#and being known as like... intimidating is something i have personal issues with re: old friends offsite. so. trying to state what i mean

[meatriarch]

overview cont. i guess lmao. no one asked but its been something in the back of my mind for a while now & i got an anon tonight telling me i come off intimidating and i feel the need to just. make note of some things so that hopefully if anyone feels a certain way with how i run this blog then like. know and understand both my side as well as that my dms / disc is open for anyone to pop into -- just obv depends on the headspace at the time.

i know this is long & am sorry if it doesnt make sense but. just setting it gently out there.

but, again, my disc ( same as my url ) is open for any mutual. its open to shoot the shit. open for plotting. open for memes. what have you. i may not always get to every message. i may not be in the headspace for certain things or certain energies. but its open for anyone as long as we are mutuals & if handles are different between here & disc then i just get a heads-up abt who you are so i know lmao

likewise, i am fairly fucking slow writing-wise and alot of that is because of offsite issues chipping into me but also because most, if not all, of the things i DO have in the inbox or drafts are from my affiliates at this time ( tho i do have some more from the archive i need to move over from a couple people ). alot of my spoons and drive to write and post is because of the dynamics and plotting built between our muses. im not a blog centered on plotting but, it does help to have a better idea on how to navigate between muses c: esp for those technically outside of my kiddos' texas canon obviously. that being said, anyone is welcome to like any inbox calls i put out there. and my inbox is always open and accepting, even if i havent reblogged prompts in a while -- i have my tag linked on my pinned and its available always & for whomever. it just comes with the understanding that i may take a while to respond to them & they may not get as expansive as some of my posts can get with my affiliates; which again, is just simply from how much we've been building together that helps with that!

on that note. my connections with my texas pals are very dear to me. both ic & ooc. as i noted in my overview post, i talk about the dynamics we've built openly and freely here because theyre so integral to my portrayals. they & their kiddos have my entire heart and i unapologetically love having fun with them and going on tangents with them and bouncing thoughts off of each others posts on the dash.

my experiences in other corners of tumby rp have not been particularly kind. and its been a long time since ive felt comfortable especially ooc with writing partners. and i understand if i may come across closed off or intimidating or unapproachable. i understand if i also come across partial to them / play favorites because frankly... i am. i do. thats because they've built bonds not just between characters but also with me. ill be very transparent and say that i am very particular in who i get close with and that translates into here too. but thats also just something that easily can also happen with literally anyone. again i do understand if i come across closed off in any sense but genuinely? im not scary and i have options open for continuing to grow more connections with people c: theyre open always. what im not going to do, however, purely out of personal experience is chase after interactions. the last fandoms i wrote in i did so and it wore me down into my last hiatus. i will show equal enthusiasm to whats given. but i wont fish for it, either. its just not my cup of tea.

i like to think im fairly patient and understanding in a lot, probably moreso than i should in some cases -- sincerely though if theres issues know that im fine with it being brought up. but im also not going to be welcoming nor tolerate my boundaries being disregarded or disrespected, im already dealing with that with an offsite friend. not dealing with it here. i do not like feeling so uncomfortable existing on my own blog or in my own disc. and i get that already with my personal disc & this offsite friend in particular. im not dealing with it here too.

which on that note, i also wont be receptive with issues regarding what i post, what i talk about, who i write with, who i choose as affiliates or mains or w/e. my blog & my dash are my safe & comfort zones and these muses often help me alot with navigating when my headspace is at a fucked up level. if any of that is a concern yes youre welcome to come to me and talk it over but end of the day? my comfort & mental state is a priority to me. if thats ever an issue i truly would just recommend you do what you feel is best for you. everyone existing on this hell-plane are entitled on curating their space in whatever manner they see fit.

again. i promise im not scary. im not an ass. but i do curate my space to be in my best interest and at my age & experience across the 10+ yrs ive been rping on and off here, ive seen alot, heard alot, experienced alot. i do apologize however if i do come across unapproachable or intimidating. i do apologize if i seem closed off to only a select few. i dont mind if you follow / we're mutuals solely just to keep up with what i write! thats completely okay too and i thank those who are <3 but if i seem unapproachable i literally just gently gesture again to my disc or prompts tag etc! i welcome any to get to know myself or my muses. regardless of how much time has passed since following one another. just again, comes with the understanding that my social battery & headspace often does work against me. and thats not personal against anyone, ever.

[creatingnikki]

What 2020 has taught me

1. Those things that seem like content for sci fi or pure fiction are actually things that can happen. To the entire world. Like a pandemic. And to you. Like a seizure.

2. Everyone is sad. Everyone is struggling. In different ways and in different measures. Makes no one special. But you still get to feel sad for yourself and be compassionate towards others. But it's also okay to draw boundaries because you're everyone too. Remember, not special? You're sad and trying to deal with it too.

3. Every job you have will not add value to your life. It will not teach you new things or give you people you'll want to stay in touch with. Sometimes some jobs will only be a season of your life. Even if the season lasts for over a year. It's okay.

4. You know how you thought picking a college and picking a major and picking your first job and picking a specific industry were all the career decisions you had to make? Yeah, no. It's never a one time thing. You could have a job as a marketing strategist for two years and then want nothing to do with it. And then you'll have to make another decision and work towards it. So I'd like to call it moves. It's like chess. You always have to make a move. And it always has to be strategic, yes. But the truth is in your 20s it probably won't. Even if you try. And as long as you're trying, you'll be fine.

5. You may have different sorts of friends like the one you only talk to about kdrama with or the one you met when you went book shopping alone and the friendship is all about books really. That's normal. But irrespective of why and how you became friends with them, if you consider them a friend then there has to be this basic sense of care, respect and empathy for each other. I don't care what people want to say. If you're faced with the worst trauma of your life, the least your friends can do is check up on you regularly. On text. And if they don't even do that then guess what? They aren't friends. They are acquaintances. Social media and quick promises make everyone seem like your friend. But they are not. They are just nice people who will be nice to you for specific periods and then wander away like you are a speck of dust floating in their journey.

6. You speak a lot and write and you express yourself and you’re emotionally mature but oh my god. You still hold in so much. You’ve known that at a subconscious level and over the last year people - experts - have told you that. You have also realized that you make your pain and sadness about pettier things because dealing with them, admitting about them, sharing that with your friends, is easier. You do that so that you don’t have to deal with the real stuff. Because it’s so damn painful. And you don’t know how to do it. Yet. Acknowledging is the first step anyway right? I know you’re confused about how exactly to let go of all this pain and sadness and feel lighter, and you know that talking to people really isn’t the solution, but I also know you’re smart enough to figure it out. 

7. Talking about being smart...you know you’re different than others. Better. Special. Smarter. None of these are the right words. And you never voiced this out until this year because you knew it would make you come across as narcissistic. Some would say it’s because you’re an INFJ. But my mother once said that this may be the first time we are consciously living life but our souls are old and so our instinct and the things we know but can’t explain are because this isn’t the first time for our souls. The connections we feel with certain people, the reason we are so different from our siblings who grew up in the exact same environment with the exact same opportunities, our sense of right and wrong...it’s all because our souls learn and grow with each time and that’s why we are who we are. I think that’s probably how I can explain what I have always felt. That I am living in a different universe than everybody but I have to pretend to be in this one and dumb my emotions and thoughts down. Maybe that’s because my soul has lived through thousands of years while most around me are living their 100th life. Or maybe I’m just narcissistic, who knows?

8. You shift between talking in first person and second person but that’s because that’s how you think in your head and talk to yourself and live your life. You ask yourself things and you accuse yourself of things and you apologize to yourself and you comfort yourself. I think that seeps into your writing and the changing of the voices. 

9. You always genuinely thought that you’d not be afraid of dying. And then what happened this October proved you shockingly wrong. I know it’s not so much being afraid of dying but the unbearable pain of knowing what that would mean to your family. So you have to be more prudent and less reckless with your life and the choices you make. 

10. Regret is not something that plagued you but this year the realisation and pain of giving away your favourite books from your own personal collection to people you care about as a show of affection and them turning out to be ass holes or losers has hit you so hard. So, yes. No more of that shit. I really fucking want my copy of The Perks Of Being A Wallflower back. UGH. With the childhood picture of me inside it! 

11. Sleeping at 5 am in the morning stops being fun or romanticised when you realise just how much harm it does to your body and mind. Literally every single disease and disorder can be traced back to a shitty fucking sleep schedule. It’s not just the hours you sleep but also the quality of sleep and the time you sleep at. So yes sleeping for 8 hours is healthy but not if that 8 hours is from 5 am to 12 pm. ‘Not a morning person’ is just another construct of capitalism and you don’t realise how many industries profit from having you believe that and staying up late or all night. Entertainment. Food. Alcohol. Pharma. Biologically and naturally you are a bloody morning person. And you don’t need 3 cups of coffee to begin your day or your phone notifications to get you to open your eyes and brain to wake up. 

12. Sometimes you really have to stop taking people so seriously. I know the idea of treating people as casual friends or entertainment makes you want to fight that concept but you know what? Some people like Pineapple are ever only going to be good for that. No matter how much they ‘grow and change’. So keep them in the background for whenever you want some entertainment or drama. But please don’t clear up your busy schedule to meet them or send them gifts on their birthday. 

13. If you don’t have the fruit juice or green juice within half an hour of making it then you are losing out on its most optimum health benefits. Or when you remove the white stringy stuff from oranges. That’s where all the actual nutrients are.

14. I am privileged and so are most of the people I interact with. The global pandemic has been hell for a lot of people around the world. Health wise. Financially. Losing people they care about. But I was blessed enough to be safe at home and have a job that I could smoothly do from home and not have a pay cut or 4-hour long Zoom meetings. So honestly when my friends tell me 2020 has been bad I have to stop and ask them why? Yes, the crippling uncertainty and anxiety is not something that can be undermined. But most people I know had very great positive life-changing milestones this year like moving away to another country for college or taking their first solo trip or getting married. So I have to ask them. Because I am not going to agree that everybody’s 2020 and pandemic narrative is the same. 

15. Money gets spent really quickly. When I left my job earlier this year because of personal issues, I thought I had enough savings to last me a year. Full disclosure - I mean to last my personal expenses because I live with my parents. But it didn’t even last me 3 months. And so to use money wisely and buy things that provide utility than instant gratification is something to follow. Also buying one pair of really expensive but quality shoes is better than buying 5 pairs of affordable but low quality shoes that will have a very short life and force you to buy more. I know that higher price doesn’t always mean better quality but sometimes it does. And as an adult now I want to do the whole quality > quantity thing even with things and not just people. 

16. Everyone in their 20s went through a crisis of what they should do with their lives and their careers and it’s not unique to the 21st century and the challenges of today. Whether it was Vincent Van Gogh in the 19th century or Sylvia Plath in the 20th, every single person, as brilliant as them went through the torture of making these decisions and living with their consequences. You may think I picked wrong examples for they both killed themselves but you know what? They were the people who really want to live more than anyone. They knew what life meant. And maybe if mental health help was more accessible back then their lives would be longer and more peaceful. 

17. Telling people everything is overrated. You don’t have to talk about every single thing that’s on your mind or that’s going on in your life. The good and the bad and the mediocre. You have to be mindful about how much of yourself you’re giving away. 

18. Re-watch Suits when people at work feel intimidating because the confidence + negotiation tactics that they show can actually work irl cos at the end of the day no matter in what position you’re dealing with people who have emotions and fears and insecurities and desires. You understand how to leverage that nobody can get the better of you. 

19. You belong to yourself. No matter how much you love someone or how much they have done for you or how much you owe them - you belong to yourself. You can’t live your life for someone else. Everyone belongs to themselves first. No relationship, no promise, no circumstance should make you feel like you have to give up your life and make it all about them. If and when the time comes to die for them, go ahead. Take a bullet. Donate that kidney. Write them in your will. But live your life for yourself. And let them live theirs. 

20. Twenty three was a challenging year. When it started you claimed the age 23 sounds boring and insignificant. Guess it proved you wrong. It hurt so much now. But that only means you’ll look back on it later and see how it added so much wisdom and resilience to your being. It doesn’t mean that it makes all the bad things that happened to you okay. Or that you should be grateful to them. Fuck no. It means that you should be kinder to yourself because at the end of the day, your mind and body find it in themselves to deal with whatever is thrown their way. They have your back. It’s time you learn to sit straight. 

[waezi2]

Re-reading Yu-Gi-Oh (part 1)

So... I bitch a lot about Yu-Gi-Oh. When I don’t complain about it online and accuse it of scamming kid me, I ridicule the story and the many holes in the game rules.

But I actually used to love this manga with a burning passion. I bought it because I was fixated with the cards, but instead I got traumatized. In an awesome way.

So I decided to re-read the manga about the possibly best known TCG game in the world and see how it started, how it evolved, and if the story still holds up.

So, I’m reading chapter 1, and we have to talk about the art.

The art style at the beginning was chunky and sometimes downright awkward. But it was still very enjoyable. The characters were very expressive and the tone of the style could swing quickly from wacky and rubberhose like to eerie and brooding depending on the situation. It makes you forgive odd-looking legs and hands that becomes massive. It is clear that it is someone’s first project.

So, this is Yugi. Possibly the cutest and meekest punk kid who ever lived. Yugi is not an outdoor person, so he spends most of his recesses inside the classroom. He brings a ton of games to school, hoping that someone might wanna play with him, but all of his classmates prefer to go outside and do stuff like basketball. And being a short teenager who practically looks like a little boy means he is not a desirable team mate in any ball game.

This is totally just a theory, but I think Yugi’s signature punk hairstyle is his way of trying to look a bit more edgy to try do something about his cute appearance.

... Yeah, it’s not working. He still looks like a fricking Gummibear.

As Yugi is minding his own business, we meet two familiar faces.

... their names are actually Jounouchi and and Honda, but most people know them by their American names, so I will just refer to them as Joey and Tristan. 

It’s so odd to see their old designs. Especially Joey since his hair is not as big and square like as it is today. And what the fuck is up with Tristan’s face?!

Anyways, while Yugi decides to play with the most valuable game in his collection, Joey and Tristan decides to mess with him. They make an interesting bully duo where Tristan is more loud and is clearly having more fun bothering Yugi who is too short to put up a fight while Joey seems more stoic and is almost annoyed by Yugi for being a pushover. He even tells Yugi to be a man about it and at least try and take the game back from him by force. So while Tristian just enjoys picking on Yugi for the heck of it, Joey seems to sincerely dislike Yugi.

Luckily, Yugi doesn’t have trouble with bullies as such since he is friends with Tea who is so tough that she actually intimidate Joey and Tristan with sheer attitude. That’s actually impressive.

... A shame she is most of the time just the damsel in distress.

Tea is the only person in class who hangs out with Yugi since they have been friends since kindergarten. And she doesn’t mind staying inside at all since a ton of the guys are jerks who only wanna play basketball with the girls since it gives them an opportunity to look up their skirts.

Yeah, there is a lot of that in this manga. Most of the males in this series are kinda horny. the humor often relies on it, which downright creepy at times.

Even Yugi finds basketball more appealing now that he knows about the skirt-looking.

Lewd panty-shot aside, I think it is a nice detail that Yugi is as pathetic as the rest of the dudes in school, he probably just doesn’t have the courage to try get a look. It makes him less of a pure hero.

Altight, let’s stop talking about Yugi being a closet creep:/

Yugi shows Tea what his greatest treasure is: A LITTERAL treasure.

Yep, this is the famous Millennium Puzzle, practically the mascot of the series. It’s an ancient puzzle found in an pyramid that Yugi got from his grandfather who runs a game store. The puzzle is extremely valuable, both because it is from ancient Egypt and it is made of gold.

... And Yugi brings it to school where Tristan and Joey pushes him around...

Yugi has been struggling with the puzzle for eight years despite being a game nerd. Even though it is a blow to his not that big ego, he keeps trying to solve it since the box says that if he will be granted a wish if he manage to solve the puzzle.

Meanwhile, Joey and Tristan makes the fatal mistake of talking about picking on Yugi while Ushio is close enough to hear it. He is the school’s hall monitor and rumor has it that he is downright psychotic and is feared by most of the students. Heck, some of the teachers are uncomfortable being near him.

And this guy has decided to become Yugi’s bodyguard, something poor Yugi doesn’t take serious when Ushio tells him that.

Joey and Tristan are unaware how screwed they are as they keep having their fun bothering Yugi without our hero knowing it. Joey managed to steal a piece from the puzzle box before Tea interrupted, and Joey decides to throw the piece in the school’s swimming pool so that the puzzle becomes worthless as it can no longer be solved. I gotta say, that is pretty twisted and surprisingly sneaky of a teen bully. It’s downright creepy.

Speaking of creepy...

This is Yugi’s grandfather Sugoroku. He runs the game shop that Yugi lives in and is a living encyclopedia when it comes to games of all sorts.

And he can’t just tell Tea that she has grown. He HAS to mention her breasts as well. Da fuck is up with all the sex talk and panty shots in this series?! Does Kazuki Takahashi(the author) have some sort of issues?!

Yugi’s grandfather notices that Yugi is STILL trying to solve the ancient puzzle and warns Yugi that the puzzle is supposedly cursed. That the archeologist and his team died mysteriously shortly after finding the puzzle and the last one to kick the bucket said something about a “shadow game” with his dying breath.

That however makes Yugi even more determent to solve the puzzle. If it really is magical then chances are that he will be granted a wish by completing the puzzle.

Personally, I would call the nearest museum and sell the dang thing before it could kill me with it’s insane cursed magic.

Speaking of insane, Yugi realizes that he should have taken Ushio serious when he said he would be his bodyguard.

Yep, the SOB has dragged Joey and Tristan behind the school building and kicked their asses through and through. Tristan is in so much pain that he is barely conscious and Joey is so pummeled that all he can do is watch as Yugi shows how surprisingly brave he is as he demands that Ushio leaves them alone, even refer to them as his friends and that they were just trying to make him a man.

Yeah, picking on someone because they are too timid and demanding that they fight you despite knowing that they hat violence is the right way to make someone a man. Hip hooray for toxic masculinity!

Yugi defending Joey and Tristan results in him getting a beating as well.

One of the interesting things about early Yu-Gi-Oh is the raw and ugly violence. We talking dirty violence where people get kneed in the chest and kicked while they lie down. Not just off-screen, we witness our heroes be pummeled, making the series a bit more gritty and frightening. And this series is not for those with a weak stomach.

Joey is stunned, partly because Yugi defends him, but way more of the short spiky-haired kid’s courage. But Yugi is anything but afraid. After all, he refused to fight Joey, but he still tried to get the puzzle back(not successfully, but he made an effort instead of just squirming).

After Ushio finished kicking poor Yugi’s ass, he tells him to bring him money as “payment” for his “bodyguard service.” And we talking 200000 yen, that’s a lot of dough.

Ushio even pulls a god damn knife(!), just to show how fucking crazy he is!

Yugi goes home to see if he has money enough to pay Ushio, but he only has 1656 yen. In frustration, Yugi decides to solve his unsolvable puzzle, just to think of something else than the brute with a knife who is waiting for him at school.

But what do you know? Yugi finally get the hang of it. He sees that some of the pieces just needs to be rotated differently and he finish it in a couple of minutes.

... Or he WOULD have. He finally sees that one of the pieces are missing, breaking his heart and making his awful day even worse.

But Grandpa has the last piece. He tells Yugi that one of his friends from school had found it and asked him to give it to Yugi. And that he was soaked despite it not raining.

As Yugi is happy about being able to finish the puzzle and returns to his room, his grandpa thinks about that the boy was Joey and that he asked him not to tell Yugi it was him that came with the puzzle piece. Joey also told him about Ushio blackmailing Yugi, so Grandpa secretly puts money in Yugi’s schoolbag so he won’t get in trouble.

And this is where it get’s freaky.

Yep, here it is. the iconic moment Yugi gets blessed by the puzzle so that he can turn into the split personality we refer to as Yami which is Japanese for “Dark”.

Yugi then calls Ushio and tells him to meet him outside school at midnight.

Ushio is surprised as he sees that Yugi is wearing some sort of costume and that he looks way more cocky than before.

Yugi tells Ushio that he has the money he demands, but he has twice the amount. Fricking 400000 yen!

But Yugi only “owes” 200000 to Ushio, so he suggest that they play about them in a dark and twisted game.

Yugi and Ushio take turns stabbing the stack of money placed on their hand. They have to stab hard enough to take more than one single bill. The winner is the guy with most yen bills.

As they play, Ushio seems to be winning... but when it is his turn, he can feel that his hand is way too eager to stab.

This is not just a weird-ass game. This is a “shadow game”, a game that shows your true nature. Ushio’s greed is now collected in his hand, and he so desperately want to win the game that he can’t control it. He realizes that if he stabs, he won’t be able to control his strength and he will penetrate his own hand. Ushio has to either A) give up and keep his hand or B) win the game with one hand less.

Ushio picks C.

Ushio tries to kill Yugi, but that was a mistake. The puzzle has made him super human and he leaps from the ground, evading the knife.

And cheating in a shadow game is a big no-go as the host of the game has authority to punish you.

Yami Yugi curses Ushio with “Illusion of Greed”, meaning he will be doomed to live in an imaginary world where he sees nothing but money everywhere.

Next morning, he is still outside the schoolyard like a drooling idiot who yells about all of his imaginary money.

Yugi has no memory of what happened but is glad he no longer has to be worried of Ushio who is a harmless nutcase. Not only that, he has finally finished his puzzle... and Joey offers him his friendship.

And that was the start of the horror manga turned card game commercial. It has a lot of charm, is very eerie and I think I prefer Yami Yugi’s first look that is more child like. making him look downright creepy.

This retrospective will continue ASAP.

Till then, I’m Waezi2, and thanks for wasting time with me.

[hes-a-rat-whisperer]

Sorry to disturb you a lot!! But do you have any explicative lore posts, i love yours ocs but what the hell do they do, did and will do!?!?!?!? I literally know almost nothing abt them /nm

I have a few of those posts scattered around here and there, but I honestly don´t know where, so let me give you a brief summary:

Alistair Connor: an old, british gentleman with a rather short fuse. he is also a serial killer, most commonly known as "the rat whisperer". he feeds the remains of his victims to his rats, (of which there are a LOT) which is why no bodies could ever be found, only blood and tiny claw marks. some people in his neighborhood think it´s some kind of animal that roams the streets at night, while others think there is a person behind these cases. but since nobody can really tell for sure, ´the rat whisperer´ is more or less a cryptid. him becoming this ´unknown evil´ has to do with a traumatic experience at his old workplace which ended with him murdering his boss with a letter opener.

Cornelius and Cornelia Kelly: two chipper and positive leprechauns who were both raised in a household where tradition is valued very highly. unfortunately, that tradition also involves that Cornelia would get forcefully married off as soon as she turns 18. they were devastated about that, but their father was so blinded by his need to keep the old tradition going, that he didn´t seem to care. Cornelius and Cornelia were in a relationship around this time, something they of course kept secret, but now with the marriage inching closer and closer, they were dreading that they would get separated..

Guinness: another leprechaun, one who has a bit of a temper, similar to Alistair. however, instead of solving all of his problems with violence, he tends to only choose violence when he´s exhausted all other options. he´s very protective, with a strong sense of justice and a well functioning moral compass. he is best friends with the kelly twins, even more, they see him as their older brother who always helps them with a reassuring word or two, or even by giving them some good advice.

Gosgo: a hybrid creature. he has features of a rabbit, a lion, a kangaroo and a wolf. nobody knows what he is or where exactly he came from. the kelly twins, who found him as an orphaned baby in the forest, immediatelly took him in and begun raising him as their son. Gosgo is very positive, a bit naive and always sees things from the most brightest angle. people tend to think he´s stupid, since he can´t understand sarcasm and has issues with certain ´human´ things (like brushing teeth) but intelligence has nothing to do with that. Gosgo is a literal sunshine, always wanting to help, always trying his best and always offering hugs and candy to people he barely knows or even just met.

Elijah: a wild and somewhat irresponsible unicorn boy. Elijah is best described as a "kind jock". he´s a team player who always includes everyone, but can also be very stubborn! while most unicorns pride themselves in their magic and beauty, Eli is most proud of his speed! he would constantly race through the forest at high speeds and boast about how fast he is. he even snuck onto horseraces at some point! and the leprechaun family would assist him in that adventure, by pretending to be his "jockeys". Guinness even gave him his hat, so he could hide his horn better. he eventually stopped though, due to his sister Lilith being very worried about him. it took a lot of convincing, but he stopped.

Lilith: a beautiful unicorn lady with a long luxurious mane and sparkling eyes. at first glance, she has the same intimidating energy as a high school "mean girl", but that couldn´t be further from the truth. sure, she has a posse (or herd) of rather catty unicorn girls behind her who are always acting like their girl Lilith is the queen of the forest, but Lily thinks they´re just being silly and supportive. Lily works as a barkeeper and as such, always lends an ear to whoever needs it. she is very bad with confrontation though and would rather stay out of it, which is why her friend Guinness is always there to keep an eye out and to throw out troublemaking patrons. he´s pretty much her self proclaimed security guard, if you will.

extras!!

Alistair´s rats: he has a lot of them, but they´re ALL aggressive and they all have a taste for human flesh. they love their "daddy" and always snuggle close to him whenever they sense that he´s not feeling well. sometimes, Alistair thinks that they would simply leave him if he stopped providing them with food, thinking they´re only hanging around because he feeds them, but that is far, far from the truth! they´re loyal and will follow their daddy to hell and back.

Lilith´s herd: catty. all of them. they´re all unicorn ladies with differing mane and horn colors (and I don´t really have names for each one) they always stick together, as a herd does, and find great joy in the way everyone looks at them as they march through the forest. also, they absolutely adore Lilith´s brother Eli! they always dote on him and tell him just how adorable he is

[dynamics-of-an-asteroid]

Dont suppose you have a copy of the interview you could share?

For you, dear anon~

His Dark Materials: Andrew Scott on life after Fleabag and Sherlock

We’ve loved him as both Fleabag’s Hot Priest and Sherlock’s menacing Moriarty. Now, he’s back on our screens in the new series of His Dark Materials. Polly Vernon talks to our TV crush

Andrew Scott is mortified. The actor – formerly Moriarty to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, then the Hot Priest of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, imminently Colonel John Parry in the BBC’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials – arrives at the photographic studio, bang on the appointed hour, in a fawn cashmere cardigan with a fine gold chain around his neck, bemoaning “this terrible, terrible eye infection, which is making me so self-conscious. I’m so sorry. It isn’t that you’ve massively upset me before we’ve even started. It’s so annoying. But anyway…”

Scott, 44, is small, vivid, wiry and garrulously Irish, with a face that is not handsome so much as mesmerising, intense, sharply boned, symmetrical, startlingly expressive. Sequences of emotions so subtle and complicated that I can’t begin to identify or keep up with them ruffle his brow from moment to moment. And, yup, the whole thing is rather disrupted by his left eye. This is no light kiss of conjunctivitis. It’s a swollen, red, perma-weeping situation that engulfs the whole socket. Scott turns his face two thirds on to me, so the infection is largely hidden, which would probably help if we weren’t sitting in a brightly lit hair and make-up room with a massive, inescapable mirror fixed to one wall. “Oh God,” Scott says every time he catches sight of his reflection.

Stress?

“Let’s be honest,” he says. “Let’s not skirt around the issue. It’s being overworked and…” Scott’s eye begins weeping. “Oh my goodness. I am so sorry. Really, really very sorry.”

Wanna wear my sunglasses, I ask, holding them out to him.

“That would be a bit more weird, wouldn’t it? I actually did think about that in the taxi, but I thought that would be some sort of weird and screwed Invisible Man-type thing. I mean, it couldn’t be worse. And then we have to go and get our photograph taken. It’ll be one of those pictures where, you know, those creepy pictures… Of people crying?”

That’s what Photoshop’s for, I say.

“Anyway. Let’s just ignore it.”

I wonder if it’s particularly hard to walk around with an eye infection at a point in time where you’re not merely famous, as Scott is – a star of stage, screen and Bond film, winner of multiple awards, including, as of barely two weeks ago, a Best Actor Olivier for Present Laughter at the Old Vic – but specifically famous for being sexy.

In 2019, Andrew Scott became synonymous with, well, sex. While playing a character technically known as the Priest, whom the general public instantly renamed the Hot Priest, the spiritual support turned transgressive love interest of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s supremely popular Fleabag, Scott became a cypher for the nation’s more exotic desires. A deliciously contentious pin-up. Ground zero on an earnest social media debate about whether the Priest’s relationship with Fleabag should be considered abusive, power imbalanced, “problematic”. And that was just for starters.

The Priest’s sexual iconography extended far beyond the limits of the show, becoming the subject of internet memes and real-life merchandise (visit online retailer Etsy for your £12 Hot Priest mug emblazoned with an illustration of Scott in priest’s robes, alongside the word “kneel”, a reference to a pivotal moment between the show’s lead characters, which takes place in a confession box, the climax of which, assuming you haven’t already seen it, you could probably take a stab at). There was an unprecedented upsurge in young worshippers, and women started bombarding social media “influencer” the Rev Chris Lee of west London with nude photographs. There was much foetid fan fiction.

To be publicly defined by so much sex, as Scott still is, a year and a half after Fleabag concluded, and then to be encumbered by something as visibly unsexy as an eye infection, I can see how that might make a chap self-conscious.

Scott isn’t here to rake up all that old Hot Priest stuff, mind. He’s here to talk about the second series of His Dark Materials, a lush, expensive fantasy drama based on the Philip Pullman books, jewel in the crown of the BBC’s autumn schedule. The series was filmed through 2019 and the beginning of 2020 and had all but wrapped before lockdown. Good timing, as it turned out, because the extensive post-production processes, unlike shooting, could be completed in isolation.

Scott’s Colonel John Parry is an explorer, the missing father of the central character, 14-year-old Will Parry. He’s a man who slipped into a parallel universe some years earlier, acquired a “daemon” – an exterior animal-formed expression of his soul, a female osprey called Sayan Kötör, voiced with public-pleasing symmetry by Phoebe Waller-Bridge – and never found a way back to “our” world and his son. I speak as a fan of the books, which you might describe as a darker, existential response to Harry Potter, although honestly? They’re better than that. The show is great, a deft, rewarding interpretation, and Scott is an exciting prospect as Parry.

Did he jump at the part?

“I did, actually. It was definitely something I was into. We were doing a play and it seemed like a fun thing to do.” Scott is one of those who slips into the third person when speaking about himself in a professional capacity.

Had he read the books?

“Yeah,” he says. “I think they’re extraordinary. The truth, but told on a slant. I love the way Pullman tells children about spirituality or religion in such an extraordinary, intelligent way. He doesn’t speak down to them. He talks to children’s souls.”

Given that Pullman effectively kills off God through the course of the books and Scott’s a lapsed Irish Catholic who has suffered his share of shame on account of the church’s grip on his homeland (more on which shortly), I’d imagine Pullman’s books talked to Scott’s adult soul too.

Presumably, he didn’t have to audition. Presumably, he never has to. Too famous for auditions?

“No,” he says. “Although I’ve always thought auditioning is a pretty good thing to do.”

Why?

“Because you’re able to understand, ‘Oh, this is the vibe here.’ You think, when you’re an actor, you don’t have much choice, but I’ve always felt like auditioning is a good opportunity for you to go, ‘Oh well, I don’t much like you either. I think you’re dreadful!’ ”

I don’t care that you didn’t give me that part?

“Yeah.” Scott becomes playfully, theatrically defiant. “I don’t care!” He flicks aside an imaginary rejection with a churlish hand.

Will John Parry and His Dark Materials be enough to eliminate all residual overtones of Hot Priest sexiness from Scott? Maybe. He is a fine actor, no question, entirely transformed from role to role. I saw him play Paul, a narcissistic, fame-addled touring rock star, at the Royal Court in 2014 in Simon Stephens’ Birdland, back when his deeply sinister Moriarty weighed almost as heavily on Scott’s reputation as the Hot Priest does now. I’d watched him become someone else entirely on stage. “Oh, you saw that?” Scott says, pleased.

I quote, “Am I cancer?” at him, his defining line from the play, as evidence.

“Oh Jesus. Oh f***ing hell. Oh my. I’d forgotten that line. ‘Am I cancer?’ ”

The Hot Priest association hasn’t left him yet, which is why I find myself asking what it’s like to be the very definition of sexiness.

“You get invited to more parties.”

Better parties?

“Yeah.”

Better than during his Moriarty phase?

“Definitely.”

It must be fun to find yourself le dernier cri in sexy, according to the whole nation.

“Yeah, that’s fun,” he says. “I didn’t really like being associated with scary. It’s not what I’m interested in being, in life, being intimidating to people. It’s not part of my nature, whereas being sexy to people…”

That is part of his nature?

“Well, they’re very different things.”

They’re both about having power over people.

“I suppose they are, yes.”

So did Scott, bored of scaring people, say to Phoebe Waller-Bridge, writer and star of Fleabag and a long-term friend (they met in 2009 while starring in Roaring Trade at the Soho Theatre), “Write a role for me that will make everyone think I’m just really, really sexy now”?

“That’s such a good belt. Are they two ‘Gs’?”

“Exactly.”

——————————

Andrew Scott is not the easiest interview. He’s utterly charming. Really, just a delight. In between prostrating himself for the offence of his eye and apologising for not turning up the first time we were scheduled to meet (ten days earlier; a delayed Covid test result meant he couldn’t make it), he ensures I have a good time in his company. He is playful. He makes me laugh. His every utterance is delivered as a grand performance. (“Shhhh! Just… Shhhh!” he implores, placing a finger against his lips while expressing frustrations over the mindless jabber of social media, and he does it so powerfully, he compels me to be quiet, breathlessly to await delivery of his next line.) He finds elegant ways to flatter me. He laughs at my jokes and is terribly taken with my belt.

Yeah. For Gucci.

“Oh. Ha ha! I thought it was the Golden Globes. I love the Golden Globes. Ha ha!”

And of course, he’s Irish. Clichédly, melodiously Irish, which makes everything sound softer and jollier than it might otherwise.

As for the actual business of being interviewed, of answering straight questions with straight answers, finishing off sentences, offering more than a slip-slide of vagaries punctuated by vigorous hand gestures, none of which translates into print? He’d rather not.

He tells me, as he’s told other journalists before, this is because he’s interested in navigating the line between “privacy and secrecy”, then says he’s aware he’s sometimes “got away with secrecy under the guise and respectability of privacy”, as if signalling potential incoming slipperiness, which means I prepare to throw every trick in the book at him.

First up: amateur psychology.

Might Andrew Scott’s gayness be at the heart of his reluctance to speak more freely? Perhaps. This is no scoop. He’s been out for almost as long as he’s been famous. “I mean, as a civilian, I was quite young [when I came out], you know? But then, as a celebrity…”

He tails off, allows me to fill in the blanks. This is another of his evasion tactics. I can’t very well quote Scott on the presumptions I make about things he never quite says.

He had to have another coming out?

“Yes. And I have another one coming up.”

He has another coming out coming up?

“Yeah.”

So that will be, what? Tier 3 gayness?

“Tier 3, yeah.”

Scott grew up in Ireland at a time when it wasn’t legal to be gay, which could certainly seed an enduring reluctance towards carefree openness in a person. He invokes the concept of shame more regularly than the average interviewee. He was born in Dublin in 1976 to Nora, an art teacher, and Jim, who worked at an employment agency. He has one older sister, Sarah, and a younger one, Hannah.

He was shy, so started attending a children’s drama course.

Did that help?

“Yeah. Acting to me is not pretending to be someone else. It’s more like, this is who I actually am. The lie that tells the truth,” he says. I am none the wiser. He was clearly talented. He went from adverts to his first starring role in a film aged 17 (Korea, directed by Cathal Black), won a bursary to art school but took a place at Trinity College Dublin to study drama instead, and ditched that six months in to join Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. He’s been gainfully employed in the field ever since.

How Catholic was his upbringing?

“Well, there were Catholic priests in my life,” he says. “None of whom I wanted to have sex with.”

Does it amuse Scott to know he inspired a mass fetishising of priestly ranks? That in 2019, the Hot Priest would make, “Can you have sex with a Catholic priest?” one of the most googled terms of the year?

“Absolutely f***ing mental,” he says.

Homosexuality wasn’t legalised in Ireland until 1993, when Scott was 16.

“I always think, if I’d had a boyfriend then, which I definitely did not…”

No?

“No.”

He knew he was gay, though?

“No. No, no, no, no!”

Was he suppressing it or not thinking about it?

“I would say suppressing. Definitely suppressing. I don’t believe people just don’t think about it.”

An upbeat, cheesy jazz remix of something or other starts playing outside the room.

“Oooh, this is the soundtrack for this bit of the interview,” says Scott. He wiggles his shoulders to the music.

I switch to strict dominatrix interviewer mode. Focus, I say. You were about to tell me something good.

“Oh, shit, was I? OK. I think what’s really insidious is that people don’t ask you about sex or… People wouldn’t say, ‘Are you gay or are you [straight]?’ And the lack of directness is very damaging. They just didn’t go there.”

Does he think his family, friends, the people closest to him knew then that he was gay?

“No,” he says. “I don’t think they did know. Or maybe they have a suspicion, but they think, I want to be respectful, so I’m not going to ask about that. Then [when you do come out], people say, ‘Oh, I’m glad.’ You know? If you do talk about it. So I suppose what I feel now is, talking about sex or sexuality is important. Really important.”

Having said that, “There’s still getting rid of the shame. In a situation like this, 10 or 15 years ago, I would have been…” He fakes shock, horror. “Oh no! Polly’s just asked me about [he switches to a whisper] that.”

Scott will talk about his sex life only notionally. No specifics. For 15 years, between 2001 and 2016, he was in a relationship with the actor turned screenwriter Stephen Beresford (Scott starred in Beresford’s 2014 film Pride). Ever since, he’s refused to answer questions about his romantic life.

And he’s not going to talk about it now, I presume.

“No.”

What if we talk about it opaquely?

“OK.”

Where does he see himself, domestically, in an ideal world? Married with kids whom he’ll, I dunno, adopt or have via surrogacy?

“I like it. It’s bold. Am I going to adopt or…?”

Get a surrogate?

“I definitely think that’s something I would be open to.”

Great, I say, with blatant sarcasm. Thanks. How specific.

“Ha! I’m sorry. OK. Have I got any children at the moment? No. How can I�� [explain]? OK. I was with a friend of mine in Dublin…”

His partner?

“No, no, no. Not my partner. Ah ha. I see what you were…”

Teasing. Yes.

“Ha! Yes. So, I was with a friend in Dublin and we were walking around and he was looking at apartments and I was like, ‘What about this place here?’ You know? And he said, ‘No,’ and I said, ‘Why not?’ and he said, ‘I don’t live a heteronormative life, so I don’t want a heteronormative house.’ ”

What’s a heteronormative house?

“Two up, two down thing. He goes, ‘I can live in a loft or a weird space. I don’t need those things.’ He was so proud of it. He really owned it. I think where a lot of one’s pain comes from is when you go, ‘I should want that.’ And so, to answer your question opaquely, I have kids I adore. I love children, genuinely, and I had a very happy childhood. But I also feel, if I don’t have kids, that’s all right. I think I would’ve attached a lot of shame beforehand, with not living a particularly heteronormative life… Even with being gay, there’s a sort of way of being gay that’s acceptable. And I don’t feel that any more.”

He feels you can be unacceptably gay?

“Exactly. Exactly!”

I ask when shame shifted for him and Scott says it was when Ireland voted overwhelmingly in favour of same-sex marriage in the 2015 referendum, which felt, he says, “like acceptance, genuinely. And I remember going out to this gay bar in Dublin and this girl came up to me, this cool Dublin girl, and she said, ‘What are you doing here? You need to go down to, I don’t know, blah, blah, this bar in some park.’ She was saying, ‘This isn’t the right gay bar for you. This is some shit gig,’ when the fact I’m in a gay bar in Ireland [at all] is a miracle to me, and then some person with a half-shaved head is telling me, ‘No, you need to go somewhere cooler.’ ”

His left eye starts weeping again.

“I’m so happy about that,” he says. “Even though I’m crying.”

I ask Scott if he has a game plan when picking roles, if he plots his course from Sherlock villain to Bond quasi-villain (he played Max Denbigh in Spectre) to sex icon, and, if so, what next? “No. Jesus, no,” he says.

We talk about the totalitarianism of social media, which he isn’t on, and share a mutual despair over it. “I thought it was something one would associate with the right, but actually, now it’s [the left] that is very ‘you’re this’ or ‘you’re that’. I find that quite frightening. It actually makes me feel ferocious.”

Is he not worried about being cancelled, of somehow saying the “wrong” thing, according to Twitter sensitivities, then having a thousand voices mobilised against him, demanding his firing, in the style of JK Rowling?

“I’m not,” he says. “I refuse to be. A very intelligent person I was talking to recently was writing a book and he said, ‘I’m going to get a sensitivity expert to have a look. I don’t want to get cancelled.’ I found that frightening.”

Is he rich? “Rich is the absence of worry about money,” he says. He can’t remember the last time he worried about money.

That must be nice.

“Of course it f***ing is. I think it’s a miracle. I really do. I was working in a French theatre in London for nothing – none of us was working for anything – and I remember the artistic director of the theatre talking about the fact we weren’t earning any money as some sort of virtue. I remember feeling really annoyed about that, like this isn’t good.”

This leads to an inevitable conversation about how the arts are suffering with Covid, including a segue down the Fatima route, the much shared government advert that depicted a young ballerina and suggested she retrain in something called cyber. “Her name’s not even Fatima,” Scott rails. “I think she’s called Desire’e. From New York.”

I mean to ask him about his experience of filming The Pursuit of Love with Lily James and Dominic West, stars of their own recent off-screen micro-scandal in Rome, just in case he lets any scurrilous insight slip, but our time’s up and it’s not as if Scott has much form on offering up scurrilous insight anyway.

Still, I feel grateful to him for meeting me halfway on the other stuff. And so I say goodbye to Andrew Scott, the UK’s foremost gay heterosexual lapsed Catholic faux-priest lust icon with a troublesome eye infection.

[growingingreenwood]

Hey I start college this week any advice? Hope all is well you are amazing!

Omg good job!! That's so exciting!!!! Alrighty, I have a bachelor’s degree and now i'm working on my Rec Therapy Degree so I’ve had like 5 and a half years of college/university experience so hopefully at least something here will be helpful for you. 

What are you going to collage to take?

One- Try to sit in the front of of the lecture hall

Classes will probably be a lot bigger than you’re used to and many people find this intimidating. I used to sit at the very back of lecture halls because I hated having to walk past rows of people, but you know what? My grades suffered for it. I’m an easily distracted human being with crippling ADHD and so being able to see everybody's computer screen was a nightmare for me. Half the class was watching movies or playing games or whatever so I didn't hear a damn word my teacher said. The closer I was to the front, the less distracting it was for me. Plus, I find that when I’m more familiar with being closer to my teachers it's easier and less intimidating for me to ask them for help or to re-explain things. 

Two- Don’t be embarrassed, everybodys a mess and other people have your question. 

The colleges I’ve been to have been nothing like highschool. We’re all in this together, we’re a suffering squad okay. So if you're too tired to ‘look good’ SICK half your class probably has not showered in like five days. Have a question that you think might make sound dumb? I can literally assure you that other people have the same question and pray somebody else will ask it. All of you are confused, it's okay. 

Three - BUY YOUR TEXTBOOKS USED!!!!!

Oh my god I cannot stress this enough. For some reason professores and schools are out here hustling textbooks like starving soundcloud rappers. We don’t need that shit. Your school probably has a facebook group or two where students are selling their old textbooks much cheaper than you could get them in bookstores. And when I mean cheaper, I mean by like 100 - 200 dollars. If you're on a physical campus, lots of people put lists of what books they're selling on their lockers so keep an eye out for flyers as well. 

Four -  Join a club! 

One of the things I really love about college is all the low pressure social situations. There's literally tons of clubs at most universities rankings from really open (First Year Social Club!!) to ridiuclously niche (We All Play Super Smash Brothers In Full Costume Once A Month) so its a great place to start when it comes to making new friends and finding some cool stuff to do! 

Five - Don’t fall for the ‘too cool’ trap. 

Lots of people have endless fun in college (like me) and some people really, really hate it. Personally, I think it has a lot to do with your attitude about being there. There's tons of pep rallies, carnivals, festivals and whatever else held by your school that can actually be super fun to attend but many people think they're ‘too cool’ for things like that. Don’t fall into this trap, I can assure you those that went to the events had like 9 billion times more fun. 

 Six - ASK FOR THE HELP THAT YOU NEED 

This lesson took me so long to learn, but it was life changing once I did learn it. There's tons of resources available to you though most universities, and most of it was probably paid for through your tuition so it makes no sense to NOT access these things. See what your school offers for counseling services, stress reduction, learning activities held in the library, financial aid, make use of your teachers office hours, things like that. Crawl through your school’s website and see what they have to offer you, you can get some really really good life advice sometimes. If you’re falling behind in school work and need an extension, ask for it. Literally the worst thing that can happen is your teacher telling you ‘no.’ Which, honestly, in my near six years of schooling has literally only happened once and it was because the teacher personally didn’t like me. 

Seven -- C’s Get Degrees 

School Burnout Is REAL, she is sneaky, and she will hit you when you least expect it. I really struggle with having too high of expectations of myself when it comes to my work/life balance. This is the only year that I haven't worked at least 20 hours a week on top of full time university education and that only because of COVID and my immune issues, however for some reason I always expect myself to do like 3 - 4 hours of homework a day. Which is lunacy. At least it is for me. I literally cannot even count how many times I’ve put my grades before my physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental wellbeing. How many times I’ve forced myself to keep studying when I knew that I had already surpassed my limit hours ago because I thought that getting an A was more important than anything else. Especially myself. That’s not true. 

You weren’t put on this earth to get straight A’s, you were put on this earth to be the best you that you can be. 

So sometimes, you really do just gotta accept that ‘C’s get Degrees’ and you gotta close your textbook, go paint your nails, call your friend, and go to bed. 

Eight -- Everything Can Be A Learning Experience 

There are endless things to learn at college, and most of them aren't what the teachers are telling you. College is where I first learned that it really isn’t the end of the world to fail sometimes. It happens, it happens to everyone, but there's always something to learn from every ‘failure’ and part of it is how you can better handle failures in the future. It teaches you how to work with people, share ideas, and grow in your self-confidence. If you take the time to self-reflect when you find yourself struggling in aspects of your life in college, you can really learn a lot about yourself and how you present. 

It was through self-reflecting on some of my peer interactions that I realized my vocabulary was creating a rift between me and them, as several people as it as a way of me purposefully trying to make myself seem ‘better’ or ‘more educated’ when in reality I just forget a lot of simple words and end up using some ridiculous monstrosity in casual sentences.  The more I made that known about myself in interactions, and mentioning how much I read, helped my interactions because it helped people to better understand WHY I speak that way. This lesson has continued to help me throughout my life. 

Nine -- Missing Lectures is a Slippery Slope

My attendance rate was already a lost cause by the time I got to University (my highschool almost didn't let me graduate because I had an 87% absentee rate and something like 300 missed detentions but I was 1 of 3 Full Honors Students and they wanted the funding so they ecentually let me lol) but I have watched many a student crawl into this 'Chronic Skipping' pit with me in my years. Im not really sure why it happens, but basically as soon as you miss 2 lectures for no concrete reason (like a dentist appointment or cause your sick or something) it's game over for you. You'll miss two classes, then three, then four, then 2 a week, then 3 a week. Then you start skipping other subjects too. Then you end up like me and suddenly its the end of the term and you realize you've only attended 4 entire classes, one of which was the first day and the other 3 were exams. (True story, that was my 8am Political Science Class in my second year)

I hope this helps somewhat!!!! Let me know if you have any specific questions! 

And thank you lovely, I’m chugging along doing my best trying to get back into my creative bubble which for some reason seems to be rather elusive and hard to track down thus far. 

[lovemesomesurveys]

Have you ever dated someone more than twice your age? No.

Have you ever “dined and dashed”? Absolutely not.

Have you ever been cut off by a bartender because you were too drunk? No.

Have you ever borrowed money from your mom & lied about why you needed it? Nope.

Have you ever dated someone just because they had money? No, and I never would.

Have you ever lied to your spouse about the money you spent shopping? Never been in a serious relationship where I discussed my spending habits, but if I was I wouldn’t feel any reason to lie about what I did with my own money.

Have you ever flirted with a cop to get out of a ticket? Never been in a situation where I got pulled over or issued a ticket for any reason, but I wouldn’t even attempt doing something like that. I’d just take the ticket and either pay it or try to fight it if I felt I wasn’t deserving of it. Not to mention, it wouldn’t work cause I’m an ugly mess and have no flirting skills at all lol. That takes confidence that I don’t have.  Have you ever gone on a first date with no underwear? No.

Do you treat attractive people better than others who aren’t as attractive? Uh, no. That’s a really shitty thing to do.

Are you more comfortable with friends that are less attractive than you? Wow. I don’t think about the attractiveness of people when befriending someone, that’s not even a thought in my mind. I befriend people based on them as people, on their personality and character. Ya know, the important stuff. I’m also not a narcissistic, vain, arrogant, cocky person who thinks I’m better than other people. Plus, ya’ll know my self-esteem is shit.

Have you ever hated a job to the point that you tried to get fired? Never had a job, but if I was that unhappy I think I would just try and find something else if possible and then quit? I wouldn’t want to get fired.

Have you ever lied about your weight on a driver license? No.

Have you ever lied during a job interview? Never had a job interview.

Have you ever lied to your boss to get out of work?

Have you ever lied under oath in court? Never been in court.

Have you ever bought alcohol for someone underage? No.

Have you ever started a rumor to ruin someones reputation? No.

Have you ever switched tags on an item to pay less for it? No.

Have you taken any pics of yourself that you wont want your parents to see? Yes. No nudes, but sad attempts at sexy poses haha.

Did you ever tell your BF/GF you like their outfit when you really didn’t? I don’t think to a boyfriend specifically, but I’ve said that to people, yes :X I feel bad if someone asks if I like their outfit or hair and I don’t. I’ve been honest as well, in a nice way of course, but I feel bad. I’ve been like, “Maybe not in that color or style” or “try a different pair” or something. But I also like to make known that it’s just my personal opinion, so if they like it and it makes them feel good then go for it cause that’s what matters.

Did you ever get fired and tell someone you were laid off?

Would you turn a family member in if you saw them commit murder? Yikesss.

Have you ever turned in a school paper that someone else wrote for you? I never had anyone else write a paper or do any assignment for me.

Have you ever written a check that you knew was going to bounce? No.

Do you feel accepted by your BF/GF ’s family? I’m single.

If you were an employer, would you hire someone with your exact work ethic? With my work ethic? Uh, no haha. I’m not doing anything productive with my life. I have no energy, no motivation. I would not be useful to anyone.

Do you lie about your age? Nope. 

Would you risk your life to save a total stranger? I don’t know. :X I feel like that makes me a bad person. That’s not to say I wouldn’t try to help them in some way either by myself or by getting them the necessary help. 

Have you ever trashed your ex’s car after an argument? No.

Have you ever snuck out of the house to go out with friends? Nope. I wouldn’t have had to do that, I could have had a social life when I was a teenager, my parents would have encouraged it. I just... didn’t. I was a total homebody.

Have you ever shoplifted? No.

Have you ever done something because of peer pressure you are ashamed of? Yes. Have you ever been embarrassed to introduce your parents to anyone? Nooo. I’ve never been embarrassed by my parents, never would be. I have awesome parents and I love them. My mom and I are especially close, she’s my best friend. And besides, everyone always thought my parents were cool haha. 

Would you leave a note on a car claiming responsibility if you damaged it? Yes. That’s the proper protocol, right? I’m not gonna be an ass and say nothing.

Have you ever dis-liked some because you thought they look better than you? Wow, no. I got into this already with the friends question. I don’t base how I feel about someone as a person based on how they look. That has nothing to do with who they really are. My brain also just doesn’t work that way, like I don’t see or meet someone and think, “hm they’re really attractive, that could be a threat to me in some way and I don’t like them” or something. Like what??

Have you ever used someones handicapped parking pass to get a parking spot? I’m handicapped and have my own parking placard, thanks. Please don’t do that, though. 

Hve you ever held back a well deserved compliment because you were jealous? I might have before.

Do you guilt people into giving you what you want? If I’ve ever done this, it wasn’t intentionally. <<< Yeah, I don’t pull the disability or health problems card. I’ve done it in a playful way with my family like, “aww I don’t feel good, I bet my favorite food would make me feel better *wink wink*” but that’s it. However, I feel that happens without me doing that if that makes sense. Like, I think people get things for me sometimes because they know I’m going through a hard time and feel bad for me. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain.

Would most ppl consider you better than average looking? Uh, I highly doubt that. We know how I feel about myself, but others would probably just say I’m average to be nice

For yourself, would you rather have a perfect body or high IQ? High IQ. 

Have you ever embarrassed some intentionally in public? Not intentionally, but I’m sure I have.

Have you ever used a false ID? Nope.

Are you embarrassed to tell people your job? I don’t have a job, soo.

Would you give up your car to save the planet? I don’t even have a car. I’m glad my parents and brother have their own cars, though... I see it as a necessity for us.

Are you more likely to believe a man or woman? I don’t decide who to believe based on gender. I hear what they have to say and make my own judgment. Unless they give me a reason to doubt or be skeptical then I’ll likely believe them.

Has your credit card ever been declined? No.

If you ran over an animal would you keep driving? Gahhh. I don’t drive, but that’s something that worries me.

Do you think your parents are too critical of you? No.

Would you cover up your boss’s wrong doing for a promotion? Uhh, what kinda shady company am I working for?? 

Do you avoid conversation with ppl you think are smarter than you? I admit that I feel intimidated and would feel self-conscious about myself. Like if they asked me about something I didn’t know about or was having a conversation I couldn’t contribute to. I’ve been around people who I felt dumb or bad about myself around and as though I was being judged, so I definitely try to avoid that. There’s also been times where it was encouraged to ask questions and the person was inviting and didn’t make me feel inferior in some way.

Ever blame a sibling for something you did wrong? No.

Have you ever dated someone you met through a personal ad? Nope. Also, personal ad sounds so old school lol.

Ever lie about you [or your kids] age to get a discount? May have stretched the kid’s discount a couple years a time or two when I was a kid. :X Like if the cutoff was 11, but I was like 12 or 13. Shhhh. 

Have you ever accepted credit for someone else’s work? No.

Did you ever buy something expensive,wear it once and return it? No.

Have you ever re-gifted something? >> Of course. No use keeping something I’m not going to use, or that someone else would enjoy more. <<< Same. I don’t really see it as a bad thing. And I’m usually upfront about it anyway like hey I thought maybe you would enjoy this, I don’t personally have any use for it right now or something.

Do you really care about saving the planet for future generations? I care, but I admit I’m not doing much about it.

[semicolonthefifth]

CROSS Ch4 - You Rascal You

A couple hours had passed since then. The music-player had been cycling through several songs and had eventually settled on “Run’ Em Off” by Lefty Frizzel - a moderately cheery Old Earth Western tune. Charlie recalled hearing Jason groan quite audibly when it played.

Charlie had never seen a man drink seven full, large glasses at a bar in one sitting - especially not without losing control of their higher brain functions.

Yet there he was - the man he’d come to know as Jason Cross. Gunslinger; bounty hunter; one of a two man team, part of a famed group that would take down raiders through skill and knowledge of the land. He was a man he only knew as a wondrous tale of wasteland justice; and there he was, chugging alcohol as if he was competing for the world’s biggest drunkard. Yet at his 8th glass in the man stood. At least that was something worth admiring.

Frankie, meanwhile, was all too busy admiring the book - his nose deep into the pages cataloging the history of Aurora. He gazed with sheer joy in detail of every photo, sometimes turning back a page just to re-admire it some more. He let Charlie and Jason be, all while he was content with catching up on the knowhow of the world.

Charlie coughed a bit before asking politely through some discomfort, “Um, Mr. Cross?”

Jason held a finger up, silencing Charlie while he finishes his latest order. After a few large gulps does he finish, letting out a long and heavy sigh. A quietness comes after, with Jason staring off into space. Charlie almost gets a word in before Jason then speaks up.

“Fuckin’ genetics, I swear to God.” He softly complains. “I should be dead now, or at least hammered. Why am I always drawing the worst luck?”

“Yeah… was about to ask about that.” Charlie wonders aloud with a worried tone. “How are you still talking, or in fact… standing?”

“Call it a curse.” Coldly replies Jason. “Let’s just say my body ain’t built like most others if my height ain’t a strong hint by now. Don’t want to get into it though… way too personal.”

“And what I just learned WASN’T personal already?”

Jason groaned more, head brought down with a thumb squeezing at his temple. His injured hand was deep into a plate of ice, half already melted at this point - all while his free hand tends to the headache. His brain was ringing a bit, but it wasn’t the alcohol that was running deep in his body. Repressed memories kept clawing out, and trying to bury them further was hurting his head more than it was worth. With a strong flavorful exhale, he picks his head back up and looks at Charlie.

“Alright, what do you want to know?”

“Y-... You serious?” Charlie asks, a bit concerned for his own safety as he was for Jason’s.

“More than I’m not.” Jason states, with hints of a tired slurring in his speech. “I’m half thinking of running out of here, but considering how shit my luck has been I don’t want to run the risk of something worse happening out there. So… ask away. Might as well ride this newfound awfulness till it ends.”

“Ok, ok…” Charlie collects himself, doing a couple of deep breaths before taking a professional, presentable angle to speak with Jason. “You are Jason Cross. Brother to Frederick Cross. Member of the Crimson Crosses, one of the most famous militia groups on the Black Road, here on on Aurora. Aaaaaand you’ve druken enough ale in one sitting to knock out a man.”

“Yup, unfortunately yes, absolutely no, and not even close.” Answers Jason with a tired look. “Fred and I haven’t been brothers for about… 5 years now. Not a word said to each other since, that I’m certain of. I’ve also not been a member of that damn group for the same amount of time - all entirely my choice. As for the drinking, I’m not close… not a little. I think I can handle some more.”

“But why?” Charlie asked, genuinely concerned - the wideness of his eyes like a boy hearing that his childhood hero was fake all along. “You two were fantastic. I’ve gotten so many stories collected about you guys. All the adventures you’ve taken, and the good you’ve done.”

He quickly snatches his collection book from Frankie, turning a large chunk of pages to a chapter highlighting the many achievements of the Crimson Crosses. There were stylized posters and photographs, all of them singing praise upon the Crosses and their exploits. Charlie began listing them off, all with a sense of innocent pride in his voice. “Here - this one’s about you guys facing off against a crook known as the Silver Stallion. And look here! ‘The Cross Brothers, and the Attack of the Screaming Mimmies!’, a widely-seen classic. Then there’s this one where you fended off a swarm of Kodvacs from ravaging some farms. You guys were heroes!”

Jason takes a glance at the photos, the memories coming back again. With it comes that tremble behind his eyes, a sharp pinch he tries to ignore before stating coldly, “Yeah, but that was long, long ago. Told you: Fred and I ain’t brothers no more. Those adventures don’t mean anything, not when things are so fucked right now. The Crimson Crosses weren’t meant to last with how they operated.”

“Why’s that?”

With a harsh cough, Jason continues. “All Frederick was concerned about was tradition, that’s it. He wanted to keep everything like it was in the old west days. How we lives; how we operated; how we even talked - if, again, you hadn’t noticed. Meanwhile, I wanted to have us improve and modernize; he thought I was ‘ruining things’, and said I had no respect. Eventually I said ‘fuck it’ and left. Left him and that group to rot.”

“That’s it?” Charlie asked softly, yet still curious. “Couldn’t talk it out?”

“Nope, and I don’t care anymore to ever return to it. I got my own thing, and he’s got his. Out here I’ve been handling myself fine these past years. Sure, there've been some… rough parts.” Jason pauses, out of the alcohol in his system or his own emotions is unclear. “Still, I can survive. Can’t say the same thing about the Crimson Crosses, but that don’t matter.”

“That’s unfortunate to hear…” Charlie said softly, looking rather devastated. Jason noticed, but he didn’t much care for it. Suddenly then, Charlie thought of something and proceeded to ask, “Well, it wouldn’t be so bad to talk to him again, right? Maybe catch up on some things? Make amends?”

“Oh to hell with that noise!” Jason shoots back. “I got better things to do.”

Frankie slides the book back to his reach, getting back into his reading as he chimes in with, “Yeah, Jason’s his own man now. Riding around, bounty hunting for the government. Last I heard he got a lead on some guy for a high price - Sid was it?” He shoots a toothy smile at Jason, exclaiming, “Ain’t that right, Jason?”

His smile suddenly weakens once he’s face to face with the sheer, utter misery emanating from Jason’s sour expression. Frankie moves away, chuckling nervously, “I uh… take it that the job didn’t go so nicely?”

Then, a THUD!

Jason’s head slumps onto the table - his face directed down, all the while he admits to his company, “Nothing’s been going nicely. Killed the bastard, but didn’t mean - then I just embarrass myself and get my fingers fucked over when I turn in the bounty. I didn’t even get a single cred for all that trouble. Seems like my luck has just about run out. Everywhere I turn to, everywhere I go… something goes wrong. Sometimes it feels like the universe is just making me out to be a joke. Sometimes… I just wish I weren’t me.”

“Now, come on Jason.” Frankie softly replies, lending a comforting hand upon Jason’s shoulder. “You ain’t unlucky. It's just some bad circumstances. You’ll pull through in no time, I’m sure of it.”

Jason tries to feel a little better, though by now it was a feat that felt harder to get over than any mountain along this cursed world. The reassurance does not last though, as a couple new guests come in through the back of the bar to join in for the night.

The two men were broad in shape, and both quite physically intimidating. One man was quite fat, with a big bushy, coal-black beard alongside a long length of hair from his pinkish head, and a slew of tattooed flames along his muscular arms. The other was far more fit and tall in appearance - white skinned and clean shaven, with dark blonde hair shortened to a buzz cut. His lower jaw jutted outward, often times showing a small row of yellowed teeth. Despite their differences, they dressed very similarly: black leather jackets; dark-red colored shirts with white horizontal stripes; brown, dirtied pants that tucked into their black boots. Each man had a knife prominently sheathed at their belts on one side, but the fatter one has a sawed-off shotgun in his hand.

Jason’s company immediately took notice of them, with Charlie quickly collecting his book back into the backpack while Frankie remains mostly still in his seat. Meanwhile, Jason was too mentally exhausted to even see them; he kept one hand one the ice and the other on the table, all the while groaning every now and then.

The Bartender also saw them - doing a table-take before moving himself away. As the two men slowly made their way to the trio, he observed carefully from where he stood.

Once the two men reached the others, the fit one of the pair looked over them with a brutish scowl - all the while his fatter friend circled over in a slow pace so as to flank the group. Frankie, nervous though smiling, tries being civil, “Hey there uh… friends. You needin’ something?”

Charlie wrapped his arms tight around his back, sticking extremely close to Frankie. The fit-bodied brute unclenches his jaw, cracking it as he adjusts it before speaking in a thick drawl, “Name’s Jessup, ‘friend’... and he’s Burk” He adds, nodding to his partner. “We here juss’ to be lookin’. No issue in’at, yeah? Juss’ a couple guys coming in for a drink is all.”

He leans close from where he stands, while his hands are kept to his side - very close to to his knife where it’s plainly seen. His mouth hangs crooked at times,with lips dipping down obnoxiously. Jessup continues, “Have been runnin’ down the road and back all nigh’ long. Going down the ways and makin’ our mark cross the dunes. We juss’ abou’ looking fer’ someone who’s causing us some problems up on ‘dere road. Wen’ in and murdered a friend of ours… and ‘den carried him off.”

A nervous chuckle escapes from Frankie’s lips, which he fails to contain as the goon Burk completes his slow round. The man gets closer to Jason, examining as best he could. Meanwhile Frankie insists, “Hadn’t seen anyone like that, sir. How do you even know your friend was killed anyhow? Maybe he ran off somewhere?”

Jessup doesn’t flinch or change his expression, instead adding, “Oh, we know he killed him. Supposed to come meet us back, and gave us some warning ‘case any problem were to come his way. ‘Course he never came back, so we checked on a bar he said he were goin’ for. ‘Course we found his body by ‘dere road - put away by his killer. Followed on over ‘tword’s dat bars he mentioned, and then soon enuff one of ‘dem squealed about who done it.”

He slowly rises back, cracking his neck and jaw as he towers over everyone. The knife by his belt tapped by his muscular hands, tense and ready. “Roughed up the owner pretty good - probably hurt his friends just as fierce, I reckon. ‘Ventually he gave a name and some general idea on where he gone on and fled. About put us through a good couple’a hours, but we got the run on the man. Man were described as a blonde, big fella - red bandanna ‘round his head, and got a vest ‘longside some goggles. Name were…. Jason Cross. That soundin’ familiar?”

Charlie was fiercely shaking in his seat, while Frankie had lost all the color and optimism in his face. The corners of Jessup’s lips curled up a bit upon seeing their reactions before he slowly turns his gaze right towards Jason. He asks with a soft intimidation, “Him, eh? Am I gettin��� right?”

Before either could answer, Jessup starts moving over. Frankie attempts to stop him by getting in front, but is quickly stopped when Jessup snatches his arms and slams the man against the table. Pinned, Frankie struggles as Jessup steals the man’s sidearm, keeping it away while his friend Burk makes his move. The Bartender can’t do anything to help, as Jessup aims the stolen gun right at the owner.

“Don’t be gettin’ any bright ideas, fella.” Jessup growls through gritted teeth. “We only wantin’ one dead man today, so don’t push us to make room for four. Keep yo’self out of our business if you know what’s good for ya’.”

All the while Burk holds up his shotgun, tapping Jason on the shoulder with a free hand while the gun was aimed. Jason stirs, looking lazily at the two as his mind starts to catch up on things. When he finally puts two and two together, he winces and groans, letting out a slow, tired, “Oh, damn it. It’s me, right? Of-fucking-course it’s me… it always got to be me.”

“Get up!” Shouts Burk, striking the butt of his shotgun at Jason’s back. Jason barely reacts, not even out of pain. His head is giving him all sorts of ringings and fog. It’s like an ongoing fireworks event is bouncing around in his head, and it ain’t letting up anytime soon. There’s enough awareness to get him to hold his hands up slowly, though he still groans in doing so.

“I’m coming, I’m coming… just give me a second ok?” Jason slurs in his remark. “My head’s a bit fuzzy.” He lightly shakes his head, not so much to push the intruders into making the problem any worse than it should. Afterwards, he suggests, “Mind we take this outside? I’d rather not die in a bar, personally speaking. I think that’s not gonna do me any favors for me after I’m dead.”

“No chance there, friend.” Jessup chimes in. “Boss wantin’ you dead. Right here, so nobody be goin’ and messin’ with us again.”

“Yeah!” Adds Burk, “So pipe down! Else, we make this a slow one.”

Jason blinked, his expression a mix of confusion, intoxication, and grumpiness. Some of it brought by the situation, part of it by the music. Just as his whole world was turning upside down; just when it seemed he was about to be done in at the worst possible way - the universe throws another wrench at the burning tractor that was Jason’s life.

Blaring from the radio like an insane bastard was about the worst song that could play at that moment: “Paraylized” by the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. It screeched with a mix of unintelligible lyrics screamed aloud, alongside a set of banging drums and cymbals. All that noise turned the fireworks in Jason’s head into a lineup of air horns playing simultaneously. It woke Jason’s sense quick, but at the cost of knowing that this song would be what followed him into the afterlife. If disappointment could kill, it would’ve done him away three times by now.

He held a finger up as he stared back between the music-player and the two goons. Then he begged, meaning it when he says, “Listen… if I’m dying, can I make one last request?”

Jessup pursed his lips, sighing gravely, “Yeah?”

“Please.” Jason pleaded aggressively, “Can I please change the song? I’ll die, alright, but it shouldn’t be to this. It can’t be to this. Anything but that piece of crap.”

All of them glanced towards the music player, to which even Jessup and his partner looked troubled at. Eye-twitching, it almost seemed heartless to make THAT the last thing for someone to hear before they die. After a moment he stepped aside, nodding to Burk to let Jason move ahead - though to keep his gun aimed still.

Slowly, on the death mark, Jason Cross makes his way to the player. He twitched and frowned at every incomprehensible shout from the singer, but prayed and gave thanks to the universe that - at the very least - he could change it before he died. For a moment he thought how easy it would be to run out through the hallway at this point, then out the back - but he knows that was his fear talking; were he to leave, it would only put his friends in danger in his stead. After a long, slow walk he made it to the music-player, studying it for a moment.

It was a neat little invention, inspired by the more modern techs made in the 21st century of the Old Earth. The player was a small rectangular box with a screen monitor that, when touched, would respond to the users action. It had a series of wires going into the walls, likely into the several speakers hidden throughout the saloon. The box was a brown color, to better match the area, but also dusted with age. The screen lit up past the dust, a sign that few ever come to change the music themselves. When Jason scrolled through the selection, he found it to be near infinite, thanks in part to the incredible storage this little box held. As he scrolled, he cycled through what music was available - as he couldn’t afford the time to be picky.

There were all sorts of songs, most of which had a country feel. There were variations of grunge, rock, and easy listening throughout the pre-selected library. Jason recognized some names: Eddie Arnold, the Larks, Dick Dale, along with some Van Morrison. He felt the clock ticking - he had to find something, anything.

If Jason Cross were to die today, he ought to die to something different.

He hovered his fingers to the monitor, closed his eyes, and picked a song at random.

Then, silence.

Nothing.

Soon, a screech - Jason’s ears perk and he cringes.

A guitar strums. The drums follow. There’s a beat that hits hard.

Jason’s eyes slowly open, and then his body eases. He turns away from the music player, and right there simply lets the music hit him. The lyrics come, sung by a dry voice that speaks of a rascal to be made dead. The song hits Jason in the way he needed, as if it woke him up - and pointed him on a path right back to those men.

For the first time in a long while, though he cannot say how, Jason felt good. A sensation crawls up his spine, and a light breathless chuckle erupts out softly.

The two men look confused, but Jessup is quick to shout in a pissed off tone, “Alright ‘den! Get on back ‘ere, Cross! It’s about time you died!”

Jason looks at them, and after a look around he slowly makes his way back. Being careful, he grabs something off the hallway wall and keeps it right close.

He moves further towards the two, stopping just right before them. Jason’s friends are unable to do much at this time, and the Bartender is just as stuck. His attention is immediately drawn to Jessup, whose lip twists into a grin - his bottom lip still sagging, enough to show his browned gums. Burk’s shotgun is aimed at the ready, and Jessup asks,

“Any final words?”

Jason doesn’t nod or shift for that moment, instead staring intensely right back at Jessup as he answers back, “Yeah…”

“...Draw.”

Quick as a flash! Jason flips his hands and produces a revolver, aimed right at Jessup’s throat. Both men were taken by surprise - the gun was too quick to register before it had already pinned close to his jugular. Jessup chokes a bit out of reflex, but he keeps his cool. He looks at Jason, right into his eyes - through the goggles he can see pure anger daggered right back with an odd greenish spark.

Rob is left surprised, holding the shotgun as he tries to get what had just happened. For a moment his eyes concentrate on the gun Jason’s holding.

“You be goin’ and making a big mistake.” Jessup scowls, spitting at his t’s and k’s.

Jason doesn’t give. He returns in kind, fierly. “I’ll be the fucking judge of that.”

Rob looks closer at the gun. He squints, and thinks aloud, “Is that a--”

SMASH! Shards of white porcelain and half-melted ice fall everywhere. Frankie is risen off his seat, holding a broken plate while all the other pieces are spread about or wedges into Burk’s head. The fat brute recoils in pain; the shotgun is lowered before it’s finally dropped.

Jason takes the opportunity, smacking the revolver upside the brutes head. Hard. Jessup falls to the side, also dropping the gun he’d stolen from Frankie before it slides far away.

Angry, Burk gets up and charges at Jason - he tackles him against the bar table and begins to lay down a series of heavy strikes against Jason’s face and body. Pinned down, Jason tries to fight back against the blows, by kicking against his fatter opponent. All the while the Bartender finally gets the chance to join in and tries to push Burk off Jason - as well, Frankie and Charlie try their best to smack at the man.

Not content with just punching, Burk ignored everything before pulling his knife from off his belt and goes for the stab.

The blade swings wildly, causing everybody around the two to step back to dodge. Burk’s hand raises high for the moment and he strikes down, landing a deep stab into the table - near Jason’s neck.

Jason keeps moving, but the man pulls and goes again for the kill - close enough to nick him on the cheek.

After a couple more swings, and a hefty shove to push everyone away, Burk slams the knife down. A hard scream is heard! Blood shoots up as the knife pierces Jason’s left shoulder!

It twists, and suddenly Jason’s adrenaline hikes up enough for him to launch the man away with a fierce kick - pushing him off and onto the floor.

Jason gets up, breathing harshly as his pained growls start to sound like a pained beast. He doesn’t have time to register the knife stuck on him, but instead his attention is immediately directed at the goon that put it there. Through the tinted goggles, all Jason could see was red.

Before Burk could even move an inch or utter a word, he’s quickly overcome by Jason - who starts to beat him with the gun he picked off the wall. Fierce blow after blow is unleashed upon the man, fueled by pure, unadulterated anger.

The others are frozen in terror. Jason goes mad with his beatings. With Burk on his ass and against the wall, there was nowhere to turn to to escape Jason’s pummeling. He’s beaten down by the gun; slammed in the face by Jason’s knee; his head kicked in by a downward stomp. In between the pain he could only catch a glimpse of how bull mad Jason was, and nothing more. Even when Jason loses his grip of the gun through the blood, he still keeps at it with his fist.

Blood splatters, against walls, tables, and chairs. The bar echoes with violent thuds and hectic breathing. Frankie, Charlie, and the Bartender watch Jason beat the man down - too shocked to get in the way. It’s hard, at this point, to even recognize the intruder’s face… or to know if he was even still alive at this point.

Meanwhile, as Jason keeps hitting, Jessup recovers and wakes from his blow. He spits some blood and a couple teeth onto the floor, before noticing the bloodied revolver that Jason struck him with - on the floor and within his reach. Struggling, he makes the grab and picks it up before aiming it right at Jason.

Jason finally notices, as does everyone else who all stare down at the grinning Jessup. Breathing hotly, and with his arms exhausted and blood-stained, Jason doesn’t do much, nor does he react strongly. All he does is look down at the injured brute aiming the gun.

Jessup lets out a pained laugh, with blood dripping off his lip. “All ya’ll are so dead. Every las’ fucking one of ya! Ain’t gonna be a soul alive once Boss Lars is done with you.”

He cackles and bleeds before pulling the trigger!

Nothing.

Not even a click.

His expression instantly sours into utter shock as he then turns the revolver - it is a replica. A fake.

Then he hears something getting picked off the floor. Looking up, he sees Jason holding Rob’s shotgun with one hand - aimed right at Jessup’s face.

Jason glares down at him, then, with barely restrained rage, states, 

“I’d like to see you try.”

Click.

BANG! Ca-click, BANG!

The bar is showered by a large mist of blood. From where Jessup’s head once was, there is now only a mess of gore splattered all over the floor. Two walls are covered in blood and brain matter, and much of the bar table is colored in similar red. Trickles of it hit everyone, but not as much as it hits Jason.

Frankie, after a long pause of shock, lays against the table as he pants and wipes the blood off his face. He tries to look for his gun, but mentally puts that off for later.

Charlie stares on like a deer in headlights. He stands completely straight, as he looks on. Frightened, shocked… amazed, though he doesn’t say.

The Bartender is the least emotional or reactionary of them all. He takes a deep breath before slowly making his way to the back closet at the end of the bar.

Then there was Jason, standing there. A shotgun in one hand, and a knife wedged deep into his shoulder. He stands tough, breathing heavily as he finally has time to register all the wounds inflicted upon his face and body. It hurts, and it’s going to hurt even more.

As if on auto-pilot, Jason starts walking out of the saloon’s front door and doesn’t say a word. His friends take notice and start moving after him.

Right outside, the people of Blondie gather around the bar. They’ve since been woken up from the commotion in the saloon, and everyone from the craftsman, the traders, the local priest, the carers and the watchmen come to see what had happened. Even the Mayor has come out, dressed in his nightly finest, as he stands front and center along his people - men and women, young and elderly alike.

They had just come once the gunfire caught their attention, and were debating amongst themselves on who would be first to enter before they see Jason exit out from the building. They stand, shocked in seeing the bloodied Jason Cross walk out from the saloon - sporting a shotgun in one hand, and a knife jutting out his shoulder. Then, coming right after him was Frankie and Charlie, who both start to stare with uncertainty in what to do now. Frankie’s first instinct is to calm everyone, but he isn’t able to get a word in… not before Jason.

Crazed thoughts run through Jason’s mind alongside a constant ringing - a ringing that felt like it never left him, and he can’t remember a time where it wasn’t following alongside him to begin with. The pain is too strong, it’s catching up to his brain now. The drinking has finally come to the station, and it’s not kind to let the pain have its way on his senses. There’s nothing but noise, and through it Jason can only think sparse thoughts.

‘Can’t say my name.’

‘All I get is trouble.’

‘All my name brings is trouble.’

‘Have to say something.’

‘Have to say something now.’

‘Sometimes… I just wish I weren’t me.’

Jason drops the shotgun, and with that he then holds both his arms up as best he could. Then, with a crooked grin, he announces aloud, “People of Blondie. My name… is Frederick Cross… and I just saved the day.”

The crowd murmurs, and some look outright shocked. Shocked… and excited. The Mayor looks outright pleased.

Jason grins some more and chuckles, all before proceeding to fall backwards onto the unforgiving ground.

The last thing he sees before blacking out are the crowd of people coming to his body. As well, the concerned looks on both Frankie and Charlie’s faces.

The people of Blondie never stopped talking that night: of the man who saved their town from a couple of gun-toting hooligans, and the very name he bore.

Frederick Cross.

[camillemontespan]

the enigma [olivia nevrakis interview]

Drake’s Interview

Maxwell’s Interview

@jovialyouthmusic @pug-bitch @sirbeepsalot @moonlightgem7 @fromthedeskofpaisleybleakmore @notoriouscs @be-still-my-aching-heart @katedrakeohd

Warnings: Mentions about sex toys. This is Olivia, after all. 

              **************************************************************

I am waiting for my interview subject to finish modelling for our cover shoot. We are shooting in a manor just outside of Cordonia and the room is filled with flowers, ornate chairs, glimmering chandeliers, fashion assistants, catering staff and our enthusiastic photographer. 

The one person who isn’t enthusiastic is the model herself.

Olivia Nevrakis is lounging on the floor, silk and satin sheets beneath her with flowers strewn around the feet. She is wearing a pink and white gown with pink taffeta underneath the layers; she looks like she is wearing a rose. 

‘I hate pink..’ Olivia grumbles in between photos. She holds an open book in her hand and flashes that famous Nevrakis stare at the camera. I look at the screenshots and can’t deny it; she may hate pink but she makes the outfit look regal. 

‘You look gorgeous, darling!’ the photographer exclaims. Olivia arches an eyebrow. ‘Oh, I know..’ she purrs, before striking another pose. 

Once the photographs are taken, Olivia is helped to her feet by an intern. ‘Get me a coffee,’ she orders him. The intern nods, clearly nervous. ‘Um, black? Latte? Cappuccino?’

‘Ask someone else your impertinent questions..’ Olivia drawls, before striding over to where I’m standing. She holds out a hand which I shake. ‘Let’s do this, shall we?’

I am also rendered speechless. Olivia has an air about her that is intimidating. I’m not the first journalist to feel nervous about interviewing her and I doubt I will be the last. She stalks ahead of me and I watch as she takes her hair clip out of her bun, shaking her red hair out so it falls down her back like a waterfall. We enter a private room and Olivia pulls off her pearl bracelet, tossing it onto a table. There is a Chinese screen in the room, which she goes behind and starts to undress. I stand awkwardly as I see the pink dress flung over the screen, landing heavily on the floor. 

Olivia comes out from behind the screen wearing a red lace bodysuit and black stilettos. She is tall, creamy skinned and as she moves, I can see her muscles flexing under her skin. I know that she is trained in taekwondo; in clothes, her muscles aren’t obvious, it is only when she is bare that you can see the effect her training has had.  She shrugs on a red silk dressing down and ties it up before settling down on the chaise lounge in front of me. 

‘I feel much better now,’ she breathes, eyeing me. I clear my throat and set the dictaphone down on the table between us. The door opens and the intern comes in holding a tray with three coffee cups on it. ‘I wasn’t sure which one to get you so I thought, be safe and pick all three of our choices,’ he babbles, setting the tray down. Olivia looks down at the coffees, her nose wrinkled. She takes the black coffee and adds two sugars. She looks at me. ‘Do you want one of these?’

I take the cappuccino and smile at the intern. He leaves the tray on the table with the extra latte. The door closes behind him and I turn to Olivia, who has a Cheshire Cat grin on her face. 

‘I know I may come across as a bitch to you,’ she tells me, ‘but in this world, you kind of have to be. See, extra coffee.’ She indicates the latte that is still on the tray. ‘That intern was too scared to bring me just one coffee so he brought me different kinds in case I bit his head off.’

I am immediately wanting to ask her why she views the world like this. I want to find out about her upbringing and her parents, her life as a Duchess. I bite the bullet and ask her. 

‘My parents were killed,’ she tells me point blank. ‘I had nobody but servants for company.’

I tell her it sounds lonely. 

She shrugs, brushing off my concern. Olivia then reaches down into her bodysuit and brings a dagger out from her cleavage. She twirls it around her fingers; I slowly edge away. 

Olivia grew up alongside King Liam. He is so kind and gentle, it is hard to imagine the two of them being friends. ‘I like to think we compliment each other actually..’ she says quietly.  ‘He tries to make me a little nicer, a little more understanding, while I try to get him to be less gentle, less of a pushover. More of a badass.’

I ask if Liam is a pushover.

‘Oh god, yes!’ she laughs. ‘He hates conflict. When we were growing up, say it was his birthday, if his brother asked for the biggest slice, Liam would give him the bigger slice even though it was his own birthday. If it was me, I’d have shoved the cake in Leo’s face. In fact, I think I did once.’

Leo. The King’s older brother. Leo had been the king first but then abdicated and left Cordonia to do God knows what. He is often seen as the party boy royal, kind of like Britain’s Prince Harry before he grew up. I have heard he is charming flirtatious and makes women go weak at the knees.

Olivia rolls her eyes. ‘Yeah, whatever..’

I ask jokingly if she has ever gone weak at the knees when confronted by Leo. She bristles and raises her chin defiantly. ‘I’m not that kind of woman, in case you hadn’t noticed. I’m not pathetic.’ 

I go quiet. Clearly, I’ve hit a nerve. Olivia takes a sip of her coffee, her eyes studying me from above the rim of the cup. ‘You’re a woman,’ she says to me. ‘Do you go weak at the knees over men?’

I ponder her question.  I have interviewed many swoonworthy male celebrities. I tell her I met Tom Hardy and the way he called me ‘pet’ made me giggle. She looks like she has swallowed something inedible and wants to throw up. 

‘The only time a woman should go weak at the knees over a man is when he leaves her alone in the bedroom with a rampant rabbit and comes back with champagne on ice,’ she tells me dryly. 

I’m shocked at how quickly this conversation has turned to talk about sex. But this is a woman’s magazine, sex is a topic we cover widely, so why not? Let’s talk about sex with Olivia Nevrakis. 

‘I mean, men are good for some things,’ she relents. ‘But most of the time, no. If I want something done, I do it myself and that goes for everything, not just sex. I love being independent.’

I ask if she’s ever had a boyfriend. ‘Nobody I deemed important enough to give that label,’ she says shortly. 

Has she ever had a crush on anyone?

‘Sure. I’m not a total ice woman.’ 

I ask if she’s seeing anyone now. She stares at me, her face unreadable. ‘I’d rather not say.’ 

She definitely is. Whoever he is, he has got to be some guy. An alpha who can challenge her but also someone who can keep up with her. I think about her circle of friends and wonder if any of the men in that group are secretly dating her. I always thought she would be well suited to the Duke of Valtoria, Drake Walker, but he married Camille Montespan last year. 

‘What the fuck? Me and Drake?’ she asks in disbelief. ‘You are aware that I’m good friends with Camille, right?’

I nod, feeling my face go red. 

‘Good. Now wash your mouth out with soap. They are so well suited, anyone who says otherwise is a moron.’

I tell her it’s only because Olivia and Drake are both outspoken and Drake is often pictured looking.. well, grumpy. Pissed off. Like he doesn’t like anything. 

‘Drake is actually a sweetheart,’ she tells me. ‘He only gets pissed off because of the constant paparazzi stalking him and Camille. Fuck, I get pissed off when I’ve got photographers hounding me. You would too.’

Since the King was crowned, there seems to have been a new obsession about him and his friends; this new generation of young Cordonian nobility who are making a difference to the country. 

Drake Walker spreads awareness for mental health - he launched a successful campaign called Mind over Matter which aimed to get Cordonian men together, outside, trekking, abseiling, rock climbing etc., while talking about their struggles with depression and anxiety. The country could donate money to the campaign which was dispensed to various mental health charities.

Duchess Camille re-introduced Open Houses, a dormant feature from 200 years ago in which she and Drake open their doors for their citizens, who visit to discuss issues and the Duke and Duchess work with them to help. 

Cordonia is becoming more modern and all the better for it. This brings me to why I am interviewing Olivia. 

Because as cold and harsh as she may be, Olivia Nevrakis has a heart. She has been working with the King to make foster care more prominent in the country. 

Cordonia is known for being traditional. Anything outside of the typical family dynamic of two parents and 2 children is seen as radical; this means that adoption and foster care is not prevalent in the country. As an orphan, Olivia is keen to change this. 

‘As I said, I grew up surrounded by servants in an old, crumbling manor. I had no parental guidance, which forced me to grow up very, very quickly.’ I see that she is opening up more now; gone is the hard stare, the bored drawl. She is now animated and gesturing with her hands to discuss this topic. 

‘When Constantine ruled, I saw orphans out on the streets, playing barefoot in dirty clothes. Most people avoided them; they would literally cross the street to stay away from them. I didn’t. I would offer them money so they could buy food or a drink.’

I did not see that coming. Olivia shrugs. ‘I don’t want children to grow up desperate. I know I brushed off your concern before, but that is just how I deal with things. I brush off people’s pity.  But fine, I’ll be honest. I hated being an orphan. I hate that feeling of being helpless so I taught myself taikwondo and defence skills. My parents had already instilled in me from a young age to know it is important to fight. Lythikos is a cold, tough place; if you have no survival skills, you’re a goner. I learned how to look after myself and I’ll admit, I picked up some fucked up ways of thinking. Like, I always carry a weapon. You saw my dagger just now. I don’t trust anybody as far as I can throw them.’

I sit in silence, scared to speak in case I lose her sudden honesty. ‘So, when Liam ascended the throne, we talked and I asked him to consider the orphans of Cordonia. Now, we’re developing a programme which is open to adults who have a job but also free time to raise a child, and offering them the option to foster these orphans. By taking in a child, the King will give them a monthly income to help pay for the child’s upkeep and that way, it’s a child off the streets.’ 

I am sceptical. Surely, some adults might take advantage and abuse this? Foster a child so they earn extra money.

‘The adults are tested about their knowledge of raising children. They have to prove they want to help a child, not to do it for their own gain. They have to do it out of the goodness of their hearts. So more families can take in orphans, more single adults can do it too.’

I ask if she would consider launching a defence training course for children. She grins. ‘Maybe in the near future..’

The foster care programme launches next month and is named ChildKind.  Olivia smiles and nods when I confirm the name and leans into the dictaphone. ‘Tell your readers that I say, ‘sign up, bitches.’ 

She is more humorous now, more easygoing.  It seems that it takes a while for Olivia to relax in interviews but once she is over that hurdle, she is easier to talk to. We go back to different topics and she is more forthcoming now. 

I ask how she deals with sudden celebrity that she has commanded since Liam came to the throne. ‘I have set up four restraining orders for four different photographers,’ she says wearily. ‘It can be exhausting. But last month, I got away from it all with Camille and Hana.’

From Hana’s Instagram feed- which I urge you to check out, it’s so pretty-  photos were put up of a girls trip. The three women went on a girls break to Mykonos. ‘We rented a villa, it was so secluded. Just a week of sunshine, drinking cocktails and swimming in the pool.’

I ask if any debauchery was had. She smirks. ‘What do you think?’

I imagine Hana is the quiet, sensible one. Olivia bursts out laughing; real laughter. ‘You would think that! Oh my God, give that girl a Tequila Sunrise and she is on the table. Nah, she is the wild one when she lets go. Camille is the mom of the group; she makes sure we’re wearing suncream, have drank enough water... she still got wasted though.’

Duchess Camille is always pictured looking elegant and sophisticated with her usual uniform of pencil dresses, nude heels and chignon hairstyles. I can’t picture her wasted. 

‘She is a fun girl, always,’ Olivia tells me. ‘But she does need to let loose now she’s a Duchess. Plus she’s from New York, of course she’s not going to be elegant 100% of the time.. Bertrand taught her well about etiquette and royal duties, but there is still a crazy New Yorker in there. Put her with Drake, who loves a whiskey, and they become more American as the night goes on.’

How?

‘I swear I heard Camille say y’all in all seriousness..’ she tells me, groaning. ‘Of course, she says she was joking, but I think she genuinely said it. She forgot she was talking to me.’ 

I ask what Drake does to be more American. ‘He has a tipsy habit of saying ‘fixin’ to. Like, ‘I’m fixin’ to get another whiskey. It means he’s about to get another whiskey. Why not just say that? He’s so Texan sometimes. His voice becomes more of a drawl when he’s been drinking.’ 

I wonder what Olivia is like under the influence. She smirks. ‘Am I hell telling you that.’

That is when I get it. Olivia is an enigma; she has these walls up which are hard to climb over and she won’t discuss anything too personal. She will happily make fun of her friends or talk about important causes such as ChildKind. She will talk about sex- hell, she mentioned rampant rabbits in this interview- but she has layers which she deliberately hides. I know she is kind and engaging, I can glimpse it. I just feel that she would rather show her true self to someone who is deserving of it. Someone who is prepared to deal with everything that she is.  Anyone else is just lucky to see above the surface.

[meredithritchie]

Mask of Anonymity: Anonymous Asks as a Teen Outlet

[The following is an article I wrote for a campus submission. I retained the rights to publish it here, as well. It regards my experiences as a fandom blogger.]

“Hi, I’ve been suffering with what is probably depression for years without any help and recently it’s been getting worse,” begins the anonymous message that drops into my inbox one night. It’s a teenager asking me how to keep themself stable until they can get a diagnosis from a pediatrician. I tell them I’m proud of them. I tell them I’m not an expert. I tell them to be kind to themself. I tell them they’re loved.

Since founding my Tumblr blog in April of 2017, these messages have become almost routine. In just a few months of actively posting my fanedits and fanfiction online, I amassed almost five thousand followers.  In this particular fandom, where the most popular bloggers have ten thousand followers, that’s a dramatic amount. Via the blog’s anonymous ask feature (colloquially called “anons”), anyone in the world can drop a question into my inbox without revealing their username, even if they aren’t one of those five thousand. Many if not most of these followers are minors, and some of them are not even of the minimum age to use the site: thirteen. My sister is twelve and loves watching fandom videos on YouTube, and in one year, she will be old enough to make an account with access to my blog and the blogs of all five thousand of my followers. I wonder if she’ll be one of the faceless messages I get in my ask box.

“Could I ask for some advice? It's about gynaecologists and vaginal health while being trans.”

“What I’m wondering is, how did you go about narrowing down lists of colleges to go to?”

“I basically cant[sic] think anymore and it's really hard to do school work because of this. Do you have any advice?”

“How does one stop obsessing over someone, when that person will never be theirs?”

“Hey I really need some help like older sister stuff help”

“I had a breakdown at school today. At least I think that’s what happened because I don’t remember it clearly.”

Some of it is generalized, and some of it is specific, but it all comes from a recognizable place of teen struggle and fear. Sometimes these messages linger in my inbox, as I try to struggle for just the right words. Other times I feel urgency, and dash off a response as quickly as possible. I re-read the post later and wonder if I said the right things, if I said what I meant. I’m not the only one.

Other fandom blogs, some even larger than I am, have turned off anons or closed their ask box entirely because of an influx of personal rants, requests for help, and even suicide notes. While Tumblr’s anon feature is meant to be a place for shy and intimidated users to express themselves in a way that isn’t possible via conventional social media like Facebook and Twitter,  the double anonymity of a hidden screenname offers confidence to say things that are otherwise difficult or even unsayable. When it comes to personal questions and statements, many young people lack a safe location to speak them, and the ask box offers a unique relief. Many teens don’t want to speak to their parents, teachers, or guardians about their sex life, their mental health, or their personal problems. Even Googling answers sparks fear that a teacher will confiscate their phone, or a parent will borrow their laptop, and evidence will be left in view. With a generalized segregation of America by age, most teens also don’t have other adults which they can speak to on a friendly basis, let alone speak to face to face for advice on difficult issues. Often the only adults that young people interact with face-to-face are authority figures like older relatives, teachers, and coaches. In the absence of face-to-face interactions, teens instead turn to the leaders of their fandoms, who often foster online personas  as Fandom Rens, Moms, Uncles, and Sisters. Plenty of older fandom members cultivate this image, though “older” is relative and in a small community these members may be only eighteen or nineteen years old, though they are generally in their twenties and thirties. While many fandoms have a primary userbase of tweens and teens, these senior members often run the most popular blogs and produce the highest quality fanart, fanfiction, and other fan content. During fandom “discourse,” these older members often lead the way and resolve conflict.

“Discourse” in fandom is not like discourse in the academic sense. While academic discourse encompasses many elements of rhetoric and debate, fandom “discourse” is essentially a euphemism for argument, frequently with an ethical element or discussion of “problematic” behavior. This discourse can involve either relationships between real human beings like celebrities and fandom members or the content of any fictional work contained in the fandom canon. The wide umbrella of “discourse” covers everything from discussion of whether a fandom celebrity’s recent comment was racist all the way to whether fanwriting two characters romantically is incestual when both characters are figments of a third character’s imagination. In essence, discourse gets hairy, complicated, and even philosophical. Like real political and social issues and like fandom itself, discourse gives some young people a sense of belonging and also the feeling that they are on the side of right and reason. An individual’s choice to participate in discourse becomes part of their identity.

In this way, fandom becomes what Mary Louise Pratt refers to as a contact zone, “where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other.” Through fanfiction “AUs” (alternate universes) fans of color write white characters as PoC, queer fans write cisgender/heterosexual characters as LGBT+, and neuroatypical fans write neurotypical characters as autistic, depressed, anxious, or otherwise neuroatypical. While alternate universe only emerged as a genre with the rise of the internet, these stories reflect a longer history of the insertion of the subordinate into dominant texts. Pratt refers to a text called The First Chronicle and Good Government, in which a man native to South America uses the language of his colonizers, the Spanish, to talk about the experience of the indigenous people, “in which the subordinated subject single-handedly gives himself authority in the colonizer’s language and verbal repertoire.” Through this text, Pratt touches on what she calls transculturation, a product of the contact zone, in which “members of subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture.” In the modern world, the dominant culture produces Steve Rogers, a cisgender man, and fandom reinvents him as a transgender man. The dominant culture creates Hermione Granger and Harry Potter, two white children, and fandom reinvents them as black and Indian. The dominant culture offers Legolas and Gimli, both ambiguously straight, and fandom reinvents them as a gay couple. For young marginalized people encountering this kind of contact zone for the first time, fandom becomes a community that is irreplaceable and unique, where they have the ability to express themselves and see themselves in characters.

Between the aspects of community in fandom itself and the discourse which offers a cause and creates both positive and negative relationships, it is hardly surprising that young people turn to fandom elders when they encounter a problem. After watching older fandom members participate in, manage, or even quell discourse, younger fandom members begin to look up to them as people who have all the answers, as leaders of this unique community. The availability of anonymity makes the opportunity even more enticing. A kind older fandom member becomes everyone’s shoulder to cry on, everyone’s outlet, and everyone’s therapist. While this may serve as a resource for plenty of teens, there is always an associated toll taken on the mental wellbeing of the members who serve them. Fandom creators want to help their followers, but may be struggling with their own past or present depression, anxiety, PTSD, eating disorders, body image issues, and attacks on their identity.

Self-proclaimed “Fandom Grandpa” @randomslasher (known in the community as LJ) runs the largest art and writing blog in my fandom and has struggled with a history of anon rants and anon requests both to themself and to their partner Thuri, who also runs a popular blog. As long ago as 2013, LJ posted, “I don’t think I will ever understand people who hide behind a mask of anonymity for the sole purpose of making someone else feel bad. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should [emphasis original].” LJ has made additional posts before and since requesting that people abstain from ranting into their inbox, but the issue continues for LJ and other major bloggers who gain new followers every single day. Many of these anonymous messages are never published, as evidenced by posts like this one, which appeared on LJ’s blog in 2018: “Anon i’m sorry to hear that, but that wasn’t a safe ask to send someone without a trigger warning, and i won’t publish it. Try to get help if you can.” The message of the post alone is ominous, and one can only guess at the content of the ask.

The teenage years are known to be a time of struggle, both personal and social. This is significant now more than ever as depression and anxiety rates among teens rise, and many teens experience suicidal ideation, unhealthy relationships with their own bodies, and struggles with their gender and sexuality in addition to the classic problems of teenhood which should be no more serious than asking someone to homecoming, getting a driver’s license, or taking a chemistry exam. However, as student struggles become more severe, especially among marginalized groups, resources to cope with this period is not moving apace, and young people use fandom as a resource to get answers and to express themselves. Older fandom members are suddenly bearing the weight of hundreds of teen struggles, and most of them have no formal training or resources to cope with them.

[putschki1969]

Welcome to “Book Concierge” Hikaru’s home! Vol. 1 📚

Note: Here’s the third section I translated, it’s time for Hikaru’s part. Sorry, this took longer than expected >_< Manga/anime related stuff is so hard for me to translate T_T Oh well... Without further ado, enjoy! 〈(•ˇ‿ˇ•)-→

Hikaru’s love for reading is well known, she always ends up recommending various mangas according to certain themes. To commemorate the first issue of this magazine she shall introduce us to some works with the theme of “summer” in accordance with the current season. Maybe you will discover something you find really interesting? Something you will come to love?!

Speaking of summer, the following works come to mind: Natsume's Book of Friends by Yuki Midorikawa Colette Decided to Die by Alto Yukimura xxxHOLIC by CLAMP Re-Kan! by Hinako Seta

I tried choosing works with refreshing world views that will hopefully make you forget the humidity and heat in the midst of summer.

1. To start things off, my first recommended work is 「Natsume’s Book of Friends」 by Yuki Midorikawa It is a story about a boy who has the ability to see spirits. I watched the anime adaptation but this is originally a manga series which is still ongoing. My first encounter with this work happened when I watched the sixth season of the anime which aired this spring, 「Natsume's Book of Friends Six」. Originally I was a little worried, I thought the topic of “spirits and ghosts” might be too scary, also, since I would have to start at the very beginning of this super long series I was worried whether I would be able to catch up with everything. But then a staff member from our label told me that the stories in each volume get wrapped up nicely so you can start reading wherever you please. That’s when I first got into it...It was really intriguing! Spirits, ghosts, things that you cannot touch, they can be truly scary but after reading this manga I realised that there were lots of kind and gentle spirits, that there was a reason for them being here. You are just not scared of them anymore. I started watching the anime during its sixth season and I am now in the midst of reading the orginal work, that’s where I am currently at *laughs* As for the characters, aside from the protagonist Takashi Natsume-kun, there are lots of other great characters and spirits, Natsume-kun’s self-proclaimed bodyguard Nyanko-sensei is super cool! Then there’s Tanuma-kun who is also a great character, he is the son of a shrine priest and he is always there to help out Natsume-kun, he is very kind-hearted and sensitive. He cannot see spirits but he has the ability to sense them, that makes him one of the few people who can actually understand Natsume-kun. He is always at Natsume-kun’s side and wants to protect him. Always concerned, a very nice boy indeed! In this work, both humans and spirits have very complex characters and they are each dealing with a multitude of difficult situations. I feel like one of the highlights of this work is that each character that appears is very likable. Certain parts will unexpectedly move you to tears and others will make you feel all warm and fluffy. If you are like me and are slightly intimidated by ghosts, please don’t worry, this work won’t scare you. That’s it for this manga.

2. My second recommendation is 「Colette Decided to Die」 by Alto Yukimura This work is currently being serialised in the monthly magazine 「Hana to Yume」, I guess the genre is fantasy. The heroine Colette is a young docter who unexpectedly ends up in the realm of the dead...there she meets Lord Hades, the king of the Underworld, due to many other encounters she matures and becomes a proper adult. The story feels very fresh as Colette continues to travel back and forth between the world of the living and the dead. Many strange incidents occur in the town she lives in as well as in the Underworld so she is very busy trying to find solutions for them. Colette is the kind of girl who will give her all, no matter what, I really admire that kind of attitude. Many different characters can be found in the Underworld, first of all there’s Lord Hades, then there are many skeletons and various other beings that are completely different from humans but Colette treats them all equally, she doesn’t discriminate against any of them. She has love for both Lord Hades as well as the skeletons, she treasures them all. Just because they are different, she won’t reject them. In his position as the king of the Underworld Lord Hades pretends not to care about anything in heaven or hell but Colette quickly realises tha he is actually very kind. There is some friction between Colette and Lord Hades but this story is ultimately about the two of them respecting each other and making each other a better person, I can really recommend it.

3. The third work is a manga by CLAMP! 「xxxHOLIC」「xxxHOLIC・Rei」 by CLAMP! Of course this list wouldn’t be complete without CLAMP! This story is almost like a character study based on the premise that there exists a shop for people in need where all wishes will be granted for a certain price. Many of the customers visiting that shop have darkness in their hearts. Most chapters are dedicated to purifying that darkness, within these stories you’ll get to dicover emotions that you have never felt before, you will start thinking differently than what you are used to from your every day life. There are many scenes that will make you tremble with emotion. This work has a great educational value, you can learn a lot from it, it makes you question whether it is really necessary to have your wishes granted, it showcases and reveals the innermost thoughts of human beings such as jealousy, love, hate or obsession. For the most part the world in this work can be seen as an occult fantasy but there is also a lot of realism in it. You can get truly absorbed in this manga I love all the characters in 「xxxHOLIC」 but above all, I really like Yūko-san. She is a witch with the strong ability to change destiny, she will do crazy things on a whim, she will joke around and she is very selfish, she will always play around with the main character Watanuki-kun *laughs* However, underneath all of that, she is hiding a caring nature, she is very determined and always gets things done...I admire her. Midway through the story, Watanuki-kun takes over the shop from Yūko-san but by all means, I’d love it if you started reading 「xxxHOLIC」 from the very beginning.

4. And now the final manga, 「Re-Kan!」 by Hinako Seta Lastly, a work about souls and spirits *laughs*. 2-3 years ago I watched the TV anime based on a four panel manga which is still being serialised, I found the anime really interesting so I started reading the manga. It is a story that depicts the interactions between Hibiki Amami-chan, a high school student with the ability to see ghosts, and her family, friends as well as many ghosts. I’d say that more than half of the main characters are ghosts, there really are quite a lot of them. However, since this is a comedy, the ghosts aren’t depicted in a scary manner *laughs* The ghost of a samurai, the ghost of an old man bound to the place where he died, the ghost of a hip teen-age girl, the ghost of a cat, they are all completely different. Hibiki-chan is very kind and polite to everyone, no matter if it’s a human being or a ghost so all the ghosts end up flocking to her. Many interesting incidents occur involving Hibiki-chan’s friends who cannot see ghosts, due to these events they become much closer. For the most part the genre is comedy but once in while there will be stories with heavy content, stories that will move you a lot, those are really great too! One of my favourite stories is in Vol.1, it’s about Hibiki-chan’s friend who goes to the park and gets to play with some ghost kids. That friend doesn’t have the ability to see ghosts but in that very moment she is able to see them and play together with them. That story was great!

That’s it! Four recommended summer lectures by Hikaru! I tried choosing works that have everything, stories that take place in an ordinary setting, ones that take place in a completely different or even slightly occult setting, stories that depict spirits, ghosts, beings of the underworld, the darkness within a human heart, worlds in different dimensions. Each of these works will leave a gentle feeling within your heart once you get immersed in them. It would make me very happy if I managed to make you curious about any of these works, even just a little.

Works that will restore your power (some extra content!) Here are 4 titles overflowing with power to fight off the summer heat fatigue 「Haikyū!!」 by Haruichi Furudate 「Chihayafuru」 by Yuki Suetsugu 「A Perfect Day for Love Letters」 by George Asakura 「Tanaka-kun is Always Listless」 by Nozomi Uda

◆ 「Haikyū!!」 by Haruichi Furudate I first got hooked after watching the anime and then I started reading the manga it was based on. This manga which is bursting with fighting spirit tells the story of members of a high school volleyball team and their growth into adulthood. It can be enjoyed both by students of the same age as the protagonists as well as by grown-ups. In this story, none of the characters are perfect in the beginning, they all have a long way to go. The main character, the team mates, the rival team members, the teachers, the coaches, they all overcome their hurdles, one by one...They all get stronger, both as individuals and as a team. Each character has unique traits and each team has a certain charm that makes you want to root for it. While you are reading through the manga it makes you feel like you also wanna do your very best

◆ 「Chihayafuru」 by Yuki Suetsugu  This story full of fighting spirit takes place in the world of a handful of young competetive “Karuta” players. There are many scenes depicting the joys and sorrows of love, it’s really great! Not only the heroine’s life is shown in detail, the conflicts and love lives of the surrounding characters are shown as well. As a reader you gain strength seeing how everyone is trying their very best to reach their goals.

◆ 「A Perfect Day for Love Letters」 by George Asakura I really love George Asakura-san’s works! The first manga I read by her was 「Piece of Cake」. Her style is very edgy and many of her works deal with quite serious subjects so it’s somewhat hard to easily recommend anything but among all of her works,  「A Perfect Day for Love Letters」 is a comparatively easy read. It’s a collection of short stories so it’s easy to get into it and you can just start reading wherever you want, this also makes it very easy to recommend it to everyone *laughs*. George Asakura-san’s work is so powerful because her art conveys so much energy, it’s amazing! Give 「A Perfect Day for Love Letters」 a try and see if you enjoy her unique literary style and art, if you do I’d be happy if you joined me on my journey into her realm. I can really recommend this work as an introduction to George Askakura-san’s world.

◆ 「Tanaka-kun is Always Listless」 by Nozomi Uda This work really stayed in my mind because I could totally relate to the attitude of the main character, “How long can I get away with being utterly listless?” He doesn’t want anyone to talk to him, he just wants to preserve his lazy lifestyle. It’s not like he is the type that won’t study for a test but he also won’t aim to get the best results, he is the kind of person who will study to get an average result *laughs*. However, in a way he is a real professional. When it comes to things he strongly believes in he will throw himself into it and do anything within his power to achieve it. It’s a manga that conveys such devotion.

[dustydreamsanddirtyscars]

“Sitting On A Bench, Reflecting...” - On the Traces of “Forrest Gump” in the Story of An Angel of the Lord

“Life is like a box of chocolate, you never know what you’re going to get.” - Forrest Gump in “Forrest Gump”

One tiny white feather floats in the sky and slowly descends to the ground to eventually land on someone’s shoe. The certain someone, who is attached to said shoe picks it up gently and places it carefully into a book. It’s the introductory shot to one of the probably most well-known movies of the past 25 years. And it sets up the feather as a recurring theme, element and metaphor for the entire movie “Forrest Gump” from the year 1994.

A good 11 years separates this movie following the life of Forrest, a simple minded and innocent boy, whose “passion” and “gift” for running would lead him literally around the world and the beginning of a small show called “Supernatural”. On the surface there’s not much one could say connects this film and this show. One is embedded in a world where monsters like vampires and werewolves exist, the other is firmly placed in a “non-magical world” - though of course “Forrest Gump” in many ways can be considered a kind of fairytale just without the fantastic elements. Still - despite these huge differences in approach and especially in atmosphere and tone (one is a horror show the other a sort of sweet kind of drama after all) - when digging a little deeper the big themes tackled in both franchises align really well. From absentee parents, to the story of “adolescence” and “coming of age”, to family, love and the question of destiny vs. freedom of choice - there is much that “Forrest Gump” shares with “Supernatural” and in particular so with a character that was introduced in S4 with a shrieking sound on the radio, white noise on the tv and exploding windows in an all but abandoned gas station somewhere in the broader vicinity of Pontiac, Illinois, where on September 18th, 2009 one Dean Winchester dug himself out of his grave after he was dragged to Hell by Hellhounds four months earlier. It’s Castiel, Angel of the Lord, we are talking about, whose story feels like having quite a bit in common with Forrest. And all of that starts with one tiny feather dancing from the sky to the ground and coming to rest on Forrest Gump’s shoe, who sits waiting on a bench at a bus stop reminiscing about his life, telling anyone who will listen, his story.

Said feather is a recurring theme - paired with wings and birds and songs and metaphors of flying (mostly connected to Forrest’s one true love Jenny) - in the movie. A symbol capturing and describing how the main character’s life was seemingly shaped by circumstance, how one step lead to another, how he walked through life like a feather floating from here to there in the wind, drifting from one place to another, going wherever the road took him (and that is actually one major parallel to “Supernatural” as a whole with the Winchesters driving across America going wherever the next case leads them) without giving it much thought (in fact many places he ended up being had to do with him simply doing as told, to “run, Forrest, run” whether it was to get away from the bullies in his hometown or in the baseball team or when rescuing his companions from the jungle in Vietnam) - though he always had one constant, one person to return to: Jenny, his childhood girlfriend who throughout long stretches of the movie appears to be seen like an angel by Forrest (fittingly she is also often times wrapped in white flowy gowns, talking about her wish to become a bird so she could fly away - to escape her abusive father - or standing on a window sill read to jump and “kill herself” to be free while Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” is playing in the background). And an angel’s story is Castiel’s. A warrior of Heaven, a servant of God, who - like that tiny white feather - touched down on earth for the first time in millennia after he rescued none other than Dean Winchester from Hell.

Just a few days ago I was talking about Castiel’s trenchcoat, how it always set him apart from the rest. Just like Forrest, who couldn’t walk without aides as a child and was made fun of for being “simple minded”, Castiel, never fit in as the narrative told us. Cas was always a rebel (even if he doesn’t remember himself, those who re-programmed him know), the one who came off the line with “a crack in his chassis” as Naomi called it or as Samandriel put it, he always had “too much heart”. And while Castiel in S4 is intimidating and absolute, when it comes to human interaction he is ill-equipped, almost childlike, innocent. All traits one connect with Forrest Gump. Most of all though and that’s of course what defines Castiel’s arc in S4 most is how he “follows orders”, “doesn’t question”, but “obeys” and “does as he is told”. That is until “The Big Pumpkin Sam Winchester” where Castiel starts to express doubts for the first time and interestingly enough those doubts are connected to a bench in a park.

“I’m not a hammer”, Castiel tells Dean in 4x07 “The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester” and sitting down on a bench next to the one Dean is sitting on (there is a multitude one could just write about that little gap between them there btw, as to me it captures perfectly how Castiel grows closer to humanity, but isn’t completely on the same page or rather bench yet). It’s a scene in which Castiel expresses that he has questions and doubts - everything that a good soldier is not supposed to have. And yes, of course the parallel and wording of “soldiers” aligns Cas with Dean, in relation to this meta however it is also noteworthy that Forrest indeed became a soldier and worked well within the army. It’s a recurring theme, Forrest is told something and he follows. It captures how he drifts from one place to another. Rarely making decisions himself, instead he often times “goes with the flow”, “goes where the road takes him” or differently worded “floats”. And that is something Forrest at the end of the movie when standing at Jenny’s grave even voices himself and it captures the question of destiny vs. free choice that is so inherent to “Supernatural” quote beautifully:

“I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s both happening at the same time.”

And of course it takes us back to the feather imagery of the beginning of the movie, a feather floating in the breeze, that came to rest at Forrest’s feet while he waits for a bus (which also parallels nicely to Jimmy Novak’s bus journey but much more than that Castiel going to sleep inside an old bus when he is human in S9).

And to me Castiel and Forrest are working beautifully as parallels here - not just visually but on a narrative level as well. Because that’s where Forrest’s life truly changes, when he gets on that bus and meets Jenny, who introduced him to his son. That changes everything. Likewise Castiel, an angel with wings, was floating aimlessly and just did as he was told until the day he rescued Dean from Hell (and one could definitely see a parallel between Jenny and Dean here as well as they share the aspect of growing up in an abusive household). From there on out his mission changes, his focus changes, he himself changes.

“I’ve figured out one thing about this world… Just one, pretty much. You find a cause and you serve it. Give yourself over, and it orders your life.”

- Meg in 7x21 “Reading Is Fundamental”

And while his narrative mirror is Forrest, it’s also worthy to note that Castiel’s arc also works rather beautifully in contrast and opposition to Jenny, whose entire life circled around escaping and flying away. So when Forrest in the ending scene looks up to Heaven as if Jenny’s watching over him (like an angel) it gets clear she finally managed to escape and fly away. Castiel’s story can be seen entirely in reverse to her, as for him, it was never about flying, but falling. For humanity as embodied by Dean.

To me the scene in the park (a playground nearby - the whole conversation Dean has with Castiel here is a direct parallel to Dean sitting next to God on a park bench in S11) in 4x07 “The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester” works as a perfect starting point of Castiel’s journey. Roughly 2 seasons later we would meet him again - sitting on a bench (like Forrest) - in 6x20 “The Man Who Would Be King” telling us his story. A story that shifted from being a feather in the wind, following orders to making decisions yourself and having to deal with the consequences. A story that tackled the question of destiny and ended with free will.

I’m sure that none of these parallels have been inserted consciously by the writers at the time - though with Ben Edlund and 6x20 “The Man Who Would Be King” I could imagine that he thought of “Forrest Gump”, but the chances are slim - still to me these franchises work together and in opposition to one another, because they utilize the same tropes and themes. And I don’t know about you, but I personally quite like the theme of “reflection” and “identity” woven into these bench moments...

[In case all of this didn’t leave you all “I don’t know about you, but this person that wrote this bs has issues” ;P for more metas on benches and vending machines used as meatphors and symbols on SPN - yes, it’s a thing and apparently I have a thing for it - click here, here, here and here]

[jam2289]

Notes on Horsemanship

I've always liked horses, I just haven't interacted with them much. A handful of years ago I took some private lessons and worked up to jumping over little gates. It was fun. Then, I ended having health issues after almost dying in Africa, and then I had complications with my spine, and now it's been years since I've been on a horse. Over the last few weeks I've tried motorcycle riding for the first time in years, and I've been fine. Soon I'm going to give horseback riding a try. I have some hesitancy about it, because it could go very bad for my health. But, as a step on that path I went to a 2-day horsemanship seminar at Chance Stables put on by Phil Oakes.

Last year I noticed that there was a horsemanship seminar going on near me. I looked into it just a little and learned that Phil Oakes is known for his gentle methods used to create gentle horses. I like that, it goes well with my spine that needs gentle treatment. But, last year I was not anywhere near having the health and ability to get on a horse. This year it's at least in the realm of possibility, so I decided to go watch.

I'm giving presentations at the Harry Potter festival in Sparta this coming weekend so I took a notebook to work on those speeches. I didn't plan on taking many notes about horsemanship, but Phil started throwing out so much wisdom so quickly that I ended up with three full pages.

Here's the thing, I'm not that good at taking notes. Growing up I always had a strong memory and found that paying attention in the moment ended up being more valuable than taking notes. It worked out great when someone else would take notes. For instance, when I was doing EMT training I rarely took notes. A few students organized a study group and I was a part of it. Everyone else took more notes that me, and there was one guy, Matt, that took a ridiculous amount of notes. And, he was good at taking notes. His handwriting was good, and he liked organizing them. He had hundreds and hundreds of 3x5 cards. It was great. I would pay close attention in class, trying to absorb as much as possible. Then, I would study off of Matt's notes in the group. (I ended up being number 2 in the class, Matt was number 1.) (Now that I've had some brainstem damage and short and long term memory issues, I see notes in a different light.)

All of that to say that I'm not sure if my notes are going to be very valuable to anyone else. But the seminar itself was quite amazing. It was interesting to watch people confronting problems and creatively trying to work through them and solve them. The problems had a wide range. Some people were on new horses, or horses that were new to them, some horses had injuries that needed to be worked with, some riders had been thrown and were working through that fear, some were afraid of riding next to so many other horses and were working through that, all sorts of stuff.

This all took place at Chance Stables. I talked to quite a few people there and it seems like a wonderful and expanding place. They do multiple horse therapy groups and a number of other things. I was impressed.

The first day focused quite a lot on groundwork, where you aren't on the horse. Later in the day some of it was in the saddle. It was a nice sunny day and we were outside. I came close to burning, I burn easily, and I learned a lot.

- - - - - - -

Phil Oakes - ground work

if what your doing isn't working, cut it in half - patience

relax, wait, cause to think instead of react

don't bend the neck, do lateral jaw flexion instead, soften the jaw

jaw is connected to hind legs

want back of hips down

don't disengage rear by crossing

wait out the tension

teach backing up first

relaxation of the jaw and the mind has to be first before he can learn

if horse won't give space walk directly at him and let him move

relaxing exercise, half circle-lateral-half circle other way, figure 8

vibrate to help relieve intense tension

balance is key

I love circles, we don't want to stop forward motion

I have a bubble

I stop he stops, I go he goes

left had, hope hand doesn't need to move

let them know what you're going to do, big breathe indicates bubble

we don't want to correct curiosity too much

reward the horse while he's moving (unless he has trouble stopping) with petting

deep out breathe indicates stopping, deep in indicates going

the horse is always looking for a leader, she wants a leader but won't follow a bad leader

before you ask the horse to do something have intent

get the pelvis under them

don't collect the horse with the neck down

want the head up, but guide it, don't push or pull it or the back will hollow

final spine fusions at 9 years old, health horse should peak in the mid 20s, work in 30s

don't reward a reaction even if it's what you want, reward it when it's thought through

want a long lead

loose jaw, hips under, backing up head up, bubble and circle, 3 track crossover

reward small good behaviors and let them grow

don't turn too sharp

use fence on side and in front to work on crossover

hold arms out and you can feel it when you walk

we want them to stop and think, not natural

let the lesson soak in, don't rush

multiple short sessions a day

raise up front, sink rear, muscle memory

give the horse enough room to give a signal

walk away to create room, then turn and train

change the mind and the feet will follow

pain or intimidation may produce compliance, but never softness

- - - - - - -

(I had to leave about a half hour early that first day because I had to get to a graduation party, and then take off to a rehearsal for a speech.)

I could tell many stories from the two days. The person I met that had crazy adventure stories about hitchhiking. The odd and deep conversations that I tend to get into with people about all sorts of things ranging from health, to fear, to meaning, to archetypes. I could talk about the weird mini-horses that cause trouble with the fences by escaping, and chase the other horses, and can't be caught. I could talk about the observations that I noticed on why some horses spooked at certain times, that I don't think anyone else caught, or the time a horse became interested in a clock and knocked it down and broke it. But, I'm not going to. Instead, I'm going to talk about my heart.

At lunch I was talking to Phil about how he uses his stick. He touches the horse in certain spots to indicate to the horse how he wants them to move. If the horse doesn't move he just keeps poking them in a rhythm. I noticed that he didn't get more intense, or harder, or stronger, just steady. He said waiting it out is important. If you do it with a rhythm the horse will eventually move. The horse is trying to figure it out, it's trying to adjust its mind and body to do the work. (Several people said their horse was "lazy." Phil completely disagrees with every saying that. If the horse doesn't want to move, something is wrong.)

He said that if instead of using a steady rhythm you do it erratically then it won't work. I then mentioned that I noticed when working with my uncle John one time on some music that I really struggle with keeping a steady beat. Phil said that your ability to keep a steady beat is based on your heart. I realized that maybe the issues I have with my spinal deformities and the pressure on my brainstem, that do cause some heart issues, might ultimately be part of why I struggle with keeping a steady beat. Phil wondered if learning to keep a steady beat might work to help my heart. An idea I hadn't thought about before.

I had many interesting conversations over both days like that. The second day was rainy. We started in the inside arena, but did do some work outside later. The second day was all in the saddle.

- - - - - - -

Phil Oakes - saddle work

steer with just the reins first

watch the jaw, don't want to bend the neck

learn to weave

once the jaw/rein is working, then work on pushing the rear with the leg

slide hand down reing to signal

roll horses head to down from side, less tension

weave across straight line, alternate haunches in shoulders in then both haunches and shoulders in

reward one step by letting it go

horse should look and then go

trust is key

some horses display fear, others hold it in

start collection one rein side at a time

gentle, but don't let them fall on the forehand

the horse isn't lazy, he's out of balance

lift straight up on rein while standing until same side front foot lifts then let him go, prevents bucking

don't destroy forward, redirect instead

perfect circle, perfect drift, then jog, never heavy in hand

there has to be a leader, if you're not then he will be

stick, this is my space

if you're telling them what not to do, they're telling you what to do, do what you're doing, focus on your intention

if horse won't go come to side, horse will go when off balance

you want him to think through a crisis, not natural

stick and rope work, chaos, only place he can find peace is where you want him, then stop pet and let sink in

left circle, left leg back right leg forward

everything is gradual, one component at a time, let him figure it out

when they speed up they start to blank out

- - - - - - -

(I did more talking to people on the second day so I missed some significant portions, but it's still a lot of good info.)

Now, what shall I do. I was talking to Jeremy, that's been helping out at the farm for the last handful of years, and he was telling me about the teen program they run on Saturday mornings. You help for a couple of hours and then you get some time with a horse. Kim runs it and I asked her if it would be okay if I showed up just a bit late since I teach on Saturday mornings, and she said that would be fine.

I'm slightly ambivalent about it because I might not be able to ride horses at all, ever. So, maybe it would be best just to go somewhere, hop on a horse for an hour, and see if it's even possible. But, it would probably be cool to work with the kids too. So, maybe in a couple of weeks I'll go on Saturday and check it out. Maybe work on groundwork with a horse the first week. If everything goes well, maybe I'll get on a horse in a few weeks and see how it goes. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to walk on a horse. I'm worried about the trot though. I'll have to play with it. Maybe if I post I can take it, that's a little stand-up motion you do while riding. And, I think there's some possibility I'll be able to canter. No matter how it goes, I want to give it a try. Only by exploring do we expand our range of possibilities and abilities in life.

I thought the seminar would be interesting and informative, but I didn't expect it to be quite so much fun. It was a good first step in seeing if I can get back on a horse.

________________________________________________

You can find more of what I'm doing at http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

[queenofthewaste]

Hi it's 3am (by the time I finished this it was in fact closer to 5am) and I'm so tired and I don't care anymore and this is literally my blog so if I can't be emo here then where? (A diary, I suppose, but shutup)

To preface this, mutuals, whatevs you've seen me go through fandom after fandom and then become a pseudo aesthetic blog so you can handle me angsting a bit. IRLs on the other hand, if you read this I would appreciate you not ever acknowledging this in anyway shape of form bc like. Emotional vulnerability bad (ง'̀-'́)ง

Up until a few months ago I was in a relationship with someone who I cared about very deeply. The relationship itself was not perfect but I was pretty happy, and best I can tell, so was she. Ultimately we broke up because of the fact that she felt she couldn't come out to her family. This wasn't fun for me or anything but its something I was aware of as a possible end so y'know. Whatever.

Unfortunately this break up wasn't even remotely clean. She continued to talk to me, not seeming to get my requests for space and eventually we went back to cuddling and other forms of emotional intimacy that are far oustide of my platonic wheelhouse. At this situation's worst she made some pretty specifically romantic moves towards me, which I would call almost actively callous. Eventually after a few months of going back and forth on whether or not we were talking we (I) actually were firm about it. This was on Halloween, and the following week or so was basically "great" insofar as I didn't have to think about her.

Unfortunately the next week it was my birthday and she turned up on my doorstep after my party upset I had invited some mutual friends, and I helped her with her emotional distress and then walked her home. Then I had no contact. For about a month.

A month later she messaged me on Twitter. Then a week later she turned up somewhere she knew I was going to be (this is somewhat debatable but ultimately I still felt stalked and in a weird way kind of betrayed).

Then nothing until Christmas day when I received an anonymous "I miss you" on this tumblr. Not provable as her like who else misses me lol? (All the creepy men who I keep rejecting but I don't they have my tumblr). Then on NYE she messaged my housemate about me. Then a few days later she does the same.

Ultimately my feeling about all of this are;

I’m sad about the circumstance of the break up. It feels like a waste of something good, but I could probably deal with it better if either of us seemed even remotely happy since it.

I think it’s fucking heartbreaking that someone I cared so deeply for would so quickly become someone I desperately wanted to avoid, the extent to which I want to avoid her is actively depressing in and of itself 

She’s clearly not been doing okay since we broke up (or for a while before we broke up but she’s been more noticeably dysfunctional since we broke up) and it’s so frustrating to watch her feel alienated from her friends (and to an extent have actually alienated her friends) and to engage in self destructive behaviours etc, and have no room, or even right to do anything. 

As an addition to the previous point, I am usually cold to a fault, so I hate how I have been unable to switch off here. I hate that I still care about her the way I do when everything she has done in the past four months has had an active detrimental affect on me.

This is probably the least “valid” feeling to have about the dissolution of the relationship, and I actively consider this to be deeply petty but here we are - I think it’s unfair that she is telling my housemate that she misses me. I think its unfair that she was the one to do romantic things during the messy period post break up. I think it’s unfair that she made a choice and now seems to want to have the sympathy of the person who was “left” or “dumped” or whatever. Fuck you that’s not fair. I haven’t made my feelings about this known. I didn’t message her fucking housemate to tell him I miss her. Of course I fucking miss her but I’m also not a fucking douchebag.

I also feel betrayed by how willing she was to hurt me and mess me around post-break up. She told her friends things she had promised she wouldn’t and generally handled things shittily. Honestly I just want to know why? I didn’t do anything fucking wrong. We didn’t break up even due to shitty behaviour what the fuck did I do to deserve all of this 

I still want to talk to her. I sort of feel like there’s nothing left to say anymore, but I do 

Running concurrently to this is the fact that last year I was voted in to be the president of the Comic Book Society (club) at my university. At the time I was pleased and looked forward to it. One of the people who would be running it with me was a guy I was good friends with. Then he (probably) sexually assaulted me, and (definitely) became super creepy about his feelings for me. I low key told him to fuck off and didn't speak to him for the summer. During which time he got therapy and seemed to improve, and because I didn't want to have to do paperwork I figured I would let him stick around. Of course then he continued to be creepy so I had to tell him to fuck off properly.

The break up I had just gone through, and the fact I had to fire 1/3 of my exec did not make running the society easy, but ultimately neither of those things were the actual problem. 

The problem instead was that my members just. Wouldn't talk. No matter what. I did everything I could. I know I'm often somewhat intimidating but I also know I'm reasonably funny and decent at conversation in general. But over three months these people remained mute and it was infuriating. They wanted a weekly lecture about comics and I'm just not doing that. So I've allowed the society to fold.

Ultimately about this I guess I feel

Sort of betrayed by the guy who was into me, obviously I suppose I shouldn’t have forgiven him after the (possible) sexual abuse, but I was tired and thought maybe it would be fine. But ultimately he was a guy who claimed to care about me/ know me well, and everything he did belied the opposite which is such a fundamental kind of gross that it’s sort of upsetting.

About my society failing? I take on the responsibility personally, even though every piece of evidence suggests there wasn’t much I could really have done to increase turnout, bar become more general interest (Like talk about the movies more) which ultimately defeats the point of the fucking society so. No. Basically, lol, I feel like a total failure for failing to run a society that was clearly doomed to failure from the beginning

ALSO I’m twenty one. Due to issues with my mental and physical health during my A levels I had to spend an additional year in college. I then failed to get the grades I wanted to go the uni I really wanted to go to. As a result of this I came to uni and was a bit “behind” where I wanted to be in life. Then, naturally, of course, I managed to fail a module of my course, meaning I had to resit the whole year. Making me a Twenty One year old First Year. I haven’t told any of my friends about this, meaning I’m consistently lying a bit about what I’m doing. (I did tell my now ex, and am sort of paranoid she may have told someone but whatever) Oh also one of my housemates is resitting his first year, which arguably makes my extended deception worse, because it’s not helped with his self perception. Oh also multiples of my friends are getting engaged now 

I guess the way I feel about this mess of shit is 

Failurex1000

I feel extremely “behind” some idea of where I feel I should be in my life, which is ridiculous because I’ve never had a clear picture of where I want to be and when, so there’s no plan to be behind on 

Failure Failure Failure

I feel somewhat guilty about not informing said housemate bc he’s insecure about resitting, and also insecure about me being arbitrarily “better” than him, but also I have a crippling fear of being seen as weak or stupid and he’s not my fucking responsibility.

Again, the friends all getting engaged thing makes me feel weirdly lagging so. yay

ALSO I live with three boys currently. I say “boys” because despite their status as legal adults, the juvenile term is really more appropriate. One of whom has had a crush on me for a relatively extended period of time now. He claims to be over me, but his behaviours consistently belie that he is not. Another is just generally a bit immature, and screeches down his headset playing shit video games in the middle of the night (this is in fact why I am currently up and writing this) The third is technically fine but he contributes to the general mess and skid marks on the toilet with the seat always fucking up and the hair all over the fucking bathroom dear fucking god 

Summing up this one too;

I have already decided to live alone next year, and have made the arrangements to do so, Though this means I will basically be broke re: disposable money

If I ever see another fucking toilet seat up I’m going to scream

I nearly stabbed my housemate today for waking me up. And now five hours later nearly I have been unable to get any sleep. 

Alot of my complaints about my housemates highlight two specific things for me 

My upbringing required me to be more independent from a younger age. I’m grateful for the relative competence this has provided me earlier on, but also I think I’m becoming resentful, or jealous, of these people who got to be children until even now? I cannot imagine being 19 and behaving the way these boys do (or twenty one and behaving the way my ex does) and I can’t help but wonder about the kind of coddling they must have had relative to my life.

I need my own space. I have had little control of my life and living arrangements for quite some time now (even having spent three months or so technically homeless last summer) and this is potentially my only opportunity to get that so

Finally, Alot of how I’ve reacted to stuff the past few months has made me feel concerned about my mental health? Several years ago I went to a psychologist for an extended period of time (I was forced to lol) and toward the end of the time I was seeing her she mentioned cluster B personality disorders to me. Obviously being a sixteen year old who thought she was fine this made me balk, I started lying to seem neurotypical or whatever the word is now, and then eventually managed to get out of having to go, but now I think there was probably some stock in what she was talking about and am now going to try and pursue this, so I get to dally with the NHS’ adult mental health services.

Summing up

I don’t actually want a diagnosis and on some level think I’m fine but also line up with the DSM of two of the cluster B’s relatively well and am clearly not doing well so my belief that I’m fine is unhelpful

In the end, it is clearly my pride that’s gong to lead to my death. 

Thanks for reading, anonymous internet person or person I know irl stalking my blog/ignoring my request for this to be ignored if you know me irl :I

[saintedfury]

Tired | IC Drabble

Summary: Furia’s struggles keep building, despite the weight of expectation, she still finds it in herself to finally make a decision based on what she wants rather than what would be best for anyone, or everyone, else.

a/n: Not sure what this is really. It’s not quite stream of consciousness, but in a way, it might be. It just kind of popped in my head and went from there.

Tired

Exhaustion wove through her lithe body—tightening supple muscle, drooping squared shoulders, and dulling the serpentine swish of her gait. Furia wasn’t just bodily tired, it had seeped into her very soul. The sea of emotions beat against her like a storm surge, eroding the fragile surface and flooding past the broken walls at the same time. The roiling left her no time to reconstruct the strong barriers she’d built over the span of her life, the ones that protected her. Instead, she was left compartmentalizing. Sorting things into their proper spaces seemed best in order to contain them and deal with each when the moment required it.

It seemed easier that way, or so she told herself. In truth, it made only served to increase her willpower and allowed her emotional state to be somewhat more controllable, most of the time. She knew how to handle the traumas contained in each little box, how to mostly hold back and keep at bay the dark villainy that her own mind could assail her with from those individual corners. It was when the shades crept from more than one compartment that she found herself reeling tumbling out of control like a plastic bag whipping about in a windstorm.

There weren’t a lot of people left anywhere that knew the boss’ skeletons. She tended to keep her own counsel on all but mundane issues, but on those days when she was blatantly honest with herself, she’d admit that there weren’t any people left alive in the galaxy that really knew her or her secrets. She’d shared some with Eli. Johnny, Shaundi, and Pierce knew a few; Matt and Kinzie, over the years, both managed to dig up some of their own. Her siblings had known surprisingly less than even her friends. Troy, however. Troy had known them all; braved the dark spaces of her mind with patience to find them so that she wouldn’t be alone there when those memories and thoughts dragged and held her beneath the surface to be bashed bodily against the sharp rocks and grating reefs.

The old armor, battered and broken as it was, helped with that sometimes. When it didn’t help, other things could—fights, fucking, a bottle … in that order. Anything to push her into the visceral experience of life and away from the haunting specters in her head.

Though she knew she wasn’t alone, she felt like it at times.

Her life had changed so much in the past five years. Taking her down a path she had no business being on. Aliens destroying Earth. The fate of her species (and others) being placed in her hands. Then there was losing, rediscovering, finding, and re-losing the people around her. It all weighed on her, but her shoulders were broad. She had carried the struggles of others most of her life upon a foundation of her own troubles; though of late those strong shoulders had been drooping, her powerful back bowing under the immense weight of the things she now carried alone.

As a young woman, Furia’s life took an unexpected turn, well, several. When things were thrown at her, she overcame them. There was no other choice in her mind—overcome or fail, and failure in her world usually meant death, which was never an option. Even up to and including the “keep what you kill” moment when she destroyed Zinyak, her life followed that track. Looking up from what, at the moment, felt like just one more life or death battle, she found his entire empire, which his ego included in the instant of his downfall, dropping to their knees and recognizing her as sovereign. Ruling had been forced on her. Being in charge, leading was something she had a knack for, but this was entirely different. The Zin Empire wasn’t a gang, and it wasn’t really a country. It was … unique, something all its own.

Politics consumed her days, draining her.

To avoid impropriety, she’d let go of the things she knew best—thieving, murdering, and intimidation—trading them for diplomacy, rebuilding, and inclusivity. As she had all her life, she took on the role laid in her lap, donned the garb of expectation. While it was a choice she made, it never felt like a true choice.

Who would do it if she did not?

It always came down to that question. And usually the answer was no one, or worse. So, the responsibility became hers and she took on the mantle of galactic emperor with the same dedication she had every other role in her life��responsible big sister, matriarch, go-to girl, boss (twice), and beyond. A combination of hard work and good intention, however, never helped her overcome the feeling of failure that pervaded her newest position. The victories, small and plentiful or sizable as they may be, never managed to outweigh the screw ups that peppered her tenure. Each stumble weighed on her mind as heavily as the missteps of the past and the lasting impact of the deaths of dear, old friends.

Furia struggled with days where the power of the empty feeling inside her threatened to consume her like the black hole at the center of a galaxy sucked in everything including light; she feared she might just collapse in on herself. Other days she drifted, much as a ship with no anchor might, but she wasn’t rudderless yet. She could still direct herself through those times, but those trips just carried her past the shore, past ports. And now, she could see the path clearly. Inevitable loss and predestined devastation loomed.

Destined to lose more. Always more. It was life after all. Loss was a part of it, she reminded herself.

Waiting for it, however, that wasn’t decided.

His voice echoed in her head. You could make a visit to my world a more permanent one. … There are so many things I see and want to share with you. … It’s what I’ve always wanted but I never thought it would be possible.

Even thinking about it her heart took flight, but it only got so far off the ground before the anchor of expectation snapped tight. It was selfish. At best, there were only two people who could find any benefit in this—she and Eli.

What about those people counting on you?

Despite having no ideas of abandoning her responsibilities, she still worried that this choice stretched past the allowable bounds of decadence. Furia could be reckless, fun-loving, and drank deeply from life’s goblet, but she was always loyal and tried to be dependable. The aim of her actions was usually directed at doing the best she could for the people she was responsible for.

But this …

She could remember thinking about it more than she’d admit, but it was always a pipe dream on the farthest cloud nine—sharing time and proximity, a life, with Eli. Now that the possibility stood before her, she felt herself pulled in new directions because of the emotional trauma destabilizing so much of her personal world. It was the first time she ever put something she wanted for herself on the same level as the expectations thrust upon her.

More than that, it was the first time she asked herself what she wanted, and based her decision on that rather than merely weighing the benefits and risk.

It felt good, for a moment. Choosing a direction based purely on her own desire. But the euphoria didn’t last long before the guilt and worry sank in. It was selfish; it could cost her, perhaps more than she was willing to give up.

Furia stared at the muted slivers of light playing on the black ceiling, trying to keep her racing mind from taking its usual track. She didn’t want a pro and con list. She just wanted this, wanted to be with him. It was only temporary. She could time it down to the day, which perhaps made her selfish decision easier for her to make. There was an end of it in sight. But in the quiet moments, it haunted her with questions and accusations.

Would her friends hate her for taking this chance? Would Eli? Would they see it as abandonment? What would this cost? Would it cost her all of them, even him? Would he think her weak for choosing this? For looking for a handful of happiness instead of being responsible?

Her mouth tingled and the shapes on the ceiling warped as the tears flooded her eyes. Deep breaths echoed in the darkness as she lay wide-awake in the empty, too-large-for-one bed. She swallowed, her vision finally clearing without a single tear falling … victory.

Though the thoughts and memories still chased away her sleep.

[tremendouslyhappypeach-blog]

(Seeing the pictures above, there is a big story for each one. If youll notice the golf cart, the mini suv and van, they have stated that they are deathly afraid of us but are driving past our house daily and there really was no reason for them to do so. The pictures of the injuries, this is from the golf cart slamming into my partner riding that bike above at about 20mph from the rear, story to follow. Police did nothing to the man when he stalked my partner to the community pool, threatened him calling him a fuc*en fag, tried to hit him, a witness stepped in, police were called, the report will be posted since it a matter of public record. The police refused to speak with the witness, said the man used foul language but didnt hit anyone so no crime happened, but he said he was sorry. Then two years later runs my partner down trying to kill him. As you can see, we had put alot of money into our house, some 50K and it showed. The big issue was the picture of my partner above, the wives really liked when he walked around without a shirt on, the husbands didnt like it (jealousy is a bitch, isn't it) and they attempted to pass an HOA rule to ensure he wore a shirt when he was out, riding is bike or walking around, this was because they were jealous of his body and that they were fat and out of shape. The rule failed and so they tried another course of action. The further pages will go step by step on what had happen, how the hate crime came into place, how the community management brushed it under the rug and how the Largo Fl ploice covered it up, when it was brought up and wanting to have them look further into it, we were told that if we pursued that course of action, that they would open up a stalking case against my partner and eight months he was arrested on trumped up charges costing 25K. The person who made up the charges, was caught lying in court, she lied on her police complaint, police used faulty software to determine the validity of a paraody videothat was made and with in three hours issues a probable cause warrent. Below, you be the judge. Well here we are, April 2009, Charlie, myself and a friend went looking for a house in the Down Yonder Community Park, it always looked nice, it was all adult, a 55+ community, but I was able to get in, they needed to allow 42 and up in to meet some quota. The place we looked at was a large 4 bed room, much older home, the floors were sinking in, meaning lots of floor work, it needed tons of care plus the outside was a dark pumpkin brown. I wanted to throw up, so Caress and I went for a walk, leaving Charlie there talking with the owner. As we walked, we seen a house for sale on the corner, it was nice, and for the price, perfect. I called them and meet up with them a few hours later. The guy from the pumpkin home found out, didn't like it, started rumors that Charlie was a drug dealer. As I mentioned Baba, he was way out there, his wife would love to stare at Charlie as he worked out in the yard, or when he was on the pourch, he would catch her staring at him, this at times would freaked him out, but hell why not, he has a body that most liked looking at. That pissed off Baba. He Killed two of our pine trees because he didn't like cleaning up the needles, he then began dumping tons of dirt at the base of one of our trees saying "Im trying to help you out and build up the yard" that was BS, he just didn't want to get rid of the dirt so he dumped it on us. He got on a ladder and re-positoned our back yard security light into the air so it would not shine in the yard as he was partying on the weekends. I guess he didn't like it when Charlie made fun of the carpet he wore on top his head. We got into it with him and he stopped after his wife passed and he moved away. Thank GOD for that. The neighbor behind the new house came by, his name was known as BABA and was full of himself and of IT! The neighbor accross the street his name was was BAD DON, he had a license plate saying that as well, total nut case plus he had a one eyed dog that he allowed to run all over shitting in everyones yard. Well we moved in, we gave several things to Don, air conditioner and other things and when the free things stopped, this nut case really showed out. He attempted to run Charlie over twice while in his car, he would get into shouting matches with Charlie over the garbage blowing in our yard and that his dog was shitting in our yard, Charlie kept running him out, the dog that is daily, Charlie kept picking up the crap. He called the dog pound since the community mgt refused to do anything about it. Bad Don then yelled out to Charlie, "I have a bullet and it has your name on it" well of course the police said they could do anything unless he shoots Charlie, now how messed up is that. Any how, Bad Don ended up leaving the community. Charlie discovered facebook and opened his own page, it was a rant page, a place he could vent, a place he could release, I worked some 16 hour days, I was an overnight, promoted to a manager then to Director which took alot of my time running 8 residential facilities. If you pissed off Charlie, you made his facebook page, now whether it would be in good taste or not and everyone has that right to accept it or not. Everyone in the community was blocked from seeing the page, he only had a few friends. These nosey M/Fers would create fake facebook pages just to see what Charlie was saying. Now good taste or bad, it was his own page, he didn't friend request, email, text, instant gram or call anyone, they chose to seek him out and see what he was saying. It's the pandora box theory, if you know it's something you souldn't see, don't seek it out, don't open the door, don't open the box because you just might not like what people are saying about you. Charlie would put horns on them, color their eyes red, swastikas on thier fore heads, would make comments like "Look the Ass holes are back" again, this was intended to be only for him, his own rant page, of course we knew that they were reading his pages just from the talk from the neighbors within the community. Now with that being said, as strong as it sounds for Charlie, many of times he was found by me crying, depressed, kind of lost in moods that I couldn't get thru too and this would last for days at times. I would do my best to keep things together, but thru his eyes, these people he really didn't know some how hated him for what he was or for how their wifes acted when he was around. What ever the case, Charlie was depressed 80% of his life while we lived there. Now understand that this isn't a "Cry me a river, build a bridge and get over it" I had enough streangth for the both of us. By no mean was Charlie ever short on words, but my dad raised no pussies neither, we were fighters, but when the person you love is going through this hell, what you do if put in them shoes. Now as I mentioned above, Charlie liked to work, ride his bike and walk around without his shirt and the comments he would get from the older women just pissed off their husbands. So a bunch of the community HOA residents attempted to stop him and get some fictitious rule to get him to wear a shirt. We were members of the HOA at the time, I had to work so Charlie went to the meeting to address the HOA about the shirt issue, all the "SO CALLED FRIENDS" didnt say one word in Charlies behalf, some real friends, but they sure did support him when the meeting was done and everybody left. The rule never passed since ELS, Equity Life Styles, said that this is Florida, everyone goes around without shirts. The husbands stated that if offends the women, which again pissed the hell out of the husbands and still the rule they wanted "FAILED" So the communities little click began their attack on us. Here is What Charles looked like before and after the OLD POOP ran him down like a dog in the road, then has the nerve to say "That me and my girlfriend FEAR for our lives" and looky looky here are pictures of him, his freak of a girlfriend and his family in the white van, doing nothing,,, but harassing Charles by driving by the house, taunting Charles. There was no reason for them to even come by since they FEAR for their lives, but the City of LARGO seems to think its just fine for them to FEAR for their lives and just drive on by harassing us. Think about it... FEAR for their LIVES.. Really!! This is what our house looked like when we were FORCED out of it by DOWN YONDER/ELS 50,000.00 LOST Here is what happens when it rains! Drive thru that! This Charlie and Me, together almost 19 years, yeah I can see why they hate us so much.. they can't stay married let along together.. Jealous, what a terrible thing.... Add Text Here... THE HATE!!!!! They got away with in LARGO!!!!! The Attempted MURDER while on a bike, and LARGO looked the other way!!! Figure that!! This what I drove over for years damaging my car and the community Mgr LEFT it like this, who cares its just two fags right?? This is what Down Yonder and the HOA didnt like, they put their attorneys on us and forced us out of our home. I never thought in a million years that old people were this BAD. A word of advice, STAY OUT OF LARGO AND THE DOWN YONDER COMMUNITY OWNED BY EQUITY LIFESTYLES... Unless you just want to throw your money away.... Well just a fast update, today 4/12/16 I filed a complaint with the Pinellas County Sheriffs Office about Charlies experience, well guess what was sitting outside my work site... a Pinellas County Sheriffs SUV. Hmmm can we call that INTIMIDATION!!! Im not going away guys, I will speak mine and Charlies story, no matter how much intimidation or harassment I get from you, your friends or any officials. You will not shut me up, gage me or other wise silence me, nothing Im doing is against the REAL LAW, what you may make up, I will not listen to. SO put on and buckle your seat belts, Its going to be a LONG RIDE!!via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsYE-xthERg)