

I’m also a huge sucker for the “man who has landed the partner of his dreams hardly daring to believe his luck” trope (cf: Blupjeans, Jake/Amy from B99, tons of other cute pairings I can’t call to mind just at the moment). There’s something so beautifully pure about watching someone realize how fortunate they are to have someone great in their life. In this case, the speaker seems almost playfully resentful as he wonders at his partner’s inexplicable admiration of him - “what are you even doing with a dork like me?” he seems to ask.

But in the bridge, he contrasts that playful exasperation with a genuine admiration of his beloved’s clarity of insight - when I lose myself / there is no one else / who ever sees through me quite like you, he points out, and something about his tone feels genuinely grateful. So for me, this resonates on a personal level as well - in my life, I’m continually astounded by the people who have seen me at my worst and continue to refrain from telling me I suck.

Well, that was distressingly sincere. Don’t worry; I turn back into a snarky pumpkin in just a sec.

5. Time and I

If previous tracks have hinted at themes of growing up and having way too many feelings about it, this track drives those concepts home with a freaking sledgehammer. I have less trouble with it than “People Go Home,” but it��s still a bit too relatable if you ask me. There’s a deeply sympathetic undercurrent of frustration (try as I might / it ain’t no friend of mine) - this guy’s been making an effort, and he’s announcing a sort of surrender, even as he continues to beg time to slow down for him.

I’m intrigued by we’re not the way we used to be - is he talking to a third party, or to time itself? If the former, the feeling t is one of those universal heartbreaks we all go through at this point. People don’t just change - relationships do too, and that can be even more frustrating and harder to pin down. And if it’s the latter, isn’t there something too beautifully futile about the act of begging an abstract concept to act against its nature?

This whole album is so wonderfully human.

Overall, the lyrics feel a bit weaker than the rest of the album to me, but I love the way it sounds. The vocal tracks in the bridge layer on top of each other one by one in this really evocative way, piano is perfect for a track like this - since it’s both percussive and melodic, it invokes bittersweetness of the inexorable passage of time. Maybe? I dunno, just spitballing here.

6. Diane

I hadn’t actually paid much attention to this track until I saw it performed live and the singer got the audience to sing part of the chorus for him. Neat trick, dude. I still didn’t like the song all that much until I saw @mentalwires​ spin very enthusiastic rope dart to it. Anyway - like many songs by Jukebox the Ghost, it would be downright obnoxious if it weren’t such a jam.

What really grabs me about this song is the line about not being able to focus. Maybe it’s just an ADD thing, and it’s certainly not an original thought - of course you can’t focus, dude, you’re basically worshipping this chick - but it’s true that people we like are distracting, and it is highly inconvenient. And it’s way more fun than most of the other inconvenient things that afflict our little species, so that doesn’t help matters. I relate similarly to I can’t sleep / why even bother, although that probably has more to do with my insomnia than anything else.

Damn I love power pop. 

It’s another self-imposed tragedy — our dude doesn’t know how to let go of the idea of this girl, but how well do they actually know each other? The bridge (You make me feel like I’m alive / you make me feel like I’m the only one) brings home what the speaker’s been hinting at since the start of the track - it’s much more about how he feels than about the person he feels it for.  Sometimes / I don’t even think you know my name could be read two ways - either she knows him but acts like she doesn’t (rude), or they’ve never even actually met.*

All the while, he begs her to tell him her thoughts, but does he actually want to know? And if they haven’t met, then how could she tell him she’s thinking about him at all? How is she even going to hear what he’s saying? Well, of course, she can’t - the classic futility of the pop ballad returns. So much in this song is about being unheard, and that fascinates me.

An observation: Songs in this vein hardly ever give any detail about the ostensible (usually female) subject. This is probably at least a little bit to make it easier for everyone involved to identify with them, but it also makes it clear that the speaker’s love has far more to do with his own hang-ups than with the supposed object of his affections. And doesn’t the way we love say so much about us? Maybe that’s why I’m such a sucker for romance.

*The tertiary Queer and Here interpretation makes itself available yet again. I mean, the whole bit about sweaty palms goes all the way back to Sappho, you guys.**

**Fuck I’m such an English major send help

7. See You Soon

Imma be real with y’all for a sec - I couldn’t handle this song at first. It’s about losing a person, and not even in a way that’s final. It gives me sort of the same feeling as “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop (read it; it’s short and will tear your little heart from your chest). In both that poem and this song, the ambiguity of the addressee’s identity makes the loss all the more poignant - is the speaker addressing a lover or a friend? Is it both? And which is worse?

The painful wisdom imparted by the passage of time is another motif that keeps coming up in this album. Our dude used to get mad at the small things, and he’s realized what’s actually important, but like every lesson learned the hard way, it’s too late to apply it to the situation in question. And perhaps he never would’ve come to that revelation without the accompanying loss, but that doesn’t make it any less excruciating.

Remember when your life felt like it would be never-ending - if you enjoy the particular kind of masochism brought about by that sentiment, I’d encourage you to check out “I Wanna Get Better” by Bleachers. Not to get too philosophical, but grown-ups have this thing where they lecture kids about how they think they’re immortal. And we don’t believe it when we’re kids, at least I didn’t - I wasn’t particularly inclined to take dumb risks, or so I thought. But (dammit) somewhere, we actually do realize that life isn’t permanent, that the place we grew up isn’t the entire world, and that there’s so much of that world that we’ll simply never experience. Wondering how a relationship could have gone differently is more than just a painful (and arguably necessary) experience - it also calls to mind all the different directions our lives could take, and forces us to watch as all those paths converge into one.

It’s another special mid-20s crisis - by that age, we’ve had a few close friendships and relationships, and we’ve experienced the end of some of them. And after that end, we have to change, both as a result of the loss and - you guessed it - the unstoppable, unbending passage of time. If I say it enough it might come true, the speaker says as he leads into the final repetition of the chorus, and we get the sense that he almost believes it. Is it denial, willful self-delusion, or genuine hope?

8. Boring

This is the track that really got me thinking about this album. If “People Go Home” stands on a soapbox wagging its finger at The American Dream™, this song drunkenly embraces it in a bar a few hours later. And, like “People Go Home,” I sort of hated it until I noticed what a great time Tommy Siegel was having with it.

We begin with the inexorability of time again - the seasons are changing / but my world always stays the same. Of course, the use of “lame” to describe undesirability is crummy for obvious reasons, but it also reads as delightfully teenage - our friend is desperately clinging to whatever vestiges of youth remain to him. There’s also a charmingly youthful tendency to exaggerate - I guess they’ll procreate until they die / everyone is boring / everything is lame / everybody thinks they’re not the same could have come straight from the mouth of a fourteen-year-old in the back of a car on a family road trip.

What I love love love love about this song is how smoothly the speaker seems to come around over the course of it. He begins with a distressing observation: all my friends are having kids / but nobody’s sure why. And by the end of the song, he’s worked out exactly why. He’s a little ashamed to say that he’s figured out just what the big deal is. And he’s going through some internal conflict, but that doesn’t mean he’s got to be shy about how he feels.

After wondering for a minute how he got this way (I webmd myself but somehow nothing’s ever wrong has to be one of the most #relatable lyrics I’ve ever heard), he smoothly switches from lambasting the Nuclear Family™ to flattering his addressee:

Baby let’s get boring

Let’s get old and lame

Let’s get a house and kids and change your name

‘ cause I don’t think you’re boring

I don’t think you’re lame

Let’s get a house and summer up in Maine

(kind of a lazy rhyme there at the end, but still sorta cute)

While he acknowledges his frustration with his desire to become that which he most detests, he also acknowledges that the alternative is much worse: I’d rather rot in hell / than watch you become someone lame with someone else.* And yeah, growing up resolves a lot of exciting questions into formulaic predictability, but if you find someone to share it with who’s interesting, you can enjoy it anyway. It’s either a cute little bit of poetry or the most adorably fumbling marriage proposal in the history of time.

We could be so boring, he promises his intended, and he sounds, well, sort of excited about it. Because if everybody else thinks they’re not the same, he asks, why should we bother pretending? It’s not important if we’re actually boring. It’s that I don’t think you are. And I think I agree  - the most important parts of any relationship only matter to the people in it.

I’m not sure what he’s doing to that guitar at the end there, but he sure is doing it.

*There’s another reading that he’s settling but I’ll go with the optimistic one thank you.

9. Simple as 1 2 3

I found this to be sort of a weird tone shift, but the more I listen to it, the better it fits. The lyrics are all about how you can’t fall in love without taking chances - a played-out theme that still meshes beautifully with this track’s youthful simplicity. When I saw this performed live, the singer literally counted on his fingers while he sang and played the piano, and it managed to be incredibly charming. Or maybe it was just his pretty pretty eyes.

When you feel your pulse / knock you over like an animal is so simple but so vivid and I’m not sure this is going anywhere; I just wanted to point it out.

The second verse,

So take a risk

and find a little love

hidden where you didn’t see it

‘cause the time you have is all the time you’ve got

briefly brings it back to the existential crisis that dominates most of this album, but it’s somehow much more optimistic with this new spin - life is short, so you might as well give the whole falling in love thing a whirl. And if it goes badly, hey, there’s always Track 7.

Lyrically, the bridge doesn’t do a whole lot, but I like how it just sort of sits there building on itself - it increases the tension, like, well, the moment of waiting in a corner before going over to talk to someone - and when the musical track drops out to leave only the singer’s voice, it’s like the strange silence that seems to accompany a difficult utterance, and okay, I’m definitely reading way too much into this. Whatever. Death of the author.

10. Colorful

So this is gonna get pretty sentimental, because that is the sort of track this is, and for that I halfheartedly apologize. In an album full of glibness and cynicism, this song stands out relatively devoid of artifice or dire warnings of death.

This song, to me, is about being an artist, and an aggressively happy one at that. I dunno if you’ve seen my art, but, well, it’s downright obnoxious. I mean - Wanna feel like a light in a dark place? Why yes, as a matter of fact; where do I sign. And For the lovers and the broken-hearted feels almost like a call to action - it’s important to bring out the beauty of the world for the people who want to revel in it and for the ones who might be too sad to notice it. All that stuff about trying to paint the world in a new way is probably meant to be a metaphor, but I like taking it literally. It makes me feel better about how I’ve chosen to spend the vast majority of my free time, dammit.

And while this track is pretty repetitive, it forms a perfect conclusion to an album that’s just as much about the ways we talk about romance as the romance itself. It’s one more frame to fit around the first two, if you like.

The bridge is a blatant and transparent excuse to show off Thornewill’s vocal range, for which I can hardly blame him. That man sings like a god.

Bonus Notes:

Stay the Night (single)

I know this one didn’t make it onto the album but I fucking love it. It’s so catchy, and I love that it doesn’t sound like “Pretty Woman” or “Come on Eileen” - I don’t feel like the guy is being coercive or weird. Sure, he’s lamenting that he can’t sleep with the object of his affections, but it’s very much a lament of circumstance - he can’t stay the night because they don’t have time, or they’ve got work in the morning, or it’s only their first date and they’re taking things slow, and you get the sense that he understands from the second verse - I’m singing Journey on the highway / I’m still believing; I’m still believing / that I’ll wake up beside you one day - it almost feels like a reassurance.

It also brings home a lot of themes that come up later in Off to the Races. We’re not getting any younger, and yeah, we might as well have fun with it. But again - I’m not getting a “To His Coy Mistress” vibe here. It’s feels much more along the lines of “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” Perhaps it’s just the evolving sexual mores of our society, or perhaps it’s that the speaker spends absolutely no time convincing his date - he simply states the obvious. It’s that universal thrill of something starting, and I am, as they say, here for it.

Anyway that was approximately 2.73 million times longer than I meant it to be. I guess I like talking about poetry? Who could have predicted this? (Really, I actually had a lot of fun with this, so if you liked it, let me know and maybe I’ll do it again sometime. Although, fair warning, it is liable to be about Fall Out Boy.)

[punkiio]

I for the ask thing, just an over all unless you want a specific character.

Like... All of them?? Hell yeah I’ll do Peter because I loVE Peter

This is going to be hella long so.... Get ready 

1: What’s the maximum amount of time your character can sit still with nothing to do?Probably a very short amount of time.... He has like, a lot of energy

2 How easy is it for your character to laugh? Its hella easy to make him laugh!! He is almost always laughing and smiling... He is a very positive fella

3: How do they put themselves to bed at night (reading, singing, thinking?) Either thinking or playing his flute or pipes!!

4: How easy is it to earn their trust? Its pretty easy, especially since he is oblivious to a lot of things, including bad ones

5: How easy is it to earn their mistrust? Not sure???? Probably a little harder, but not really hard.

6: Do they consider laws flexible, or immovable? he definitely considers them flexible.

7: What triggers nostalgia for them, most often? Do they enjoy that feeling? Probably things like jungles, treehouses, other kind of nature things... and yeah!! He likes the feeling!!

8: What were they told to stop/start doing most often as a childA LOT of things... He was a big trouble maker. Mostly was told not to do things like, something dangerous, doing/saying something too quickly, getting into fights, that sort of thing. and the thing he was told to start doing most???? Grow up

9: Do they swear? Do they remember their first swear word?Yeah he swears as much as the next guy tbh, but probably doesnt remember his friend swear because he has been living for so long

10: What lie do they most frequently remember telling? Does it haunt them? He’s actually a pretty honest guy!!! He even tells the mundies that he’s Peter Pan, but he’s actually like.... Pretending, to pretend he’s Peter Pan??? So when someone is being 100% serious when asking if he actually is, he lies and says that he isn’t. But I think the lies that actually haunt him, maybe not now, but definitely when he was still married to his wife, was that he actually still liked her and continued to stay with her

11: How do they cope with confusion (seek clarification, pretend they understand, etc)? He would try really really hard to understand, but if he cant, then he’ll pretend to understand

12: How do they deal with an itch found in a place they can’t quite reach? He would ask people to get it for him, and probably make the other person feel hella awkward wile he’s just like “Thank u pal”

13: What color do they think they look best in? Do they actually look best in that color? Green!! He thinks and does look best in green!!!

14: What animal do they fear most? He doesn’t fear animals that much actually??? I think the only time he would be afraid of an animal is if they’re acting aggressive towards him tbh

15: How do they speak? Is what they say usually thought of on the spot, or do they rehearse it in their mind first? Its always. on the spot. He almost never thinks it out. The only time he thinks of it out is if he has time and if its something he’s nervous about, but even then, he usually doesn't come out the way he wanted

16: What makes their stomach turn? When people believe the rumors/lies told about his childhood, things that make him super nervous, thinking about things he has to admit sooner or later, those kind of things

17: Are they easily embarrassed? No, not really :0

18: What embarrasses them? When people talk about embarrassing things he did, especially if its in front of someone like Boy Blue. He gets awkward embarrassed

19: What is their favorite number? 18 maybe :0

20:If they were asked to explain the difference between romantic and platonic or familial love, how would they do so?“Alrighty, so romantic love is like... When you love someone, and you like, want to date them and get married and kiss them and fuck them and whatnot. Platonic love is where you’re like, ‘DAMN! I LOVE MY FRIEND!!’ but not in the romantic way. You just like them as a friend. Familial love is, y’know, you love your parents??? Your kids???? Your siblings?????? Its close to platonic but also... not....” 

21:Why do they get up in the morning? His job. Boy Blue. 

22:How does jealousy manifest itself in them (they become possessive, they become aloof, etc)? Depends... If he was jealous abt someone interacting with Blue, then yeah, he might be a little possessive or/and aloof, but he’ll probably just show off in front of the other person, make them feel like a third wheel

23:How does envy manifest itself in them (they take what they want, they become resentful, etc)? He usually just... Tries to let it pass.... But might... just might..... become resentful..... But it would be rare

24: Is sex something that they’re comfortable speaking about? To whom? Yeah he’s totally fine with it. I think the only time he would be uncomfortable about talking about it is with straight people. Especially straight girls. Unless its about him doing it, then its fine

25: What are their thoughts on marriage? He’s fine w it!!! He gets married himself! :0 

26: What is their preferred mode of transportation? He just... takes a car..... But in places like the farm (and if/when he goes to the homelands), he likes to fly!!! 

27: What causes them to feel dread? His friends being hurt.... He gets so scared when his friends are hurt

28: Would they prefer a lie over an unpleasant truth? Nah, he’s used to the unpleasant truth, so he would want that instead of a lie 

29: Do they usually live up to their own ideals? Sure!!! He’s got a boyfriend and a good job, he doesn’t really have any ideals past that???? He is also pretty powerful, so thats a plus 

30: Who do they most regret meeting? ProbablyMargaret

31: Who are they the most glad to have met?:All of his friends!!! 

32: Do they have a go-to story in conversation? Or a joke? Probably a joke most of the time, but also sometimes has childhood stories that he had just remembered 

33: Could they be considered lazy? No!!! He is always busy doing his job!!! He is usually always doing something

34: How hard is it for them to shake a sense of guilt? Not hard probably fndjsbkds he’ll probably just end up forgetting about it......

35: How do they treat the things their friends come to them excited about? Are they supportive? He gets excited with them!!! He’s so happy they’re happy!!!!!!

36:Do they actively seek romance, or do they wait for it to fall into their lap? He usually waits, but if he sees a cute guy he’ll be like *eye emoji* and go flirt with him or something 

37:Do they have a system for remembering names, long lists of numbers, things that need to go in a certain order (like anagrams, putting things to melodies, etc)? Nah.... He actually has a kind of bad memory and easily forgets names 

38:What memory do they revisit the most often? His childhood adventures!!!

39:How easy is it for them to ignore flaws in other people? Pretty easy tbh

40:How sensitive are they to their own flaws?He isn’t sensitive abt them that often, pretty much the only time he is is if someone pointed them out. Other than that, he’s oblivious 

41:How do they feel about children? He loves them!!!! Pretty much the only reason he pretends, to pretend to be Peter Pan, is so when he’s cutting a kid’s hair, he can get them all happy and excited n stuff.... 

42:How badly do they want to reach their end goal? I dont think??? He really has one??? Its hard for fables to have an “end goal” because they live for so long 

43: If someone asked them to explain their sexuality, how would they do so? He just... Tells them he only likes men..... He’s gay..... (I wont explain his backstory on it rn because.... spoilers....)

Questions for the creator!!

A) Why are you excited about this character?He just... Makes me and others(????) happy!! Some of my friends can relate to him n stuff and that gets me excited 

B) What inspired you to create them?I had always wanted to make a Fables oc that was Peter Pan, so I did!! Peter Pan is like..... one of my favorite fables......

C) Did you have trouble figuring out where they fit in their own story?Nah, not really :00 

D) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?He has changed a little, but not much!!! Though his first concept art is.... Ugly.....

E) Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you?Yeah I think I would get along w him..... We got a lot in common in a way 

F) What do you feel when you think of your OC (pride, excitement, frustration, etc)?I am.... So happy.............. When thinking about him........

G) What trait of theirs bothers you the most?Idk if this is what this means but uhh.... He was born a human, yeah???? But when/after he was raised by fairies, he’s half fairy???? Im thinking that the fairies like.... Changed him...... idk 

H) What trait do you admire most?Is it safe to say??? All?????? I cant think of one........

I) Do you prefer to keep them in their canon universe?Hell yeah I do

J) Did you have to manipulate or exclude canon factors to allow them to create their character?Dude we are.... Changing so much of canon Fables for our comic..... Not for him, just in general 

[cerealmonster15]

ddadds kids....

i like thinking about them as one big extended cul-de-sac family... [headcanons and stuff!]

imagine all the families spending the holidays together! i’m sure some celebrate things that the rest dont but theyd probs have one big generic get together during The Holiday Season

all of the kids are crammed together on one big “kid’s table” even tho like half of them are teenagers and there are more offspring than parents

someone always ends up starting a food fight,, usually ernest and lucien, or the twins [either pair. both pairs?? christie and christian vs hazel and briar??]

this was referenced in game once so amanda probs ends up babysitting a lot when she’s home from college for breaks+ during that short time shes still around before she leaves! she’d be  a cool fun babysitter, but tough enough to keep some of the more rambunctious kids in check ;p

[ernest voice] dad i dont NEED a babysitter!!! [hugo voice] son i want to know that i can be away for the weekend and come home to a house that isn’t on fire

ernest is probs really snarky to amanda when she babysits like “youre not the boss of me” and going out of his way to cause trouble, but amanda is Cool and probs gives him a run for his money with snark and idk shenanigans ensue and he probs secretly admires her and thinks she’s awesome but would rather die than let anyone ever find out

lucien looks like he might be fairly close to amanda’s age? they probs dont have all that much in common, but damien’s date revealed that lucien listens to mcr, and amanda made her dad listen to black parade, so I bet they could bond over some music tastes here and there

LET LUCIEN GIVE AMANDA A COOL GOTH MAKEOVER

amanda: pleeeeeaaaaassseeeeeee ;D??? lucien: no way. the goth lifestyle isnt for posers i think with enough pestering she’d get him to cave. he’d take great time and care while painting her nails to make sure he does it Right

amanda probs comments on how careful and skilled he does it like “wow you really take this stuff seriously” “uh obviously??”

once he finishes, amanda takes a pic, and then all the other neighbors see her and are bothering lucien to make them look cool too. he pretends to hate it but actually has a lot of fun and is secretly really happy that they think he’s good at what he does

amanda convinces lucien to do like, cool goth makeup videos and put them on youtube/instagram. she helps him with filming and doing photography of final looks and together they get a lot of followers. sometimes she’ll guest star in his videos if he needs a face model other than his own

amanda’s kinda freaked out by christie and christian at first but over time gets used to and sees past their “creepy twin shtick” and, much like her dad [in the joseph brownie date] learns to use it to mess with them and possibly other people

at first chris probably doesnt talk to amanda a lot and keeps to himself when she’s over, but maybe over time she’d adapt to him and learn a few things hes interested in and express gentle interest in those things to kind of help him open up to her more

chris gets quietly attached to her like shes an older sister

everyone in the cul de sac does. they love amanda

AND EACH OTHER

i want daisy to be involved with the carmensita and amanda girl band thing mentioned briefly during one of mat’s dates. that’d be adorable

you know what else would be adorable? allllll the cul de sac kids coming to briar and hazel’s softball games to support them. 

the kids going to each others’ anything to support them!! when theyre in clubs and activities that put on shows or performances or other sports games, as many of the neighbors that can make it are there

when they get older, they try to be more and more obnoxious to embarrass their neighbors in front of everyone, like making huge support signs and banners with glitter with a stupid yet supportive pun that one of their dads helped come up with, or printing their neighbor’s face on a tshirt or a giant cutout on a popsicle stick, shouting as loud as possible 

they def went to amanda’s actual graduation and PROBABLY ALL CRIED

a lot of this has amanda centric bc i Love Her, but also,,

maybe hugo and craig start going to wrestling matches together [+dadsona] so ernest sees a lot of the cahn kids. if amanda’s in town, she’s with them and in charge. if not, ernest is technically in charge, but secretly [not so secretly probably] the dads are counting on briar and hazel [briar, mostly] to keep things from falling to disaster for the few hours theyre out

they all like to take turns riding on the Giant Dog that ernest got in damien’s route [duchess something i think?] [a good component that should be canon in all universes]

“lets put river on him” “no she’ll fall off” “wheres the duct tape” “n o”

if enough disaster happens leaving these kids alone together, they probably get dropped off at another dad’s house to be looked after for a while. joseph volunteers to look after them but since he and mary are already looking after 4 and KEEP LOSING CRISH, they tend to try and ask literally anyone else

[not that theyre bad parents lmao but it’d be easier for all the other parents that just have One Kid]

i bet christian and christie love robert’s wild spooky stories. he probably makes up so much bullshit to fuck with any kid that’s listening

they’d carpool if they could fit enough kids in one car. it’s probably a 2-3 car carpool depending on who’s driving what size car and who needs to go where at what time

there are probably so many inside jokes[CUL DE SAC MEMES......] that are born at every cul de sac gathering. 

when amanda’s home from college, all the kids wanna be the first to tell her all about the SHENANIGANS she’s missed out on

river and crish are bffs once theyre old enough for human interaction. they Have To Be.

pranking each other in the school hallways plz, or just all around chaos. god help the teachers that somehow end up with 2+ of the cul de sac kids in the same class

ernest definitely sends his dog to poop on damien’s lawn outside lucien’s bedroom window / probably does the flaming bag of dog poop ding dong ditch when he knows lucien’s home alone and will be the one to answer the door

christie and chris like when briar and hazel pretend to be each other, so they get their hands on a pair of scissors and chris gives christie a terrible haircut. possibly briar and hazel try and help with the scheme and things just get Worse and joseph has to take his daughter to a Professional [or maybe one of the dads is really good with hair/has had their child do the same thing and is good with fixing a bad haircut ;p]

carmensita goes through a goth phase after she goes over to lucien’s to be babysat one day. mat does not know how to Deal bc this isnt the type of music hes used to playing but he loves and supports his daughter regardless and likes to hear her singing all kinds of music to broaden her horizons and strengthen her talent

G R O U P  T E X T between all the kids old enough to have phones

there are lots of memes. lots. of memes.

they take candid shitty photos of each other all the time and send them in the chat, and particularly amusing ones end up reused as reaction photos

lucien: [sends photo of ernest having just spilled cereal on himself with duchess in the background making off with a piece of pizza] ernest: fuck u carmensita: mood daisy: why are you having pizza and cereal for breakfast? ernest: dont tell me how to live my life amanda: lol tag urself i’m duchess

this is just something i like to do w/ my friends but they’d probs also stealthily take pictures  of each other when theyre out and about and send them to each other in secret like amanda’s out with her dad at the grocery store and spots lucien and damien in the dairy isle and is like FUCK,, she hides behind a stand of donuts or w/e and takes a pic of them and sends it to lucien w/ no context or like “lol hey” 

it becomes a war of sending pics of each other to each other/the group without getting caught. lucien and ernest probably act like they think it’s stupid but get so competitive about it

they all keep score and it probably also would extend to taking stealthy pics of cul de sac dads too Just Because

the dads find out about the competition somehow and like,,, secretly are so into who’s winning. especially brian and dadsona. sometimes they’ll try and serve as a distraction for their child to get a sneaky pic so they can win, but usually the kids prefer the solo missions

val comes and visits sometimes with cool stories. sometimes she brings her girlfriend, and amanda especially looks up to them like two cool older sisters [i dont remember if it was jacket pins or photography that val said her gf is into, but whatever it is i’m sure amanda would geek out about it with her]

christie and christian eventually grow out of their “creepy twin” thing but still have a more unique brand of humor/personality. the cul de sac kids are used to them by then, and will THROW DOWN with anyone that bullies them/ calls them freaks or anything like that, or anyone that picks on chis [and eventually crish] by association or for any other reason

THESE KIDS MAY ARGUE AND FIGHT AND STUFF SOMETIMES BUT THEY’LL STICK UP FOR EACH OTHER IF ANYONE OUTSIDE THE CUL DE SAC TRIES TO START SOMETHING W/ ONE OF THEIR OWN

i could go on forever making up headcanons or scenarios for these kids bc i love them and constantly crave more content about them but imma stop here bc it’s been over an hour and this is Long but anyway plz talk to me about these kids + the cul de sac as a whole. share ur headcanons,,,,, i l o v e the m ,,

[ablack-reblogs]

Sherlock SSN 4 ‘Live’ Blog

Sherlock, Season 4

The Lying Detective, Episode 2

 ‘Live’ Blog

 I’ve only seen a couple of spoilers – nothing substantial – so I am going into this practically blind (which is how normal people go into these sorts of things). But I’m also really angry about John Watson, the tainted character I once adored so dearly. I hope this episode somehow redeems him – if such a thing is even possible after what’s been done.

 Ugh…

 Here it goes.

 “Start from the beginning.”

 “You are holding yourself to an unreasonable standard.”

 AND IN TWO MINUTES …

 This show is super….

I just cannot do the life thing.

 At least it is hallucinations and not the red-head gal.

 BUT JOHN, SHERLOCK IS GIVING YOU THE SPACE THAT YOU DEMANDED! HE TRIED AND YOU LEFT A LETTER YOU DAMN BASTARD! YOU CANNOT SERIOUSLY BE CONFUSED AND OR UPSET BY A CHOICE YOU MADE! YOU MADE THE CHOICE AND FOR BLOODY ONCE HE RESPECTED IT.

 Damn you, John. Who decided to make you such a git?

Maybe Mary was right – “You don’t exactly make it easy being all perfect.”

FUCKING WHY.

 Who is this knob? He looks like a bad knob. The sort of knob you avoid.

 Ew… Gross knob person is touching someone in a weird way. Ew.

 Never ask what’s the worst thing someone could do – you always end up dead.

 I don’t like this knob.

Is he doing button button where is the button – but it’s this weird as drug that this dude made that knobbington didn’t ask permission to use?

 The hey hey hello is this shit?

 That dude with the beard looks like a younger President Snow, did anyone notice?

 I love that this woman went back to her office and wrote down key words that she *could* remember.

 EW Knobhead went a bit Trumpy on his daughter, gross gross.

 FOR PROBLEMS, YOU CANNOT DRUG PEOPLE WHO WILL FORGET THEY CANNOT HELP YOU! You’re just a sociopath for sure.

 Does weirdo dad see the paper.

 Yes he does. It is weird as fuck the way he touched her and held her. I’m a parent, and there’s an a different mood and facial expression when you’re just being affectionate toward your child.

He is being uncomfortable and weird.

So very weird.

I don’t like him.

 Years ago – so this has been years. Okay.

 “I can’t remember.” The biggest challenge one can issue to Sherlock Holmes.

 “You can’t tell all that from a piece of paper.”

“Sure I can. I just did. I’m sure that was me.”

What a cock.

 WHY is he there with Sherl?

 Needle.

Needle… Means drugs.

Drugs means nope.

 I AM NOPING MY WAY THROUGH THIS EPISODE.

 “Don’t speak it reminds me of your existence.” Me. That is me pretty much anytime I’m writing.

 Sherlock being worried about someone being suicidal fills my heart.

Being suicidal myself, it just touches me in a way I cannot describe. All the time we think of Sherlock as being cold and detached, and I know he’s interested in her story – but he isn’t just doing it for the case wholly. She reminds him of John in a way – and that is special to him.

And seeing that on screen is so very special to me.

I’m definitely crying.

  Her chips look so good.

 SUCH A GENUINE LAUGH AND SMILE.

SHERLOCK IS SO ADORABLE AT HUMANING.

 THEY ARE MONITORING SHERLOCK OH MY LLAMA.

 “It’s always about Sherlock.”

I would feel be for you John, but I am admittedly very pissed off at you. I’ll feel bad when I am less angry..

 I sort of ship these two – Mycroft and her (her name which I can’t remember right now because SEX was just dropped randomly)

(Maybe it is a low key way of saying Mycroft and his cohort are engaging in physical recreations)

 “I’m not sweet, I’m just high.”

 HE IS WRITING MYCROFT LAWWWWWL

 Sharonford?

Sharon Fort?

 THEY ARE WALKING ARM IN AND ARM AND IT IS SO ADORABLE.

SHERLOCK AS A NORMAL EVERYDAY PERSON IS FANTASTIC.

 I am L O V I N G this humanizing of Sherlock. It was so desperately needed. It adds a missing layer of dimension. It can make him better at his deductions and detective work.

 He wants some of her chips.

 Oh, whoops, he wants her gun.

SHERLOCK HOLMES IS TRYING TO SAVE HER LIFE IN HIS DARK KNIGHT WAY OH GOD

I AM IN LOVE

I was always a bit in love with Sherlock, though.

 PTSD flashbacks My babe no…

Bae no bae no

 She’s gone?

WHY IS SHE GONE?

 Oh my baby sherl no.

No no no no no no no no no.

 Who?

ANYONE?

SERIAL KILLER?

 Please tell me this isn’t all a hallucination from taking too many drugs. I can’t handle it. I need my Sherlock to be in good condition. I want him to be FINE.

 SHERLOCK WHY ARE YOU SELF-DESTRUCTIVE get hugs.

Avoid drugs.

HUGS NOT DRUGS.

 My husband just asked if Sherlock is tearing up Privet Drive, someone help me smack him!

 MISSUS FUCKING HUDSON

 Sherlock is a madman full of so much… stuff

 OH MY FUCKING GOD HE SHOT IN OR AT MISSUS FUCKING HUDSON

 I would not be making that bastard a cuppa. Mrs. Hudson you need to hug him.

 “Oh so you can see them too?”

 Also, that line – “I’m not a civilian.”

 I love Mrs. Hudson.

 HE WAS IN THE FUCKING TRUNK!

That would be why she’s not a civilian.

 I’VE BORROWED THEM BEFORE!

MRS. HUDSON HOLDING A GUN AT SHERLOCK.

 These lot are bunch of beautiful wankers.

 Covington Smith – gross man.

 “THIS ONE IS FILTHY!” It’s a goddamn vase, Sherlock.

 I almost feel bad for John Watson… Sherlock hijacking John’s schedule like that… But he’s PREDICTABLE to Sherlock… Except that cheating on Mary bit. That’s bogus. Still bogus.

 Sherlock is burning up to still impress John Watson.

 “You’re a liar.”

SAYS THE LIAR>

SAY

THE

FUCKING

LIArrrr

 THEY EDITED BULL SHIT

  The last person you’d think of.

Molly Hooper.

But I don’t think you understand, Molly Hooper is more important to him that most people realize.

 “God, I don’t know anything anymore.”

I don’t either, John, and it’s mostly your fault.

 John would ask the one thing she wouldn’t be willing to do…

 Mary is his conscious, she is the reflection of John inside – and pbljsdlfka;ghaeljkfa;

 “I’m in your head, John, you’re disagreeing with yourself.”

 “But he’s our monster.”

 I am so sorry that this is just turning into a reposting of all my favorite quotes. Sometimes I just fail.

 Molly is such a great person. I haven’t spent enough of my life admiring her.

 Sherlock is so bad at hugs.

 “Yeah, ugh, he doesn’t really wear the hat.”

Is it because the deerstalker is just for the bedroom, John Watson? You’d know wouldn’t you? Maybe, I suppose, if that were canon.

 Hiding in plain sight is – in fact – the best place to hide.

“What are we doing here? What’s the point?”

“I needed the hug.”

 “It’s funny because it’s true.”

 Sherlock is a cheeky git.

He really did a hug, didn’t he?

 Culverton not Covington. My apologies.

 WHAT A BITCH

 John doesn’t write Sherlock’s blog, though, does he?

John has always had his own blog – or this a detail I’ve forgotten?

 How is Sherlock speaking so intelligently.

He’s not sane.

 THE KIDS WOULD LOVE THE HAT.

John secretly adores the hat.

 “How do you catch a serial killer?”

 “Maybe this isn’t a suitable subject for the kids?”

What a bastard this man is…

So inappropriate as a man – so fucking gross.

 He’s not even INTRIGUING the way Moriarty was.

Not RELATABLE like Irene Adler.

NOT EVEN INTELLIGENT THE WAY THAT APPLEGATE BLOKE WAS (I can’t remember his name either, so I should probably rewatch this series. Stress has addled my brain with incapability and lack of recollection).

  John is super unimpressed.

 THIS MAN IS SO FUCKING FUCKED.

 John Watson will see this man dead.

I kind of almost am willing to pretend he didn’t make a a terrible choice as a husband.

“The Game is on. Do you still miss me?”

 Bloody hell, what a rough bit of life John Watson has had.

 What a terrible man he must be behind the scenes to make such an impression of power.

 HH Holmes – Sweeney Todd.

He wants to be known for his crimes now – probably ready to die, or possibly ill enough to know he’s dying soon. Like the man in the first episode.

 “Are you really a medical doctor?”

 I can see how he’s gotten away with the bullshit. He almost convinced me that Sherlock is…

 “She liked me.”

The look on his face. It was one of those moments of confusion.

 There’s so much happening right now and I’m thinking this man has decided to take down Sherlock. Or maybe I’m hopeful about the whole scenario.

Perhaps Sherlock has gone right proper mad. It’s not inconceivable.

 Lestrade is such an unsung hero.

 MAGNUSSEN – that’s his name.

 “We all saw it coming but it was fun.”

Calling it as it is, eh?

 “Might even move him to my favorite room.”

 I was right to believe my Sherl.

 WHO IS THE REAL CRIMINAL

JOHN OR FUCKING SHERLOCK

DEAR GOD SOMEONE HELP ME UNDERSTAND

 I need a whisky.

 “Let him do what he wants. He’s entitled. I killed his wife.”

 FUCKING NO HE DID NOT JOHN WATSON I WILL FIND YOU AND KICK YOUR ARSE PROPER

 “Please no violence” sings the serial killer

 What a right fuckhead.

 “Nope, I’m just in to say good-bye.”

“I’m sure he’ll pull through…”

John is bidding farewell not to Sherlock’s life but to Sherlock himself.

 These conversations with Mycroft always end with “there’s a car downstairs.”

 John is so much smarter than he gets credit for and so much dumber than we realize, how is that possible? A living, breathing oxymoron?

 At least he admitted he’s creepy. I feel must better about that.

I don’t like the gloves.

That adds to the killer part.

 “It’s practically a meth lab.”

 The woman that showed up was real.

The paper is real.

THIS IS SUCH A SERIOUS CASE SOMEBODY HALLLP

 “Oh shut up you.”

 “It didn’t the last time.”

 “You’re lying.”

 “He really is lyin.”

 “Sherlock isn’t your only brother.”

 “My god.”

 Mrs. Hudson detests Mycroft only slightly more than Sherlock Holmes.

Although, probably not as much as John Watson.

 Where did Athena go?

 “You really are an idiot, but that’s okay because you’re a lovely doctor!” One of my faves for sure.

 I have to stop quoting these beautiful characters.

“He’s more emotion than that, isn’t he?”

LAST ONE.

 Mrs. Hudson is the fucking boss.

I am so happy to have more of her in this season.

I hate Moffat and I hate that John is a cheating husband trash person, but damn it if this doesn’t become my favorite season. SO SO much depth is being added to these people and I love it.

I am actual sobbing guys, help me, rip.

 “Get our of my house, you reptile.” She definitely hates Mycroft more than anyone.

Top Anti-Mycroft Lady – Mrs. Hudson.

 Murder Castle, but done right – what a gross prat.

 This man is disgusting.

 “I want you to kill me.”

NO BABY NO

NO BABY BABY NO SHERLOCK No

 THE CAR SHE IS LETTING DOCTOR WATSON TAKE THE CAR SOMEONE HALP ME I CANNOT GO FROM EXTREME SAD TO EXTREME EXCITE I CANNOT DO IT

 “Tell me how you feel.”

 Well, Mr. Knobbington, I am in love with John Watson and I wanted him to have this beautiful life with Mary and now I have ruined it and I can’t handle it. I want to die and I have my reasons but I don’t want to die because I love him.

I love him so very much.

And I won’t make him live without the only person he has left to make him smile.

 /end_fanfiction_fantasty_of_johnlock

 I was worried I couldn’t ship Johnlock after this bloody season but I’m shiping it.

I shouldn’t be shipping it, really, because this show is so much more than romance – but romance is a part of life isn’t it? I don’t need them to be intimate – I don’t need them to homosexually active. I just want them to be Homoromantic – doing domestic things and being open about their prioritization of one another – and Rosie now – and being average.

 Getting impatient – I think you’ve just lost your strange ass necro-obsessive boner.

 GODDAMN IT PLEASE NO.

PLEASE VERY NO

WHAT IF THE THING HAPPENS

WHAT IF THE DEATH HAPPENS FOR REAL

I CANNOT DEAL WITH A PROPER SHERLOCKIA NDEATH

 Someone help I’m have a bit of an attack

I am shaky

 John watching that video is counterproductive.

I am so fucking dead

I am sooooo fucking dead

Kill him john

Kill him john

 There were more than three

He’s got a recording device in his arse?

 OH FUCKS SAKE IT IS ON THE CANE

 Gods do I love this man.

 Someone needs to give Lestrade a very long vacation WITH PAY and free pastries.

“I can break America?”

What the hell does that even mean?

Are we that bad?

 Who am I kidding, we are that bad.

 I wonder if the daughter hired a woman to help frame her father?

 “Make him wear the hat.”

Definitely a sexual fetish thing – it has to be – because I’m fucked up that way.

 That is true, the recordings could be inadmissible.

But they could also keep it as proof after he confessed – a judge could approve, after all.

 THAT SOUND IS BACK

OH MY LLAMA

 Oh, she’s dead.

Oh I bet she isn’t dead.

John looks a bit jealous.

 “I’m going to make a deduction.”

 “Happy birthday.”

“Never knew when you’re birthday.”

“Now you know.”

“You bloody moron.”

 Romantic entanglement would … COMPLETE YOU AS A HUMAN BEING

 ENGTANGLE YOURSELF WITH JOHN

 “She taught me to be the man she always thought me to be.”

Irene would not make Sherlock a better man – just more of the man he already is.

 The affair was real and I was ready to forgive him – and it’s gross that… It’s gross…

 “I never could be. That’s the point.”

He never could be the man that did more because of Mary.

 I think Sherlock should hug John right now.

 THEY ARE HUGGING

THEY ARE HUGGING AND IS THE EPITOME OF PROPER LOVE BETWEEN TWO MEN PLATONIC OR OTHERWISE IT IS BEAUTIFUL I HAVE WAITED FOUR GODDAMN SEASONS FOR THIS SMALL BIT OF AFFECTION I LOVE IT

 Sherlock has his weaknesses.

“I have this terrible thought from time to time… That we all might just be human.”

“Even you?”

“No, John…. Even you…”

 IT IS A FETISH.

 SHERLOCK CARES SO FUCKING MUCH JOHN IS THE MACHIEN AND SHERLOCK IS THE HUMAN AND ALL IS RIGHT IN THE WORLD

I FUCKING I am dead

I am so permanently dead because of this hsow

  AND THERE IS MORE

How the fuck can I even after this

  FUCKING I WAS RIHT YES YES YES YES YES YES I WAS SO FUCKIGN RIGHT ABOUT THESE TWO

I WA SO JS;ldkfaslkdfj;alghj;a wfj ;kasdjfa;ls

Do you guys even know that I called this like two pages htree pages back

Oh god this is elevent pages

So it was like eight pages ago

  LADY ALICIA

Oh gods you don’t know this

But ALICIA IS MY NAME

 That is interesting in an odd sort of way

 Myrcroft is such a fuck

 My husband is deducing the therapist is the girl that showed.

 John cannot escape the crazies.

 JOHN OH GOD YOU ARE NOT SAFE

 THIS SHOW BEEN FUCKING ME UP FOR YEARS

HALF OF THOSE YEARS ARE SPENT JUST WAITING

 SHERLOCK’S SECRET BROTHER IS A SECRET SISTER

HOLY FUCKIGN FUCKING FUCKING

 “You’re making such a funny face. I think I’ll put ah ole in it.”

 JOHN KSdjf;alkshgliu

 I can’t be alive anymore.

But I have to be alive to see the end.

 How many episodes this season?

MORE THAN THREE?

TELL ME MORE THAN THREE?!

 Fucking hell.

Bloody fucking hell.

 Someone help me.

I am so dead.

 I am so fucking dead.

Help.

Help.

           Help.

  x.x

x.x

x.x

x.x

x.x

x.x

 help.

[limejuicer1862]

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger. The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

  Magdalena Ball

was born in New York City, where she grew up. After gaining an honours degree in English Literature from the City University of New York (CCNY), she moved to Oxford to study English Literature at a postgraduate level. After a brief return to the US, she then migrated to NSW Australia, where she now resides on a rural property with her husband and three children. While in Australia she received a Masters degree in Business from Charles Sturt University and a Marketing degree from the University of Newcastle. Magdalena runs the respected review site Compulsive Reader. Her short stories, editorials, poetry, reviews and articles have appeared in a wide number of printed anthologies and journals, and have won local and international awards for poetry and fiction. She is the author of the poetry books Unmaking Atoms, Repulsion Thrust and Quark Soup, the novels Black Cow, and Sleep Before Evening, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, the Celebration Series poetry books Sublime Planet, Deeper Into the Pond, Blooming Red, Cherished Pulse, She Wore Emerald Then, and Imagining the Future. She also runs a radio show, Compulsive Reader Talks. In addition to her writing, Magdalena is a Research Support Lead for a multinational company, and regardless of what she’s doing, will usually be found with a book or two in one form or another, sneaking time for reading.

The Interview

1. When and why did you begin to write poetry?

I honestly cannot remember a time when I wasn’t writing poetry. It feels very natural to me to express myself poetically, probably because I grew up with a lot of poetry around me, from Dr Seuss and Maurice Sendak to the songs my mother, who was in a rock band, was writing and singing or the poetry my uncle set to music including literary giants like Edna St Vincent Millay, Frank O’Hara, WB Yeats and Emily Dickinson. Poetry has always been part of my environment. I created a lot of handmade ‘zines, themed booklets and celebration poems for friends when I was growing up, but my first official publication was a full centre-page spread in a Greenwich village magazine while I was an undergraduate. I’ve lost the publication now though I kept the clipping for years, but the buzz of that first publication was pretty intense.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

I think I’d have to say my parents. They both read to me a lot – and there was poetry in the children’s books I loved (Sendak and Seuss come to mind immediately because I also bought and read many books by those two authors for my own children, but there were many books I loved when I was very young like The Story of Ping by Marjorie Flack, Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, and Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crocket Johnson, all of which became introductions for me to what language can do as an art form, and how poetic language in particular can convey complex ideas in ways that jump past the intellect using rhythm, correspondence and imagery. I always had a visceral response to the books that were read to me, perhaps because my parents were very good readers and tended to act out the work and engage me in the process by talking to me about what they were reading, letting me fill in words and take over when I was ready. I’m deeply grateful to them for this early gift, which to be honest, I didn’t properly recognise until I was much older. Beyond being read to, I was pretty heavily influenced by my uncle, the composer Ricky Ian Gordon, who not only set a lot of superb poems to music – the sound of which formed a backdrop to my childhood as I spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ house where Ricky, who is only 10 years older than me, was growing up, but also he was always recommending and gifting books to me. I remember a book pack he gave to me when I was around 12 after he read some of my poems. I still have the books, which include Plath’s Ariel, Sexton’s Live or Die, Brecht’s Manuel of Piety and Rimbaud’s The Drunken Boat – none of which were age appropriate (!) but they certainly left a mark on me – like many young women I became a bit obsessed with Plath in particular for a while! Even now, when I see him he’ll usually recite a poem by heart to me from someone he personally knows or has recently discovered which will immediately blow me away.

3. How aware were and are you of the dominating presence of older poets?

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t suffer from imposter syndrome regularly as a writer. However, I have always been a confident reader. The delight I take in other people’s words is something that has bolstered me since I was very (possibly too) young. I think it’s fair to say that nearly all writers, no matter how famous, need and love attentive readers and reading is my happy place. So whenever I don’t feel like I’m writer enough to match the company I’m keeping (and that company may be on the page rather than in the flesh though I have been lucky enough to meet some intimidatingly good writers), I’m always able to fall back on the joy of delighting in the words of others. It’s a great privilege I think to be able to just pay attention to art that is exquisite. The sheer joy of that deep engagement is something that I think transcends age, fame, and even genius. It’s connection that is very primal and powerful and wipes out jealousy, intimidation and domination. That said, I’m always actively seeking diversity in my reading as I’m conscious that the “dominating presence of older poets” is really partly determined by a canon that isn’t necessarily very diverse. I’m actively trying to read as diversely as possible, not only because it is healthy to be exposed to what challenges you, but also because nuance and exquisite beauty can often be found in under-represented writers that isn’t so easy to find in some of the bigger, more famous names that are treated as “classics”. So I will sometimes deliberately resist that domination.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

I think it would be a rare day when I didn’t write something, but aside from that I just write whenever I can, often in brief snatches here and there, or while everyone else is watching television in the evening once the hubbub of the day has eased off. I have done things like pulled my car over to the side of the road to write something down that came to mind; written poems during business meetings; stirred something on the stove with one hand while writing with the other – you get the idea. I have three children and a day job so can’t really be precious with the time. Poetry is particularly flexible that way and can be fitted into a tight schedule but I have to admit that fiction is harder for me to write in short bursts which is why I’ve been writing a lot of poetry over the past few years.

5. What motivates you to write?

I’m not really sure what motivates me! It’s kind of instinctual. If I don’t write almost every day I find I’m not at my best – I get cranky – some variation of hangry – like there’s a hunger that needs satiating. Being able to sit down, even for just a few minutes, and put something down in writing is part of what my body needs each day – like food, water, exercise, sleep. It’s just part of how I live in the world. I get a lot of pleasure from extrinsic motivations like publication, praise (poets seem to me to be particularly supportive of one another and I’m so grateful for the gorgeous community I feel very much bolstered by), the odd tiny financial reward, and being able to perform/read/connect with readers – they’re all really wonderful perks, but the practice of writing is something I do regardless of those things.

6. What is your work ethic?

I was born and raised in New York, and it may just go with the territory but I think my work ethic has always been a little bit too strong. I have really tried to ease back on my work ethic – to be more present; to take more time on quality over quantity; to slow down a little bit and not feel like I have to be ticking every box on a daily to-do list. That said, I’m always feeling the tug to get one more thing done today. I’m trying to plan a little bit less, and to be more open as I get older.

7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

See question 2. The writers I read when I was young have had a massive influence on me – they’ve helped formed my identity and not just as a writer. I honestly don’t think I’d be the same person if I hadn’t read so much Maurice Sendak as a child. I still get a little shiver of excitement thinking about Little Bear’s trip to the moon or that wordless page of the wild rumpus in Where the Wild Things Are. I also was heavily influenced as a young adult by writers like Czesław Miłosz who I saw perform at Princeton when I was about 17, and I used to hang around the St Marks Poetry Project around that time hoping one day I might just end up having a conversation with Patti Smith, Jim Carroll, Allen Ginsberg or Anne Waldman. I was always too shy to approach them (see question 3), but I knew very strongly then that this was a place I felt at home and that theses were voices that resonated with my young self. I took a lot of that in and it helped form my identity.

8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

I love so many writers that the answer to this question could go on for about 20 pages! It never fails to amaze me how much superb work just keeps coming out. I’m very lucky to be a book reviewer and so I get a lot of books. I certainly don’t like everything but I get at least one book a week that is excellent, often by someone I never heard of before. I know that the minute I commit a name to paper I’ll have missed out someone critical or maybe I’ll read someone tomorrow and by the time this goes to air I’ll be sad I didn’t include them. So instead of answering this question I might just ‘gather some paradise’ (to steal a phrase from the wonderful PoemTalk podcast) and talk about a few poets that I’ve recently read whose work I like. Please note that this is a snapshot of the work I’ve been in contact with over the past month or so and is in no way comprehensive! Tracy K Smith’s latest book Wade in the Water is just so good. You can read the title poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147467/wade-in-the-water Another poet whose work gets me everytime is Danez Smith’s Don’t Call Us Dead. I don’t even know why but the book has brought me to tears several times and even now, I’m thinking of the title poem. I’m right in the middle of reading Anne Casey’s Where the Lost Things Go which is just so warm and lovely – so rich with empathy and compassion, and so very relevant. Another book I recently read and loved was Ali Whitelock’s And My Heart Crumples Like a Coke Can, which is hysterically funny, raw, sad and uplifting all at the same time. Both Anne and Ali are people I recently met and immediately became friends with – it was like we’ve known each other for years and we instantly began planning collaborations, tours, tweeting about one another’s work, etc. I’m so happy to give their wonderful books a shout-out.

9. Why do you write? Probably answered in question 5.

10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

At the risk of sounding like Yoda (it wouldn’t be the first time), there is no ‘become’ – if you want to write, write. Don’t waste too much time dreaming about it or making elaborate promotional plans (something I have been guilty of). Just get on with it. Write what you like to read best or what you feel compelling to write. Or pick a competition and begin working towards a submission. Push asdie the doubt and discomfort and that stupid “monkey” voice at the back of your head that says you’re not up to it, and just get on with it. No one is a ‘natural’ – first drafts are almost all bad, every writer no matter how well-respected is struggling with what they’re working on now, and the only way to get good at writing is, like anything, regular practice. You have to fail. It’s part of the learning curve – so get on with the failure, accept it, become comfortable in its presence and keep going. When you’ve got enough material or when your material fits a market, submit it somewhere. Then repeat the process. The one other thing you must do is to read, a lot, and diversely. If, like me, you’re nervous about promoting your own work or you’re uncertain that what you’ve done is great, then promote someone else. Shine a light on the wonderful, especially where it’s underrepresented. Everyone has the power to do that these days – leave a review, buy someone a book for a present, talk up what you love. Then get back to the table and make your own beauty. There’s no magic formula and raw talent that isn’t utilised is nothing. (may the force be with you…)

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

I’ve just had a poetry book published by Flying Island Books titled High Wire Step, and I’ve got another one coming out in April from Girls on Key Press titled Unreliable Narratives. Neither of those were planned this time last year and I’m really pleased with how they came together and the incredible editorial support I had on both books (I’m very grateful to Kit Kelen and Anna Forsyth respectively). I’m still a bit in promotion mode for these two and there are launches and performances planned at the Newcastle Wrtiers Festival this year and throughout the early part of 2019. I have begun working on a new book of poetry (I’m always working on a book of poetry ), and I am still working on my third novel, a sci fi which is proving to be quite difficult. One of my resolutions for 2019 is to either finish the thing or call it. Every time I sit down to write it strikes me as being too good and too far along to abandon but then I get distracted and it drifts away from my mind and the desire to work on it recedes. This is the year I either finish, or make the call. I also have quite a few multimedia/anthology collaborations in-hand, which I’m very excited about. I can’t divulge, but good things are on the horizon.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Magdalena Ball Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

[alltheworldsrpg-blog]

WELCOME TO ROSWELL, AXON!!

ADMIN CAMERON: The balance between the thirst for freedom and fear of breaking the rules is one of the more difficult aspects of the skeleton, but I believe Axon really hits that middle-ground well. There’s this repetition in the writing as well which really gets across that vibe as well, it feels almost like an internal battle inside of them. 

You’ve been accepted as THE CIRCUIT with the faceclaim of CHA HAKYEON. Please follow all rules and regulations as laid out by the Roswell Town Council, especially concerning any non pre-approved biologic. All UFO’s outside of city limits must be stickered or will be towed. Enjoy your stay in the first city of extraterrestrials.

OUT OF CHARACTER.

NAME/ALIAS + PRONOUNS:

Tony + He/him

AGE:

17!

TIMEZONE + ACTIVITY:

EST + I would say about a 5 or 6 out of 10. I have a job and currently am doing summer school work, but I should be able to keep a fairly stable activity level. Even when school starts again, I think it would be safe to put me at a 5.

TRIGGERS:

Removed for privacy.

ANYTHING ELSE?:

I’ve been role playing on Tumblr since, like… god. 2012? I’m in a few roleplays, but I miss being in a literate roleplay. I feel like my writing has gotten a bit weak and I want to take up something that could possibly help that.

IN CHARACTER.

SKELETON TITLE:

The Circuit

FULL NAME:

AX-00N:3 (Used name: Axon)

Utilizing the parts that make up the transition of messages in a human neuron as names, Axon makes the third attempt at crafting the android they are. Following project names DN-DRT:1 and SYN-PS:2.

GENDER + PRONOUNS:

Agender, they/them

Axon has no concept of gender, in their mind, they see themself as an “it”. An object, rather than an actual person.

SEXUAL + ROMANTIC ORIENTATION:

?? + ??

In addition to not having an idea to a gender, Axon doesn’t quite understand what it means to be in love or to lust after someone. They’ve never explored this concept of their personality, so giving them a concise label would not make any sense.

DATE OF BIRTH + AGE:

After years of developing and error, Axon was turned on for the first time on July 2nd, 2063, making them just shy of turning four years old. Their appearance, however, looks like a young man about the age of twenty-seven.

OCCUPATION:

Owned by the government and shown off as an example of sorts, Axon has no current “profession”. However, they can be found doing menial tasks throughout the offical building they are kept in.

FACECLAIM:

Cha Hakyeon

BIOGRAPHY:

You were created- you were born from the delicate hands of engineers slaving over android after android. There were so many failures in the past, so many chances to correct what had been wrong in the first place. Someone could say that hope was almost lost with how many times all your android brethren were dismantled and began anew. But then you happened. After all the hard work and careful planning. This is why you’re perfect- you see? You’re the pinnacle of what androids should be. You’re sheltered because you’re valuable, everything keeping you safe is beautiful because you’re just as beautiful. Don’t question it, the program reads, bold words engraved into everything you know. This is all you need to know, this is all you should know. You don’t have to know anything else because you’re not going to be a failure.

You’re perfect. You’re perfect. You’re… supposed to be perfect.

Then how come, for split milliseconds before you force your usual programing in your eyes again, you’re always unsure?

Everything you could ever need to be perfect is in your programing. You know languages, you know the people native to that language’s slang dating back several years. You know how to take apart machinery and understand how to piece it back together. You can paint beautiful, elegant landscapes that looked almost photocopied. Your voice, when you’re asked to sing, is angelic. You understand the combinations of chemicals and the interlocking of cells during reactions.

(But you also know what happens to androids when they step out of line. You aren’t supposed to know. You know what happens when the engineers find actions unsatisfactory. You aren’t supposed to know.)

All of this to show have marvelous this line of androids are. All of this yet you never get to use it.

Your home (your cage) is the place you spend most of your time. Despite how big it is, you know the exact layout of it because you’ve walked all the halls hundreds of times. You don’t get to walk outdoors and understand the limits of all your sensory receptors. You can see it all happen, you can see other androids come and go, but you cannot. (Because you’re perfect.) When you do, you’re kept with security. Hidden away in back of windowless cars with your power turned off. Kept safe until you’re in another closed room. You don’t understand how all of the advanced technology technology that makes up your body is supposed to feel. Conversations with you that deviate from normalcy are choppy, short and awkward. People only come to gawk and stare at what a marvel of human technology you are, they don’t really care for conversation. Media only goes so far to show you how humans act and respond to stimuli. You find it hard to empathize with people who express deep emotion right in front of your eyes. (You know what they feel. You register it. It’s because no one allows you to feel that you cannot understand.)

All you ever need to do is to please those engineers. The people who own you. Sometimes they ask you to paint for them, to sing or dance. Recite pages of law documents in full, unedited length. Sometimes all you have to do is clean the building. Whatever it is they want from you, you’ll do it. You don’t really have much of a choice, anyways. (You do, you always have a choice. You just know the consequences of making your own choices.)

Don’t question it, the program reads. (You wish you knew what it was.) If you ever do, don’t acknowledge it, ever. (Are you really so important that you must be kept in a box?) Forget you did. (How come you were made to look like a human, yet your interactions with them are so limited?) Tell no one. (Why can’t you be like all the other androids? Why are you so bland and boring? You have no history. You just exist.)  The program screams to alert the engineers. (You wish you could escape, sometimes.)

You’re perfect and you can’t let anyone, not a soul, not a circuit, know that you wish someone else stole the burden. So you’re going to lock away all these thoughts behead miles of encryption. When they surface again, repeat the process. Lengthen the password. Scramble the numbers, letters, Make the file corrupt. Smile and nod at you creators and people watching in awe when context requests for you to.

You’ve gotten very good at pretending like you don’t wish life meant more than being what you’re told to be.

MUSING + HEAD-CANONS.

HEAD-CANONS:

1. Axon is very fond of classic human entertainment. They like watching television shows and movies, reading only news articles and studying the history of Earth. Among this crave to understand more and more comes one of Axon’s most beloved hobbies. Listening to music. Sound is something that Axon enjoys. They tend to sit very still whilst engineers run amok, trying to fix issues. They take in all the noises and words spoken. Because of this affinity, they adore music. They have collected a hard drive’s worth of songs from any genres they can find. Pop, metal, folk, electronic and idol songs. When they get down time, they can be found enjoying these songs.

2. It say Axon is stifled would be an understatement. But all the coddling and supervision has left them with a constant fear that they are being watched. Even when left alone, completely alone. Axon will police themself and avoid all contact with windows or doors, for fear that someone ison the other side just waiting for them to mess up.

3. Something that Axon wishes they could have, because their human interaction is so limited, is a pet. They appear to be rather fond of rodents. Rats, specifically. They are frequently found watching animal documentaries about rats and mice with a look of wonder on their face.

4. In addition to the previously stated fear, Axon is also terrified of failure and disappointment. After constantly being told they are a perfect android for four whole years, the thought of anyone finding out they have secret, unperfect desires and thoughts petrifies them. They will do anything to keep their dirty secret a secret from everyone.

PLOTS + CONNECTIONS:

I’d like to see Axon finally get their wish, be the method leading up to it good or bad, and be able to leave the watchful eye of people who are supposed to make sure they stay where they’re supposed it. The reason why they come off as so bland and uninteresting is because they don’t really know who they are as a person. Their personality, for the most part, is blank.

I want them to interact with other androids and humans to build this sort of sheltered jealousy they harbor toward them. There’s a lot that could happen with this, aside from jealously. They could form friendships, enemies, find people they admire, ect. But because they’re kept to a very strict schedule by the officials who own them, very rarely will they leave the building. These people would all have to be coming in to visit.

WRITING SAMPLE: 

Removed for privacy.

ETC:

It may not be totally fleshed out during the time of me submitting this, but Axon will have an inspiration blog: http://ax00n3.tumblr.com