#also possible catharsis of the family being able to see how it 'should' have gone

[chronologically-challenged]

There was this one art a little while ago about the family stuck in a situation where they're forced to play ISAT in some post game scenerio. I keep having many thoughts, but here's some about them figuring out who Loop is:

1) They all BAFFLED by how Loop usually talks. They all thought Loop was this shy little star person. Immediately, they get hit with "have you tried not dying~~~~" into "I think you deserve help" and do not know what to think.

2) Odile is in charge of the controller. Mainly bc no one else wants to control Siffrin and they all have equal amount of video game experience aka none, so Odile is being practical about it. This has the side effect that Odile gets to be all investigative. Odile makes it her MISSION to find stuff out about Loop.

3) Siffrin has complicated feelings about them finding out about Loop??? Like okay they HATE their family has to see all this, ESPECIALLY THAT THEY CAN SEE HIS THOUGHTS!!!! But. Loop. Siffrin hasn't told his family the truth. It's not his story to tell. But. If they figure it out...? In a way that proves Loop wrong, right? That they can recognize them. Maybe it takes a bit because Loop looks different is and actively trying to be different from Siffrin. But. Maybe...? Either way they encourage Odile to talk to Loop. If this is a simulation... if this is real in some way even... yeah he wants to talk to Loop.

Anyway here's a list on how they find out one by one:

Odile: She catches the little stuff. She notes the royal We, the fact that Loop alludes to having an old body by accident, the casual familiarity in some places. All of that. She is also the first to note their eyes being different shades. However, Odile doesn't make the connection 100%, not until Isabeau. Well.

Isabeau: He gets some of the weird stuff Loop says but not as many as Odile. HE finds Loops side comments weirder. He sees Loop's reactions and they're a bit. Uncanny.... and then he has another realization, Loop and Siffrin have the same eyes. When Isabeau notes this, it all clicks for Odile.

Mirabelle: Okay, so. You cannot tell me that Mirabelle has not read fantasy stories with weird guide characters. She has to have!!!! So at first, she's not even looking for who Loop is. And tbh? She has the best read on Loop's personality otherwise. Sassy, but clearly caring. A bit of a shit, but serious when needed. And mainly, she appreciates Loop Being There when the rest of them couldn't. That being said, the moment where the "have you wondered who I am" happens. And suddenly Mirabelle Is Thinking Of the Possibilties. And then the ME option pops up!!!! Odile was already about to pick it but Mirabelle YELLS to pick that one!!!!! Uh. Shortly after that they all have a conversation about how yeah, Loop is VERY likely Siffrin. Mirabelle justifies herself with tropes. Of course!!! Of course they're Siffrin!!! If they're anyone they have to be Siffrin. Siffrin got transformed and became the guide they needed!!!! It Just Makes Sense.

Bonnie: ....Tbh doesn't really figure it out on their own? But also. Loop. Feels like Frin. Not exactly like Frin. But they're Frin enough to be trusted so who cares. It takes awhile for them to really get it too because... it's weird. Also they're the one to really ask why there would be two Frins??? Duh??? And why would Frin become Loop???

Anyway, basically, after picking "Me?" They pretty much are all on the same page. They got that it was wishcraft. They got Loop is Siffrin somehow. I think Odile might figure out that "hey, uh if Loop is the guide then what happens when Loop doesn't have a guide" and Mirabelle probably says "wait Siffrin didn't you say to me once that without Loop you wouldn't have made it?"

Meanwhile Siffrin is a mix of sad and very emotionally touched. Because. Yeah. Even when trying to actively hide, their family recognized them.

Notably, Siffrin gets them to twohats (Siffrin remembers that they understood Loop most after showing them the coin. So yes, the family does get to see Siffrin's "I will forget everything I love" moment. Goes as well as you expect. Lots of hugs and the reassurance that they will bug Siffrin until the end of their days so he can't forget him so HA!)

But yeah. Siffrin really wants to make sure they can get little simulation Siffrin to realize Loop is Siffrin as well. Because if there is any chance of this being real and that they're guiding a Siffrin in another reality, then they want to make sure they can get Loop to know just how much they did. How much they helped and changed Siffrin's fate for the better.

To note: I'd imagine in this scenario, Odile wouldn't go do any of the side stuff. At least not too much of it. There wouldn't be as much exploration either. Siffrin likely would be very underleveled as a result.

So perhaps in this scenario? Imagine if you will that while the Siffrin watching definitely defeated Loop, the simulation Siffrin loses.

And Siffrin finds out that... no. No! Of course Loop couldn't kill him. Of course they wouldn't. There is a catharsis to that realization.

(After they finish the game, either a) prologue playthrough time or b) they're freed and the group IMMEDIATELY try to figure out a way to find Loop bc uh??? Even if they weren't Siffrin, they want to find them. But like. Two Frins. Two Frins they know are different but who cares, no matter who Loop chooses to be, Loop Is Family Too).

Anyway, family plays isat featuring the Loop Saga.

[fixfoxnox]

I was thinking about one of your older posts when you mentioned how reincarnation works in the sito world (long, prolonged deaths) but theoretically, what would the story have been like if it was the opposite?

i.e. in this case Ghost, Gaz, Griggs remember bc the three of them were taken out with a bullet and were immediately gone. Bc I can totally see a different story where Ghost’s obsession with the mask and persona came from being haunted with his first life, and his slow spiral trying to find Roach again, and going through his own catharsis of accepting the things he was given in the new life and moving on.

Idk just a thought lol 🤷🏻‍♀️

This is a super interesting concept and, assuming everything in SiTO world/the changes stay mostly the same its just that Ghost/Gaz remember, it would certainly be interesting. (Griggs would probably remember too but idk that I'd use him much)

I think Ghost would handle things much the same in terms of Roach, in the way that he wants to get back to something similar to his old life.

Where I think Ghost would differ, is that I can picture this making him into a much darker character. Like he has this knowledge and these skill sets and he is going to use them to try to make this life better, to make this life safer.

So like first thing, I imagine his backstory doesn't happen the same. His family still die, but like the people who killed them in his first life? He kills them long before they even get a chance to turn bad. Because the story of how he loses them in the new life is different, he isn't able to prepare for it.

He absolutely kills Shepherd before the man can even form Shadow company. He kills him and makes it look like an accident so there is someone else in his place. Because of this, when the 141 team up together the events of MW2 don't actually happen the same way.

The missiles still get to Hassan and they still have to stop that, but the plot with Shadow Company doesn't happen because there is no Shadow Company. Instead its like KorTac or something helping them out.

Ghost still wears his mask and he's constantly keeping his ear to the ground for word about Roach. Is constantly telling Price that he should be "looking out for any possible new members" for the 141.

Because he and Gaz never really met in the first life, I imagine they end up much like Jackson and Roach in terms of they work together for years before realizing that the other remembers. When they do realize, they become closer and help watch out for one another better, but neither really wants to talk about the past, so they don't much.

One of the more interesting changes would be his relationship with Soap. Obviously he was used to an older and more mature Captain MacTavish, so I think this worlds Soap catches him off guard a bit. He's definitely still keeping a jealous eye on him, but because Roach isn't there yet he isn't really worrying about any of that so he ends up liking/getting along with Soap more. I still don't necessarily think he'd fall for Soap, but maybe he would become super good friends with him at this point.

Ghost also uses his knowledge of the past world to essentially keep an eye on Makarov and take him out before he can get too far into his rise to power. He does a #assassination on the guy during one of his leaves lmao.

When Roach finally rejoins the team, I think he's probably struck by how different yet similar this Roach is. This Roach is just much lighter and fluffier overall and he, somehow, finds himself quickly falling harder for Roach.

Meanwhile Roach, similar to his first life, when he first joins the team he gains a huge crush on Soap. Ghost can definitely tell, but he finds that he doesn't mind as much as he thought he would.

The team are definitely surprised at how quickly he opens up to and tries to befriend Roach, Gaz is the only one who knows why. Again, similar to the first life, through training and spending more time with Ghost, Roach falls head over heels for him and within like three or so months of Roach joining the team they're probably dating.

Then you get like several months later when Ghost realizes that Soap has developed a thing for his boyfriend again. And he knows he should be angry, like he was in his first life, but this time because he and Soap are closer and, he admits it, he's fully understands why Roach had a crush on him at one point, he finds that he's more willing to share this time around.

So he's just cuddling with Roach one day and is randomly like "hey do you want me to ask Soap if he'll fuck you?"

And Roach is naturally an absolute blushing and stuttering mess at the question. He assumes that Ghost has picked up on the fact that his crush on the man was still lingering but Ghost is like "I didn't even notice that babe I just know he wants to fuck you and hey, I might be willing to share if I get to watch."

So you get Soap/Roach/Ghost that starts out as Soap and Ghost both dating Roach, but not each other. Then slowly as time goes by and they're in this relationship longer, Soap and Ghost just naturally shift into dating each other as well.

But yeah, essentially I think Ghost would go much darker than Roach did and use remembering his past life as a way to justify going around and killing anyone who he perceives as a threat to himself or the people he cares about.

He definitely obsessively looks for Roach again, but probably wouldn't manage to find him on his own. It would only be once Roach joins the 141 in the new world that they meet again.

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

Honestly the Supernatural ending was fucked all along, because to have a strong ending, a work has to resolve whatever tensions and questions it set up in the opening – not necessarily in an uncomplicated way, but it has to offer a kind of answer to the fundamental story questions.

The premise set up in The Woman in White is: Sam has a good life, Sam is an up-and-coming guy on his way to happiness and success, but Sam's father is not doing well; Sam is angry at his father, who he remembers as, at best, a habitual drunkard who kept Sam's life in chaos and then disowned him.  So question number one is, given that Sam is better and happier now that he's no longer entangled with his father, should he revisit any of that?  Does he continue to owe his father anything, should he help look for him, should he even care at all that his father might be in trouble?  That feels like a clear no, not really, let John solve his own problems – until Jessica dies in the same way Mary did, and that introduces a twist.  Has Sam actually misunderstood who his father was?  Does John know, has John all along known something that Sam needs to know about his own past, that he can't live his happy life until he understands?  The search for John is now about not just “does Sam owe his family anything?” – it's about “does Sam need his family?”  And there's a plot resonance, but also a thematic resonance there: do you need your family?  Even if your family's pretty fucked up?  Does going back to your unhappy childhood serve some necessary function on your road to a successful adulthood?  Can you pretend forever that you don't come from the fucked-up place you come from, or do you actually have to go back and understand the truth about who your parents were because the past is never just the past?  

So the early seasons are largely about answering that question, through the vehicles of Sam, who would prefer not to admit that his fucked-up past can't really be run away from, and Dean, who would prefer not to admit that there was anything fucked-up about his past at all.  Both of them learn and change: Sam begins to understand where he really comes from and why he can't separate himself from the forces that made him, and Dean begins to understand that yeah, actually, he should separate himself a lot more from the forces that made him, that it's foolish to hold up his father as some kind of infallible god, because even God isn't that. All the stories that spin out in the early seasons about Earth as the cosmic battleground for the family strife between Michael and Lucifer are linked to the pilot by that question: is there any escaping the reach of your family and its history?  And the show decides, yeah, we have free will, we shouldn't just lie down and die because that's our inheritance.  We should change the script.  We can be better than our parents were.  Better than we were ordered or prophesied to be.  And the clear mechanism for all of this is love: Sam falls to Lucifer's influence when he's rejected again (Dean following in John's footsteps), but Sam is able to shake off that demonic control long enough to thwart Lucifer because Dean loves him and accepts him and remains with him when it looks like it's too late to save him (the thing John never did, couldn't do).  Dean changes the script by being more able to love Sam unconditionally than John could, and the basic question of the premise is answered: you do have to go back to your family – not to accept or replicate their mistakes, but to do better, to love them better this time.  You have to heal from the root.  As a viewer, you can accept or reject this resolution; I personally like it, but I'm from that same cultural background, I have a family history that vibes with the things the show is discussing, I'm primed to like and agree with the conclusion.  Maybe you're not, and that's okay!  The point is, it is a conclusion to something.  The show asked questions and then provided answers.

The problem is...the show answered its own questions in 5 seasons, and in such a way that the naturally satisfying conclusion was – literally anything else except more hunting.  You can't say the Big Answer is loving and forgiving your family in spite of their flaws, and then also say that what you want to do with your life is The Family Business just as your father practiced it.  Once you say that the prescription is to heal at the root, something should change.  And it doesn't, really, because the show can't change.  It has a formula.  It's about hunting.  Dean can't give up violence and become a family man, even though that's been clearly established as something he'd be better and happier doing.  Sam can't pursue any dreams that weren't the dreams his father had for him, even though that's been clearly established as the thing he's been willing to fight for all along.  So if the show isn't going to be over, they both have to actively choose to go against their own self-interest. And season 6 is pretty clever, actually – soulless!Sam is a device that does get them back on the road in a way that makes sense; we know why Sam isn't doing what's right for Sam, and we know that Dean can be convinced to do what's wrong for him in order to save Sam.  It tracks.  But it can't last, and what takes over pretty soon from there is...inertia, basically. They keep doing this because this is what they do.  It doesn't really make them happy.  It just feels necessary, because Hunters is what they are; no Hunters retire, in the whole show.  They are never allowed.  It is not done.  They may lapse into more of a part-time gig, but nobody actually leaves the business, because it would be – bad.  People would die, we guess?  A hero never would, we guess? It's not terribly clear, but the general sense is that it just has to happen this way because this is their story now.  This is who they are.

And that's the opposite of what the initial story was about.  Now the story about using your free will to transform and redeem the dysfunctions you inherited is a story about two guys just working in the family business while they die inside of loneliness and PTSD.  There's no story question in the later seasons; there's just stimulus and response.  Oops, Leviathans.  Oops, Mark of Cain.  Oops, Amara.  Oops, Lucifer and Lucifer and more Lucifer. Oops, Michael again.  We better deal with that, I guess.  Some of the storylines are okay in later seasons; some individual episodes are fantastic.  But the whole thing is mired in the fact that there can't be forward momentum in the story because there are opponents and antagonists galore, but there's no internal engine to the story, no fundamental problem to conquer or question to resolve.  From outside the story, we can sit here and say, Hey, it's a problem for me that these dudes are fucking miserable, I'd like them to work on resolving that!  But within the story, they're never allowed to admit that is a problem.  Because it's an adventure show about brave guys doing good deeds, and it's undermined at the most basic level if we come out and admit that what would make these dudes less miserable is no more fucking adventures, no more martyring themselves to do good deeds, no more hunting at all.

When the show came to an end, it was epically fucked, because it had nothing to resolve.  And to give the show credit, it did try to do something interesting that would refer back to and provide a commentary on the whole show – this meta business about “have we all been God's favorite tv show all along?” There's something there; it reminds me of the CS Lewis quote about how he never worried that God didn't exist, but he did often fear that God was actually a vivisectionist.  What if the reason this show has been churning along in place forever in spite of the characters' vivid and unchanging dissatisfaction with their life is that some other force wanted them to keep going on adventures?  Maybe it's God, who's a writer (that's ground we've gone over before), but not just a writer – he's his only fan, his only audience.  He's the Fandom. He's the Audience.  He's us.  Sam and Dean have been on this hamster wheel of labor and loss with no endpoint in sight because that's what we tune in to see; if they both quit, we change the channel.  We're the ones who demand they Always Keep Fighting, who call them heroes for suffering through this endless parade of baddies and funerals.  I mean, that's pretty good, as a way to retcon the complete pointlessness of the last ten years!  The point is: it was fun to watch.  We liked the characters and the episodes and we wanted them to keep doing that for our entertainment, even though we knew it wasn't any fun for them.  It's basically the network tv version of Cabin In the Woods, and there's a – I would say mildly interesting question to raise there about what's drama, what's catharsis, what do we get out of stories about other people's suffering and other people's heroism?  In my opinion it's a mildly interesting route to open up, although I don't know that there's enough meat on the bone to really make it pay off.  An effort was clearly made, though!

But to follow that through to its conclusion, you'd have to answer it, and the way it's set up, there is no satisfying answer possible from inside the universe.  We can answer what we get out of stories, perhaps.  But why would that be of any interest or comfort to the people in the stories?  Their story can't resolve for Sam and Dean if we learn it was actually a story about us the whole time.

So what do you do to end that story? Well, you're a little bit stuck.  You can have them resign or get free somehow, sure, and the show does that.  But what then?  You have two choices, really: either we loop back to s6 and they keep being hunters because It's a Show About Two Hunters – only this time they have True Free Will so you have to assert that they're really freely choosing it, and you have to somehow justify that they would really freely choose to keep doing this thing that's never made them happy, which is depressing as shit – or you have them quit and go pursue their own lives and their own desires – which pretty much goes ahead and admits that the last ten seasons have been us the audience benefitting from the Winchesters' unwilling participation in this Saw-like theme park that was set up for our entertainment (via our stand-in, Chuck).  That's clearly the bolder option, but it's also like – super fucked up!  And it denies both the audience and, more critically, the people who make the show from having any real victory lap,  any way to present the show as a completed entity and say “here's a great story that we're proud of and excited about.” It's such a bleak corner that the show has painted itself into at that point – all of this only happened against our heroes' will, but enjoy it anyway!  Of course that got pushback.  Of course people wanted to end with something that portrayed the characters as the drivers of the show, protagonists whose choices mattered, whose lives mattered.  But they weren't, and they didn't.  That was the premise the writers went with in season 15, because they needed to do something about the fact that nowhere in the past ten seasons had the Winchesters done anything on their own behalf, because they'd never been given story goals.  All they'd been allowed to do is play whack-a-mole with monsters.

It's a mess all the way around, and it's almost impossible to resolve this late in the game.  Season 15 couldn't be about the Winchesters resolving any real Stuff, because the show had long since realized that its prime directive was making sure that the fundamental pattern of the show remained intact: the boys go on adventures, bad things happen somewhere and the boys show up to stop it.  And if that fundamental pattern is not a problem – if we're supposed to be glad it's there – then you can't allow any storylines that would end in changing it.  Everything that's introduced has to be resolvable by a reversion to that vision of What We Do Around Here, so we can keep doing it.  The legitimacy of What We Do Around Here is never allowed to be in question, and an attempt to question it at the very end of the series winds up inherently muddled and out-of-place.  Third-act problems are always first-act problems, and the problem with the finale is that the show had spent so long actively reifying the value of an endless, unchanging sequence of events and actively working to quash anything that started looking like a linear story that would end in a place other than where it began.

I like a lot of the plotlines and episodes and characters in the later season.  Honestly, 12 is probably my favorite season, just on the weight of good episodes I enjoy watching.  But the only part of Supernatural that ever had a coherent story at the heart of it was the original five seasons, where things were set up, explored, and resolved in Swan Song with admirable narrative focus and direction.  Everything after that was just stuff that happened, which is not what a story is, and you can't come back from that in the series finale and somehow make it work.

[mangobone]

I just watched ep 13 and I’m stunned! Finally, the fog is clearing away and the information shown in the earlier slower episodes is paying off! This time is the Seo’s case thats finally coming to light along with some other things.

This is going to be a long post so go get some water and a snack if you’re willing to read and share your thoughts!

Also, If you haven’t watch the ep, please wait until you do before you read this. You’ve come this far, it’d be worth it:

-I don’t want to rewatch any of the earlier episodes until this season is done, so the Park Gwan-Su case with Hanjo, Choi Bit and Woo Tae-Ha is a little muddle for me so I’d give it a pass, just to say that I loved the acknowledgement to the late Chang-Joon and his incredible efforts, that still ripple through various people. He truly was incredibly smart in that aspect; however it didn’t stop him from turning into the mastermind of 2 serious crimes so I’d love to know how Si-Mok feels about him, 3 years after the whole ordeal.

-The Seo Dong Jae case OH! MY! GOD! (I’m turning into Janice from Friends, sorry) I wasn’t expecting that, but I do remember seeing the young man in the beach and thinking there was something off with him when he was being question by the police and he looked like a deer in theheadlights when he saw Si-Mok; however with the onslaught of information from the rest of the cases and the fact that he was a sort of “victim” from the couple that burndt the restriction line, I completely removed him from my possible culprits mental list. I was shocked today tbh. And I suppose Chief Kim has something to do either with him or the fake witness, that much is clear, but I won’t speculate too much there.

-The scene with Kim...JESUS. Hwang nerves of steel Si-Mok! He truly gave absolutely NOTHING away as he kept apologizing while looking at Kim straight in the eye and wasn’t that INTENSE?!!; I was repressing a scream throughout the whole scene. Btw whats with the forgotten garage control? I wonder if that’ll be significant.

- I really hope Kang Won-Chul won’t get too damaged when the shit hits the fan, with the whole Hanjo business and the war between the Lee’s. I’m also interested to know who was Park Gwang-Su’s younger brother.

My guess is that Si-Mok will have to make a decision between helping Kang Won Chul and following his strict moral code in the end. It’ll hurt whatever the decision, as can see that the appreciation between those two is sincere.

-I hate Oh Ju-Seon. So. Fucking. Much.

-The Eun Soo reference? Jeeeeez that was painful (great scene between CSW and Bae Doona btw) I think self-reproach, guilt and regret are Si-Mok’s kriptonites, as we can see since the Tongyong “incident”, and the fact that the “surviving” student is the abductor will only worsen the feeling for sure as he didn’t suspect him from the beginning. (I have a theory about this but it’ll be way below.

-NOW the scene between Yeo-Jin and Choi Bit? (Aside from the horrendous product placement) Well, Choi is holding back nothing eh? But I like that she doesn’t really tease her, she just asks honest questions (though a bit out of place, IMO) says what she feels she needs to, in order to “protect” both Han and her own interests. On the other hand Yeo-Jin GIRL YOU DIDNT DENY THE STATEMENT! Though I think we all knew she had something of a crush on Si-Mok from the first season, she indeed looks a bit more invested now. And I could guess that one of the reasons why she wanted to be in charge of the Seo Dong Jae is because of Si-Mok’s need to catch whoever hurt another one of his fellow prosecutors.

-Boy! Finally a scene where they find that son of a bitch! The moment when Yeo Jin presents her ID and the musical punk looks around to see if he’ll be able to knock her out and kidnap her JESUS OMG I WAS SCREAMING AGAIN and dismayed that our prosecutor hadnt gone with her! but thank heavens Hwang Si-Mok’s elegant shoe made its appearance, along with the rest of him and I was able to breathe!

-BTW I’m not too sure that Si-Mok will be able to catch him without Han’s help (We know that’s not his forte) by the looks of the teaser but he sure will be yelling at him, and for that I’m more than glad! He needs some catharsis and we all need the information.

Also, I love aggressive Hwang Si-Mok 🙃 (Sorry for the shitty captures, but I didn’t want to invest much time in them)

-From the teaser: WHY THE HECK ARE THEY LOOKING UP? Is there something horrible up there? AND WHERE THE HELL IS SI-MOK?!?

-And also...whoever decided to add a scene from episode 14 (to be confirmed) way back in the teaser for other episodes?!? That’s not cool and I’m sick of being cheated.

-NOW! onto why Si-Mok didn’t suspect the Tongyong “survivor”? Two theories that could be seen as one but here we go:

-Unknown emotions getting in the way:

In the first season the media was trying to destroy his credibility and Yoon Se-Won told Chang-Joon that Si-Mok had undergone brain surgery when he was younger and it was possible that he could be temporarily suppressing his emotions; so what if In these past years and everything that happened with his colleagues and with meeting someone like Han Yeo-Jin, changed him subtly but enough that he could actually empathize, if only for a bit, with Kim Hu-Jeong? And that all of these questions and doubts on his professional capacity are because he’s too worried about his college but he doesn’t know it, just like Prosecutor Kim suggested it, when he suggested that he’d tell Chief Woo that he wasn’t ready to take Seo’s case.

-Mental turmoil

Or what if he’s actually a little bit...depressed? Contemplative? Unsatisfied?

When we start the season, for the first time we see him more as a lonely man rather than an outsider. He’s actually got a farewell party thrown for him that he clearly doesn’t look forward to, he’s watching couples and families stroll by, he admits openly to Kang Won-Chul that he “may never fully understand the things that he should know by a certain age”, he doesn’t let his mother know that he’s back in Seoul and the promised visit is clearly not his idea, and the talk with Yeo-Jin about Eun Soo and the simplicity between living and dying got me wondering about his state of mind. He’s got questions he won’t ask to the only authoritative figure he still respects somewhat (Kang) and he’s more defiant to Woo Tae Ha.  So he’s more self-isolated with the only exception being Yeo Jin, to whom he asks questions about her obvious attitude change.

These things, along with Han Yeo-Jin’s change in attitude really got me wondering about both our protagonist but we don’t really get enough time with her to venture theories on what is going on and why she keeps quiet when Si-Mok questions her about her life choices, just that she’s miserable on her desk job with her bureocratic collegues. 

Also, I could be mistaken BUT anyone noticed how this is the first time Han Yeo Jin mentions someone from her family in the series? (grandmother).

I’d go on and on writing on the possibility of a Hwang/Han relationship but I feel that those two ending together is just too unlikely, as much we as audience would love it. They truly are made for each other, like a perfect yin-yang, and this season only confirms that she’s the only person who manages to make him eat in peace and make him smile.

Well I’m sorry for offending your eyes with this sea of text but I had to get it all out before tomorrow’s episode!! Going to sleep and hopefully I’ll open my eyes to the new ep!

[thatiranianphantom]

Riverdale, Buffy, and the Musical Episode, an analysis.

Hey all! I have spent far too long writing out my thoughts on Riverdale vs. Buffy’s musical episode, from the perspective of a theatre nerd. Thoughts are welcomed!

To those who aren’t aware, I, your humble author, am a massive musical nerd. I have ALL the musical memorabilia, Broadway and the West End are places I’ve visited many times, my favorite genre of music by far is musical theatre, and I am just a musical nerd in all senses of the word. 

Which leads to a...perhaps more sharp criticism when a medium like TV attempts to dive into the world of musical theatre.

(Also, full disclosure, while I enjoy the music of Carrie, Heathers, and certainly Buffy’s musical episode, the music of Hedwig just...don’t work for me. It’s not bad music, it’s not a bad show, it’s just not my thing.) 

In this short analysis, I’m going to attempt to explain why Riverdale’s musical episodes fail, and why it IS possible to successfully mount a great musical episode on TV, by way of example, Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s episode “Once More, With Feeling”. 

First, a short recap of both shows’ musical episodes. 

Currently, Riverdale has three musical episodes. These are all jukebox shows (performing pre-written and pre-performed songs), based on three popular musicals. They first did Carrie the Musical, then Heathers, then Hedwig and the Angry Inch. As to this point, all of them have occurred in a diegetic setting - that is, the characters were aware that the songs were being performed. Carrie and Heathers were explained as being the school musical of the year, and Hedwig was ostensibly performed to prove a point, and to support a student struggling with his own identity. 

Buffy’s one musical episode was in season six, arguably one of the darkest seasons Buffy ever had. It is also a diegetic musical, but not a jukebox musical. It features original songs, written by show creator Joss Whedon. The songs are given explanations and each one is written specifically to fit a character.

To sum it very basically, Buffy’s musical episode is much, much better. It is the first episode I would recommend if you were ever in the market for a musical episode, and it takes itself very seriously, while occurring in a very unrealistic setting. 

At the point Carrie occurs in Riverdale, the characters are dealing with a serial killer known as the Black Hood, who ends up murdering their friend and cast member by the end of the musical, on stage. Of the three musical episodes, you could make a pretty strong argument that the first two musicals tie themselves into the plot best. The role of Carrie’s mother is given to Alice Cooper, because she is also struggling with family issues. Purportedly, the song “Unsuspecting Hearts” is used to make up between two characters, as is “You Shine”. 

Buffy’s musical episode occurs at a time where the characters are all struggling with big secrets that they don’t feel able to tell. It’s driving a wedge between all of them, and there’s a large undercurrent of tension. Buffy can’t tell her friends about the depression she’s struggling with, Willow is becoming dangerously addicted to magic, which has caused her to cast two spells, erasing a memory of a fight from her girlfriend Tara’s mind. Spike is in love with Buffy, but is very much wrestling with what that means. Giles has made plans to leave, because he feels like he is hindering Buffy’s growth. Anya and Xander are having serious doubts about their upcoming marriage. The tension created by all these boils under the surface, but nobody plans to say anything. 

The catalyst for this episode occurs in the form of an unnamed demon, who is accidentally summoned and whose primary power is to make people sing and dance - until they can’t stop, and they burn up. It adds a note of risk to the episode. They are being forced into this, and the stakes are high if they don’t comply. 

And so, one by one, all the characters are forced to express their deepest secrets through song, and the demon leaves them to deal with the fallout. It did what Riverdale, fundamentally, has never managed to do: the songs force the plotline foreward. 

That would have been impossible without the songs. The characters are unwilling to open up to each other, and they feel unable to express themselves, until the demon literally musically forces them to do so. At the end of the episode, their biggest secret, the secret that will inform the rest of the season, is revealed: Buffy’s friends didn’t pull her out of Hell, they pulled her out of heaven, where she was at peace, and now the world around her is bright and violent and she is miserable. That revelation will literally carry us to the season finale. 

Riverdale’s musical episodes are, in a way, explained as above. High schools do musicals. It happens. But all of our main cast, and all in the lead roles? Not likely. And that explanation is made even thinner in the latest musical episode, where characters burst into song at random, like Betty and Jughead’s fight in the bunker, or Kevin and the girls breaking into “Wig in a Box” during a sleepover. 

The issue becomes very contrasting between the two musicals: Buffy builds their world around the songs. The songs are crucial to the plot. The episode wouldn’t work if these specific songs were not given to these specific characters. 

Riverdale, however, bases the songs around the plot, and the result is a very odd episode with songs shoehorned in. They aren’t necessary, they’re just...there. Buffy crafts a plot around the songs. Tara finds the flower Willow used in a previous episode to wipe her mind of a fight, and we can see the song naturally build off that. Tara sings Under Your Spell, which is meaningful because she is quite literally under Willow’s spell. Toni is shoehorned into the Heathers musical to be a choreographer, despite there being no previous indication of any experience with choreography, because they need to get her into the room to sing Candy Store, because Heathers features this song, which means they have to. 

The Riverdale musicals take none of the plot of their source materials, which strips the very songs they struggle to add in of all their context and meaning. For example, Hedwig is a show which features a domestic violence plotline as one of its main arcs. Hedwig herself is a pretty terrible person. You would never know that from watching the episode. Heathers’ entire premise talks about how it’s very easy to influence someone into cruelty to the very people who were kind to them, and how quickly a lie can spiral out of control. None of that features in the Heathers Riverdale episode. These songs are powerful because of the context that surrounds them, and that is just...gone. Hedwig’s final song (Midnight Radio) exists in universe as a song where Hedwig finds emotional catharsis and hands her stage off to someone else. It’s exceptionally meaningful, because the whole musical has been a journey to this point. None of that poignancy is able to be translated to Riverdale. 

In contrast, Buffy’s final song (Where Do We Go From Here) feels very earned because it feels like the end of a journey for the characters. All their secrets are exposed, and you can feel the ramifications that will last for a long time after this. And that’s not even mentioning Buffy’s solo Something To Sing About, where she is literally begging for something to make her feel more alive. This only works if Buffy is singing it. The song is designed around her, and it is where she admits her biggest secret. The song is necessary, it is crucial. NONE of the songs in the Riverdale musical episodes have this same power. 

(ALSO, RE: RIVERDALE HEATHERS,  J.D. IS ONE OF HEATHERS MAIN CHARACTERS, I WAS SO EXCITED TO HAVE SWEET PEA PLAYING HIM, AND NONE OF J.D.’S SONGS WERE GIVEN TO SWEET PEA. INJUSTICE. ALSO ALSO, THIS LINE:

Reggie: Just two single straight dudes doing some theatre.

OH SWEET REGGIE. NOBODY HAS TOLD YOU ABOUT KURT AND RAM HAVE THEY DARLING?) 

It should be noted that Riverdale’s songs in all three musicals are heavily reworked to fit the characters, and the TV network rating, better. 

Music has meaning. The songs should be there to do something, not just have extra content to churn out and look good doing it. As stated, Riverdale’s musical episodes aren’t necessary. There are no stakes to their expression through song. 

Fundamentally, Buffy understands what a musical episode is. They do only one, and that was a fight to get on the network as it was.

Think of it this way: did the songs affect the characters and plotline enough that it would still have ramifications a few episodes later? 

Buffy’s certainly did. 

One could theoretically say Midge’s death affected Riverdale, which did occur during the episode. One could also say that Betty and Jughead burning the trailer affected Riverdale. But those didn’t need the songs to exist. Again, they were just….there. 

And then there’s the issue of vocal performance. 

Look, musicals are a lot of work, and it’s hard on the voice. 

Buffy’s cast does feature several singers. Notably, Anthony Stewart Head, Amber Benson and James Marsters have had separate success in music outside of Buffy. 

Riverdale’s cast features a grand total of one person with professional musical experience (that would be Casey Cott, who makes that fact entirely obvious). I suppose KJ Apa counts too, so let’s say two to be generous. 

But again, Buffy wins this round. Make no mistake, their songs are autotuned. Just about every piece of music you’ve heard since the 80s has had some amount of autotune applied to it. Sarah Michelle Gellar would probably be the first to admit, she is not a singer. Actually, up until she received the music, she was fully planning on being dubbed, and is openly says she is not comfortable singing. And you can tell. In the musical, she sounds fine. She’s not amazing. That’s actually the point. She sings well enough to fully communicate the emotions she’s feeling, but it feels genuine. You can believe Buffy is actually singing, not in that full voiced, broadway quality voice that so many Riverdale episodes feature, but in a normal-person singing voice, the voice we all use when we sing in the shower. Willow is not a great singer, and Alyson Hannigan is clearly not comfortable singing either. Accordingly, she’s given the fairly meta line “I think this line’s mostly filler”, and it doesn’t sound heavily autotuned. It’s a normal person voice. 

In contrast, Riverdale’s voices are mostly a machine. I’d kill to listen to the raw tracks, but they are practically waterboarded with autotune. One can scarcely distinguish a real voice in there. They don’t sound like real people, they sound like professionally polished singers. And how many high schools have full choruses of broadway quality singers? It takes you out of the show. I actually would have liked Riverdale’s musical episodes far better, had they let them use their more natural voices. It would have sounded less polished, sure, but it also would have sounded more real. Lili Reinhart has a pretty voice naturally. I would have loved to see that being allowed to exist in these episodes. 

(On a slightly separate note, Casey Cott is very clearly a singer. His voice is full, trained and controlled. It stands out above everyone’s in every musical episode).

In summation, musical episodes are becoming more and more common, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy to do well. However, if you understand the meaning you have to imbue music with on a medium like TV, and craft your context around the singing, it can work. 

And if you’re looking for a musical episode, for god sakes, watch Once More With Feeling. 

[chibimyumi]

Hey! Hope everything's fine (: I wanna ask about the following: what do you think will happen to r!Ciel? I just can't see o!Ciel, Sebastian, the Undertaker etc killing r!Ciel... He might decide to leave the scene for his brother's sake. It would be quite ironic if r!Ciel will choose to sacrifice himself after UT's hard work to bring him back to "life", given the fact that he's an ex-human who committed suicide.

Dear Anon,

First of all, thank you very much, I am doing great. I hope you’re doing great as well! Secondly, I am so sorry for the late reply.

What I think will happen to R!Ciel.

I definitely think that Undertaker will do anything in his power to make sure that R!Ciel does not get killed again; we have seen Undertaker’s obsession with the Phantomhive family, after all.

Sebastian is the titular character of this series, and right now he is incredibly scared of the reaper. Functionally, Undertaker is designed as the main villain and foil to Sebastian. Therefore, storytelling-wise, I think the logical proceeding would be for Sebas to thwart Undertaker when it comes to R!Ciel. Both of them would share the same reason to oppose each other, namely that they are each other’s greatest obstacle in achieving their respective goals. For Sebastian, it is to fulfil his contract and devour O!Ciel, which Undertaker is trying to prevent. For Undertaker, it is for Sebas to NOT fulfil his contract, as he wishes to reunite the Phantomhive family as much as possible. As such, though R!Ciel is of course a character of his own, he does also function as a plot-device for Sebas’ character arc to bear fruit.

Unpacking ‘Need vs Want’

Any good character arc should contain a good ‘need vs want’ correlation. The part above ⇈ and the greatest part of the manga so far, addresses only the ‘need’ in the ‘need vs want’ in Sebastian’s character arc. The ‘want’ is mostly left untouched. Sure, we could say that Sebastian ‘wants’ to fulfil his contract in order to have O!Ciel’s soul, but there has never been any explicit explanation as to whether Sebas had a choice in the matter to begin with. He did not seem to have any say in whether he gets summoned or not, as was suggested by him telling O!Ciel to dismiss him if he required no service of him. Here, we learned that Sebas can’t just leave on his own accord; i.e. he is chained. From this, we may conclude that sacrificing R!Ciel was the fee to get Sebastian to travel to the human world. If we do accept that he had no say in whether he wanted to come or not, we could say that by ‘paying’ with R!Ciel, Sebas was put in a magic-parcel and sent to O!Ciel, with the included promise to enter a bond of servitude. In order to dismiss him, the same postage fee would have been required to repack him and send him back.

If we accept Sebas’ condition of entering the contract as being involuntary, all the ‘want’ in him that is left so far is:

wanting his meal to be delicious

to not be a speechless slave.

Out of these two ‘wants’ however, only number 1 counts as the correlation with the ‘need’ which befits a character arc.  Number 2 is more of a coping mechanism, or a means to an end, if anything. Whether or not he acts like a speechless slave will not really change the way he fulfils his contract. For number 1 however, Sebas does need to act differently depending on how he wishes to manipulate the flavour of O!Ciel’s soul. Sure, so far in the manga, Sebastian has done quite a few things already to influence the flavour of his meal, e.g. letting the snakes attack the boy in Snake’s tent in the circus arc, or not allowing him to continue simpering due to trauma in the werewolf arc. (But one could even argue that shocking him out of trauma has more to do with the ‘need’…)

The current development in regards to Undertaker is probably the first time where Sebas’ ‘want’ arc can finally shine. I shall explain below:

R!Ciel and O!Ciel’s bond.

One of the most important things the flashbacks were telling us is that O!Ciel and R!Ciel have an incredibly strong bond, and that O!Ciel used to be hyper dependent on his older sibling. After R!Ciel died, O!Ciel had to rapidly grow up in order to fill the shoes his brother left behind, as well as to establish his own identity, or arguably, his brother’s identity according to the almost idealistic standard to which the younger twin held him.

O!Ciel is no longer dependent on his twin, but if we read this spread page from the werewolf arc as the order of guilt-level O!Ciel feels towards people, we see R!Ciel being in position number 1.

So the arc for O!Ciel here is to decide whether his sentiments play a role in his decision making.

Will he show that he has entirely let go of his sentiments and see R!Ciel for the zombie he is, and continue his revenge arc in a bee-line?

Or will lingering sentiments flow into a mini personal-redemption arc now that the main object of O!Ciel’s guilt is back?

Considering O!Ciel’s personality, I personally am more willing to bank on a route 2, where the sentiments might threaten to influence O!Ciel, but him having to smack these feelings down even more harshly. If anything O!Ciel has learned in the past almost-4 years, is that the dead stay dead. Back in chapter 19, O!Ciel even lectured Soma on the stupidity of wishing things back that are gone at one point.

O!Ciel realises very well that R!Ciel is not his brother anymore. We have seen his shock upon seeing his brother’s corpse talking to him, yes, but afterwards, the first spoken reaction we see of him is utter outrage. That scene was so full of spontaneity and catharsis, it is hard to believe that he used all those long, looong moments of absolute silence to come up with a script to give people a ‘show’ of how he wants his zombie brother deader. If anything, the long period of silence was probably him considering what the return of ‘the real first born’ means to him, and how it will influence his future. And of course O!Ciel is not happy to find out that the one adversary even his demon seems unable to overcome, has become their adversary again in a major problem that O!Ciel cannot afford to hand-wave. During the Campania- and the Boarding School Arc, O!Ciel could say: “Oh, Undertaker is up to no good, he has to be stopped. If not, then it sucks for others.” But now, if Undertaker doesn’t get stopped FOR GOOD, well… it will become: “That sucks a lot for me!”

Returning to Sebastian’s ‘want’

So, what does all this rant about O!Ciel have to do with Sebastian’s ‘want’ arc? If O!Ciel goes for route 1 (bee-line to revenge), then Sebastian and O!Ciel’s ‘want’ arc will overlap, and the two of them can head towards the same goal (albeit with different motivations).Here above however, I said that I am more likely to vouch for route 2.

If O!Ciel opts for route 2, then O!Ciel’s ‘want’ and Sebastian’s  ‘want’ will contradict, as surely Sebastian is not waiting for a soul with ‘too-many-sentiments-to-kill-a-corpse’ flavour. In that case, however reluctant Sebastian might be to fight Undertaker again, he will at least make sure that O!Ciel’s resolve to kill the zombie won’t wither. This task however, will require a much greater effort and determination on Sebastian’s part than anything he has done so far in terms of ‘seasoning his meal’. The snake-stunt in the Circus Arc was adding some salt and pepper perhaps, but this time, playing a hand in whether or not O!Ciel has the guts to kill R!Ciel will be as flavour-changing as choosing between boiling or stir-frying a meal.

Hence, with clashing interests between demon and boy, Sebastian must see to it that his ‘want’ won’t be hindered by O!Ciel’s ‘want’. So,  ladies and gentlemen, and other respectable individuals, here is where we might see Sebastian’s first ‘want’ arc where he acts solely out of personal desire. Regardless of whether O!Ciel would initially choose route 1 or 2, the final result (if Sebas has any say in the matter) will still result in them going after R!Ciel.

R!Ciel Leaving Baby Brother?

As for R!Ciel leaving the scene for his brother’s sake… I personally find it quite hard to believe so. As explained in the Boarding School Arc, Bizarre Dolls – however well they are made – are in essence the embodiment of a person’s strongest emotions and fixations in life. R!Ciel’s fixation is probably his regret that he could not stay by his baby brother’s side to protect him and planning every detail out in their ‘glorious shared future’. Remember how R!Ciel could not handle O!Ciel saying he is going to live his own life and become a toy maker? Yikes.

The possessiveness of R!Ciel that was unfiltered due to his young age became the essence of his current being; a baby-bro-con zombie. Instead of “braaains”, it is “baby-brooooo”. In short, I do not think there is any chance R!Ciel will be able to physically and mentally let go of O!Ciel. As touched upon in this post, I think Undertaker’s and O!Ciel’s shared objective is to force O!Ciel to live a ‘happy life’ together with his twin.

If anything, R!Ciel’s (artificial) intentions fit the theme of Kuroshitsuji perfectly; humans are too greedy to let go and will submit to their greed ever after death.

If we consider this, then the Bizarre Dolls tell us that: “what makes humans human is their greed and fixation. In order to make a corpse human again, the main and only way to make this possible is to restore this greed and fixation.

[angerissue]

@ofmusingsxandmayhem asked... 2, 6, 12, 15, 23 (mental health headcanons) From this headcanon meme. Open to everyone.

2. Does anyone in your muse’s family experience mental illness?

Yes. The most obvious example is Brian Banner, who is Bruce’s biological father. On the surface, he suffers from alcoholism and severe anger management issues, which manifested in the form of abuse towards Bruce and Rebecca in the earliest part of Bruce's life. Knowing how Brian behaved towards his family, and knowing he himself had been abused as a child, with his two siblings, it’s possible that he suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). He checks most of the boxes for it, including the following.

The first criteria is a fear of abandonment, and a feeling that someone doesn't exist to others. This was evident in how Brian became jealous of Bruce, and the amount of time Rebecca would spend with him after he was born. Brian would always claim that he was being cast aside in favour of Bruce, and say that their life was better before Bruce came along, citing their son as someone who was "tearing the family apart" and "preventing them from spending time together" (and by "them", Brian meant himself and Rebecca, because in his eyes, Bruce wasn’t a real part of the family). A lot of his claims were very sensationalized, which indicated just how invisible Brian felt in relation to Rebecca and Bruce.

The second criteria for BPD is extreme swings in emotion, which often involve anger. Brian demonstrated this on multiple occasions, physically abusing both Bruce and Rebecca for harmless actions on their part; on one occasion, he even sent Bruce to the hospital for stitches because he saw him doing something that angered him, and he couldn’t help but react violently. But BPD-related emotional swings can also involve intense feelings of shame, sorrow, and sadness, and this was potentially the reason for Brian’s dependence on alcohol — he was evidently struggling with underlying emotions that he couldn’t exorcise by himself, and he needed alcohol to cope.

The third criteria for BPD involves paranoia, and disruptive patterns of thinking. This is relevant to Brian because he believed that something was wrong with both Bruce and himself, on a genetic level, because of an accident that happened long ago. These beliefs were unfounded, but they became impossible for Brian to stop worrying about. In consequence, he felt the need to persecute Bruce on a regular basis for an entirely fabricated flaw.

Aside from this, Bruce’s relatives have decent mental health. Most of the issues in his family stem from Brian’s side.

6. What is the longest your muse has gone without sleep?

Weeks. Bruce doesn’t need to sleep if he stays in a transformed state, and there are verses where he remains like that for months on end — particularly in “Blood Sky” and “The Persistence”, where he becomes obsessed with making up for lost time and completing as much scientific work as possible. During this time, Bruce spends his nights working on projects instead of sleeping. Someone could argue that it's impossible for someone to spend all this time in a productive way, since they'll eventually grow bored or run out of things to do. But they underestimate Bruce's ability to get sucked into his work and lose track of time, not to mention he has a ridiculous amount of ideas to realize.

Bruce's normal form, however, can't go that long without sleeping. His longest stretch happened in the first few months after the accident, when his condition was brand new and he didn't know much about it. At this time, he harboured an irrational fear that the "other guy" could potentially assume control of his body if he fell asleep — he believed that if he fell unconscious, he might not have woken up again, and the "other guy" would have free rein. These days, he understands there isn't really an "other guy" (at least not inherent to his condition), but back then, his lack of knowledge and the resulting fear meant he could easily spend two or three days without sleep. This happened on more than a few occasions. However, he seldom went longer than 72 hours, because he would either crash or force himself to sleep. He knew that Ross was looking for him, and it was difficult to maintain his awareness if he was running on fumes.

12. Does your muse ever experience a lack of interest in things that they usually enjoy?

Yes. Bruce experiences depressive episodes from time to time, on account of his Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). When this happens, he loses his appetite and doesn’t have too much energy, both from a mental and physical standpoint. This can make it difficult for him to exercise, whether it involves hiking or yoga, and he doesn’t feel driven to cook, maintain his living space, and pursue his hobbies like reading and fishing.

These episodes also affect his work. If he’s in a slump, he won’t feel as passionate about it or enjoy it as much.

However, even if he's feeling down and doesn't have much energy, Bruce tries to continue his scientific work unless he's completely incapable of doing so. He'll be easily drained in these situations, and he doesn't enjoy it because of how arduous it feels, but he would rather continue working than stop entirely. This is because if he stops, he would feel like he's stagnating and otherwise not making progress, which would make things worse. When he was a child, Brian always told him that he would never amount to anything, and he's internalized this belief so much that he constantly wants to prove him wrong now; he always needs to keep going and working, even if his mind and body are putting up a fight. He wouldn't be able to articulate Brian's criticisms as the reason for his consistent work, but it remains nonetheless, and it drives him to keep pushing himself even if he should take it easy.

At times like this, if someone approached him in the lab, he would likely respond with hostility. Because he's already functioning on such low energy, Bruce wants to use that energy to work on his scientific ventures rather than conversing with other people. He usually can't have both at times like these, so asking otherwise will cause him to become snippy. Someone may perceive these moments as an indication that Bruce has some kind of personal beef with them, but that's never the case; he's just trying to keep his head above water. Once he crawls out of his funk, he'll be more sociable and receptive to discussing his work again.

15. What does your muse feel most guilty about?

Bruce could wax lyrical about the incidents with the Hulk, Ultron, Sokovia, and Lagos, but his most genuine feelings of guilt come from his existence in general. He’s repressed most of his childhood, but he does remember his father accusing him of being a disruptive presence in the Banner household, and being a monster — Brian had claimed that if he weren’t around and he never existed, things would be perfectly fine for him and Rebecca, calling into question the validity of Bruce's birth from an early age. He remembers being blamed for the death of his mother as well. This sentiment stuck with him throughout school and his adult life, long before the Hulk was born, and it became a sort of filter that coloured his waking hours.

Even now, Bruce is constantly questioning his right to remain in the world. He continues to believe that he was responsible for Rebecca's death, in addition to everyone who's been killed by his condition, even if he was, truthfully, entrapped and forced into reacting violently by Ross. All of the other incidents, like Ultron or Lagos, are icing on top of the cake. From his perspective, these are all symptoms that are caused by his existing and making decisions, most of which have caused some kind of catastrophe, which implies there’s something inherently wrong with him. And he feels guilty; even selfish, for continuing to take chances on things if he knows they'll seldom work out.

There are indeed moments when he feels like he really belongs; this most notably occurred in the early years of his career, because there was a span of years where nothing awful happened and he was on an uphill trajectory. But ultimately, there are too many incidents that call into question whether he deserves to be around. This will continue unless he seeks professional help, learning to separate himself from his internalized emotions and not see himself merely as someone defective and destructive.

23. What are your muse’s coping mechanisms? Are they healthy?

He’s a mixed bag when it comes to coping mechanisms.

If Bruce is upset about something and needs to blow off steam, he usually turns to aerobic exercises like running and hiking to ease some of his emotional vigour. Putting some distance between himself and other people, like going on a day trip or spending some time as the Hulk in a remote location (which is a more common venture than people think), is a possibility as well. Meditation can come in useful too.

But while these activities help address the physical symptoms of his stress, they seldom address the underlying issues. In most circumstances, he needs to talk to someone in order to achieve catharsis, and stop things from bothering him in the future.

And this is where things usually fall apart.

For starters, he won't usually approach someone if something is bothering him. Subconsciously, he feels that if he shares too much information about himself, it could somehow be abused or otherwise used against him. This fear exists even if he knows someone very well, because it's not rational. It just is. Additionally, over the years, he’s had little opportunity to speak with other people about his issues, because he’s been alone for most of that time. It’s simply not a habit he’s ever gotten into.

And if he does speak with someone, there are obstacles to overcome. He suffers from alexithymia, which means he has trouble understanding what he's feeling at a given moment, and articulating it in a clear and concise manner (aside from the emotions that are easy to identify, like anger). This makes it difficult to determine his core/base emotions and explain them to others. Oftentimes, he won't provide enough information and he'll fail to explain what he, himself, is experiencing in a given situation. Because of this, Banner often ends up giving non-answers, even if he believes he's being transparent with someone, so they will need to perform mental gymnastics and interpolations in order to understand what he's saying. If this fails and Bruce cannot explain himself, he’ll become frustrated and end the discussion on a sour note.

Bruce's inability to communicate means that once he stops the more immediate and acute symptoms of an issue, he usually doesn't have a choice but to ignore it until his mind represses it completely. Once that happens, it usually won't bother him on a conscious level anymore, but it can certainly come back to haunt him at a later date. It can also easily bubble up when he’s the Hulk, because being in that form tends to negate his repressions (which is partially why the Hulk is always so irritable). Moreover, while avoidance can be good for Bruce in the short-term, it ultimately does more harm than good.

Bruce also practices avoidance when it comes to social interactions. He needs to be dragged to Avengers galas, and even going out with his teammates for coffee requires him to be in the proper "mindset". He's a quiet and introverted person by nature, but some of these tendencies come from his PTSD, and a persistent fear that the more people he’s around, the higher the chance that something bad will happen to him. People in general tend to make him uncomfortable, even subtly, because of the abuse in his childhood and other traumatic events. It’s not that he's consciously thinking, “uh oh, there’s a person”, but he simply finds it difficult to let his guard down. There’s always a subtle flight-or-fight response happening with him, because over the years, his sympathetic nervous system has learned to always keep itself on, in case of trouble.

As mentioned a few paragraphs earlier, Bruce also tends to blame himself for situations rather than looking at them objectively. While this can help him feel a semblance of control over a situation, because it implies he was the sole person responsible for the outcome, it's a double-edged sword because there are many, many times where Bruce has blamed himself much too harshly, and it became all too unconstructive. This is because most of his self-blame is simply the result of internalized emotional abuse from Brian. Effectively, if Bruce puts all the blame on himself and doesn’t even consider other possibilities, he’s continuing a cycle that Brian perpetrated in his youth.

All in all, Bruce has far more unhealthy coping mechanisms than healthy ones. He has a lot of unresolved baggage because of it.

[wingheadshellhead]

endgame time

okay i figure i might as well post all my thoughts on the movie and get all of it out at once

the good shit (oh yes i loved iron man 5)

the tony and nebula interactions were so good. so soft. love that sweet validation of them being stuck for 3 weeks and getting along. TONY OFFERING HER THE BLUEBERRIES on their last day of oxygen and her pushing his hand away and tony immediately scarfing them all. tony thinking of a complete stranger’s needs before himself even as he’s dying. fucking good shit a+

when he stepped off the jet and it was STEVE who rushed immediately to catch him lmao my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. a beautiful cinematic stevetony moment.

“i lost the kid, i lost the kid” holy shit superfam........ SUPERFAM. how he looked so distraught and heartbroken like he knows he took a teenager up to space with him to fight the greatest villain the world has ever faced and he LOST him and the way it broke him saying it out loud as steve was holding onto him

the catharsis of tony having his big “I WAS RIGHT FUCK YOU” speech and then collapsing afterwards. SHIVERS. and it was fantastic seeing rdj physically weakened and looking like crap surviving for 3 weeks on the ship with zero supplies. WHEN HE TORE THE REACTOR OFF HIS CHEST AND SHOVED IT INTO STEVE’S HAND. “where were you when i needed you” “we’ll lose together. you said we’d do that together too, LIAR” (not a paraphrase) oh my gOD. fucking deserved. his righteousness, his betrayal, his hurt. so excellent. loved that for him. all the avengers watching him with mild concern but also resignation knowing he WAS right and they’d treated him like he was crazy two years ago for nearly losing his mind because he was so worried about the threat of impending invasion.

5 YEARS LATER. steve holding support group was such a great moment of continuity from him watching sam holding the veterans group (a first win for samsteve in the movie), i loved him still wanting to create a space for others to share their trauma and to talk. the painful irony of having a whole cap trilogy and 4 avengers movies and having so few scenes of steve actually talking about his trauma and instead having his experiences filtered through other people’s dialogue has been so fucking painful and endgame continued to screw him over (see below lmao) with this one but i thought this scene was still a nice touch.

really enjoyed natasha saying she’d found a family and a purpose in THEORY but it wasn’t backed up enough by the context. she was running point on what was left of the avengers essentially but it felt more work related than “oh we’re a FAMILY” which the avengers has never been as much as they might try to act like it for one line of dialogue that’s meant to be so meaningful

AVENGERS ENDGAME AS A TIME TRAVEL CAPER. holy fuck a literal au come to life. loved it. we got a whole stevetony going undercover in the 70s on a mission which was awesome. spy!steve and spy!tony shenanigans. the throwbacks to 2012 avengers and continuations of the scenes we saw in the movie were so so much fun. 

america’s ass. god bless. tony thirsting after steve in every world in every universe in the multiverse. 

“i missed that giddy optimism” he also missed that ass, apparently

they really fucking WENT there with the hail hydra but i thought it was a smart (if smug) wink to the audience of steve one upping the hydra guys and taking the scepter from them.

STEVE LIFTING MJOLNIR!!!! steve WIELDING mjolnir and doing the lightning thing. THAT’S MY BOY!!!!!!!!

being 90% sure that tony was going to die going into this movie i knew it was nails in the coffin the MOMENT we saw the 5 years later flashback and we were at this beautiful house and tony was married and playing with his kid. it seemed gratuitous, it seemed too good to be true. and it’s everything tony deserved and more. the domesticity, the beautiful simplicity and quietness of having a wife and a kid and being surrounded by so much love. I LOVE YOU 3000. i love you 3000. holy shit. you cannot tell me or anyone that tony isn’t the best dad in the whole damn universe. that kid was so loved, so adored. all along, all tony has wanted is a family. he just wants people to love him and people that he can love that will stay. and he got exactly that. he got five years of that and maybe it’s not enough but being a superhero it never is. i’m glad he got that 5 years. 

RESCUE PEPPER was incredible. gwyneth got more screentime than i thought she would. seeing pepperony flying their suits in the sky was SUCH a trip ironfam really won this whole event. 

tony being bitter and putting up a front when natasha, steve and scott came to visit him. it was so jarring watching steve seeing tony with the happy family and life he’d never been able to have, always an impossibility to him. steve jumping the gun with “is pepper pregnant” in cw. such a bittersweet moment. it’s one of those very classic comic moments in the multiverse where they have a wild au concept and they lull you into a false sense of security that everything is beautiful and perfect and happy until they have to ruin it all again and go be heroes. it was very that. except the happiness and love was all REAL and tony got to have it.

their conversation about how everything had worked out for him and how he had a family he couldn’t leave behind..... bro he really got me (and the avengers) there. do you really think THE tony stark could ever live happily ever after knowing half the world was dead? either he’s going to die trying to bring them back or he won’t be able to live with himself at all. the simulations were such a satisfying move. his conversation with pepper. her telling him he wouldn’t be able to rest. it was tony asking permission but also telling her that he was going to go and leave behind their life to do what he had to do. the subtext of that whole scene was really fantastically done. 

PETER AND TONY. THE PHOTOGRAPH. HIM LINGERING ON THE PICTURE OF PETER LIKE OF FUCKING COURSE HE HASN’T HAD A MOMENTS REST NOT THINKING ABOUT HIM.

so anyway. tony invents time travel. we love a genius. he also invents an infinity gauntlet. incredible.

i was holding my breath the entire scene of tag when they were tossing the gauntlet back and forth mf wAITING for it to land near enough to tony. i knew it was coming but like,,, jesus christ part of me wasn’t sure when they had bruce do the snap. they skipped a lot of the technicalities of wielding the actual gauntlet (like not going mad from power and having the whole weight of the universe inside your head at your fingertips) probably to keep from weighing the story down but THAT would have been a brilliant touch to seeing tony finally getting the stones. and having them slot into place on his OWN GODDAMN ARMOUR. TONY STARK FUCKING DID THAT.

“i am inevitable.” “I AM IRON MAN”. literally the most iconic line of the entire marvel cinematic universe and tony gets to say it as the biggest fuck you the biggest villain they’ve ever faced. loved it.

so yeah the gamma rays taking tony, baseline human out, vs. bruce was a much less satisfying end than having it be the weight of the whole universe and the promise of madness and infinite power. but this is the ending tony deserved. we always knew that one or more of the OGs would die and it was tony and this is exactly the way this should have gone.

tony died saving the entire universe. he died sacrificing himself and HIS future with his family for the avengers and for the universe. the story of the mcu begins and ends with his sacrifice. he wouldn’t have had it any other way. to know that what he did, what he’ll be remembered for, is saving the universe. it validates all the selflessness and heroism and grace we’ve always known he has when it comes to being a hero. tony isn’t the hero that gives speeches and moves peple to action, he’s the hero that just DOES the thing that needs to be done. the one that will lay his life down on the line to let everyone else crawl over him because he wouldn’t be able to live knowing he hadn’t done more. him dying meant that he’d finally done enough. he finally gets to rest. and getting to die surrounded by the ironfam was such a beautiful touch. tony stark is unquestionably a hero. his legacy will always be one of sacrifice and heroism and creating the possibility of a better future. he has always, constantly, relentlessly been working to build a future he will never see that is better and stronger and more resilient than the present; it’s inherently a part of being a futurist that he will never get to see this world that he’s willingly given up everything for. and in the climax of the final battle, he gave up HIS future so that the rest of the universe could have one, and if that isnt the most tony stark thing i’ve ever heard idk what is. 

the unsolvable problem of the avengers

how do you write the culmination to a grand universe of 22 movies with the avengers being the cornerstone of that massive cinematic vision when your avengers aren’t even really a team? what are we supposed to root for when none of them seem to visibly friends or even like each other except when they’re in pairs? what “TEAM” are they referring to? 

the avengers from day 1 aren’t a team. they aren’t a family. there’s no sense of camraderie in any of the movies between them all as a unit. 

we had ONE scene of teamwork in the movie where they were locating the stones and planning what to do with them. the shot of nat bruce and tony lying on the conference table was great, but unearned. why should we care when they haven’t shown us how these people care about each other outside of saving the world once every few years? we don’t watch superhero team-ups for the cool fight scenes we watch them because we want to see these heroes actually care about each other and the BOND between them that makes them a worthwhile team on AND off the battlefield. 

there’s no sense that even strategically, they work well as a team. steve is the leader sure and tony provides the tech but apart from that? there’s no spark. there’s no connection between them that makes us thing oh shit, this could really work. they’re on the same wavelength. they’re going to try and do the impossible and it shouldn’t work but it just might because it’s them.

cannot emphasise this enough: not enough carol danvers. she was yeeted out of the movie after her intro and then came back for the final battle and that was it. she should’ve been THERE in the war room coming up with plans and going to the space destinations with the teams. it was ridiculous to have the future leader of the avengers and the legacy of the mcu not be front and center with the (non-existent) team dynamic. it fucking bewilders me that CM could write and develop a fury + carol friendship better than her dynamic with ANY of the avengers, her future friends and teammates. 

so, the avengers aren’t really friends. they’re coworkers who occasionally put up with each other to save the world and that’s fucking depressing and arguably why all the avengers but tony were so badly fucked over in the character development and ending of endgame.

the bad shit (full circle rip)

thor and bruce were treated like comedic relief for too much of the movie. i wasn’t expecting bruce to have much of a storyline because he never does but his conflict was solved with a handwave explanation in the beginning “oh i have the best of both worlds now, i’m both banner AND hulk the brain and the brawns”. was such a bizarre fucking feeling. and the insinuation that he’d just been chilling in the 5 years post snap with his new updated hipster wardrobe taking pictures with fans??? what the fuck? what kind of storyline is THAT? he should’ve been WITH natasha helping her deal with the fallout of the snap and working with the remainders of the team. what the fuck.

thor was done EVEN dirtier in this respect. it’s as if all the ugly stans that hated and mocked tony’s im3 ptsd storyline decided to put their messy caricature of him into a character arc. hemsworth pulled it off, to his credit and comedic delivery, but it wasn’t a story fitting of the mighty thor. there IS a way of writing thor going through trauma, trying to process the loss of his entire world and family and people, without reducing him to an absolute farce. imagine a thor, treated with gravitas and respect, lost and kingdomless and peopleless wandering the world, a recluse and a hermit, like the better side of the coin to hawkeye, but being called back to heroism because he couldn’t stand by and do nothing. idk if its the taika effect or just the massive turn that the thor trilogy took but i think the overt humour was the wrong way to go with thor and it made his entire storyline seem regressive and like they were laughing at him more than they were laughing with him. i would’ve accepted taking a leaf out of dc’s book (i.e. diana and arthur in JL) if they had to go down this path with thor’s story, of having him retreat from the trauma and grief of what he’d lost. because his pain was understandable, you could very clearly sympathise with what he’d been through but they turned his pathos into bathos and let his storyline play out in jokes instead of being the noble warrior and hero finding the strength to believe in people and have hope and fight for the world again. endgame really made a mockery out of thor’s legacy and not knowing if there’ll be another thor movie............... god he deserved better. 

clint?? we don’t speak of mcu clint but idk. i gUeSs the russos achieved what they thought they wanted to achieve with ultimates clint going full rogue and becoming a lawless deadpool but without the jokes. (ugh 616 clint... you will always be the only clint ever.) of all the characters that SHOULD have a lighthearted ironic storyline, it’s CLINT BARTON. he semi redeemed himself by wanting to die instead of natasha??? thereby absolving him? idk whatever lets not think too hard about mcu clint. 

i think most of fandom has long given up on mcu natasha so it’s less an issue of “this isn’t the natasha we deserve” and “well how badly can they fuck this up”. i think natasha’s development was well-handled and it was a Relief to have her final moment be between her and clint, purely driven by platonic love and all the shit they’ve stood by each other through. i don’t know that she needed to die, clint easily could’ve fallen instead of her lmao. but her being prepared to die for the fate of the world has been a theme since aou and i was glad it played out her seeing the necessity and pragmatism of sacrifice. i liked how she said “you think i want to do this?” because of course she doesn’t, ofc natasha romanova who’s lived through the rise and fall of empires and died so many deaths, wants to live. but she’s also a hero, and she’s spent so many years working to be a better person (when she said the avengers made her better g o d loved that line) and she knew what she had to do. idk that this was a fitting end for her but i thought her character development was well done (even if the team itself is a shallow non-existent “family”) and her sacrifice, alongside tony’s saved the universe.

ok don’t let the shortness of these points belie how much they annoyed me but CAROL deserved more screentime RHODEY deserved more screentime. SAM AND BUCKY deserved more. for characters that are so charismatic and bring so much life and dynamism to the avengers it was a fucking shame that they didn’t make the most of them. carol and rhodey especially. the lack of carolrhodey air force interactions and tonyrhodey was offensive.

sam getting the shield and the little moment of passing the shield was amazing but At What Cost

so..................... steve. oh boy. oh fuck here we go. the mcu has never known what the fuck to do with steve and i have written countless answers and thinkpieces and meta posts about it. the most heartbreaking part of steve’s story is that the avengers is literally his life. it’s tony’s life. and it is to many other avengers but all of them have always had something else to fall back on. steve has always only had the avengers, or the army or SHIELD or whatever affiliation he’s currently part of. his purpose and his drive is part of the team and whatever Thing he’s part of that he can throw himself into and embody. not having the avengers be a fully functioning team and misfit found family really handicapped his entire storyline and possible development. you could argue that steve found a family with the capfam but it’s really having a Team of people to lead and befriend and become family with that’s integral to steve’s character. his story as steve rogers, not captain america, is about finding a home and a family in the 21st century. making peace with what he’s lost in the past so he can live in the present and fight for the people of the present and future. 

it’s ironic and tragic and an absolute abomination for steve’s plot to literally be about regression. as if nothing has changed. he hasn’t learned anything from tws he hasn’t moved on, he hasn’t been able to let go “but not us” (AND WHY THE FUCK NOT RUSSOS?) he hasn’t been able to grow or make peace or find catharsis. he was SUPPOSED to, burying peggy, letting go of her. getting bucky back. but the setup of the mcu and the failure of the avengers as a team and family has actively kept steve from being able to ground himself in the present. the mcu ripped sharon carter right out of their universe so she never stood a chance. bucky had to go back under ice. natasha was running point with the 5 years later vengers. so in the end capfam is just???? sam and steve? his only support system is two and a half people?? it fucking breaks my heart. steve DESERVED a family. steve DESERVED a home. and even if mcu wasn’t going to let that be all tony stark-related there should’ve been SOMETHING.

of all the endings they could’ve pulled out of their asses

of all the fucking endings

this shit was straight out of the comics

straight out of the bad place darkest timeline scenarios

the ramifications of it all. hydra? bucky? sharon? homewrecking peggy’s own family and happily lived life just to get them back together? steve willing to risk it all for a dance and a woman he knew for a few months over the friends he’d spent nearly a decade with? we’re supposed to believe THAT’S steve rogers???????????

a literal fucking mess.

captain america as we know him in mcu ends with tws thats it

also, my expectations for stevetony was 0 but we got more than i thought we would. there was no development in terms of their actual relationship but as the filthy stevetony shipper i am happy with the cheap meal we got. there should’ve been a conversation between them about what happened, about what went down, something to tie together the avengers and the “trust” they wanted to establish between them. something like tony keeping the phone with him all this time. a little comic parallel “we still friends?” “never stopped”. just. Something. we needed more than “you trust me” “i do” in the time crunch of a mission. it was unearned. idk how this conversation would go, literally there are a hundred choices that i’m sure we’ll see play out in fic but one final big conversation between the two cornerstones of the mcu involving heroism, sacrifice, where they stand as heroes, how they see each other, who they are to each other. something like tony and steve always, at the end of everything, at the heart of who they are, seeing through each other’s masks and facades and personas and SEEING who the other person is. a tiny mcu nod to “you gave me a home” that ties the past and present and future together. tony believing in steve. steve believing in tony. i could’ve forgiven mcu all it’s other stevetony sins if we just had that.

just spitballing but – tony: you know, i never wanted to be a part of this thing. the super secret boyband. it was never supposed to be me. steve: we made it work though. for the most part. until we didn’t. tony: even when it looked like there was no way of ever getting the band back together a part of me still believed you. gullible of me, i know. but i wanted to think that if there ever came a time when we had to make one last stand, as avengers, we’d do it together. like it was always meant to be. steve: i know. tony, i – tony: i should’ve called. steve: it’s a two-way line. i could’ve, too. tony: that’s how it always seems to be with us, huh? shoulda woulda coulda. always just missing the mark. always just out of reach. steve: i’ve thought about it a lot. about what i would’ve done differently. what i would’ve said. tony: that’s why you need me, cap. i mean, hell, it doesn’t have to be me but we all need someone to tell us to get over ourselves sometimes. to stop beating yourself over the head with your own mistakes. steve: [laughs] that’s rich, coming from you. tony: maybe. but i’m a firm believer in second chances. steve: you think that’s what this could be? a second chance? tony: i know it. futurist, remember? i’ve seen it all happen. steve: oh, good. we could use one of those. maybe you could tell us if we survive tomorrow and save everyone. tony: we will. because things are different this time.  steve: this time? tony: the way it should’ve been. you and me and everyone else. together. we can win. steve: now who’s the one with the giddy optimism? tony: i prefer to call it hopeful pragmatism. after all, i’ve run enough simulations. steve: i do, tony. i trust you. tony: well, we’re betting the future of 5 billion lives on this. steve: i know. and there’s no one i’d trust more to do it. 

[avpdpunpun]

i disappeared for 3/4ths a year here’s an update?

its been 4 months since my queue ran out and way longer since i wrote an actual post. 8 months about? i think i last posted when i impulse quit a job that was bad for my mental health and just kept getting worse.

sometimes i wonder when ppl who blog about mental illness disappear if they’ve died. there was a big user i used to follow who did, and i still occasionally think about it sometimes, so i figure its nice to post updates sometimes. and being able to look back on posts ive written and reflect on them/what state of mind i was in can be helpful even if it can be embarrassing/dangerous because its so easy to fall back into those thinking habits 

after quitting my job i did basically nothing for 6 months haha. at some point i managed to clean out my room which i had done the bare minimum on for years because of depression, took out more built up trash than i thought was possible to fit into my small space. its disgusting but the only thing i struggle to keep up with now at least is vacuuming and putting clothes away so my space is a lot cleaner and it makes me happier. your living space can really have an effect on your mood bless you marie kondo

after my post about having an anxiety attack taking my test i got my drivers license in march. i saw the same lady again after going somewhere else and i think she just let me pass because she felt bad haha. i never finished drivers ed and i still get anxiety about driving unfamiliar routes but my skills and confidence have improved a lot. i managed to drive 2 hours to a big city to visit a friend! i literally didnt have a choice in getting my license, but its still something i can be proud of. like, when i have to explain it to people, it feels extremely shitty that i didnt get it until i was 20, and only about 5 months ago too but... for someone who struggles as much as me, i have to be proud of it my small accomplishments or i’ll have nothing.

at some point something in my brain just snapped and i literally havent been able to cry? for a long time in those 6 months i felt like i was right on the edge of breaking down mentally but never actually crossing that line and it was honestly one of the weirdest things ive experienced. i almost wanted to have a breakdown again just to get rid of the feeling and reach a catharsis like... i used to be a fucking crybaby almost but i. cant. anymore. but i think ive mostly moved away from this point... still feel kinda weird tho.

i didnt end up signing up to a local school fo gen eds. its still on my mind for the vague future because there’s topics i want to learn about (psychology, natural resources, languages...) and maybe try to pursue for a career but really i just wanted a way to get out of my toxic house, even if it meant going into debt to live in a shitty dorm. 

in the last 30 days though life has been moving extremely quickly for me. i dont think i couldve lived with myself much longer being a useless adult basically living in my basement bedroom of my parents house, especially with my younger siblings getting nearer to adult milestones, plus my savings were starting to run out.

so literally next weekend, i’m moving out! and i make enough money right now that with the rough budget i have established, if its accurate, i’ll have a decent amount of wiggle room and hopefully wont be ruining my mental health just trying to make ends meet.

it took a long time of searching but i managed to find a job that hasnt made me suicidal and has slightly more than the MIT living wage for my area lol. im a janitor now! we’ll see how long it lasts but a lot of the factors from my last two jobs that contributed to my failing mental health are gone. i rarely have to interact with other people, and if i do its my coworkers, of who i tend to only see for minutes per day, or the other people working in the building i clean who at most i have to say hi and have a nice night to lol. i get to listen to music and podcasts for 8 hours and its very routine heavy. i have to clock out after the 8 hours is up so i literally cant be forced into overtime. a lot of people dont respect cleaning jobs like this but honestly who gives a fuck, its something i can handle mentally and support myself with. its still hard adjusting to 40 hours. i know its the standard, but the standard is rly tough for me, but i think i can do it long term.

all of this has been achieved through sheer self hatred and impulse alone, and im very nervous about moving in with 3 other people even if 1 of them ive known for 8 years, and i dont think its even properly hit me yet. literally cant register that i have to fend 100% for myself but also ill be away from my toxic family! i can bring my cat with me, who before this i got to see at MOST once a week!

a dude ive known online for two or more years is moving to my area too for college and he’s so sweet and kind, i feel better talking to him than i have 99% of people in my life and im so lucky to know him. ive been forced to talk about personal things i was kind of dreading (not his fault, just a result of our relationship going to go from online -> irl and things id have to address beforehand) and honestly i didnt even mind it that much when i just got it over with and talked about it to him! vulnerability is literally the thing i struggle with the most in interpersonal relationships and is a huge block for me in every way and in even the most mundane life situations but like... he’s honestly the best and im getting emotional writing this and its weird af because i straight up dont GET emotional about other people. ive absolutely developed a stupid fucking crush on him recently and i THINK hes been receptive to flirting and i cant tell if he flirts back because we already say i love you and are wholesome af but honestly no clue if he’s into (trans) dudes but honestly? even if it doesnt work out im so happy to be friends with him and im so excited to finally meet him!! i really think knowing him has helped me improve myself 

i’ve always thought that if i could literally just achieve the bare minimum in life that things would naturally get better. like i’m still mentally ill and get paranoid about peoples intentions and i think if my boss yelled at me id have an anxiety attack on the spot. im still depressed and hate that i have low energy and that it’s still rly hard doing basic chores. 

but like a huge part of my problem was that i felt like i literally couldn’t TRY to connect with people if i couldn’t face having to tell them bare info about myself, like “oh i cant drive” or “i dont have a job” or that i was living with my parents but not even making PROGRESS on getting out. like how could i make friends or go on dates if i literally couldnt contribute shit or admit these things i was so ashamed of? a lot of my self image was shaped by this because my entire life i havent been mentally well enough to do as well as i should have.

but like. i feel like im finally doing these basic things!! i dont have to hate myself so much anymore! i dont look badly on other mentally ill ppl who are less lucky than i/havent been able to do those things yet/might not ever and are still in the same situation i was 2 months ago but the self hatred is strong pls understand.

i dont know yet if i could afford twice yearly drs visits for meds or anything and probably not therapy. i dont even know what my insurance is yet haha. but i’ll see

i need to figure out at what point in my life im going to be able to never contact a single person in my family ever again, considering i’ll be a 20 min drive away and they will know the precise location of where i live, and if i’ll ever feel safe enough in society to start hrt but :^) you know :^) i can at least present more masculinely in the meantime!

i dont rly know how to conclude this... i’m not trying to brag either im just very nervous and excited about where my life might be going for the first time ever? maybe? in my entire life? i have no clue what to pursue after moving out, but i can figure it out. and just... that there’s hope even if youre as fucked up and mentally ill as i am lmao!

[roxannepolice]

Do you honestly think Rey killing Ben in ix is a possibility? She already had an opportunity to do that on Supremacy and she didn't. I don't even see her wounding him in anger, by the end of tlj she wasn't pissed at him, just disappointed and heartbroken. Her going back to being angry would throw away all the development they had in tlj, and their relationship developed quite fast. Please don't see it as an attack, I just legit don't understand how you can still think that.

No, please go ahead, I’s a doubt and challenge addict. But, reylo duel isn’t something I still believe in, it’s the conclusion I’ve arrived at fairly lately after thinking about sequel trilogy almost every day for the past 8 months. Also, duel is always followed by resurrection/healing in my predictions.

Maybe I’ll ask you this: if in mid 2014, assuming you never had any knowledge of GL’s plans for the sequel trilogy, I told you Han Solo is going to be killed by his son, who’s the redemption arc of this trilogy and actually loved his father, would that sound believable?

Han’s death has the shocking emotional impact it has largely because we see that Ben doesn’t want to kill him. For all I know he was hoping his father would “shoot first” and kill him, as he assumes his family wants to after what happened with Luke. Really, what was he waiting for with that saber in both his and his father’s hands, having metaphorically put his life (his ls) in Han’s hands, as if asking him to take the choice away from him? Is the Skywalker drama gene really so strong that he had to wait for the SKB to load fully so everthing will be atmospherically dark? There are compelling metas explaining how Ben was as actively as it was possible with a creeper ever present in his head avoiding the confrontation with Han, one that he knew, or at least gloomily hoped, would be his ultimate test of loyalty to Snoke. Hell, he was actually looking for Rey at that moment only covering up with looking for the rest of the gang, hoping he’ll be able to unfortunately fail to find his father, which shows how weak his sense of him in the force has become, he doesn’t care for him at all. But once Han called out on him, once they actually stood face to face - he was pushed against the wall.

I would also bring in another Ben who didn’t actually want to kill his loved one so tried to avoid the wall - Obi-Wan trying to persuade Yoda he doesn’t know how to find Anakin. Yoda doesn’t buy the bs of course, and so Obi-Wan is also pushed against the wall, doesn’t have any excuse. Oh but he has an excuse later - Anakin’s goning to fry anyway, he doesn’t have to strike the killing blow.

And this is exactly what we lack in the throne room after Rey wakes up - she wasn’t pushed against the wall. She had somewhere to escape to from this decision. She had more important matters to attend to. She felt it wasn’t what the force wanted, that Kylo’s life wasn’t hers to take - which I’m inclined to believe was what she wanted to feel the force wants, as is usually the case with those pesky force omnitions. I’m not even talking about SKB, where the ground partitioned to stop their fight.

So the interesting question for epix is what will happen when Rey is pushed against the wall? When her not killing Ben would shake the belonging she found in resistance, similarly as Ben not killing Han would immediately expluse him from fo and he feels he has no belonging anywhere else - or plain made Snoke kill him? 

Now, I’m not saying she will be happy about this, probably less than he, though I have no doubt the choreographers will still make the unwilling duel a work of art. It’s very possible he’ll “help her” do what his soul saving uncle and arguably weak father failed to do, because if she actively spares him then I honestly believe he would pierce himself with his lightsaber and jump into the lava river to not have to deal with all the morally superior people and tain the world anymore. However, the more interesting option is the one in which Rey’s hand isn’t exactly forced. I refer you to SKB duel only ask you to watch it not drowning in Rey’s awesomeness only coolly analyse what is happening. And what is happening is this girl goes almost berserk. That’s not light side she’s channelling if you ask me. In the novelization she hears a voice saying kill him in her head and I really hope it’s not some next diabolus ex machina a la Snoke. Once the tides turn at the ravine, that’s not defensive honorary duel Rey is fighting, it’s not self-defence, nor is it light side steering its champion to punish the wicked. This is a rage of an abadnoned child who corcked her pain for  15 years and whose parent figure has just been killed, by his actual child at that, one she has a guilty lady boner for, too. And she was scared and defensive moments earlier. So I argue that should Rey go in her battle mode again in epix... yeah, she would kill him, possibly with him discreetly lowering the weapon when the strike comes.

Now, about it being a regress. TLJ balanced the situation wonderfully because while most of the audience loved the reylo relationship and possibly guilty hopes they’ll turn out fine, the apparent narrative is the one in which Rey’s actual progress is her eventually rejecting most of the “fake” progress she’s made while communicating with Kylo Ben - and that also includes the catharsis about her parents she had, she should just rebury the knowledge and continue as she did before, because now lies are good provided they keep you nice. On the other hand, it is eactly in abandoning delusions abut him that she overcomes the mistake she ade about her parents. I think that here a good summary of much of the audience’s attitude - right after tlj there have been people interpreting all the sexual chemistry between Rey and Ben as actually a very healthy message, because a girl shouldn’t marry the boy she had her first time with. So basically Ben was the unhealthy girlish crush that she needed in order to understand what a healthy relationship is. 

And of course none of this makes any sense in the larger narrative, which is why I say, go ahead, Disney-LF, give them the story they want and show them how mindnumbingly dumb it is, so that by the time the duel comes they’ll root for them to have sex instead.

[primrose-path-of-dalliance]

(voltron s6 spoilers in the block quote)

this is an excerpt from a wip i started working on after voltron s5 came out....... and was written with the assumption that lotor would continue being a protag in s6 without....... all that.

so i’m tossing it out, but i’ll share it to purge myself—bc i don’t want to delete it completely and bc lotor didn’t completely blindside me, and i have to achieve catharsis somehow

For what seems like forever after she revives the Castle of Lions, Allura is surrounded by the paladins—her friends, babbling and excited, relieved at their survival and her success.

They all interrogate her about Oriande ("A truly marvelous place, I wish you all were able to see it"), the capabilities of her new powers ("I just received them! And really, it's more like knowledge than anything mystical"), what they feel like ("So far, as if something's been unlocked inside of me—as if I could find anything I need if I search hard enough").

Shiro is the most interested in these details, but once Allura has reached the limits of what she can explain, his expression grows distant and distracted. They leave him to his own devices; he gazes out, deep in thought, at the stars and ancient wreckage around them.

Pidge and Hunk puzzle over whether these new developments means Allura can invent new and powerful weapons like Voltron now if they just give her a bunch of metal ("Doubtful, but I appreciate the confidence," Allura says with a laugh), and how well alchemy relates to their understanding of science and engineering.

"Workable so far, but the lack of some analogues makes it pretty confusing," Pidge says.

Hunk shrugs. "I haven't dabbled super hard in it yet, but I think it's been pretty easy to work with on Castle stuff."

They wander off, debating about semantics Allura is perfectly happy being unable to grasp. She smiles and turns her full attention to Lance, who talks cheerfully about how "Pidge and Hunk get bat-crazy intense when they're hyperfocusing on the same thing together." He then dives into a story, which Allura listens to with fascination (and no small amount of confusion), about the time they attempted to create the most scientifically perfect muffin over spring break and had to clean the bathrooms for weeks because they nearly blew up the kitchen.

"What is a muffin?" she asks.

Lance grins. "Do not say that around Hunk unless you want to hear a varga-long lecture about batter and fruit."

As he proceeds to explain muffins, Allura realizes that sometime during the chaos, Lotor slipped out of sight. She quickly glances around, half-listening to Lance's attempt to translate flour, but in between the two of them, Coran running system checks on the Castle, and Shiro silently pondering space, Lotor has vanished.

She frowns.

Eventually, even Shiro departs after a brief, polite goodbye. Patiently and curiously, she listens to Lance describe the concept of a spring break before finally cutting him off.

"You should get some rest, Lance," she says. "You look like you need it."

"Are you saying I look terrible?" he replies with mock outrage.

Allura smiles. "Yes. After all, you did almost suffocate to death quite recently."

Lance's teasing smile morphs into one that acknowledges the truth of her statement. "Then you should get some rest, too, Allura." He touches her shoulder. "After all, you just flew into a white hole and faced down a giant lion guardian... spirit thing."

"Don't worry about me, Lance."

He gives her a look.

Allura laughs. "I promise I will get some rest. But you need it more than I do right now."

Lance smiles and acquiesces. "All right, Allura. See you later." He turns to leave but hesitates, immediately setting off alarm bells in Allura's head.

"Lance?" she asks.

He spins back around. He's frowning. "Don't mention this to anyone, but I think we need to talk later. In private."

Allura only grows more concerned, but she nods sharply. She desperately wants to ask about what—but knows that if she does, the conversation will not end there. Better to wait until later as Lance asks. "All right."

Lance leaves, and Allura sighs.

She needs to talk to Lotor. No rest for her yet, indeed.

"Coran?" she asks, approaching the man still performing tasks on the Castle interface. "Did you happen to see where Lotor wandered off to?"

"No, Princess," he replies. "Would you like me to find him for you?"

"Please."

Coran pulls up the Castle biorhythm sensors, and they both spot what must be his signature at the same time, blinking within the Castle Library.

"Thank you, Coran. I think Lotor must need some company today."

Allura turns to leave, but Coran's very serious "Princess, wait," has her halt before she can take another step. "Yes, Coran?" she asks.

He wrings his hands. "I've been meaning to talk to you about Lotor, Princess."

Allura turns back fully to frown at him.

As a child, Allura was wilder than any Altean crown princess had a right to be. She suffered many minders (and many minders suffered her), but the most persistent was always Coran, far out of his job description—her father's advisor, but in many ways also family.

When she hid from her frustrated tutor in the palace gardens, Coran was the one to pull her out of the bushes, to drag her to her rooms kicking and screaming with his nose turned up and a simple, "Just wait until your mother hears about this," to shut her up. When she got in a fight and had her nose twisted into a crooked mess, Coran was the first one at her side, handkerchief in hand to catch the blood. When she came home after her very first breakup, Coran was the first one to see her tears, his open arms the first ones she fell into.

Even before the war, they were close. Now, with Altea long gone, the only thing they have left of their people, their home, is each other. Allura can hardly blame him for being as protective of her as a mother yalmor is to her poglings.

Nevertheless, her frown is one of frustration. "Coran, I will be fine with Lotor. He has more than proven his devotion to peace. Besides," and she switches to a teasing tone, "I thought you liked him now. Didn't you two have a stimulating conversation a couple days ago about how the Empire romanticizes greed?"

"We did! I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he considered their treatment of the Balmera abominable—which indeed it is. To so abuse such a magnificent creature's life... For a Galra, he has a remarkable passion for sustainable practice." Coran shakes his head. "This is off-topic, Princess. What I wish to talk to you about has nothing to do with liking or disliking him."

Allura crosses her arms. "All right."

Coran sighs. "Princess, I don't mean to imply that your judgment is mistaken. I agree wholeheartedly that Lotor has been an ally to our cause."

"But?"

"But—and please allow me to explain fully, Princess—I don't think Lotor is on our side."

Allura (well-understood by Coran) resists the urge to object and frowns.

"I was your father's advisor for a very long time, Princess," Coran says. "A big part of my job was to judge the characters of those he worked with and give him my own assessments. I want to advise you. Especially since it seems that this relationship has become more than a simple political alliance."

"I'm listening."

"Thank you, Princess. From what I understand, being a team player does not come to Lotor naturally. His plans of attack, too, have been much different from our own. He is used to working on his own, for his own goals."

"His methods and goals are not that different," Allura says. "He told me the reason for his exile. He was resisting the Galra Empire's methods by cooperating equally with a planet he was assigned to rule over. He befriended them, learned their ways, worked side-by-side with them. When Emperor Zarkon discovered what he was doing, he ordered him to destroy the planet. He refused."

"What happened after?"

Allura presses her lips together. "He was dismissed. His father destroyed the planet. He couldn't stop him."

Coran nods. "I see. Princess, this story only assures me that the conclusions I've come to about him are correct. I do agree that Lotor is working with us in good faith, or at least not bad faith. But Lotor has also been working towards his own desires for centuries. Remember what happened when he had been the Emperor Pro Tem. He tricked us into recovering the comet ore. He tried to use our teleduv. And we still have the ship he created from the ore in our hangers."

Allura considers. The ore, a mysterious transreality material; the teleduv, a device that opened wormholes with Altean energy; the Sincline ship, built like Voltron from the transreality ore...

"He must have had some kind of plan to access the space between realities," she concludes. "But we already know that. He's asked us to do so in order to harvest quintessence and appease the Galra Empire. He wants to change them, Coran."

His father, too, wanted quintessence, the distrustful part of her whispers, not for the first time. And Honerva... who is almost certainly Haggar. Lotor thinks optimistically of his mother, but she led the research into the Rift. She could not possibly have been an innocent bystander before her death. She certainly was not afterwards.

"I believe he has good intentions, Princess. If he is lying about everything, it would be difficult indeed to fake the passion and knowledge he has right to our faces. But... do you really believe that this plan will satisfy the Empire, Princess?"

Allura opens her mouth but pauses. She then frowns, growing more concerned and disturbed by the second. "No," she admits. "No, I do not. The Empire is endlessly hungry for power. We may open a rift, but they will simply demand more. Perhaps for the rift to be widened, or for more to be opened. The one alone will be an incalculable risk if it breaches into another dimension. And there is still the matter of what they will use that quintessence for."

She remembers the war—how it began because Emperor Zarkon refused to close the rift destabilizing his planet, providing an entryway for unfathomably dangerous creatures, all for the sake of a power that provided a source of endless clean energy but enabled horrific tyranny. She remembers the alternate Alteans—a universe where she, with the best intentions, preached peace, and whose empire went on 10,000 years later to deprive living creatures of their free will for the sake of those ideals, twisted into grotesque mockery.

It doesn't matter if Lotor has good intentions, she realizes. It doesn't matter if something—something deep and inexplicable within her—wishes that he can be trusted. Allura must look beyond them.

"Lotor was Emperor Zarkon's son, Princess," Coran says, "and the prince of the Galra Empire. For better or worse, he has been indelibly shaped by his past. Perhaps he believed he could bring about change with endless quintessence; it could have been the perfect foundation upon which to build a coup. Perhaps he truly loves Altea, as much as one who has never seen it could. But the fact remains, Princess, that Lotor did not ally with us until the Galra Empire wanted him dead on sight, until he needed our shelter. Why?"

"Why, indeed," Allura murmurs.

"This is why I must insist, Princess, that you remain cautious with him." Coran places his hands on her shoulders, brow furrowed deep. "Lotor is not on our side. He has always been on his own. It is difficult to blame him for it; Emperor Zarkon was clearly far from a loving parental figure. I suspect he has had to fend for himself for 10,000 years with little if any support."

I envy you, growing up with King Alfor.

"I understand, Coran," Allura says, meeting his worried eyes. "I greatly appreciate your advice. And I believe you may be quite right. I promise I will be careful."

Coran smiles. "That's all I ask for, Princess."

He pulls her into a hug, warm and close, and Allura returns the gesture with the same smile.

[shadesofjoe]

Down Under

It’s wild what a difference a year can make. I’ve not spoken publicly of things I’m about to share, though those closest to me are well aware of these events. It’s recently been suggested to me, however, that writing more openly about the situation would be a good final step in releasing the negative energy surrounding it, thus closing this path of catharsis I have traveled for the past few months. And if nothing else, it could serve as a cautionary tale for someone else who might be able to avoid some of the pitfalls I fell into.

I met her last January. Her name was Emily… at least that’s what she told me her name was. In retrospect, I’m guessing that was just another of many things that wound up not being true. But in my memory she will always be Emily, and for the purposes of this exercise, it’s probably best to leave it that way. She reached out to me through a post I made on a personals subreddit. She purported to be from Australia, which will no doubt ring a bell for those of you who were curious as to why I suddenly became very interested in Australian facts around this time last year. She claimed to be a veterinarian and, near as I can tell, there may have been a hint of truth to that. I don’t know. It’s all still kind of difficult to parse through, unfortunately.

Be that as it may, there seemed to be this instant chemistry between us. We spent a lot of time texting, talking on the phone, exchanging pictures and voice messages. I liked her. A lot. I thought there was this energy we had going on. It was the kind of authentic vibe I hadn’t felt in a very, very long time. I was attracted to everything about her, and better yet, she seemed to actually be attracted to everything about me. In retrospect, I should have perhaps been more skeptical of a seemingly beautiful woman from a foreign country being interested in someone of my portly stature, but even my well-developed self awareness still has its blind spots.

The trouble came, of course, a couple of days before our first scheduled video call. I don’t want to get into too many details, because honestly there’s just no way for me to know how much of what I was told was true, and how much wasn’t… which is its own problem. The important part is that the video call didn’t happen for reasons that were portrayed to me as very dramatic. There was about a two-week period of radio silence where the only interaction I had from her was the recognition that she was viewing my Instagram stories. I started posting stories every day just to see if she was still thinking of me during what she had laid out to me as a very difficult and emotionally challenging situation for her. I haven’t used Instagram since all this went sideways. I still can’t bear to open the app on my phone. I honestly have considered deleting it altogether. But I digress…

After the radio silence, Emily got back in touch with me and said that she wanted to come over for a visit to see if we would still have the same chemistry in person. Then she would know if this was something she could truly move forward with. Of course I was ecstatic. So plans were set for her to come in the early spring, which in retrospect would have been just about the time the coronavirus began to spiral out of control here in the United States. I sometimes wonder what life would have been like if things had turned out to be real. It wasn’t long before travel was restricted leaving the country, so she likely would have been stuck here for a while. It would have meant more time together discovering each other, showing her around Kentucky, introducing her to my friends, and maybe, just maybe, building something meaningful and lasting.

But of course none of that happened, because she never came. It was never real. And if I’m honest, I still feel like an idiot for ever believing it could have been.

Emily dropped out of contact again about a week before she was supposed to arrive. She resurfaced long enough to once again outline a very dramatic situation that involved her family. I will refrain from specifics because if it was a lie, then it’s an unspeakably awful one… but if for some strange reason even some of it was true, then it’s just as unspeakably awful. Either way, it was soul-crushing. In a single moment, I had gone from planning out a two-week whirlwind vacation to the reality that this woman was now disappearing from my life.

I am so unbelievably stupid sometimes.

Looking back with the benefit of not feeling that devastation again, it seems clear that the potential of a face-to-face encounter, just like a video call, had made her realize that she couldn’t keep up whatever this thing was. So cue the drama and then exit stage left.

I’m not so proud of this next part…

I asked the catfish subreddit for help determining just how badly I had been bamboozled. In doing so, I linked the Instagram account she was using for our correspondence. For all of my intellect, it genuinely never occurred to me that people might send nasty messages. I wasn’t thinking very clearly at all, truth be told. But lo and behold, the next day I get a pretty spicy message from Emily on Google Hangouts (she had blocked and unfollowed me on Instagram and Discord with nary a word about it) telling me that people had been sending her some really mean things.

That’s when a friend of mine who had managed to infiltrate her Instagram, unbeknownst to me, sent me a screencapped photo of a woman on a beach, legs intertwined with another man’s with champagne glasses in both their hands. It was a first-person perspective photo, so I couldn’t see faces. But obviously it made this already strange situation seem a million times worse. I called Emily out on this, and the only thing she could say in reply is that she had “made the right choice.”

I spent the next few months floundering, trying to make sense of the million little pieces my heart had been shattered into. I really opened up to this person. I trusted her. I believed her when she said that she had feelings for me. But none of it was true. As you can imagine, I’ve spent a good amount of time dealing with this in my therapy. It’s hard to not have answers. Even in a brief email exchange some months later, Emily said it was all a big misunderstanding and that she hadn’t whisked off on some romantic getaway. But honestly those pictures likely weren’t even of her, either. There’s literally no way to know what the actual truth behind his whole fucked up situation, and that has been the most difficult thing to navigate over this past year. The utter deceit of it all reaches depths I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams.

So am I foolish? Yes. Of course I am. I think that’s just part of my personality. I don’t necessarily view it as a character flaw, per se. But it certainly bit me in the ass here. This was definitely a lesson in how to temper that naiveté with a healthy amount of skepticism. I don’t do so well with balance though, so the pendulum swung hard in the other direction for quite a while. It’s closer to the middle now, but I still have more than my share of moments where I wonder if love is a real possibility for me.

I’ve done so much inner work. I’m very proud of the person I’ve become on the inside. I’m kind, thoughtful, generous, empathetic, funny, intelligent, and possess a host of other intangible qualities that make me a very compelling person. But I am also fat and there’s no getting around it. (Pun somewhat intended?) And a woman of Emily’s purported beauty and social status dating a fat guy, no matter how amazing, is just not indicative of the reality in which we live. It’s the kind of situation you would only ever see on a television show or in a movie. But that’s not real life. And perhaps if I had understood that better, I wouldn’t have had my heart broken into a million little pieces.

But this isn’t a sob story. I’m legitimately okay now. Therapy has been a godsend and I’ve done a lot of really important work to heal from it all. But of course there are… remnants. It’s not the kind of thing you can ever completely wipe from your memory. It happened. It’s over. And I’ve moved on. Part of that is accepting that being a bachelor for the rest of my life is a distinct possibility, and perhaps may be a likelihood. At some point you have to face facts, you know? When you can confront yourself with that kind of honesty, the likelihood of someone being able to pull the wool over your eyes again dramatically decreases. Besides, I’ve got children to raise. A life to lead. I don’t really have time for childish fantasies of serendipity anymore. If I’ve learned nothing else from this ordeal, it’s that such fairy tales just aren’t real.

If you have read this far, thank you for indulging me. I really hope there’s something of value for you here. I guess I feel that if being open my mistakes can somehow help someone else avoid the same pitfalls, then it gives an added layer of meaning to them for me. So perhaps it’s a bit of a selfish pursuit intertwined with an altruistic one. That’s probably a question best left for the philosophers and dime-store psychologists among us.

[travelguy4444]

The Atlas of Happiness: Discovering the World’s Secret to Happiness with Helen Russell

Posted: 4/4/2019 | April 4th, 2019

A few years ago, I read the book The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell. I think it originally came up as a suggested book on Amazon. I can’t fully remember. But, I stuck it in my queue, ordered it, and it sat on my bookshelf until it was time to read it. I couldn’t put it down. It was funny, well written, interesting, and an insightful look into Danish culture. It was one of my favorite books I read that year.

Last year, I somehow convinced Helen to speak at TravelCon and got to meet her in person. Now, she has a new book out called The Atlas of Happiness. It’s about why people in certain places are happier than others. It’s a phenomenal book (you should get it). Today, Helen shares some of what she learned in researching that book!

Here’s a funny thing: if you’ve been online today for more than a fraction of a second, you may have started to get the sense that the world is A Terrible Place. Even the committed traveler with an open mind could be forgiven for thinking that the outlook is pretty bleak.

And if you’ve seen the headlines today or been on social media and you’re feeling low as a result, you’re not alone.

It’s easy to get the idea that the world is becoming more miserable by the minute and that happiness is a luxury in these troubled times.

But over the past six years, I’ve learned that there are people all around the world finding ways to stay happy, every day. And that happiness is something we’re hardwired to seek out – wherever we are.

I started researching happiness in 2013 when I relocated from the UK to Denmark. I’d spent 12 years living and working in London as a journalist, and I had no intention of leaving, until out of the blue one wet Wednesday, my husband came home and told me he’d been offered his dream job…working for Lego in rural Jutland. I was skeptical to start with — I had a good career, a nice flat, great friends, close family — I had a life.

Okay, so my husband and I both worked long hours, we were tired all the time, and never seemed to be able to see each other very much. We regularly had to bribe ourselves to get through the day and we’d both been ill on and off for the past six months.

But that was normal, right?

We thought we were ‘living the dream.’ I was 33 years old and we’d also been trying for a baby for as long as either of us could remember, enduring years of fertility treatment, but we were always so stressed that it never quite happened.

So when my husband was offered a job in Denmark, this ‘other life’ possibility was dangled in front of us — the chance to swap everything we knew for the unknown. Denmark had just been voted the world’s happiest country in the UN’s annual report and I became fascinated by this. How had a tiny country of just 5.5m people managed to pull off the happiest nation on earth title? Was there something in the water? And if we couldn’t get happier in Denmark, where could we get happier?

During our first visit, we noticed that there was something a bit different about the Danes we met. They didn’t look like us, for starters — quite apart from the fact that they were all strapping Vikings towering over my 5’3” frame — they looked more relaxed and healthier. They walked more slowly. They took their time to stop and eat together, or talk, or just…breathe.

And we were impressed.

My Lego Man husband was sold on the idea and begged me to move, promising we’d relocate for my career next time. And I was so worn out by my hectic London life that I found myself agreeing. I quit my job to go freelance and decided I would give it a year, investigating the Danish happiness phenomenon first hand — looking at a different area of living each month to find out what Danes did differently.

From food to family life; work culture to working out; and design to the Danish welfare state — each month I would throw myself into living ‘Danishly’ to see if it made me any happier and if I could change the way I lived as a result. I decided I would interview as many Danes, expats, psychologists, scientists, economists, historians, sociologists, politicians, everyone, in fact, to try to uncover the secrets to living Danishly.

I documented my experiences for two UK newspapers before being asked to write a book: The Year of Living Danishly, Uncovering the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country.

Since then, I’ve been humbled and moved to hear from readers from across the globe with wide-ranging life perspectives, but the one constant was a need to share the happiness secrets of their own cultures. Some of the themes that sprung out were universal — such as social interactions, exercising out of doors and finding a balance in life — while others were intriguingly unique.

So I set out to research into unique happiness concepts from around the world, interviewing people internationally until The Atlas of Happiness — my new book-baby — was born. It isn’t a compendium of the happiest countries; instead, it’s a look at what’s making people happier in different places. Because if we only look at the countries already coming top of the happiness polls, we miss out on ideas and knowledge from cultures we’re less familiar with.

Nowhere is perfect. Every country has faults. But I wanted to celebrate the best parts of a country’s culture as well as national characteristics at their finest – because that’s what we should all be aiming for.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Did you know, for example, that in Portuguese there’s something called saudade — a feeling of longing, melancholy, and nostalgia for a happiness that once was — or even a happiness you merely hoped for?

And while Brazil may be famous for its carnival spirit, the flipside of this, saudade, is so central to the Brazilian psyche that it’s even been given its own official ‘day’ on the 30th of January every year.

Most of us will have experienced a bittersweet pleasure in moments of melancholy — flicking through old photos, or caring about anyone enough to miss them when they’re gone.

And scientists have found that this temporary sadness — counter-intuitively — makes us happier: providing catharsis; improving our attention to detail; increasing perseverance and promoting generosity. So we should all spend time remembering those we’ve loved and lost — then practice being a little more grateful for the ones still around.

Finland ranked number one in this year’s UN World Happiness report thanks to a great quality of life, free healthcare, and education funded by high taxes.

But there’s also something else the Finns enjoy that’s infinitely more exportable: kalsarikännit — defined as ‘drinking at home in your underwear with no intention of going out’ — a pursuit so popular it even has its own emoji, commissioned by The Finnish Foreign Ministry.

In common with most Scandinavians, Finns aren’t shy about disrobing, and they all have such enviably well-insulated houses that stripping down to their pants is apparently completely okay even when it’s minus 35 degrees outside. What you drink and crucially how much of it you knock back is down to the individual, but it’s a uniquely Finnish form of happiness and mode of relaxation that we can all give a go.

In Greece, they have a concept called meraki that refers to an introspective, precise expression of care, usually applied to a cherished pastime — and it’s keeping Greeks happy despite turbulent times. This is because having a hobby improves our quality of life according to scientists, and challenging ourselves to do something different also creates new neural pathways in our brain. Having a passion that you take pride can be of extra benefit to those who can’t say the same for their primary occupation.

Because meraki can make life worthwhile if your 9-5 is more of a daily grind. Many tasks that need to be taken care of on a day-to-day basis aren’t particularly challenging or inspiring – from filing, to raising purchase orders or even — dare I say it — some of the more gruelling aspects of parenting.

But we can break up the never-ending cycle of mundane work with our own personal challenges — things that we’re passionate about that we can genuinely look forward to doing. Our meraki.

Dolce far niente — or the sweetness of doing nothing — is a much-treasured concept in Italy — often hashtagged on Instagram accompanying pictures of Italians in hammocks. Okay, so Italy hasn’t exactly topped any happiness rankings in recent years, but the cliché of the carefree Italian still exists – and with good reason.

Italians do ‘nothing’ like no other nation and perfecting the art takes style and skill – because there’s more to it than meets the eye. It’s watching the world go by over coffee and a cornetto. It’s laughing at tourists. Or politicians. And crucially it’s about savoring the moment and really enjoying the present. Many of us search for relaxation by traveling to exotic locations, drinking to oblivion, or trying to blot out the noise of modern life.

But Italians let the chaos wash over them. Instead of saving up our ‘fun quota’ for an annual escape, they spread it over the minutes, hours and days throughout the year and ‘enjoy life’ in all its messy reality.

One of the happiest countries in the world, the Norwegians must be doing something right. And quite aside from their enviable Scandi-lifestyles and the safety net of all that oil, Norwegians have a secret ace card up their sleeves: a concept called friluftsliv. This roughly translates as ‘free air life’ and it’s a code of conduct as well as a life goal for most Norwegians – who like to spend time outdoors and get high, as often as possible.

Anyone who’s ever visited the country will know that if you meet a Norwegian out in nature, their objective tends to be the highest mountain nearby – and there’s a saying in Norway that “You must make an effort before you can have pleasure’.

Most Norwegians believe you have to work for things, to earn them with physical endeavors, battling the elements. Only once you’ve climbed a mountain in the rain and cold, can you truly enjoy your dinner. It’s an old fashioned approach to the good life but numerous studies show that using our bodies and getting out into nature as often as possible boosts mental and physical wellbeing.

Which is all very well, on paper. But how to apply these principles and all the things I’d learned in real life? Well, I took it slowly — dolce far niente style. I had to learn not to be the archetypal Londoner, working all hours. Instead, I had to try relaxing once in a while.

Radical, I know.

Next, I got on the hobby train. I found my meraki in pottery, in cooking and trying out new recipes, often inspired by the countries I was researching. Some weeks, we ate well. Others, not so much (my husband still hasn’t forgiven me for ‘Russian month’). I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve done a fair amount of underwear-drinking, too.

The Finnish concept of kalsarikännit and I are now firm friends. And because I was working less and being more mindful of living well and looking after myself, it was relatively easy to adopt the Norwegian ethos of friluftsliv.

So now I try to ask myself: what did I do today? What did I climb? Where did I go? But the biggest mind shift was the realization that to be happy, we have to be comfortable being sad sometimes, too. That we’re at our healthiest and happiest when we can reconcile ourselves to all our emotions, good and bad.

The Portuguese saudade was a game changer for me — helping me to come to terms with the life I thought I’d have and find a way to move on, without resentment or bitterness. Because when you let go of these things, something pretty amazing can happen.

By learning from other cultures about happiness, wellbeing and how to stay healthy (and sane), I found a way to be less stressed than I was in my old life. I developed a better understanding of the challenges and subtleties of coming from another culture. My empathy levels went up. I learned to care, more.

Optimism isn’t frivolous: it’s necessary. You’re travelers. You get this. But we need to spread the word, now, more than ever. Because we only have one world, so it would be really great if we didn’t mess it up.

Hellen Russell is a British journalist, speaker, and the author of the international bestseller The Year of Living Danishly. Her most recent book, The Atlas of Happiness, examines the cultural habits and traditions of happiness around the globe. Formerly the editor of marieclaire.co.uk, she now writes for magazines and newspapers around the world, including Stylist, The Times, Grazia, Metro, and The i Newspaper.

Book Your Trip: Logistical Tips and Tricks

Book Your Flight Find a cheap flight by using Skyscanner or Momondo. They are my two favorite search engines because they search websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is left unturned.

Book Your Accommodation You can book your hostel with Hostelworld as they have the largest inventory. If you want to stay somewhere other than a hostel, use Booking.com as they consistently return the cheapest rates for guesthouses and cheap hotels. I use them all the time.

Don’t Forget Travel Insurance Travel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. I’ve been using World Nomads for ten years. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are:

World Nomads (for everyone below 70)

Insure My Trip (for those over 70)

Looking for the best companies to save money with? Check out my resource page for the best companies to use when you travel! I list all the ones I use to save money when I travel – and that will save you time and money too!

The post The Atlas of Happiness: Discovering the World’s Secret to Happiness with Helen Russell appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

source https://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/atlas-of-happiness/

[vidovicart]

The Atlas of Happiness: Discovering the World’s Secret to Happiness with Helen Russell

Posted: 4/4/2019 | April 4th, 2019

A few years ago, I read the book The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell. I think it originally came up as a suggested book on Amazon. I can’t fully remember. But, I stuck it in my queue, ordered it, and it sat on my bookshelf until it was time to read it. I couldn’t put it down. It was funny, well written, interesting, and an insightful look into Danish culture. It was one of my favorite books I read that year.

Last year, I somehow convinced Helen to speak at TravelCon and got to meet her in person. Now, she has a new book out called The Atlas of Happiness. It’s about why people in certain places are happier than others. It’s a phenomenal book (you should get it). Today, Helen shares some of what she learned in researching that book!

Here’s a funny thing: if you’ve been online today for more than a fraction of a second, you may have started to get the sense that the world is A Terrible Place. Even the committed traveler with an open mind could be forgiven for thinking that the outlook is pretty bleak.

And if you’ve seen the headlines today or been on social media and you’re feeling low as a result, you’re not alone.

It’s easy to get the idea that the world is becoming more miserable by the minute and that happiness is a luxury in these troubled times.

But over the past six years, I’ve learned that there are people all around the world finding ways to stay happy, every day. And that happiness is something we’re hardwired to seek out – wherever we are.

I started researching happiness in 2013 when I relocated from the UK to Denmark. I’d spent 12 years living and working in London as a journalist, and I had no intention of leaving, until out of the blue one wet Wednesday, my husband came home and told me he’d been offered his dream job…working for Lego in rural Jutland. I was skeptical to start with — I had a good career, a nice flat, great friends, close family — I had a life.

Okay, so my husband and I both worked long hours, we were tired all the time, and never seemed to be able to see each other very much. We regularly had to bribe ourselves to get through the day and we’d both been ill on and off for the past six months.

But that was normal, right?

We thought we were ‘living the dream.’ I was 33 years old and we’d also been trying for a baby for as long as either of us could remember, enduring years of fertility treatment, but we were always so stressed that it never quite happened.

So when my husband was offered a job in Denmark, this ‘other life’ possibility was dangled in front of us — the chance to swap everything we knew for the unknown. Denmark had just been voted the world’s happiest country in the UN’s annual report and I became fascinated by this. How had a tiny country of just 5.5m people managed to pull off the happiest nation on earth title? Was there something in the water? And if we couldn’t get happier in Denmark, where could we get happier?

During our first visit, we noticed that there was something a bit different about the Danes we met. They didn’t look like us, for starters — quite apart from the fact that they were all strapping Vikings towering over my 5’3” frame — they looked more relaxed and healthier. They walked more slowly. They took their time to stop and eat together, or talk, or just…breathe.

And we were impressed.

My Lego Man husband was sold on the idea and begged me to move, promising we’d relocate for my career next time. And I was so worn out by my hectic London life that I found myself agreeing. I quit my job to go freelance and decided I would give it a year, investigating the Danish happiness phenomenon first hand — looking at a different area of living each month to find out what Danes did differently.

From food to family life; work culture to working out; and design to the Danish welfare state — each month I would throw myself into living ‘Danishly’ to see if it made me any happier and if I could change the way I lived as a result. I decided I would interview as many Danes, expats, psychologists, scientists, economists, historians, sociologists, politicians, everyone, in fact, to try to uncover the secrets to living Danishly.

I documented my experiences for two UK newspapers before being asked to write a book: The Year of Living Danishly, Uncovering the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country.

Since then, I’ve been humbled and moved to hear from readers from across the globe with wide-ranging life perspectives, but the one constant was a need to share the happiness secrets of their own cultures. Some of the themes that sprung out were universal — such as social interactions, exercising out of doors and finding a balance in life — while others were intriguingly unique.

So I set out to research into unique happiness concepts from around the world, interviewing people internationally until The Atlas of Happiness — my new book-baby — was born. It isn’t a compendium of the happiest countries; instead, it’s a look at what’s making people happier in different places. Because if we only look at the countries already coming top of the happiness polls, we miss out on ideas and knowledge from cultures we’re less familiar with.

Nowhere is perfect. Every country has faults. But I wanted to celebrate the best parts of a country’s culture as well as national characteristics at their finest – because that’s what we should all be aiming for.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Did you know, for example, that in Portuguese there’s something called saudade — a feeling of longing, melancholy, and nostalgia for a happiness that once was — or even a happiness you merely hoped for?

And while Brazil may be famous for its carnival spirit, the flipside of this, saudade, is so central to the Brazilian psyche that it’s even been given its own official ‘day’ on the 30th of January every year.

Most of us will have experienced a bittersweet pleasure in moments of melancholy — flicking through old photos, or caring about anyone enough to miss them when they’re gone.

And scientists have found that this temporary sadness — counter-intuitively — makes us happier: providing catharsis; improving our attention to detail; increasing perseverance and promoting generosity. So we should all spend time remembering those we’ve loved and lost — then practice being a little more grateful for the ones still around.

Finland ranked number one in this year’s UN World Happiness report thanks to a great quality of life, free healthcare, and education funded by high taxes.

But there’s also something else the Finns enjoy that’s infinitely more exportable: kalsarikännit — defined as ‘drinking at home in your underwear with no intention of going out’ — a pursuit so popular it even has its own emoji, commissioned by The Finnish Foreign Ministry.

In common with most Scandinavians, Finns aren’t shy about disrobing, and they all have such enviably well-insulated houses that stripping down to their pants is apparently completely okay even when it’s minus 35 degrees outside. What you drink and crucially how much of it you knock back is down to the individual, but it’s a uniquely Finnish form of happiness and mode of relaxation that we can all give a go.

In Greece, they have a concept called meraki that refers to an introspective, precise expression of care, usually applied to a cherished pastime — and it’s keeping Greeks happy despite turbulent times. This is because having a hobby improves our quality of life according to scientists, and challenging ourselves to do something different also creates new neural pathways in our brain. Having a passion that you take pride can be of extra benefit to those who can’t say the same for their primary occupation.

Because meraki can make life worthwhile if your 9-5 is more of a daily grind. Many tasks that need to be taken care of on a day-to-day basis aren’t particularly challenging or inspiring – from filing, to raising purchase orders or even — dare I say it — some of the more gruelling aspects of parenting.

But we can break up the never-ending cycle of mundane work with our own personal challenges — things that we’re passionate about that we can genuinely look forward to doing. Our meraki.

Dolce far niente — or the sweetness of doing nothing — is a much-treasured concept in Italy — often hashtagged on Instagram accompanying pictures of Italians in hammocks. Okay, so Italy hasn’t exactly topped any happiness rankings in recent years, but the cliché of the carefree Italian still exists – and with good reason.

Italians do ‘nothing’ like no other nation and perfecting the art takes style and skill – because there’s more to it than meets the eye. It’s watching the world go by over coffee and a cornetto. It’s laughing at tourists. Or politicians. And crucially it’s about savoring the moment and really enjoying the present. Many of us search for relaxation by traveling to exotic locations, drinking to oblivion, or trying to blot out the noise of modern life.

But Italians let the chaos wash over them. Instead of saving up our ‘fun quota’ for an annual escape, they spread it over the minutes, hours and days throughout the year and ‘enjoy life’ in all its messy reality.

One of the happiest countries in the world, the Norwegians must be doing something right. And quite aside from their enviable Scandi-lifestyles and the safety net of all that oil, Norwegians have a secret ace card up their sleeves: a concept called friluftsliv. This roughly translates as ‘free air life’ and it’s a code of conduct as well as a life goal for most Norwegians – who like to spend time outdoors and get high, as often as possible.

Anyone who’s ever visited the country will know that if you meet a Norwegian out in nature, their objective tends to be the highest mountain nearby – and there’s a saying in Norway that “You must make an effort before you can have pleasure’.

Most Norwegians believe you have to work for things, to earn them with physical endeavors, battling the elements. Only once you’ve climbed a mountain in the rain and cold, can you truly enjoy your dinner. It’s an old fashioned approach to the good life but numerous studies show that using our bodies and getting out into nature as often as possible boosts mental and physical wellbeing.

Which is all very well, on paper. But how to apply these principles and all the things I’d learned in real life? Well, I took it slowly — dolce far niente style. I had to learn not to be the archetypal Londoner, working all hours. Instead, I had to try relaxing once in a while.

Radical, I know.

Next, I got on the hobby train. I found my meraki in pottery, in cooking and trying out new recipes, often inspired by the countries I was researching. Some weeks, we ate well. Others, not so much (my husband still hasn’t forgiven me for ‘Russian month’). I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve done a fair amount of underwear-drinking, too.

The Finnish concept of kalsarikännit and I are now firm friends. And because I was working less and being more mindful of living well and looking after myself, it was relatively easy to adopt the Norwegian ethos of friluftsliv.

So now I try to ask myself: what did I do today? What did I climb? Where did I go? But the biggest mind shift was the realization that to be happy, we have to be comfortable being sad sometimes, too. That we’re at our healthiest and happiest when we can reconcile ourselves to all our emotions, good and bad.

The Portuguese saudade was a game changer for me — helping me to come to terms with the life I thought I’d have and find a way to move on, without resentment or bitterness. Because when you let go of these things, something pretty amazing can happen.

By learning from other cultures about happiness, wellbeing and how to stay healthy (and sane), I found a way to be less stressed than I was in my old life. I developed a better understanding of the challenges and subtleties of coming from another culture. My empathy levels went up. I learned to care, more.

Optimism isn’t frivolous: it’s necessary. You’re travelers. You get this. But we need to spread the word, now, more than ever. Because we only have one world, so it would be really great if we didn’t mess it up.

Hellen Russell is a British journalist, speaker, and the author of the international bestseller The Year of Living Danishly. Her most recent book, The Atlas of Happiness, examines the cultural habits and traditions of happiness around the globe. Formerly the editor of marieclaire.co.uk, she now writes for magazines and newspapers around the world, including Stylist, The Times, Grazia, Metro, and The i Newspaper.

Book Your Trip: Logistical Tips and Tricks

Book Your Flight Find a cheap flight by using Skyscanner or Momondo. They are my two favorite search engines because they search websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is left unturned.

Book Your Accommodation You can book your hostel with Hostelworld as they have the largest inventory. If you want to stay somewhere other than a hostel, use Booking.com as they consistently return the cheapest rates for guesthouses and cheap hotels. I use them all the time.

Don’t Forget Travel Insurance Travel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. I’ve been using World Nomads for ten years. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are:

World Nomads (for everyone below 70)

Insure My Trip (for those over 70)

Looking for the best companies to save money with? Check out my resource page for the best companies to use when you travel! I list all the ones I use to save money when I travel – and that will save you time and money too!

The post The Atlas of Happiness: Discovering the World’s Secret to Happiness with Helen Russell appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

[theroadfromustome]

Mile 62

Well, this last mile has been a full one. Which is another way of saying that yet again, I’ve neglected posting for too long (a month maybe?). It feel like the weather has gotten warmer and everything has amped up. Buckle in, bc this is going to be a big spew, a catharsis of lots of things I don’t feel like I can say to anyone else; though of course I have been yakking to everyone about some of this.

First, the ugly: Going another round with H’s mother. I’ve realized how much of my years with H were spent managing her extremely fragile emotions. It’s exhausting. This time she outright told me that I didn’t respect her--of course if she respected me then she wouldn’t jump to the worst conclusion about my motives for my actions regarding MY child. It just infuriates me so much--and she totally defies all reason and logic and manages to make me feel like an inconsiderate, irresponsible jerk for not being omniscient or ordaining the universe. Another realization: she has always and will always treat me like an incompetent child and I am fucking DONE with it! I need her to move away. Not that it will end this shit, but it will hopefully make it less frequent and less potent. I now understand why my [current] sisters in law keep her at arm’s length. 

Also, regarding H: he’s so guarded everytime he’s around me. He’s like a big black cloud of tension and I feel like he brings shadows whenever I have to see him even briefly. What a reversal. Can it only be three months since I moved out? Poor thing, I gather he’s going through a rough patch right now, and possibly at slight odds with his dear mama as well. I do wish he would answer my legitimate inquiries about schedule though. I wish we had a better flow of comm, but he acts like I have a disease that will be communicated through the keyboard. So far things are passing between me and my mom and him. Which I know is not the adult way but like...if you won’t talk to me like a calm adult? He and his mom seem to be casting me as the enemy--but even combatants have parleys under a flag of truce. We have to resolve this sometime, but I’m perfectly willing to avoid it until he heals a bit more and is less dangerous to my peace of mind.

Ugh, just writing that out made me tense. On to the good!

The good: I’ve lost 17 lbs since January when I started this diet with my mom. I feel great this week too, bc I’m able to be more active with this nice weather. I also feel more productive at work, so all things are good. This all may be due to the next big event in my life detailed below momentarily; but I will say this: as the earth comes out of ice and is reborn to spring, so I feel reborn. This past week I have danced, grinned, sung, reconnected with musical theatre, etc. (and before that wrote!) in a way I haven’t in months. Some of this is due to this event--but I realize that before I get there I need to fill in one other item...

I went to visit an old friend from college, whom we will call S. This friend has been crazy about me since probably our second week of freshman astronomy, and it’s one of those where I’ve tried to make it work before and it just...won’t. This friend has stuck by me through all of this shit, and knows all of my flaws more intimately than almost anyone. He’s a complete vessel--a listener who won’t judge and who cherishes me no matter what. Which I know I take advantage of. Other than my mother, he’s the most unconditional relationship I have. If only he had his shit together and wasn’t illogically conservative. (We do NOT talk politics.) Also a bit sexist and racist--not that he’d ever act on them. For the sake of this bond we have I choose to ignore/avoid all that, but this is one of the reasons we just can’t make a relationship. But that doesn’t mean my visit was strictly platonic. I flatter myself that I contributed to his well-being in significant ways, but I definitely selfishly reveled in the experience of being cherished, and of the fierce, wonderful trust we share. I could cry just thinking about it--I can be so honest with him, about my ups and downs. And best of all: we are equals. Peers, partners, equals!!! I have never had that with a man. No matter the relationship. I find it sublime and somewhat irresistible. Even though I know it’s so unfair to him; bc we both know it can’t last forever. Anyway, that whole things has been good for me. Probably also bad in other ways. But it has reawakened a part of myself I thought gone forever, and that part is stronger than I ever remember it being. Trust and complete comfort are heady heady things. 

So from that we proceed to...drum roll...

I actually went on a date Saturday night. This is what I’ve been driving all my friends crazy about, and I hate myself for being such a spaz. They’re all darlings, but really, I need to get over myself. Which is why I’m going to try to exercise as much as possible here. 

So yeah, one of my coworkers has a brother. A brother who it turns out--came to visit our workplace months ago and was checking me out. Who then asked *repeatedly* to be introduced to me. Who, after I met him last month friended me on fb and then messaged me out of the blue about 2 weeks ago. Now, this man is brilliant (he’s a scientist--sexy and ridiculously intimidating at the same time), sophisticated, independent adult with a well-paying full time job and actual talent; he’s so freaking charming and good-hearted, he’s witty and considerate and he swing dances (swoon--if I dance with him my ovaries may never recover); not to mention my coworker is thrilled at the prospect. He’s also 5 years older than I am--I wasn’t exactly looking for age gap, but... Anyway, I’m still getting my brain to process the fact that he actually wants to spend time with me. Because his whole family is immortal--brilliantly talented, beautiful etc. And then there's me mere mortal with my messy-ass family. And all my baggage. And the fact that I’m trying desperately to crawl out of diapers and grow into a legit adult. I’m gonna throw some thoughts out below in no order or reason:

So the age gap: I was hoping to avoid it. After the good experiences of equality with S, who is only months older than I, I am wary of falling into the naive child role again. I am determined to be am equal adult, and yet already I feel myself pulled to alter my behavior--I can be so silly with S, and I feel like Charming here would think me immature--when around this guy. Also, he’s into scifi and have only moderate xp there, also he hikes and camps--the idea of hiking with him actually sounds utterly lovely (talk about day-dreaming), camping... But I mean I’m willing to try--I’m just so wary of losing myself again. Of putting his needs above mine and doing whatever I can to keep him from rejecting/punishing me. It’s so frustrating yet again how easily my bad habits kick in like clockwork. 

Speaking of my neurosis: I am WAY too invested in this. Super fixated. Some might say I’m obsessing. Which I suppose has always been my way with boys. But you’d hope I’d behave differently at 31 than I did when I was 12, 14, 15. So first I was mooning and daydreaming about him while grinning like a complete dope and humming songs (like, full out cliche) Sunday and Monday, and then I was stupid and was overtly flirty (like dude back off AB, you had *one* date) on Monday evening and he just--wham--dropped communications. I’ve heard nothing from him since, and I’m using all powers of mind control I possess and prayer (sorry God) to will him to just message me for like 5 minutes so I know he still likes me, that I didn’t freak him out by behaving like a silly girl. I so want to do this like an adult, but apparently I am incapable. If this doesn’t happen, like fi we don’t work out, then fine. But I’ll be crushed if it’s bc of my inherent flaw of childishness. And what if it is inherent? What if I cannot actually function in an adult relationship?

That’s another thing--I am so putting the cart before the horse. Like we met, we chatted twice, and then we spend 5 hours eating Thai food and walking all over his neighborhood. He should not be and *is* not the center of my universe. I’d like to think I wouldn’t be behaving this stupidly if he hadn’t kissed me. I’d like to think I could be cool and removed and totally ok with the fact that he seems to be compartmentalizing the amount of time he spends with me (his job is hell, apparently; another red flag, but he’s so charming....) if he hadn’t kissed me. So I wasn’t sure how to gauge it--were we just two adults enjoying each other’s company? I know he thinks I am cute--but physical attraction doesn’t mean he actually likes me. I mean, I think he was flirting with me--the body language was promising, I’m fairly certain he was nervous at the beginning (but it’s a date who wouldn’t be?), and he like, touched me arm and such you know the way you do when you’re just broaching physical contact. And then when I left I went to hug him and...it was not a platonic hug. It was brief but...there was...heat...a tiny little simmer. And then, there was a second hug, and he briefly, subtly, turned into my neck and placed a quick little kiss there. It was chaste as hell, a bit uncertain I think, but it changed everything. I mean I dunno maybe it was just quarter to midnight and goodwill talking. Maybe he’s just affectionate and that was his way of saying “Thanks for a good time.” Maybe it all goes back to the sex and it’s purely physical? I just--I have such a hard time thinking he actually sees anything in me bc I’m so--uninteresting--I’m not ambitious or successful, I’m insecure as fuck, I have plenty o’ baggage, I’m not cosmopolitan or well-read or witty. All I have is the loyalty and affection of a--child. I gather it’s been some time since he’s been taken care of, and of course that appeals to me, taking care of him, but maybe he likes being self-sufficient? He certainly is. And again!!!! It’s too soon for me to be thinking this way. But I just do this. What is my problem??? I keep thinking once he gets to know me he’s going to bail. And at this point that would hurt more bc it would mean my weaknesses had caused me to fail again than bc I’m madly in love with him, but still. The more I invest the worse it will be when this whole thing crashes. But I can’t not give it a try--even if I see eminent disaster on the other side. I keep hoping my instincts will be proven false.

On a lighter note: I am ridiculously physically attracted to him. Like--keep daydreaming about kissing him...and other things...

I just--why am I so fixated on this? Why is he the only thing I can think about? I have a life! I can’t just be marking time until I see him again. GET A GRIP, AB! I keep singing “He is not thinking of me” to myself. Bc I guarantee he is going about his business as usual--like a fucking adult--and taking Saturday night for what it was: a pleasant evening. 

Nonsequitur: If he doesn’t message me in the next few days I may implode.

Also, I just wish for some clarity. It’s like dating Jane Bennett. No clue if he’s just being nice or....?

Why is my professional performance so tied to whether or no a man is interested in me? What the hell is that about?!!!

I will say this--it’s nice to feel romance again. I feel like me again. The bitter gone-by feeling I had at my cousin’s wedding is banished, replaced by all the hope and cheer of spring and things beginning. Also, showtunes again! Singing again! I could go into “Bewitched, bothered and bewildered” but that song is too cynical. Instead, I’ll end with the line that was running through my head all day Monday:

“I don’t know why I can’t think of anything I would rather do than be wasting my time on mountains with you.”

And now, off to church!