#and ill probably just do a little one.. the big mold i have is kinda too big

[bucephaly]

Mmmk i have Three weeks to do 2 sculpts and maybe a pot, do a big firing of all the clay once everything's dry

And also carve a wood block and do a big round of printing

[doverstar]

What is the biggest difficulty that would occur for Chrissy and Eddie as an established couple? What do you think would be their first hiccup or issue was they learn to mold to each other?

I was actually just thinking about this today in the car. It's always kinda difficult, these questions, because we got so little to go off of when it comes to Chrissy's personality. At least in terms of what she's like when she's not in the thick of being miserable about her self-image/her mother abusing her emotionally. Or being hunted by Vecna. So gauging her actions/reactions to things is hard. I don't know - I think even if they're really happy being together, at some point the honeymoon phase has to end and you have to deal with everyone else. Everything else. We know Eddie doesn't care what people think - much. But even he would be a little disgruntled, I think, by the way society treats Chrissy or him. And I don't think the reactions would be as volatile as some people write them to be in fics. Like, yes, it is surprising that good-girl cheerleader Chrissy Cunningham is no longer with Jason Carver and is now dating scary freak drug dealer Eddie Munson. It's weird. I mean, the student body would only have them front-and-center as a couple in their minds up until graduation, honestly, so maybe that wouldn't be as lingering anyway- Yeah, I think they'd both have to adjust to the fact that no one in either of their circles were prepared for this. For Eddie it might understandably be easier - his bandmates and other friends probably wouldn't hate Chrissy right off or think ill of her (how could they?), and I wouldn't assume they share Eddie's now-dead prejudices against jocks. But for Chrissy - it would be really difficult. She'd have to turn off all the parts of her brain that care what other people think when it comes to Eddie and her relationship decisions, because there's just no way she can win them all, you know? Eddie is everything Satanic Panic 80's people would have hated. He's actually harmless, but they would never believe that. All Chrissy's friends, her family, the old women at the grocery store, oh my word her mother - those kinds of people would all have something to say. Or they'd make faces. Or they'd gossip. I mean, Chrissy's probably not the kind of girl who doesn't let other people's opinions affect her. We're told at the very least she has self-image issues. You don't get self-image issues without caring to some extent what other people think of you and your life. I think it would be a big adjustment for her to decide she wants Eddie, and if other people don't like it, all they can do is talk and she won't let it bother her. I think that would be harder than she thinks initially, even if she goes through some big major life-changing event that changes her as a person. She still has to live her life around people who do not like Eddie. That would be hard. So I think their first relationship hiccups might come from dealing with people who are not them. Eddie would never be allowed over to meet Chrissy's family. He's probably not allowed in the driveway. He'd have to deal with the fact that his girlfriend does care what people think at least a little, and people are wrongly hurting her feelings over their relationship, and she can't just flip a switch and turn that off. That would be frustrating, I think, to Eddie. He wouldn't pout or stew over it, or snarl at her or anything, but he'd be exasperated because he himself is so used to shutting out people's stupid biases. I can see them, first and foremost, having to learn and grow with each other in how they need to respond to one another when the outside world butts in. Everyone will have to adjust. And I think that could lead to fights between them more than anything else in the beginning.

Anyway this is getting too long. I will make a separate post about other "relationship hiccup" ideas, because I do have more, but Tumblr is limiting me! I love writing about couples who aren't perfect.

[blxetsi]

modern hange zoe dating headcanons

lowercase intended !

hange zoe x gn!reader

- first, their love language is definitely a mix of physical touch and verbal affirmations

- idc idc theyre the best of both worlds 🤩

- you prefer verbal affirmations over physical touch (or vice versa) ? their immediately making a mental note and showing u love with whichever one u like more

- i think they'd be a scientist or researcher ?? maybe they'd study the human body or like global warming ?? idfk but would definitely go into the science field

- also i personally love the idea of moblit and them being together 😳🤚 idk i love the idea

- but since YOU are with miss hange id like to think they stayed friends after the breakup 😌✨ theyre both mature ppl (and hot)

- moblit is always third wheeling w you guys. you and hange could be making out and he'd sit there with his iced coffee like 😐

- hange i feel is a very forgetful person, so like, dates and stuff (things made on a sort of short notice) they tend to forget about, but things like birthdays and anniversaries are NEVER forgotten

- ofc they'll make it up to you after you call them from the restaurant youve been waiting in for over an hour

- but sometimes it does hurt that they value their work so much, you love that they find joy in what they do and are dedicated, but it just feels like they prioritize work over you

- and hange understands ! and they start trying to be on time for things like that. is also constantly reassuring you at random times that they love and care about you

- also loves to spoon you. will literally wrap around you like a koala in bed. doesnt matter if its too hot and youre both immediately sweating, will trap you with their insane amount of strength and never let you go until either they wake up or you wake up begging to use the restroom

- i feel like when theyre working from home (which is everyday in a pandemic 🙄 even tho these headcanons arent really structured around pandemic modern times) they forget to eat/drink when they get reeeaaaallllyyyy into what theyre researching

- could be on the verge of discovering a new genetic mutation (idk) while also being on the verge of passing out due to dehydration

- theyll come out for dinner and be like "yknow ive been having this weird headache all day"

- "probably because you havent drank any water today"

- will stare at you like "🤨" before replying "nah i dont think so 😹"

- you have to threaten letting them starve to get them to drink some water. and as soon as they do theyre chugging three cups

- five minutes later theyre like "babe ! it worked ! youre awesome"

- lots of pet names like babe/baby, my love, my darling (in a dramatic english accent), honey, and any others that youd prefer

- has a weird love for the cartoon archer (yknow that adult show with like 10 seaons ??)

- will literally no nothing about the plot or characters, and will only put the show on for background noise while theyre doing something, but will ALWAYS recommend archer to others and say its their favourite cartoon if asked

- also loves the amazing world of gumball (you got them into it) actually watches the show and loves it, yet never thinks of it when asked "what shows should i watch ?" or "what are some shows you like ?"

- if youre like, an artist or something like that, they genuinely LOVE anything you make

- you made them a little painting ? theyre hanging it up in their apartment. you created a clay vase or something ? buying flowers to put in it rn (doesnt even take care of the flowers but yk)

- if youre having a bad day theyre dropping everything for you (unless its super important then theyre saying "how about i move my work to the bed and we can cuddle ?")

- if you need to rant theyre actively listening while trying to work. will accidentally start typing what youre saying onto their word document. ends up having to delete three whole paragraphs about that bitch at work smh 🙄🤚

- loves taking showers/ baths w you (NEVER in a sexual way though) they genuinely find it fun to wash each other's hair and stuff. if you ask them to wash your back theyre shoving their hands in your armpits and tickling you like,, mf ill fall and take us both down 😐

- definitely an ass/thighs person. doesnt matter how big or small, loves it.

- also a dish collector in their room. their room and office are in the same space, so youll find them with cups and plates on their desk where their research is supposed to be like bae,,, i think youre growing a new kind of mold 😍🦠💥

- talks so passionately abt their work and coworkers to you. theres this new intern at their job and hes the sweetest and brightest kid they know. his names armin and they speak about him SO highly

- also has a really cold nose ?? u love to kiss it bc it makes them shiver bc of the temperature difference

- has weirdly soft hands. youd think theyd be kinda rough bc of all the weird shit they touch for "science" but no. the hands are perfect

- doesnt know how to take care of things around the house (like handy stuff) so they beg levi to come over.

- he reluctantly does bc hes their friend but will nod at you as soon as he walks in and says "i hope hange isnt being too annoying today"

- immediately youll defend them and say zoe hange could never annoy you bc hange is the love of ur life and all he'll do is say "youre lucky then. i envy you."

- you and hange both know hes using his dry humour, but as punishment hange follows him around the place and annoys him even further

- also tries to convince you to get a dog at the weirdest of times ???

- itll be three in the morning and theyll just whisper in your ear "we should get a dog"

- theyre allergic to cats so if you suggest that they say "no ill die if i go near one"

- if youre allergic to dogs theyll say "okay fine a baby then"

- "how will we get one ?"

- "we'll steal it. or go looking through a dumpster"

- what did they say 😳😳⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️

- you shut down any ideas of a dog or baby for a long while after that

- loves squeezing your cheeks, and would love if you did it to them too

- will literally just sit in bed squishing them and request you do the same. so you both just sit facing each other criss crossed, squishing each others faces while giggling

- ive made this pretty long already so this is it ! but yes, they love u through and through

a/n

second headcanon babyyy !!! hope u all enjoyed !! my asks r open if u wanna request something !! (also please request something 😭😭😭 )

[the-awkward-outlaw]

A New Adventure - Pt. 7

A Slow Burn 

I think the title speaks for itself... We’ll see how long I can manage it! (I predict not very long at all)

Masterlist 

Read on AO3

It’s been a week since the big earthquake. You read that there’s been over 200 documented aftershocks. Most have been under the 2.5 range, meaning they’re barely noticeable without equipment. However, there were some above 4.1, meaning they were enough to frighten you and Arthur. 

As you predicted after spending the first night with him, nothing between you and him has been the same. In a good way though. 

Arthur was an ideal gentleman that night. Of course, you expected nothing less from him. He was the last man you needed to worry about. 

The morning after the quake, you woke up to an empty bed. He walked in about five minutes later with a cup of coffee for you to drink in bed. 

There was a tense, awkward silence. You weren’t quite sure what to say to him. “That was great, I hope we do that again”? No. “Thanks for letting me sleep all packed against you”? Worse. 

He broke the silence by explaining there’d only been a few small aftershocks. 

“Guess… guess we need to talk. About last night,” he’d said. 

“Guess we do. I… I understand if you prefer to sleep in the other bed.” 

He smiled and looked away. “Well, I was thinkin’... it was nice… to uh, not be alone for once. I didn’t expect to sleep last night with all the rumblin’, but… I slept surprisingly well.” 

You couldn’t but smile back at him. “Me too. Thank you, Arthur. I don’t think I would’ve coped if you weren’t here.” 

He surprised you yet again by gently grabbing your hand and squeezing it. 

Since then, the two of you have been more touchy with one another. Not in any sexual or romantic ways of course, but just the small bump here and there, and the occasional hand holding. He’s also taken to sitting on the same couch as you, as though he likes the physical closeness. 

You’ve always had a suspicion, even when you only knew him from the gang, that Arthur was secretly touch starved. His behavior now only solidifies that. 

You aren’t overly touchy, but you find yourself making an exception for Arthur. 

More and more, you want to ask him to be your boyfriend. You can’t tell if he likes you in that way though. However, it’s not just the complexity of his situation that prevents you from asking him. It’s only a matter of time before he figures out you’re not worth his energy. 

The thought breaks your heart, but you decide to enjoy his company while you still have it. 

Lately you’ve been testing how he reacts to you, to see if maybe there is something between the two of you. 

One night, you’d walked up behind him while he was sat on the couch and brushes the back of his shoulder, claiming his shirt was laying in an odd position. This was a downright lie of course, but you noticed the back of his neck burned red after your touch. 

Ever since that night after the earthquake too, he’s been more flustered around you. Not that you’ve been any different. It’s almost impossible to look him in the face without blushing. 

There’s still lots of aftershocks from the quake. 

After the first night, you thought Arthur would spend the nights with you in your bed. However, he chose to sleep in his own bed but said you were welcome to bother him should anything happen. 

This bummed you out. Perhaps he didn’t like you in that way. Maybe he blushed whenever anybody touched him. It’s not like he was used to it, afterall. 

Your feelings towards him have become confused and indecipherable even at times. You still love him as the sarcastic, tough, secretly sensitive outlaw protagonist from the video game you love, and you still have a raging crush on him as a person. However, why waste your time and energy on loving him that way if the feelings aren’t returned? 

You’re rather draggy today, a combination of poor sleep and the fact that you cried yourself to sleep. It wasn’t just the constant stress of the aftershocks. Your depression and doubt had gotten the better of you last night. 

All you could think of was how no one seemed to want to stick around you, that you were just a giant waste of everyone’s time. That Arthur would be far better off if he’d been discovered by someone else. 

You didn’t even consider the fact that without you, Arthur would probably be in a horrible place. Either back in the game and dying/dead or in a mental hospital being treated for an illness he didn’t have. 

The only thing your brain could focus on was that, just like everyone else in your life, Arthur would leave too. After all, your dad’s dead, taken from you by force. Your mother is too occupied on herself to give you the time of day. Your only sister, whom you’ve never been close with, lives in a different state. You don’t have any friends. You’re just one of those people that exists to take up space. It was not a good place to be. 

Arthur knew from early in the day that you aren’t yourself, that you’re far more quiet than usual. You lack your usual excitement towards Sage as you prepare to feed her is gone.

“You okay?” Arthur says, sipping his coffee. 

“What?” you say, completely lost in your head. 

“I said ‘you okay?’”

“O-oh. Yeah, I’m fine.” 

You decided this morning that you need to shelve your attractions to Arthur. He doesn’t like you in that way, in fact he’d be a fool to. But for your own mental health, you need to take a step back. 

Part of you wishes you’d never asked him to spend that night in your bed. It’s made things so much more complicated. If only you’d been strong enough to handle the night alone. 

“You don’t seem fine,” Arthur says, pulling you back out of your head. Damn it doesn’t help he’s wearing nothing but his union suit and his jeans, so you can see the definition of his body fairly well. “Ya seem… I don’t know, sad for some reason. Just kinda down.” 

Tears begin to well at the bottom of your eyes. Of course. You’ve been trying so hard to keep yourself together, but the moment someone asks if you’re fine, you have to break down. You turn away and wipe your eyes so Arthur won’t see. 

“I’m fine, Arthur. Like I said. Do yourself a favor and… don’t worry about me.” 

You turn back to Sage’s food. Poor dog, she’s been patiently waiting for a while now. 

Suddenly there’s a hand on your shoulder. 

“But I do worry about ya, Y/N. Y’know, you done so much for me. I know I been a… a burden.” 

“You ain’t been-” you start. 

“No, I have been. Please, let me… let me finish. I know you’ve had a lot of stress. From what I can gather about your time is that it’s hard. In different ways then my time was hard. This world moves so fast, I can hardly keep up with it and I barely have a part in it. I know it ain’t easy on anyone, even you. Then I come along, make things harder. Know my meds have been expensive. Then these earthquakes. Please, let me help you for once.” 

“You’ve helped me, Arthur,” you say, feeling incredibly embarrassed. “I mean, you got all that money for me when this COVID crap hit.” 

“Sure, but… Please, Y/N. Lemme help ya.” 

That’s all it takes and you’re breaking down in front of him. God, he must find you pathetic. It’s no secret he’s got a short fuse and doesn’t often have the patience to deal with emotional people. With his background, he has to be tough and it must be easy for him to find you weak. 

“Please, Arthur,” you beg. “Please don’t worry about me. It’s fine, I can deal with this on my own. Besides, you have your own stuff to worry about.” You wipe your tears, unable to muster the courage to look at him. 

A finger goes under your chin and lifts your head up gently so you have to look at him. Instead of the anger or annoyance you expected, you see pity and worry. 

“Ain’t got a whole lot other than you to worry about, sweetheart. I just wanna help ya.” 

“I… I can’t,” you whisper. How can you tell this man that you’re growing to love him more than any other person. He can’t know, and you wouldn’t even know how to begin to tell him. 

“Why not?” he asks. 

You swallow and look away. “Because you wouldn’t understand, Arthur. You and I… we’re nothing alike. We’re cut from different molds. I wouldn’t begin to wrap my head around the burdens on your shoulders, so I don’t expect you to understand mine.” 

“Try me,” he says with a small smile. 

He leads you over to the couch and sits you down on it. His eyes are soft and gentle, but he doesn’t press you to talk immediately. After he hands you a tissue, you decide it’s safe to at least tell him some of the things you’re feeling. 

“Arthur I… I know you know how it feels to just not live anymore. What it’s like to long for death. Well, I… I guess I been feeling that a lot lately. I just… I don’t matter to anyone.” 

You sniff and wipe your eyes again. He opens his mouth to speak but you cut him off. “And please don’t give me that trope of ‘there’s people who care, blah blah blah’ because I don’t see them.” 

You tell him about your past experiences with people and why you prefer being alone and how you expect you’ll die alone. 

“People just don’t like me, Arthur. Everyone figures it out in the end that I’m just not worth being around. There’s not a single person in this world whose life I’ve affected.” 

“Then I guess it don’t matter that I owe you my life.” 

You look up at him, your eyes wide. He scoots a little closer. 

“Y/N, who cares if ya don’t make a difference in this world? Most people don’t. Most people are barely remembered five minutes after their deaths except for those they were close to. Trust me, you’ve no idea the effect your death would have and there’s no way for you to know, just like the rest of us. And please don’t say you don’t matter to no one, because… you matter to me.” 

He takes your hand and squeezes it softly. Instead of feeling the affectionate flutter of your heart you expected to feel, you feel a soft tenderness and surge of friendship towards Arthur. It’s this moment you realize that he’s the one person you can trust to tell anything to. Already you feel better. 

“Thank you, Arthur,” you say, squeezing his hand back. “You’re a good man.” 

“Nah, I ain't. You don’t know the things I done.” 

“I know some of them. Bu you’re a good man to me.” 

[thebibliosphere]

What cleaning tips would you prioritize, for someone with dust/pollen/mold allergies? I bought a vogmask today in defiance of the seasonal pollen surge, and google has a lot of "do this, do that" to keep allergens down, but I can only do so much. How to you keep the balance between "destroy alllll the allergens" and "whoops I'm out of spoons and can't feed myself now"?

Vacuuming is my main priority in the house to keep on top of my extremely awful dust allergies. I need to vacuum every day or I’ll be having constant reactions, though unfortunately my illness means I don’t always have the spoons/energy to vacuum every day (and neither does ETD), which is actually why we bought our robot vacuum. We spent a long time saving up for our stronk robot daughter, and we love her. Not least of all because she helps keep my airways open.

Knowing how expensive that is though, I know it’s not an option for everyone, so here’s a way to combat your allergies and also give yourself some literal breathing space: if you live in a house with multiple rooms, pick one and turn it into your safe zone. Most folks choose the bedroom for obvious reasons. Try to keep the tops of any surfaces clutter free (something I fail at miserably but I’m working on) to make it easier for dusting—and always make sure to use a damp cloth to dust with so you’re not just sweeping it up into the air and into your lungs. Furniture polish isn’t necessary, and some folk find the scents irritating. Damp cloth to remove dust, and if it needs it, dry cloth to buff. Try to keep paper books in the bedroom down to a minimum as well as the pages attract dust and if you’re not able to dust your books regularly, mold spores can form. E-readers are ideal for folk with serious dust and mold spore allergies for this reason.

Also try to make a point of vacuuming that room once a day, or once every second day if you can. If you’ve got long drapes in the bedroom (like we do, rip) you will also need to try and vacuum them once every month or so if your allergies are bad. A better option for many folk with asthma and dust allergies is roll down linen blinds that can be wiped down with a damp cloth every now and then.

Pay attention to the corners and skirting board too and try to get them while dusting with the damp cloth. Or use an attachment on your vacuum. I usually do this once a week when I’m also doing the bed linenes, which is also a big thing for dust allergies, so make sure to wash your bed linen at least once a week. Skin and dust gets trapped very easily in bedding and dustmites love that. Washing them on a hot setting should kill any dust mites that tried to make it their home. Tumble drying also kills the little feckers.

Also if you can? Absolutely invest in a hepa air filter for that room and just leave it running 24/7, and make sure it’s one you can change the filter on/have access to clean it. It’s amazing what a difference it can make to the air quality, especially if you leave the door shut. Walking into our bedroom for me at night is akin to walking into an oxygen tank from how much more breathable the air is compared to the rest of the house. A reputable air purifier with a hepa filter will run from anywhere between $40 to $300+ Go by square space purified by size in relation to your room, not necessarily by price. The one I have in my bedroom is a PureZone and I think it was $99. I’ve had it for a year and only just now had to change the filter on it.

Also if you have a rotating blade fan, either ceiling or floor stand, make sure you clean the blades regularly. Those things are the devil for spreading dust around.

If your vacuum cleaner is a trigger, like mines is cause it’s a canister one that blows dust up into the air while in use and when emptying, you may also want to look into a water filter vacuum, which is something I am actually doing. The way it works is instead of using an air filter, the dust is sucked up and captured by a water filtration system that turns the dust into, well, sludge. When it needs changed you empty the dirty water out and fill it up again, kinda like a steam cleaner that doesn’t steam or get hot, but very effective at eliminating any chances of dust becoming airborne during use or maintenance.

Steam mops are also a good thing to have for things like hardwood or vinyl/tile where dust residue can linger even if you can’t see it. I have a LIGHT ‘N’ EASYsteam mop that comes with a detachable nozzle thingy for steam cleaning things like the couch, so you can kill any dust mites that might be inhabiting soft fabric surfaces. You can also buy a carpet/rug attachment for the mop head, so you can also treat the carpet to a dust mite killer steam treatment, without actually getting your rug/carpet wet or damaged. I love mine, and I use it for a lot of cleaning tasks that would otherwise require a lot of elbow grease that wears me out easily, such as say, cleaning the grout on the bathroom tiles where mold can build up and become a problem.

Also just as a more general tip if you have central air for heating or air con, and you are the person in control of the furnace, make sure you’re swapping the air filter out on it once a month. Don’t bother with the fancy $30+ allergy ones there’s no proof they work any better than buying 12 cheap ones at $3 a pop and changing it out every month. In fact the dude who services our furnace told us that the allergy filters are actually too fine for most furnaces and can cause air clogging issues. Swapping out a cheap $2 filter once a month is far better for both your wallet and your furnace. Also consider having your vents professionally cleaned in the spring and fall. We found out we had a lot of dust and mold in our vents when we first moved in and it absolutely caused havoc with my allergies till we just sucked it up (no pun intended) and paid a company to come shove a giant vacuum into the vents and get rid of it. I think we were about $250 for a full vent system clean. It was amazing how drastically it changed the air quality in the house after we got it done. Which reminds me, I need to call and get the air vents cleaned.

So yeah, how to survive with allergies and not use up all your spoons? Keep one space and make that your priority. And for days when keeping on top of things is too hard, air purifiers are your friend and well worth the investment. Also this may seem obvious? But don’t wear outside clothes to bed. I know some folk who when they come home just face plant on top of the covers still in their clothes, but this tracks outside dust and pollen into the space. Always change from outside clothes to indoor clothes before face planting on the bed. Also during peak pollen season? Try to shower before getting into bed so you don’t accidentally track pollen into your bed sheets. I know it’s not always possible, but it does help.

If you’re like me and you have a lot of clutter and shit and are currently staring round your room in dismay, don’t worry about doing it all at once. I’ve been slowly decluttering and allergy proofing our bedroom for a year. Any little bit of progress you can make toward creating yourself a safe zone is progress and you will reap the benefits of it. As for the rest of the house? Same rules apply. Take your time with it and maybe try to assess high areas of clutter that may be a source for dust and mold spores to form. For us we’re about to start looking into getting book cases with glass doors on them to try and cut down on how often we have to dust the dragon hoard of books in the corner. It’ll probably take us another six months, but that’s also six months of time for me to sort through the pile and give some books into charity or the second hand store.

Anyway. I hope some of this was helpful, and I’m sure others will have some great ideas in the notes. Just remember that some progress is better than no progress and you don’t have to do it all at once, and there’s things you can invest in to help. Good luck! And remember, Oppy the Not-A-Roomba is rooting for you, and so am I!

[umbillicalnoose]

i think that you would think im pretty and would like my poetry and i want to share it with you. im shy.

to be honest, im very apathetic these days. im not the nice “cutesy baby flower petal boy” i used to be. a lot has happened & im bitter & sullen & all in all, a pretty shitty friend/person to know. i used to possess some redeeming qualities, believe it or not, even if they were construed by the subconscious in an attempt to be likeable - a facade, even tho its only a facade, is still tangible, still there, is still something, even if not authentic. is poorer character forgivable in the name of presenting more authentically? but nah. that makes it sound like im putting effort into being a better person, which im not. im just sort of fried & done. its been a very long time since i played the role i built for myself on here of the “small fawn boy who wants to help girls” lmaooo. how embarrassing. altho, i was just a kid, & i guess, if you had a tumblr as a teenager, you went thru some cringe (i know the use of that word has fallen in on itself & adopted its own definition but for lack of a better one) ass phases, whether it was kinning or malingering mental illness or oh fucking christ, all that gender bullshit, etc etc. from what ive observed, tho, loosely following kids im still casually friends with that i met on here, i think we’ve all managed to Grow The Fuck Up, at least a little. most of us have jobs or r in school or have partners - growing up & moving on is a very surreal experience to watch/go thru. im moving at my own pace & ive accepted that - im still currently using & starving myself & concocting a suicide plan every day but at least i use clean needles as much as possible, i actively & honestly do strive for the bare minimum calorically, & um able to work with the mentality of “well ill have this when i need it but todays not that day” a lot more readily, in relation to suicide shit. ive finally found a therapist who Really Gets It, is a frontrunner internationally on ritual & extreme abuse & mind control. its pretty incredible what a few years with a good therapist can do. anyways. im sorry, i know you didnt ask for all this & im not even sure why i divulged. i guess, what tipped me off, was your attempt at sounsing “cute” - dude, cut that shit out, i promise youll be a lot better off. & i know everyone interchanges aspects of their personality based on who theyre talking to/who they percieve themselves to be talking to, but i feel like not a lot of people give enough credence to the internet & its hand in shaping/molding young people, kids, vulnerable dumbasses, especially tumblr (tho, i get that its a relatively new phenomenon) - u get a bunch of the “weird”, “alternative”, ““ostracized” kids together on a website, of course its gonna nurture a culture of hypervalidatoon & pretending to be sick in order to fit in to the point that its not an act anymore & exacerbation of symptoms & basically, just sucking each others dicks, sitting in ur own shit, & never ending coddling. & then, you have the older group of kids, who have played this game before but instead of helping or ignoring the Dumbshit kids, they indulge their own normally-buried-but-unleashed-by-internet-anonymity sadism/human instinct to just be fucking dicks & so now you have this vicious cycle of anger & hatred & fucking melodrama up the urethra. im sorry, i know im comig off as/am being harsh but god fuckin dammit yknow? also, this isnt directed at you, specifically, more of a generalized thing, @ myself included. so uh. i mean, if u still wanna share it with me after reading all this, id be happy to read ur poetry. i used to be over the top nice & then reverted to Major Asshole & am now trying to find that sweet middle spot - honoring & allowing myself to share my pain without putting it on others. which is really hard!! cuz becoming a Dick was difficult in that it forced me to be more honest with my true self & as such, more vulnerable - now in trying to become Kinda Nice again because despite being a pulsating scrotom, ive had the intense desire for friendship & human interaction, while simultaneously doing things that i was consciously aware was pushing others away - but then, if i pretend to be nice, where does that authenticity i worked for & was so scared of go? & i dont mean telling someone their new haircut looks nice even when it doesnt - thats just not being a dick. but i guess, those r the normal trials & tribulations of any relationship & adolescent developing identity. which is weird too - dealing with “normal” issues, i mean. whats the point if your life/limbs/breaking point arent at risk? whats the point when your best friends already dead. im sick of people calling "survivors” (despise that word, so fucking female-originated & overdramatic) “brave” & “strong” - surviving is not brave or strong. its just survival. you wouldnt call an animal brave for running for its life from a predator but you would call a dog courageous for going into a burning building to save its owner. premeditated action on the notion that you are probably going to be hurt is brave. being subjected to pain with no choice is not. theres no “silver lining” or anything “good” to be drawn from it either - sure it may have made x a more compassionate person or made y more introspective & gentle but you know what would have been even fucking better??? if the shit hadnt happened in the first place! let x be an asshole & y be self absorbed - the “benefits”, so to speak, do not outweigh the cost, not by a long fucking shot. its not only patronizing to hear garbage like that, but a slap in the face to know that anyone could possibly see anything good coming from that nightmare & that the characteristics, good or bad, you developed either in response to or as a result of, are worth praise. dont tell me im strong for doing what i had to to escape a torture chamber - tell me im perseverant for studying my ass off & passing that test last week. in the words of one of my dearest & most fucking brilliant friends, “pain doesnt owe me/you purpose - the need to intellectualize & assign meaning to pain & death is not only futile, but harmful.” & honestly, i think that it stems from weakness (in most cases - i realize theres a plethora of other reasons such as those who r just desperate for something to hold on to or r hyperintellectual & analytical or who have been pressured by external “support” systems to find the “good” etc etc) - while the majority of people view the person who “can find the good in everything” (strictly speaking only in relation to trauma/tragedy here & more in denunciation of those that celebrate this trait as opposed to vilifying “survivors” who respond this way, though in my experience, its very very very rarely the “survivor” that perpetrates this ideology ) as strong, i sort of see it as a weakness - their inability to sit with & absorb their own pain or that of others is so strong that not only do they have to frantically pull rainbows out of the teeth of a meat cleaver, they also have to exist within this strange (tho, not malicious - more subconscious) superiority complex. like, nah, dude, some times shit is just awful. you cant tell me anything fucking good came out of a four year old girl being kidnapped, gangraped, & tortured for two years, before being impaled & left to die on a stake. her mom opened a non profit organization? oh well thank fucking god for that!!! those that believe the latter to be more “enlightened” or whatever the fuck r the same people who say shit like “dying is easy - living is harder” & i get that that its supposed to be interpreted metaphorically for the most part - giving up is easy, trying isnt (which also.....isnt true??? admitting defeat & fully accepting the fact that ur fucking helpless is beyond hard lmao???) - but pretend youre somewhere, anywhere outside ur sunny little fucking yoga studio full of white women whos biggest issues r the pta & johnny whos failing math, & lets say your life is in real, imminent danger, a gun is to your head & i want you to not scream or cry or beg for ur life since dying is “easier”. if dying is so easy, why do the majority of ppl cling to it with such desperation - why is suicide illegal? why do some ppl go thru 100s of chemo treatments even tho the doctors say theyre just prolonging the inevitable, ppl who cut off a diseased arm so it wont spread, those who walk dozens of miles every day for food & water, etc? & i know & understand the survival instinct better than anyone, even when i wanted to die more than anything, my natural instincts would kick in with no conscious neural input & id do what i had to do. im not condemning those who cling to life (ok - a little. ur wasting resources out of ur own fear. but i also realize thats just me being a Fucking Asshole As Always cuz technically, im doing the same thing tho its more due to lack of opportunity rather than fear. i just think, societally, death should be more normalized, discussed, & not made out to be so unknown & scary), instead just reprimanding those who say shit like that (inspirational facebook quotes). especially cuz most of the ppl who do spew that shit have never gone thru anything even remotely difficult - their worst nightmare is a Big Scary Black Man grabbing them on the street, mugging them, & touching their tits. & i also know that these stupid ass sayings are to be applied to bullshit like exercise & fitness (“no pain no gain” is another one of my Favorites) & not fucking torture or even just ur run of the mill rape, even that would probably smash the rose tinted banana republic shades off their beverly hills tanned faces. but ive heard the no pain no gain one a handful of times in the last few weeks, specifically from doctors performing procedures in preparation for my bottom surgery. & i know its supposed to be encouraging & they have no way of knowing, but its just like, buddy, u have no idea who youre fucking talking to. & im starting to understand what THEY mean when they say it - pain with a reward is infinitely more tolerable than pain just for the sake of pain; like, a tattoo, it hurts, but u know, when its done, its gonna be sick as fuck. when u r able to fall back on the idea that its for something u rlly want, its A Lot easier to handle as opposed to pain thats Just Pain - theres no reward for it except, i guess, that the more u experience it, the closer u r to the end of it lmao. i mean, i still hate when ppl say it cuz for most of my life, pain was just pain, & the “reward” was the opportunity to go home at the end & so whenever ppl say that, my mind just immediately resorts back to that & im just like haha fuck u. but im trying to remember my experiences r definitely not universal & im starting to sorta understand what they mean i think. but, flipping gears here, & going back to the sentiment of “everything happens for a reason”, the base philosophy of psuedo deep Fuckwads - a girls dad didnt fuck her “for a reason”, everything doesnt happen “for a reason”. like ok, hypothetically, the kid he impregnated her with & that she was forced to have at 12 may surpass all odds & not become a homeless junkie & instead become a world renowned doctor who finds the cure for cancer. but she wasnt raped repeatedly from the age of six for that “reason”, no matter what anyone says & honestly, the liberation of the masses does not justify the suffering of one, especially a child. in my eyes at least. but again, im a bitter asshole. sorry i just Went The Fuck Off here oh my god.....if u read all this, thanks, pal. if not, thats cool too. but yea, send me ur stuff, id totally be down to read it. as for me potentially thinking ur cute, i have to look at my disgusting shitstain of a “face” every goddamn day so everyone else to me is fuckin aphrodite. but im also tryin to not put so much worth into physical appearance- its not something that should be complimented cuz its just smth a person was born with which is the same reason it shouldnt be insulted. this is gonna sound gay & stupid but i personally find that a persons essence & personality really permeates. you can meet someone who, objectively, isnt all that great looking, but once u get to know them, u really see their beauty - how the sun catches in their hair, their dilated pupils looking up at u from under long eyelashes in the dark, the birthmark on their right shoulder that they despise but that is so Them, the gap in their teeth, etc. & idk how to phrase this without it sounding like “well ur ugly but at least ur a good person”, cuz that only reiterates the societally indoctrinated emphasis on appearance & my kneejerk reaction to assure the person in question that thats not what im saying is only another result of that!!! its inescapable!!! but no, really, its not just a matter of “its on the inside that counts” - physically, they change or maybe, actually this is more likely, when i first meet them, my “default” eyes r just looking for features that i know im immediately attracted to (tall, blonde, sickly as in sunken eyes sticklike pale but still looks like she could & will beat the shit out of me) but as i fall in love or get to know them better, my eyes adjust & i notice & adore the beauty that was there all along. so uh. idk if ill think ur “cute”. but probably, yes, ill think ur an angel.

[saigeboredeaux-blog]

( cisfemale ) haven’t seen NAEVA BARABESI around in a while. the NAOMI SCOTT lookalike has been known to be (+) STEADFAST & (+) JUDICIOUS, but SHE can also be (-) CHARY & (-) DETACHED. The 21 year old is a JUNIOR majoring in ANTHROPOLOGY. I believe they’re living in POTENTAS but I popped by earlier and no one answered the door. ( james! 20. EST. she/they. )

hello hello ! i’m james and this is my baby naeva !! she’s an oldie but also ... a new..ie ?? let’s just say it’s been a hot minute since i’ve awoken her ! i’ll probably pick up another muse at some point b/c that’s Who I Am and it was already a struggle figuring out who to bring in first so jskjdflg (except ik who i’d bring in for my second muse :~) ) anyways !! let’s get right into it !

TW: implications of illness.

a e s t h e t i c s

black a-line dresses and black oxford shoes and their light tapping against polished floors, parental expectations and eyerolls beginning lectures, sunglasses under fluorescent lights and the same old tired excuses. driving drunk friends so there’s a reason to say no, laughing off backhanded remarks and clinking of glasses, that old vintage watch that no longer functions but the presence brings a comfort like no other. tossing and turning and waking up and falling asleep--vicious cycles in a battle between dreams and reality. knowledge, and the ever-ending thirst to learn more--love for the surrounding world and an undying will to live. noses in books and the peaking gazes from underneath so, curiosity peaking and a longing to feel alright in one’s skin.

general info !!

full name: naeva ornella barabesi

nickname(s): to be determined t b h

b.o.d. - september 1st, 21 yrs old, virgo

label(s): the facade, the pastiche, the prevaricator, the salubrious

height: 5′6″

hometown: lecce, italy

sexuality: brave of u to assume naeva even know

her stats can be found HERE

and her pinterest can be found HERE !!

biography !!

to those her parents boast to, naeva is a miracle child by all means. guests told that she was born perfect--silent out the womb, easy as day to care for after years of trying for child with no avail; an angel taking vessel in their baby daughter. she is born to liars.

born to old money invested in hedge funds and the vice president of an international bank, surrounded by old buildings of exquisite architectural design--the barabesi family lived lavishly. this is not a lie. their mansions and sports cars and boastful superiority is all, undoubtedly real.

a child born with ailments to last her lifetime is a precious miracle who needs to stay quiet when mommy and daddy are bragging to their guests.

being oh so fragile only meant a lack of socialization except for when it’s convenient--the endless faces of specialists, or tutors, or her parents’ friends.

they love their daughter, yes, but after years and years of building perfect empires and fitting the mold they’ve so desperately tried to label themselves--god be damned if little naeva wasn’t their golden star right from the moment she was born.

born and, for a short time, living in lecce, italy--the barabesi family soon moved to the states in pursue of the best of the best doctors. specifically, cold spring, new york.

small enough to go undisturbed, the young girl spent her time learning and learning; whether it were numbers or vague history or what to take on what days and how to turn a cough into a smile.

and being treated as far too fragile--too delicate, as if she could shatter if you so dared look at her for too long.

eventually, the vicious cycle shifted to a life manageable. though still feeling as if she walked on eggshells, naeva could attend elementary school.

sure, it was stressful--but god, it was her life; she was not a burden, no matter the circumstance and no matter what ailed her.

years passed as naeva juggled the golden child act--attending school, her parents’ little parties, her after school lessons, endless doctor appointments--a blur, in all honesty. a near comfortable routine.

it wasn’t until naeva was in high school that she got a little, well, restless

routine is good, yes--but she was a girl who wanted to live a life where she didn’t have to worry about her health.

it were small things at first, skipping class to read in the library (how very rebellious, wow) and staying out of her house as much as possible without raising suspicions--whether it was stopping at the convenience store after violin or purposely hitting as many red lights as possible.

though naeva seemed to spiral her senior year, really, that’s when it became an issue.

unraveling quickly for reasons she really couldn’t fathom, she felt as if she wasn’t living enough.

going to parties instead of the library, committing vandalism with newly acquired friends, ignoring all the don’ts that came with being her and getting just. absolutely plastered.

it was at one of these parties, a college party nonetheless--where naeva met tatiana samuels.

the girl fascinated an impressionable naeva in a way she didn’t understand--it grew into a friendship, and for the rest of the year; if tatiana was at a party, so was naeva.

but of course--reality got to the best of naeva and when her health crumbled, she withdrew. canceled her bad girl subscription; practically swore it off.

it hadn’t helped that the entire situation had thoroughly freaked out her parents, and suddenly, naeva was six again. back to the basics. this time, however, naeva thought that just maybe, it was for the best.

her parents practically forced her to attend lockwood (not that she really minded) in order to keep her close to home--even so, naeva is living as independently as she can.

personality

it’s sort of easy to mistake naeva for a very serious kinda woman; y’know, no laughs or jokes or inappropriate behavior.

it’s the air around her, really; cool, calm, and collected; aloof yet confident, eyes so dark y’can’t tell if they’re judging or commending you. always seen with a yeti in hand, undoubtedly filled with decaf coffee--booties and tights and tasteful blazers. she’s your fourth grade substitute teacher that wouldn’t let you talk during free time.

but well, it’s a mistake.

she’s responsible and rational and work-oriented but god, does she value humor and amusement and all the good little things in life.

maybe she’s not the funniest person around, but she’ll attempt banter with you--and if you’re passionate about something she’ll hear you out; hell, she’ll support your excitement, maybe even share some of her own passions. naeva is constantly amused, even if her mouth’s set in a hard line.

she studies anthropology because of her love for human life and culture; her minor’s in sociology for god’s sake. naeva loves life, loves liveliness, loves people who feel intensely--naeva’s got a lot of love in her.

it’s a shame she’s so afraid to let people in.

don’t get it wrong--she’ll cozy right up to you but...is she really? or is she just letting you see what she wants you to see? it pains her, as somebody who feels so much, to act so...distant? she by no means gives off a cold air, but she’s the kind of gal you know without really knowing.

god, naeva is so scared. it hurts, sometimes, how scared shitless she is--the events happening in lockwood, secrets being revealed--the possibility that hers will be one day out in the opened without her consent. she just wants to live her life. she really, really, just wants to live.

‘course, she keeps it very very contained. her friends must not know how goddamn stressed she is, at all times of the day--the woman hates pity. she’s been pitied since birth. she wants no more of it.

it’s precisely why she keeps her medical history so hidden. she isn’t ashamed of her life, no, she’s alive and that’s what matters--but the pity. imagined or not--the thought of it is unbearable. maybe it’s silly, maybe a little too irrational for a girl considered so...rational, but, she can’t help it.

it’s not anybody’s business anyway--she tells herself, at least--

it’s led to her lying a lot--unnecessary, but she panics often--when she disappears from school for an extended amount of time, it’s because of family drama or events or public appearances or whatnot.

which, sometimes really gets to her--she’s supposed to be dependable, reliable, trustworthy--goddammit, and she can’t even do that. she’s just a girl with a lot of excuses up her sleeve and one day she’s going to run out.

don’t get her wrong though ! she’s not a passive person, y’know, just because she can be quiet and distant. if she sees an injustice she will speak out about it--she’s got a lot of opinions, and is pretty much ready to attack you with words.

tl;dr - kind and a Pal whilst keeping a distance--always stressed but [laugh track] you’ll never know. she’s also a big nerd when it comes to cultures and just. learning in general. loves history and sociology and anthropology and all that. like...a mom friend? very responsible, will be the designated driver Always and take care of you, it’s just...you only really know what she wants you to know, and she’s a lil bit of a liar. Big Smart, is always amused. not as serious as you’d think.

OH! and she’s very noncommittal in the relationship-sense. like...she’s probably dated around a little bit but the longer it lasts the more tense she gets and more often than not she breaks things off.

disclaimer!

illnesses can be a very sensitive topic and i promise i’m not being vague about it without reason: i’ll be going into it for a task. i’m always cautious on how i portray it, so please let me know when and where i can better myself if something feels off ! the last thing i want to do is come off as inaccurate.

i also was going to do a fun fact/headcanon section but my brain? big dumb and i literally forgot everything i wanted to write so lmao. one of these days, expect a lil headcanons thing. but for now ...

OH! here’s a fun fact! she’s rich as FUCK. that is all, good day.

wanted connections

god give me everything

like i’m really up for anything.

give her a best friend! somebody who really truly knows her

or somebody who Thinks they really know her tehehehfgjfghj

let her mom friend others! be the parental figure in this relationship!

fake friends b/c she’s got money.

study buddies!

people she tutors!

somebody who lets her be a lil’ wild, loosen up.

on the other end: let her keep somebody rooted! a good influence.

ex partners! on good or bad terms??

hook ups! one night stands! fwbs!

ex-hookups ! one night stands that lead to awkward encounters

a thorn in her side, an absolute Annoyance.

on the other hand, let me use naeva to badger your characters. let Her be the annoyance.

enemies? for whatever reason ??

on-and-off-agains!

will they won’t they?

ex-friends! ex-friends trying to fix their friendship!

tense relationships!

oh, your mail keeps getting mixed with mine ?? wth ?? we don’t even have similar names ??

conspiracy theory buds!

STOP running INTO ME on ur morning JOGS u PRICK i’m trying to WALK HERE

purposely stealing the last like...breakfast sandwich in the food court just to be that asshole

bickering. just lots of bickering.

somebody who is just suspicious of naeva’s lil lies n is like HMM and she’s like OH NO U DON’T

somebody she rly wants to be close with but just :) refuses :)

anything unrequited. anything one-sided. love or hate or platonic idc i want it all.

pls n thank.

like this n i’ll msg you of course !!

[sympathetichorror]

OKAY i got a couple of responses so here’s the first chapter of my WIP tentatively titled “little stranger!”

i’d love comment/critiques but please be kind

[word count: 3,034]

Dad bought Mikey the Rickenbacker for his tenth birthday, back in ‘64. The Beatles had hit it big and Mikey had decided that he wanted to be a rockstar too, so without hesitation or any real kind of money in his pockets, Dad went down to a music shop in Austin and picked up the same kind of guitar that George Harrison wielded. At the time, Dad had given up hope on making Mikey into a sports star, so he decided to try to make him a rockstar. Rock music was masculine in Dad’s eyes, and if Mikey was a big man rock star who could pull in girls like those English boys did, even with their floppy hair, then the rumors about Mikey being light in the loafers couldn’t be true.

But Mikey, being Mikey, was over the rockstar dream by the time he unwrapped the guitar on his birthday, much to Dad’s ire and disappointment. The guitar got hung on the wall of abandoned dreams in the basement, alongside Mikey’s old baseball glove, football helmet, and cleats. I was only six at the time, but I used to sneak down in the basement all the time to steal glances at the mystical instrument, which hung just high enough to be out of my little reach, not that my fingers were big enough to do anything with it. By the time I grew tall enough to be able to take it off the wall, Dad gave in and let me have it.

He didn’t want me to have it at first because he didn’t see the guitar as a “ladylike” instrument, but once he realized that Mikey was never going to be the guy in the letterman with a beauty queen on his arm, he didn’t care anymore. An unladylike daughter was bad, but significantly less bad than a queer son. He already had a queer son, so what was the harm in letting me, the often ignored second child, be a little unladylike?

That guitar was the only thing I took with me when I went to New York to try to find Mikey. Well, I took some clothes and all the money I’d saved up babysitting, but nothing else besides those necessities and the guitar. I didn’t want anything else. I wanted to leave everything behind in Lampasas to die in the Texas heat - the bullying, the rumors, the cruelty, Mom’s bruises, Dad’s growing pile of empty beer cans, all of it.

Mom might not have been able to gather the guts to save herself, but I was determined not to let myself have the same fate as her. So at seventeen, fresh out of high school and full of teen angst, I took a bus up to New York City to try to find my brother, who’d disappeared into the concrete jungle four years ago, just after he got out of school.

It took a while, but I did manage to find Mikey, though he now went by the name Oscar and was nearly completely unrecognizable from the brother I’d once known. At the same time, he never looked more like himself, even if himself looked rather ridiculous in leather and feathers and unkempt hair. He was an artist now. He’d been fronting a band for the past couple of years, a band that was the even poorer man’s version of the New York Dolls, but he was having a ball nonetheless.

That was two years ago. Now, Oscar was deep in a heroin addiction, unable to do anything but turn tricks and shoot up. I was the breadwinner of our little fucked up household, bringing in the money for everything other than drugs. I was the artist now, though I wouldn’t know if I’d call myself that necessarily. I fronted my own little punk group and I did my own shit my own way, and that was all I’d say about myself.

“I’m heading out!” I called to Oscar through the bathroom door. “You good?”

“I’m good!” Oscar yelled back throatily.

There was no doubt that he was in there slumped over the toilet, either from being too doped up or not doped up enough. I didn’t know which it was and I didn’t really care. So long as he wasn’t dead as I was leaving, I didn’t care. I probably should care more about my brother and his current state of absolute drug addiction, but at this point, I couldn’t. I’d cared too much for too long, and I’d learned that if he didn’t care, I couldn’t care either.

With that, I threw my guitar over my back and headed out of our little shithole apartment. For a New York apartment on the budget we had, the place really wasn’t that bad - but rats and mold and pushers still filled the place. If only Ma knew where we were living...she’d probably keel over just hearing a description of it.

But Ma wasn’t here. She was back in Lampasas with her bruises and probably more broken bones at this point. I called her once in awhile to let her know that I was doing okay and that Mikey had yet to die. I didn’t bother to tell her that he’d changed his name and become nearly totally unrecognizable from the son she’d last seen almost four years ago now. She’d had enough heartbreak in her life thus far. I didn’t need to add to it. Besides, that was Oscar’s story to tell her, if he ever got the guts and decency to call home sometime. He never had, not even once, since moving to New York.

“Hey, what took you so long?” Lenny asked.

I glanced down at my watch, then looked up to my bandmate and said, “I’m five minutes late. It’s only five past eight; that’s hardly late at all.”

“Yeah, but you’re hardly ever late,” he reminded me, keeping up with my strides as we hit the Manhattan streets.

We were too broke to afford cabs unless we were buddies with the drivers, so we walked the city for the most part.

“Well maybe you should find something to do to occupy your time other than hanging out around my building waiting for me,” I suggested with a wink.

Lenny rolled his eyes, but laughed. “Hey, things have been rough since I got kicked out of Marcia’s place.”

“I can’t be sorry for you for that,” I said, tucking my hands into the pockets of my beat up leather jacket. “You’re the one who decided to fuck her best friend on the floor at her place...you kinda deserved that one.”

“Yeah, but I mean, I never told her that we were like, a thing,” he told me, trying to justify his actions. Seeing the serious side-eye I was giving him, he sighed and relented, “Still, I guess I coulda told her that we weren’t.”

“Exactly,” I said.

We walked in silence for a bit, only the sounds of the ever-rowdy city filling our ears.

“You still think I’m a piece of shit for that, don’t you?” Lenny pressed.

His expression was serious - he was genuinely concerned that he’d permanently tainted my opinion of him. Lenny was the one of the closest things I had to a best friend. That position used to be occupied by my brother, until he went and fucked himself all up. He was definitely my best guy friend and my favorite guy out of the three of them who played in my little “band” with me. We both had similar stupid senses of humor and not-so-secretly harbored major loves for David Bowie. Lenny said he was the only guy he’d go gay for, and I couldn’t fault him for that.

We’d went and seen Bowie with Iggy Pop and Blondie a couple of weeks ago at the Palladium, and Lenny had nearly shit himself out of excitement and arousal. I was just as excited, of course, but I had a much better poker face than he did.

“I don’t think you’re a piece of shit, I think you did a really shitty thing,” I clarified. I gave him a small smile, seeing as he was still desperately waiting for my approval. “But that can be remedied...you can always learn from your actions. Just no more treating women like shit, right?”

“Right,” he nodded eagerly. “I won’t sleep around and I’ll--”

“You can sleep around,” I interjected. Seeing his surprised expression, I added, “As long as you’re being safe about it and you’re telling girls that they shouldn’t get their hopes up, that is.”

“Right,” Lenny said again. “Will do, Kathy.”

“Good,” I said. “The last thing the city needs is another misogynistic asshole in a band.”

That got him to laugh, which I was glad. I laughed alongside him as we rounded the corner to go into the back entrance of CBGB’s, the one reserved for the ‘artists’ that would grace their stage. We were one of those groups that got to use the door, though we weren’t big names like the people we opened for. Then again, in the grand scheme of things, we weren’t even that big.

“Jesus Christ, Kathy, don’t you have better clothes to wear than those in the middle of winter?” questioned Terry G., one of the bouncers/security guys. He was far beefier than he was brainy - I doubted he even had the brains to play ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ - but he was a nice guy nonetheless.

“Naw, I’m fine,” I told him with a polite smile.

“Your lips are turning blue,” he informed me. “And your cheeks are all chapped.”

He was right, but I brushed him off, repeating myself, “I’m fine, really. A little cold never bothered me.”

Lie. That was a big fat lie. The thing I hated the most about New York was the cold. I loved the cool autumns, the mild springs, and even the sticky city summers, but the frigid winters were the one thing that made me miss Texas.

“Well, either way, you guys should get inside,” Terry G. said. “The other two Black Eyes are in there waiting for you.”

“Thanks,” Lenny said, speaking for the two of us as we hopped the couple of stairs into the building.

By the other two Black Eyes, Terry G. meant the other two guys that played in our little band, Phil and Keith. Phil was on the bass, Keith was on second guitar, Lenny was on the drums, and I was on guitar and vocal duties. We were quite an odd foursome, having come together after our stints in other bands didn’t work out. Phil was hanging onto the New York Dolls look with his platforms, scarves, and eyeliner, while Keith dressed more like an accountant, in button downs and ill-fitting blazers. Lenny was the one who went the most wild with his punk style, loving the safety pin and spikes look, enjoying sticking up his hair with loads of Aquanet, and always working on bettering his impression of Johnny Thunders with that lip curl thing.

I, the lone female in the band, was also the most boring looking, except for my Kool Aid red hair. I’d cut it all off when I moved to New York, and now that it was long enough to graze my shoulders again, I’d decided to go a little crazy with the dye. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it either, so we were working with it. Lenny and the guys were insistent that I keep it for a while - they said it was good for our image, that it made me stick out, which was exactly the reason that I kind of, sort of hated it.

“I always thought it’d be a cold day in hell when the two of you showed up after the two of us,” Phil joked as we entered the green room. He had a cigarette dangling from his teeth and bright blue glitter accentuating his eyes.

“It is like negative ten out,” I informed him dryly. “So that might have something to do with it.”

It was March, almost April. It shouldn’t have been this fucking cold still, but it was, and I hated the cold more and more each day.

“Haha,” Phil deadpanned. “Funny.”

“Are my drums all set up already?” Lenny asked. He helped himself to one of the beers in the cooler in the corner of the room, downing half of it in on impressive swig.

“Yeah, Keith and I took care of ‘em,” Phil nodded. We kept our spare equipment at Phil and Keith’s place, since they were the only ones with any space to put all of it. “We’re just waiting for someone to tell us it’s time to go out there and do the damn thing...unless you wanna do a quick soundcheck?”

The question was rhetorical, and he knew that. I shook my head to verify, though. I wasn’t one for soundchecks. That was too much effort, and unnecessary effort when playing at a place like CBGB’s. The louder and fuzzier, the better, or so I’d found.

“Hello hello, shiners,” came an all too familiar voice.

Before I knew it, I was being squashed in a hug by Ray. Every time I saw him I was shocked by how tall he was, more than a foot taller than me, to be specific. I should’ve been used to it by now, after everything, but I wasn’t. I lingered in his arms for a moment, taking note of his old familiar scent that I still loved - Camels, Pabst, and a dash of that cologne I couldn’t remember the name of.

“Hey, thanks again for asking us to open for you,” I said as he released me from the hug.

He pressed a light kiss to the top of my head before completely separating himself from me, something he still did everytime we saw each other, despite having been broken up for four months and some odd days. I’d been keeping track of the days for some time without really meaning to, but I quit when Lenny told me I should forget about it and try to move on to a new dick.

“Of course,” Ray said. He grinned down at me, his dark eyes glassy. He must’ve shot up not too long ago. “If I can’t have you playing with me, I’ll have you open for me, anytime, gladly.”

“Thanks,” I said. Glancing to Phil and Lenny, I said, “We all really appreciate it.”

That was true. Ray’s band, Raymond Garbage and the Trash Junkies, always pulled a big crowd. Their crowds were the good kind too - the people who really loved the punk scene for what it was, not the posers who crept it to check out what the whole ‘punk’ thing was all about. Ray and the guys were good, but their sound wasn’t the kind of sound the punk inspectors came to see, nor were we. Those curious spectators came for the Ramones or Blondie, not the Trash Junkies and the Black Eyes.

“‘Course,” Ray assured us, but mostly me. “Someday I’ll be opening for you guys.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “But that’s a nice sentiment.”

“It’ll happen,” Ray said. He flashed me that charming smile of his that’d won me over, rubbing at his eye. “Excuse me, shiners, I’ve gotta hit the little boys’ room before you go on.”

With that, he made his exit, much to my disappointment. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish that Ray and I were still together. I didn’t know if I loved him anymore in a romantic kind of sense, but I missed him. Sure, I saw him all the time and in reality we were closer than ever, albeit in a platonic way, but I still missed what we had. I missed waking up in his bed with my head on his chest and his fingers in my hair, and how we stayed up all night talking about Nietzsche or reading Vonnegut novels to each other.

“We need to get you fucked by someone,” Phil said, breaking the silence left in Ray’s wake.

“I’ve been getting fucked by plenty of people,” I said.

That was true. Since breaking up with Ray, I’d become just as promiscuous as anyone out here on the Bowery. Well, maybe not just as promiscuous. I refused anyone who refused a condom, which ended half of my encounters before they could ever happen. Still, I’d shared a bed with more people - mostly men, a couple of women - than I bothered to keep track of. A few weeks ago, I truly realized that the promiscuity thing just wasn’t for me. I was a monogamist at heart, and I’d learned that the hard way. I hadn’t stopped sleeping around, though. Once you got in the cycle, it was hard to get out of it.

“Clearly it hasn’t been good, though,” Phil replied. “Or else you wouldn’t keep on staring at Ray like he’s some sort of messiah.”

“She doesn’t wanna get fucked, she wants a nice guy to settle down with,” Keith chimed in, emerging into the room. His gray tartan blazer was so oversized that it was bordering on ridiculous. He stopped and thought about it for a moment, and said, “No, maybe you don’t want to settle down now, but you get what I mean.”

“What I need is to not date for a while,” I sighed. I flipped my guitar so it hung around me the right way, absentmindedly fingering out my arpeggios.

“Amen to that, babe,” Phil said, holding his bottle of gin up to me in praise.

He, Keith, and Lenny all took long gulps of their drinks. Lenny finished his entire beer, slamming the can into the wall. I was the only one not drinking, per usual. I was damn near being a teetotaler, something I got a lot of loving shit for around here.

“Black Eyes, you’re up,” said one of the CBGB employees, ducking their head into the room. “And just a heads up - you’ve got a bit of an unruly crowd out there tonight.”

[serahne]

What do you think on Korekiyo Shinguuji? Awesome and underrated villain or mess of writing and a waste of good concept for cheap shock value? Or maybe just a misunderstood little boy who had been sexually used by his own sister and had been scarred for life because of it?

Ah… there is a lot to unpack about Korekiyo. My general stance is that he is a good and unique character but that the third trial/murder is really bad in some ways, and it screwed him over, like, big time.

This is very subjective, but I love Kiyo’s brand of character, and I thought it was refreshing to see him in a Danganronpa game. First, he is book-smart, which is usually not a thing in these games because, guess what, if you write a character who is specialized in a field, then you better research this field thoroughly. It’s not fun, and that’s why the only ‘specialists’ in DR are characters like Chiaki or Tsumugi ( or even Hifumi ), who are specialized in stuff that the writers themselves are into. Because it’s easier. I wouldn’t be surprised if the writers had put more work into Kiyo’s character than into anyone else because his entire personality depends on his talents.

As a writer, this is very impressive to me, haha.

Even when it comes to the most… er… controversial parts of his character, they did research their stuff ! The rituals surrounding death and mourning is one of the most famous subject in anthropology, and so is the incest taboo. These are subjects that a lot of people don’t consider as rooted in culture but ‘natural’, almost written in one’s DNA, but are actually 100% cultural.

More than that, I thought Kiyo’s personality was very cool. Sure, he is painted as a weirdo from the start, but he is also smart, calm, level-headed. A character savy enough to protect himself from harm, but also unempathetic enough to create uneasiness with the others. I love characters who just see the world differently than most people, and Kiyo is exactly that. How can I not be interested in a character like that ?

The problem with his role in chapter 3 doesn’t lie - in my opinion - in his character, but in the way it’s portrayed. It really comes from nowhere The game could have convinced me that Korekiyo being a mass murderer made sense, or that his incestuous relationship with his sister was well-written. As it is… it didn’t.

To begin with, there is little to no setup to Kiyo being revealed as a “crazy mass murderer”. One trope I’ve always hated is the ‘ohoho, I was the bad guy all alone, and no one could ever suspect me before the truth blew up in your faces’. Sure, his case is less frustrating than Tsumugi’s… but still. Hell, beside his FTE, he only mentions his sister once. As for the ‘murderer’ part, once could wonder why he even waited until chapter 3 to act. He didn’t make a move in the first chapter, even though the deadline was coming, for example.

What I mean is that this is different from Tsumiki’s case, who just fell ill and immediately acted upon it in sdr2. Kiyo from chapter 3 just doesn’t match who we knew until then, and this is… the worst result you could aim for when you write a murder story. When you write a murder story, you need to reach the truth and be like ‘oh, of course ! How did I miss that ?’ “But he was pretending to be normal”, one could say. No offense, but considering how unstable Kiyo is in chapter 3, there is. no. way. he was pretending.

Also, if we really have to compare his character’s derailement with Tsumiki’s, it’s interesting to note that Tsumiki’s has a purpose. She regains her memory, giving informations and hints about the ending to the player and the rest of the cast. Kiyo’s is ultimately pointless. I don’t know is ‘shock value’ is the right word but… kinda, to be honest. Maybe in a way it could be seen as so unexpected that it would look too extra to be real - thus, necessarily scripted. But that’s very a reach, haha.

And even brushing that aside, his plan is dumb. If Kiyo’s goal is to kill as many girls as possible while inside, then he should have gone on a killing spree as soon as possible. If he wanted to leave the Academy and kept on killing outside, then why did he set up a plan that put such ridiculous target on him ? After killing Angie, he should have just rolled with it and adapted.

Everything about the third murder is about twisting Kiyo’s character to make him fit a pre-determined plot. Why does he have to kill two people ? Because third chapter. Why does he plot such stupid plan ? Because the writers probably thought about this murder and really wanted to put him into the game. If Kiyo didn’t care about dying why did he denied it ? ( the game flips flop so much on the topic, I don’t even know ) Because we obviously can’t have the murderer confess. And if that doesn’t fit Kiyo’s character, then who cares, anyway, right ?

Kiyo is a very original character that the writers bent to fit an uncreative mold, and it’s so frustrating. So many possibilities are thrown around in chapter 3, including the possibility that Kiyo could have gotten away with Tenko’s murder, and at the last second the game is like ‘lol, jk, let’s go back to our usual program, bye’, and I think that’s a waste.

[thefatalmarksman]

okay so idk who gives a fuck but i have Some Thoughts on the new BL3 DLC in general, accompanied by some headcanon meta musings that are going to end up being poorly articulated because i’m tired and incredibly tipsy

- so first off, definitely a good DLC overall---wish it had been so much longer, but overall, incredibly fun. 7/10 because it was Definitely BorderlandsTM, but it didn’t bring a lot of new or unique things to the table. 

- just gotta say.. evil lilith’s boss felt like a kh fight. it was all the zooming around and darkness orbs and dark fire kinda aesthetics. #lilithisrikusmom

- squishy nasty body horror grossness feelin’ like an evil within game and honestly no complaints here

- also the locomobius??? ohhhhh fuck yes that was a good boss, like the entire sapphire’s run level was aaaahmazing

- it gave me krieg/maya food that i didn’t know i needed and i’m legit livin for it. 

- tbh i was worried that krieg’s Mental State would be made into a total joke because mental illness is sooo rarely handled well in media, but while we got some humorous commentary, i would never say that what we got was detrimental or hurtful towards folks with mental illness. in fact, the way it rounded out, the only reason that “psycho” krieg came into being was to protect krieg from his oppressors, and honestly??? DID stuff in media is always “lol this nice person has a Bad Person inside their head that just HURTS PEOPLE” but gosh that’s such a HORRIBLE way to misconstrue that mental illness, so honestly.. i’m pleased on this front.

soooooooo onto some probably disconnected but maybe possibly important thoughts that might (hopefully) tie into some later games (and a lot of this is based on “a-ha!” moments i had throughout the dlc that i didn’t jot down so hopefully they aren’t completely inaccurate):

- the implication that there is something “connecting” all of the psychos. as far as i can recall (and from some shaky research i’m doing on the wiki, which is never as reliable as i wish it could be), the “origin” of the psychos within the confines of the first bl game is that they were all prisoners (from the corporate wars, i want to say?? which is YET ANOTHER subject i want more on, GEARBOX????? >:( ), sent to mine on pandora, and after they went into these mines, came out mentally unstable with an obsession with the vaults. this means some kind of exposure to eridian influence---whether it was eridium itself, or eridian technology isn’t really clear, but whatever the case, it instilled in them this sense of reverence for the vaults---for the eridians

- i can only assume that psychos who may have been “created” post-bl1 were somehow imbued with the same sort of “insanity” (for lack of a better term) as their predecessors, for the sake of consistency in this headcanon 

- so, within the DLC, there’s this implication that all of the psychos are “connected,” according to one echo---that, even though all the prisoners who were experimented on were in different cells, they all had the same “personality” that came from the experiments

- the amount of eridian architecture within krieg’s mind is just a BIG INDICATOR of... yknow. eridian influence. duh. :|

- so is it that, somehow, eridian influence created some kind of.. single connecting consciousness, or a hivemind, between all of the psychos?? some kind of instinct to protect the vaults???

- jumping back a bit, i can’t even BEGIN to articulate the info-dump during the proving ground sequence in bl3 (which i feel should be MAIN STORY LINE STUFF???) because there were implications that 1) the eridians AREN’T gone, they are STILL around, they are WATCHING everything that is unfolding, and 2) humans are being TESTED, somehow, though at the behest of the eridians or the guardians themselves....... well, who knows.

- i’m getting this.......... idk, feeling??? that the guardians aren’t just puppets the BL world is perceiving them as and are PLOTTING to break free of their bondage under the eridians, and this “Psycho Connection” might have something to do with it. like, a whole collective of humans under a single thought to Serve The Vaults??? basically what the guardians have been doing this whole time

- alternately, there’s also the concept that psychos have just been exposed to a Truth Too Big To Handle and that cracked their psyche and that’s that on that, but..... i mean, that’s an easy enough thing to fall back on if they’re Too Weak to follow through with an Actually Cool Hivemind Plot

SO. What Does This Mean For Xigbar’s BL AU???

it’s all shaky thus far, and a rough concept that i could only DREEEAM to expand on because idk who would even be interested, buuuut...

- he’s developed this suspicion that the eridians are still around over all the thousands of years he’s been here. just little pieces of evidence he’s picked up on while satisfying his insatiable appetite for knowledge of the universe around him---which, at one point, the eridians DOMINATED. it’s possible the guardians knew before him but, let’s remember, luxu isn’t reeeeally a “guardian,” so he’s not a part of their “hivemind.” he’s just an “eridian” with guardian parts to keep him from deteriorating. plus he’s been doing a lot of... archiving for the master, so sometimes personal research takes a back seat to... yknow....... literally obeying the whims of the oracular Eye that got forcibly shoved into your socket. :|

- given i’ve inserted him in place of the watcher........ he could very well be on Team Fuck the Eridians. he’s had enough of this shit, he’s somewhat still following the rules that have been lain out for him but he’s also sneakily Playing His Own Game, and if that means molding the humans into being replacements for the guardians? sure, whatever. 

- but then again, if the master already knew all of this would unfold??? then it’s Not a Game of His Own Playing hahhaha.......... :|

- and like, sure, xigluxu ain’t 100% a guardian, but he’s been tasked with Some Semi-Immortal Bullshit, and if the guardians get the humans to replace them and the guardians can overthrow the eridians??? yknow what, that works. because fuck those guys, they never did HIM any favors

anyway that’s a whole bottle of wine sooooooo PEACE OUT 

...........for now :|

[cartoonfangirl1218]

Winner’s Curse Ch. 13

Super excited for this one. Lots of references to characters from the Aladdin series. Enjoy. 

Jay glanced around at the muddy, deserted streets and was amazed by how quickly he was able to shift back to alert Isle mode. The mode that was prepared for a surprise attack at any moment whether from Uma’s pirate crew or some person angry that he stole their goods once again.

It was like a tourney reflex that he honed in from months of practice only it was deeper than that. It was instinctive.

He would always be from the Isle. That would never change.

And when he had been feeling it more and more during this week with the Auradonians.

Before this whole “Save Auradon (for the third time) from the Isle,” Aziz and Jordan tolerated him. Aziz was kinda moody around him even though he swore he had no problem that their dads had been enemies, but sometimes when they’d hang out with the rest of the team, Aziz would pull him away and show him around Little Agraban. 

Jordan usually acted less than pleased to be his presence and always sniped about his sticky fingers even though he stole her lamp just one time. How was he supposed to know that it was her lamp. He didn't even know genies could have kids. And okay, maybe he was a bit curious to see if it would work. But that incident sealed her view of him, he was a deceitful no good thief.

Now they acted like he was only Jafar Jr. in their eyes. It made him miss Evie, Carlos and Mal. They would have his back if they were here. 

Even the Vks.. oh Allah when did he start calling them “Vks?” He always used to think of himself as just from the Isle.

Even the Isle kids they had teamed up with disliked him. 

He had never liked Harry or Uma and their crew, and their hostilities only grew when he stood by Mal and their friends. 

He didn’t need to hear Uma’s side of the whatever sob story grudge she had against Mal, he was sticking by his dragon girl. No matter what. She had his back and he had hers. 

Uma was just a power-grabber, always trying to edge on Mal’s rightful territory. Hopefully Jordan was seeing that now for herself. People always ignored him when it came to strategizing and plans but he knew a thing or two about people.

Who to manipulate, who to avoid, who to charm, who to steal from. And any plan with Uma was bound to fail. She’d always try to take power for herself.  As for Lala...He had met her a few times before when their parents hooked up. He asked her if she was worried their future half sibling would become her mom’s favorite and she shrugged, saying that she doubted it. La treated her children as more of a mini hunting squad; food providers now she no longer had leopard men. 

Jay understood all too well. Jafar wanted him to earn his food by stealing whatever trinket he could for the shop. Or even stealing food itself. But no matter how much he stole or what he stole, it was never the “big score” that would make his father proud of him. Or care about him. 

But Lala didn’t want to bond on that commonality. She always seemed to look down on him for stealing his dinner from others rather than hunting food down with his bare hands.

And okay, maybe he stole several of her weapons too. 

So? He didn’t know what Queen La preached but he had been following his dad’s mantra that “There was no team in “I.” 

That it was best to only serve himself and make sure everyone loses but the more time he spent in Auradon, he realized something. That even though he believed his own boasts as the most selfish, bad guy on the Isle, he never had been. 

His friendship with the others had excluded him from the title from the start.

And now he wished he had his friends by his side. He missed having the security of backup and people who understood what it was like on the Isle.

He looked at his two partners from his peripheral eyesight. Jordan had healed Aziz’s back but she was still checking him and Aziz was swatting her hands away, bickering in Arabic.

Jay clenched his fist to ignore the rise of frustration that welled up in his chest. They knew Arabic, they knew things like mathmatics and science and history and so many other things that some of the Aks looked down on him for when he asked his “stupid” questions in class.  

All he had were his father’s stories.

There were so many differences between them because of fate. Their parents, where they were born. It was all so unfair.

He knew Jordan and Aziz’s intentions were probably good, having the villains take over Auradon would be no treat, especially since some were pretty pissed that his friends hadn’t gotten them off during Ben’s Coronation as they had said they would. 

But Aziz and Jordan didn’t truly understand. Once this was over, they would go back to their plush lives as if nothing had happened.

Which he had been doing as well up till now.

Another thing he couldn’t help notice beside reverting to his Isle mode were the kids. He hadn’t noticed them before. But even though he didn’t usually listen to Evie’s Isle proposals, some of her speeches slipped into his head.  

He looked at the few children he had seen that were brave enough to roam the streets despite the Coven’s strict law. Many of them were about searching through trash cans for food. Looking for one unspoiled apples among the leftovers or daring each other to eat the most rotten. 

He remembered he used to do that with Gaston’s son, bragging that he could eat anything no matter how foul tasting or disgusting it was. It had given him food poisoning more than once, but he had been proud of himself for not complaining about it like a man.

Lady Tremine’s 3 year old grandson would be able to boast the same, Jay thought as he saw the bob-ponytailed boy run away with a bundle of molded bananas.

It wasn’t just the food that was the problem. The dirt and the hygine was seriously lacking. Something he hadn’t realized until he got to Auradon and Couch Jenkins required the team to take showers after practice. He had just stood in amazement as he looked at all the dirt swirl down and eventually clogged the drain.

When he got sick on the Isle, he had learned not to complain. Many parents didn’t tolerate whining about a “little sniffle” even if that sniffle turned out to be a raging fever. Every year there was always some bunch of kids that ended up being buried on the shores of the Isle.

He could sort of understand why Uma and Evie were so determined to get kids off it. While he had been fine living here, proud of himself for surviving so long, Auradon really was a better place to live and these kids deserved to get that chance.

But Jordan and Aziz had been so concerned about infiltraiting the Coven, they had been neglecting Evie’s list and he doubted that they would give it priority so it was left to him to find them. He doubted the others would mind, he had a feeling that Jordan would be oh too happy to be rid of his presence for a couple of hours. 

He knew Diego De’Vil was on the list but he lived on the other side of the Isle where the more livable houses were instead of the shacks that lined the alleyways and docks. As for the others he would have to check the list again. 

But Jordan took the list….

Oh this was going to be too easy.

Jay fell at their feet bracing himself for impact as they fell over him like dominos and ecieving a nasty kick to his ribs in the meanwhile. Hands scrambling, he felt around Jordan’s skirt for any pockets but couldn’t find any.

Did Jordan give the list to Aziz? Jay couldn’t remember but it would be just-

“Hands off the ass!” “Sorry, sorry, I tripped. Dude, get-aack- get your foot off my neck.” Jay mumbled when his face was suddenly pressed against the dirt.

“My foot is nowhere near your neck.”

“Well someone’s is!”  

With some shoves, and dirt swirling from the wind picking up, they managed to get themselves all upright again.

Jay rubbed his head, surprised by how woozy he felt from the “accidental trip.” He must be getting rusty.

“We’re not getting anywhere like this.” Aziz snorted derisively, “We should probably split up. We’re too intimidating all together.” “You intimidating? Ha!” Jordan barked.

“Well it’s not like you’ve been having good ideas lately.” Aziz retorted.

“He’s right.” Jay cut in before another “boiling” incident could happen, “We usually stick to gangs on the Isle for safety. People will approch us if we’re alone. Or targte us so you better hold your weapons close.” Jay gripped his scimitir for emphesis.

“Got it. You go that way, I’ll go this way.” Jordan pointed to the point where they had come and motioned for Aziz to keep moving forward. She didn’t give Jay any directions. Figured. So Jay decided to go to the alleyways.

He closed his eyes as he did so, secretly congratulating himself every time he brushed past a wall or a person without hitting it. He knew this place with his eyes closed. 

“Jayal, my son.” A voice slithered from behind him and Jay nearly tripped forward for real.

“Jay. You’ve gotten soft in Auradon haven’t you.” The voice mocked, his shadow looming over Jay’s on the ground.

“Hello, Dad” Jay turned to his back and looked up.

His dad looked nothing like he remembered. Gone was the beer belly, and tattered pajamas. He was no longer stooped with age and ill health. He looked like the picture of his glory days.

Jay never saw how his father could be seen as sinister. Patheticness and desperation reeked his appearance on the Isle but now he could.

Skinny as a cobra, the thin mustache and curled lips gloated as Jay looked up to his father. The turban’s glowing ruby kept blinding him as the lamp lights hit it and the pointed shoulders of his outer robe reminded Jay of all his dad’s threat of stabbing Aladdin and the rest of the royal family to death once he was back on the throne.  

In hand, Jafar held his staff, now shimmering with magic that had been untapped until now. 

“Get up you miserable whelp.” Jafar hit his legs with the staff, urging Jay to get up quickly. “Miserable whelp?” His dad never called him that. But then again from the slghtly blissful crazed look in his eye, he bet his dad was already drunk on power.

“Well, Jay, come to take me to Auradon a year too late?” Jafar sarcastically asked, catching Jay’s chin with his staff and drawing to him.

Jay felt himself at a loss of what to say and fear started to trail down his spine. “Well Jay?”

Jay knew what he would have done if any of his friends were to face their parents. He would stand between them and protect them from Maleficent’s scorn and Queen Grimhilde’s criticsm and Cruella’s abuse.

He’d bring those villains down with his fists, killer tourney moves, and whatever weapon he had in hand. Improvising weapons had been one of his more unusual yet necessary skills while growing up.  Besides those three adults made him furious. Why did they think their abuse would make their kids better? They were just bitter about how their lives turned out, they used their kids as punching bags. Or a tool that if one achieved victory, they achieved victory without doing the work. 

He had seen too many times Mal having near panic attacks about not living up to her mom’s perfect ideals, Evie’s meltdowns over a stray pimple and Carlos’ withdrawn demenour after a brutal evening alone with his mom.

Back then, he had seen what theit parents did to them, and Jay had done nothing.

He had told himself it wasn’t his fault. They hadn’t asked him too, they never went into detail about what happened behind the closed doors of their home. They were Vks, they were expected to suck up and deal with the tough love.

But he regretted it now. He had seen their pain and he hadn’t even asked them how it felt. It was too mushy, too personal but he still should have done something. 

Damnit he had gotten bloody noses taking on Uma’s crew for messing with his friends in their somewhat superficial feud brought on by a child’s prank. But when it came to the real abuse. He did nothing. Yet they still thought of him as their “big brother.” Some big brother he was. He didn’t deserve that affection. He didn’t earn it after doing nothing. Just like Jafar said. Why would anyone care for you if you were a miserable parasite. That’s why he had to do his share and get goods for the store. Then he deserved some food. 

However the whole situation was different when it came to facing his own father and how he treated him. He didn’t feel anger towards him like Mal sometimes did at night. He didn’t feel complete terror as Carlos always feared his mother. 

He had never thought of seeing his father again and had no idea what he’d do. 

Jafar wasn’t the worst parent on the Isle he thought. He never hit him outright except for one time when he had gotten really furious at Jay for bringing nothing home and threw random objects. Some accidentally hitting him on the head. 

He didn’t criticize his looks like Evie’s mom or expected him to be the baddest villain on the Isle like Maleficent.

Jafar didn’t expect much of him except to bring the money.

Jafar didn’t care if he got beaten on his runs from other gangs. He wouldn’t have noticed until the end of the day when Jay didn’t come with the money. He would look past Jay’s scars and bruises and Jay would sometimes wonder if the blood he felt trickling down his nose was even visible for how little Jafar cared.

Though the one confirmation Jay had that Jafar did see Jafar see his scars was during the the few arguments where Jay rebelled against his dad. Jay would threaten to walk out and hoard his ill-gotten gains for himself if he didn’t get his fair share, Jafar would point out the bruises Jay had gotten from a fight before and remind him that he wouldn’t survive long fighting everyone on the streets. He should be thankful to his dad. Jafar him a home when he could have stayed at the brothel with his mom to die. He helped create him. He owed him his life. 

Jay would concede that his dad was right and lay down under the tvs and try to ignore Jafar’s continued ranting. On that topic of Jay owing him his life, he should be bringing in more money. He knew Jay could get the big score so why was he always failing?

Yet despite how little Jafar cared for him. Demeaned him that he wouldn’t survive on his own. Gave him enough scraps of encouragement that he could steal bigger and better things that Jay would stick around. 

Jay still cared about his dad. Because as much as he hated to admit it, he did. He owed him his life, and he had hated to see his father walk around his junk shop in pajamas and rant about his glory days to Iago. He had thought that if he could just get that big score that maybe he could fix his father’s tattered life. He could be proud again and proud of Jay. Praise him for bringing his power back into his life instead of being a burdensome child and then…

Well that was where the fantasy ended. He didn’t know what would happen after the big score because he could never imagine it being possible. He could see himself swimming in piles of gold but he always knew it was a fantasy in his head. Not a future.

And since he’d been in Auradon, he had tried his best to ignore the nagging feeling that this was his chance to make his father proud, that he could finally be the “Crown prince of Agrabah he should be.” Jafar didn’t deserve Jay’s effort to earn his respect. Jay didn’t “owe” him his life.

He realized, even if he gave Jafar the seat of Agrabah, all the gold would never be enough. Jafar would still send him to fetch more. For him to steal something he could really be proud of. That Jay had to continue being useful in other ways, keep up his skills, get more and more gold.    He’d never earn his father’s approval. All those years he spent trying..... That’s what angered him the most. He, the famed silver tongue prince of thieves of the Isle, fell for his father’s lie that there was a chance he could win his approval and maybe even love. And he had wasted 16 years of his life for him. 

Jafar dropped Jay’s chin and threw his head back with a cackle, dirt swirled around him, transforming his skinny figure into a slender, black furred cat-man in Egyptian-styled robes.

Jay covered his eyes from the flying dirt and scowled, “You!”

He lunged to grab him by the throat but all he gripped was vanishing smoke.

“Over here, Jay.” The voice purred

Jay turned and punched at thin air.

“Whoops, wrong one. That one was an-”

“Illusion.” The two said together.

Jay looked up to follow the sound of the voice and felt the ground give way beneath him like quicksand.

Jay’s eyes searched frantically for a branch, something to hold onto but then took a deep breath and exhaled. He wasn’t really drowning. There was no quicksand on the Isle streets. It was just another illusion.

He opened his eyes to confirm his belief that he was safe and saw the Isle streets had completely disappeared. He was facing a dark iron laden wall dripping with moisture and cells lining the wall to his left.

“Huh where am?” Jay looked around wildly and found himself tied to a chair, Aziz and Jordan tied to his back as well.

“Hmm he didn’t panic about the quicksand. It’s always so disappointing when they don’t scream.” The teenage cat mock-whimpered to the female twin that appeared beside him.

“I know. But we still have time. All the time in the world. I can’t wait till Staqauit gets his hands on them.” The girl smiled, her fangs gleaming against the darkness of the room and the blackness of her fur. 

“Illusion, Chimera.” Jay growled, fighting against the iron shackles that bound him.

“Oh don’t act so surprised that we’d mess with you. You should have seen yourself when you saw your father hehe! You were like a statue. All frozen and mute!” Illusion swiped his beanie to condescendingly ruffle his hair and then pulled the communications earpiece Carlos had gifted him from his ear and crushed it between her claws.

Though they didn’t physically look the part, these two were one of the most dangerous creatures on the Isle. Near gods. They were the children of Evil Incarnate. 

They escaped entrapment by virtue of the fact that no one dared to enter their mother’s cosmic void, Morbia. But they did visit from time to time. They enjoyed all of the Isle’s backstabbing, thieving, immorality, and of course, evilness. 

“Yeah we kinda figured the connection. Cat people with the powers of socercery and illusions. Of course you’re Mirage’s children. But seriously, Illusion? Chimera? Oh please tell me you have a third sibling named Hallucination. It’ll really tie up the theme naming.” Aziz mocked.

“Continue your brave little prince act…. I dare you.” Illusion walked over to Aziz’s side, disappearing from Jay’s view but he coud hear Aziz grunt and the familar sound of claws against skin and Jordan tense up beside him. 

“Though we’ll admit, we didn’t do this just for the sake of evil.” Chimera buffed her nails on Jay’s shoulder as she settled on Jordan’s lap, “We wanted to create a little family reunion. Jay with his dad.”

“The prince with his uncles and cousin.” Illusion continued, “And the genie with her new master.”  

“Isn’t that such a good deed? Maybe we’ll even be invited to come to Auradon.” Chimera cackled.

Jay tried to work his finger to find some sort of knot or chain to undo but there was no use. With Chimera and Illusin in the room, he doubted he would have a chance when they could literally change the landscape in an instant. 

His frustration at their predicament grew alongside the still-mounted anger he had for himself at being duped by Illusion. And the greater anger that he had come face to face with who he had thought was his father and he had done nothing but stare. 

He wanted to hit something, make them burn like the anger burned inside him... Wait that was an idea! 

Jay nudged Jordan’s shoulder and tried to mouth for her to do the boiling trick she had to Uma as best as he could but Chimera just glared at him and Jay switched to give his best smolder in return.

"Antiqam!!!” Illusion called and the door slammed open to reveal a tall, tan man drapped in flowing blue robes studded with ambers and onyxes and desert diamonds and sporting a five o’clock shadow.

“Hello, cousins, genie.” Antiqam smiled. His face was warm but his silver eyes were cold and focused and that lied the greatest danger.

During the few Aladdin-haters club meetings back in the day, His father had always warned Jay to not go near Mozonroth or his son which honestly, he didn’t need any warning.

Antiqam was a good 8 years older than Jay and had the physique to match. But it wasn’t the muscle that scared Jay, no, wits beat muscle any day, it was just that Antiqam was manipulative as he was strong and had an unpredictable temper. 

The dangerous part though wasn’t when Antiqam would snap but how. Antiqam could vanquish you in a swift blast of heat or he could arrange for a slow torture by manipulating you to ruin your own life.

But despite the danger, Jay had to ask, “Cousins?”

Hey, just because his life was in peril, it didn’t mean he had to act like it. That was one of the foremost rules of the Isle and thievery, never let them see you sweat.  

“Oh Jay, you don’t know? Besides being cousins to the insufferable soon to be ex- prince over here, you and I are distantly related. I am Antiqam iban Mozonroth iban Cassim and Nasira. Your…” Antiqam prompted.

“Aunt. Aunt Nasira is your grandmother?” Jay stared, suddenly gripped by a headache. He never really knew his aunt’s age or his father’s. It didn’t matter much since villains seemed to pop up from the dead like woodwork or achieved immortality somehow, but this was a new revelation.

“Yes! And Cassim is the princy boy’s grandfather. So you two are my baby cousins. And you are my new genie. Well my father’s. Then mine. We planned it all out. Your father will go to Jafar, and your mother to Nasira. It’s so nice that there’s three of you. Makes splitting things up easier.” Antiqam smirked. 

“We live to serve to make things easier for you.” Jordan bitterly smiled. 

“Eventually you’ll go to my little brother and his family. My heirs will be inheriting bigger things, more servants since they’ll be the ones ruling the Black Sands and the kingdom of Agrabah.” Antiqam held out his hand and Illusion obediently gave him Jordan's lamp. “So we’re all one big family. I mean once we execute half of it. Starting with the crown heir.” Antiqam slipped out of Jay’s view again to Aziz’s side.

“Yeah, sorry to disappoint you but I’m not the crown heir. I’m the second in line.” Aziz cockily corrected.

“Uhh I think there might be a problem with that if my father rules Agrabah.” Jay couldn’t help but add when Antiqam was about to speechify again, much to Antiqam’s annoyance, “I mean not that any you’ll ever will get to rule Agrabah. We won’t let you get away with this.”

Antiqam leaned down so they could look eye to eye and stared at Jay’s defiant ones, holding his gaze until Jay reluctantly broke his. “Heh, that is up to discussion. We haven’t exactly planned the boundries yet but Jafar and Nasira won’t live forever. And you and Jade can always be deposed of.”

“Or be used as servants.” Jordan piped up earning her a confused look from Imran.

“What? Seriously?” Jay cried. He knew she didn’t like him but really? To immediately backstab him the moment they were in trouble! And Aks said they were bad.

“Jafar came to the Isle as a genie bound to a lamp. You can always use him as your genie if he doesn’t do what you want. So you’ll have that as blackmail.” “And then I won’t have a reason to use you. Is that what youre getting at? Don’t think so.” Antiqam finished and dipped his finger in the dip between her breasts, smirking as she cringed, “Jafar’s lamp is in the hands of his sister and even if I wanted a genie, I would still choose you. I think we both know why.”

“What about Jafar’s crotch? It could be good. We don’t know. We haven’t seen it. Maybe it’s a diamond in the rough, it’ll take you to a whole new world.” Jordan blurted.  

Jay felt himself growing queasy and vainly pressed his ears to his shoulders in an effort to will away that sentence and image. Antiqam backed away, his look of disgust giving way to amusedly shaking his head, “You are definitely a genie. Always talking about the most inane subjects.” 

“To be fair my mom has speculated on your dad’s crotch so it might be genetic. Mainly about him compensating...” “Jordan!” Aziz shouted.

“I’m nervous.” Jordan cringed, “But you’re right, I should gag myself right now. That-That would probably be a good idea.”

Antiqam laughed outright, “This is too easy. I mean that little side-tangent about crotches was disturbing. But still. My own gorgeous annoying phenomenally cosmic genie! No one will ever be in my way and I can assure you, you will soon see I have nothing to compensate for.”

Whatever Antiqam was about to say next was interrupted by the sound of a door creaking open. They all whipped their heads around to see who had entered and saw Jafar with his sister, Nasira and her daughter, Jade.

Jay looked to the two cat dieties. It would be just like them to create another illusion just to add to the psychological and emotional pain but neither looked devious. They looked anticipatory just like cats eyeing the canary to see who would make the first move. The cat pouncing or the canary flying.

Jay gulped. It must mean this was truly his father, he could tell by the irritated look on his face that Jay had seen most of his life. The same furrowed brown and frown that seemed to pull down the rest of his face. Aunt Nasira stood by him like a second command which was unusual since Aunt Nasira and his dad had a falling out a few years ago but he supposed they reunited once the opportunity came to seize Agrabah. Jade stood behind her mother looking pityingly at him which was.. different. Everything about her looked different actually. Jade wasn’t wearing her scratched and worn leather pants and faded purple crop top but a flowing violet abaya with diamonds, rubies, sapphires and bloodstones adorning the collar like the ones he saw the Sultana and Aziz’s sisters wear on TV. She had completed the look with an opulent jade and gold choker and matching head-chain, looking every bit a princess as those that attended Auradon Prep. 

He and Jade has always got along, always teased and got on each other’s nerves. She used to be his partner in pickpocketing before their parent’s fell out though that didn’t stop them from getting similar tattoos on his 13th birthday. His was a cobra striking to the left and hers was a coiled viper looking to the right. Both were on their lower backs so if they stood next to each other, it looked like the snake tattoos were about to fight. The tattoo fit her. She was as fierce and vicious as a viper or more accurately, her mom. 

Although they never had a close bond like he did with his friends, he also considered her as someone to count on. Their relationship was different than that with Mal, Evie and Carlos. While their differing personalities contrasted yet melded to somehow work as an awesome team, he and Jade were so similar they were often mistaken for fraternal twins and not just because of their similar looks. 

A day didn’t feel quite right if he went without talking with at least one person from his gang but he and Jade could go for months without talking and pick up again like nothing. She was someone to go to hang out and relax. Compare notes on what they imagined Agrabah to be like. 

They didn’t have a touchy feely relationship. He couldn’t remember the last time he really touched Jade beyond fighting back to back with her or flicking her on the forehead compared to the numerous hugs Evie pulled him into or Carlos jumping into his arms. Jay knew he would never have to protect her like he did with the others because Jade could handle people herself. She didn’t need him and she’d proudly boast of the fact. 

They didn’t get emotional with each other or talk about their feelings, it was only fun and games between them. They didn’t give pitying looks. Jade was too tough for that. 

So if she was looking at him that pityingly….

Jay watched warily as Jafar strode towards him, his arm so outstretched it looked like the staff was leading the way. The staff that he had stared at every night before he went to bed, thinking of his dad’s stories of its mind control powers.

Jay vaguly registered his father’s “Jayal, my son.” He thought he heard Illusion cackle saying, “That’s what I said! I got it right.” He might have heard Jade murmur something. And there was some echo about remembering there was no “I” in team. But he didn’t see anything.

All he could see was the staff’s bright ruby eyes. Those tantalizing glowing eyes that must have been in the Cave of Wonders for it gleamed and shined like the thousands and millions of jewels and treasures and gold that was said to be there. It was so tempting, so mesmerizing.

He couldn’t look away.

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story Part 28

 PART 28

I don't remember what sparked it, but at some point that summer Ava was really mad at Sarah and I randomly after having stayed the night one morning. It started with the awkward false accusations that we hated her and wanted her to die. That we thought she was an ugly bitch, as well as other things we never really thought. It got tiresome. You could try to tell her that you didn't think poorly of her, and she would find a way to twist that around to feel worse about herself. And she always did this if two people were in conversation in our group and were getting along. At this point, I rarely ever visited Sarah alone, even though we lived a few minutes away from one another because I knew Ava would find out and be livid. Her fits were pretentious and unstable.

During this one freak out in the morning, she began screaming and crying and accusing us of stuff that we just weren't even awake enough to fully comprehend. We tried to talk to her about it, but she only got madder. I felt extremely frustrated by this. She started calling herself a bitch and hitting herself repeatedly. She wasn't hitting herself very hard, and she looked over at Sarah and I every time she hit herself looking for a reaction. There was an element to this behavior that was genuinely a sign of mental illness, and a very good element of it was that she was trying to control us by hitting herself because lets face it, she was a rich spoiled brat with avoidant parents and her addictive personality needed constant attention that she failed to get at home. Sarah and I looked at her blankly. Sarah Mae in particular has a very classic resting bitch face that I am sure Ava didn't take all to kindly of. It was too early in the morning for this.

I was mostly mad because I have never liked it when people avoid reason for the sake of getting their own way. She was beyond reasoning at this point and Sarah and I both just shut down and let her do her thing, and upon seeing that her hitting herself wasn't having the desired affect, I could see the embarrassment run across her face, which turned into contempt towards us. It was very strange and hard to deal with. She was slamming doors in Sarah's house. She called her mom to come pick her up. When her mom got there, it was the strangest thing. Sarah and I were sitting in the room, pretending that we were not eagerly anticipating Ava's departure. Ava's mom drove up and had some news for Ava. She told Ava that there was a family that just moved next door – by which she meant two miles on down the road of course. There were two boys in that family, both of them being around Ava's age. Kinda cute. Ava was freaking ecstatic. She went from this place of vengeance and anguish to sudden hellish delight and arrogance. I guess she had just decided then and there that one of those boys would be hers.

Which soon did come to pass. We went up and visited. The family that moved in The Smiths (not one of my beloved favorite bands), was headed by this Mormon couple. They were extremely religious and strange. They adopted unwanted children in the foster system and they collected the money. I don't remember the father's name, but the mother's name was Cindy. She told the state that she was homeschooling most of these eight or nine kids, but really they were not getting home-schooled. None of these children had had any education to speak of for several years. Over half of them couldn't even spell their own name – and sometimes didn't even really wear clothing. A few of them were developmentally challenged, but actually most of them were just not treated like people. They reminded me of feral children. They seemed to make more noises and hit one another at random times than they did talk. There were nothing like my brother or sister. The house was big and empty. There was almost no furniture, no television, almost never any food except hotdogs. All the kids got one hotdog a day. And then everyone would sit around and listen to the bible which I imagine they understood very little of.

The state gave tests once a year to check the progress of the kid's schooling. Cindy would forge it in their name. The father collected the money the state provided, and invested it almost entirely into this pick up outside. It was a giant truck, camo, with enormous monster truck wheels. He would walk around silent and intimidating. He never spent any time with the kids at all, and didn't seem to regard their existences in any way. He carried on his hips at all times, a loaded gun and a large knife. If anyone got out of line in the house, their was a belt that he would use to punish the culprit. Everyone in the house was terrified of him. He didn't have a job. As long as they gave the kids almost nothing to live on, then he really didn't need one. Cindy never left the house. Ava one time let one of the younger kids play with her gameboy. When Cindy found it, she took all the kids in the kitchen, and she stomped on the gameboy as hard as she could until it was broken in pieces. She then made that into some kind of bible lesson. Part of the reason they moved out this far was to stay clear of the state figuring out their setup. There is a movie called Gummo. The vibes off that movie describe the vibes from that house pretty well.  

The two elder sons in question, Cody and Justin Smith, were biological brothers who had been adopted together. Their mother had been a sex worker, and she had been stabbed to death by her boyfriend. Neither one of them knew who their real fathers were. On the day of the stabbing, they had escaped through the back bathroom window. Cody and Justin actually did talk. Cody was a year older than us, and Justin was in our class. Both of them were very eager to hook up with Ava, and any of us if we were willing. In a week, Ava had hooked up with Cody. They didn't ever go that far. Ava always wanted Sarah and I around to show off her knew 'hunk'. And oh, the kissing. You would be talking, sometimes to Ava directly, and she would then turn and start smacky smacking with Cody. I never really got to know much about Cody or Justin. Cody was always in a state of kissing Ava. And Justin was friendly and small in this shy annoying kind of way where you could tell he wanted to kiss too. He went after Sarah pretty hard. At one point, he asked her out, at the worst moment of course, and without any indication that Sarah liked him back. I remember him following her to the house as she had to go pee. I watched their two silhouettes, her rushing forward annoyed, Justin, trying to get close to her so he could ask her out. I watched him ask her out, I watched Sarah's awkward rejection. When she told him no, he looked down at his feet for a moment, and then started moving on towards me as if that hadn't happened. It was mindless and not in the least bit romantic. All and all, I didn't dislike Justin though. He never wanted to hurt anyone. Cody quickly grew to be someone I didn't care for, but Justin was never a mean person. Just really annoying and really desperate.

Roxanne came to visit me once that summer. She wasn't as jovial as she had been the previous year. There was no money left, she had just realized that Jody had been cheating on her the entire time she had been with him. She stopped by to ask if I wanted to go to a lake. I agreed. The lake was about fifty miles away in the woods. The entire trip was miserable and crowded. Jody and her fought the whole way up. When we finally got there, nobody was happy. The water was too cold to swim in – at least by my standards. And very strangely as I had never seen a lake like this before, the ground was wet clay. I was baffled as I had not realized that pure clay was a thing. It was slippery. I ended up slipping and cutting my calf open. Blood was everywhere. As I tried to climb out, I slipped again in the awkward bushy water sand clay mess, and cut myself again. We ended up leaving shortly after. I almost needed stitches, but I went ahead and let the cut heal on it's own. I did however, grab a bunch of that clay and take it home with me. I never ended up using it. I put it in a bag in a cupboard in my room, where it sort of molded a year later – which was also news to me. I didn't know that clay molded.

My brother David was having horrible temper tantrums. I probably made his freak outs a whole lot worse. There was a time that summer, where David was freaking out and screaming. He would get so out of it that his face would be beat red, he would be shrieking hysterically. I didn't know how to deal with it, and I felt like he was overheating. My dad told me that he had also thrown the same kinds of fits as a boy. And his mom had to dump water on his head. So, I did the same thing to David. I remember the shock on his face. In retrospect, it was not the nicest thing to do. David needed more work than other kids, and with me being the sole caretaker of his, he wasn't getting that stability. He was a kid that would have done well with consistent rules in a two party household where everyone got along. Obviously, that wasn't what happened.

Early on, people would say that David's tantrums were normal – mostly my parents, who were rarely home to see it. I never thought so. Even then, I felt like they were the beginning of mental illness. But when you take into account that my father had/has horrible temper problems that almost got him killed, his father wasn't expected to reach age 30 on account of his anger, my mom's brothers have anger issues, her dad was a sadistic cruel man, there might have been a genetic link that was beyond David's control. And with  all the meanness that I had shown him, my babysitting power trip, my instability, my mom coddling him, and my dad putting some kind of unfair expectation that David would be the man my father wanted him to be – even early on, I can see some of what the disturbance probably was with little David. The environment activated the genes. He didn't know why he felt the way he did. Just like anyone, he was overpowered by his brain chemistry. He was always a sickly boy, with unrelenting allergies in the summer that left him delirious. He had asthma and was sickly. He always woke up hostile and confused. His pale freckled skin burned in the summer heat. And he always felt like he was competing for the same tit with Allison, them being only eleven months apart.

I was so proud of my cd collection. With the first twenty dollars I earned, along with another ten dollars that I had acquired somewhere or other, I remember planning a time when I could go to the store, and buy myself the new Good Charlotte album that I had thus far only had burned onto a cd. That, and I wanted the new Evanescence album. I have never liked Wake Me Up Inside, but there was a slow song on that album that I did like. It's not to my taste anymore – though Amy Lee could potentially be listenable if she played a completely different style of music.

I was feeling really cool about myself as we left town – self contained and ready to buy those albums, and nothing more was on my mind that day. We drove past the store. When we drove past Sarah's grandma's new house, I couldn't help but to notice that Zack was out in Sarah's grandmother's yard. I felt this odd softening towards him the moment I saw him. There was a soft breeze. He had grown his hair out so his blond hair was close to his chin in length. There were no other boys who had long hair in town and other than a few of my mom's dumb friends, I had never seen a guy with long hair. He had grown taller, and thinner. He was wearing a white t-shirt and blue jeans. His eyes looked extremely blue. The reason he was out in Sarah's grandma's yard is, Tutu hired slightly troubled teen boys to do a lot of yardwork. She paid handsomely, and I think she might have liked having the young men about – not that she was being a cougar exactly, just that she found it a little exciting. The word in town was that Zack had somehow broken a window and had to pay it off. Which intrigued me. I saw him, and if ever there was a corny moment where Cupid's arrow strikes, it was probably then. I quickly took the arrow out of course, patched up the hole, snapped the arrow it in half and threw it out the window, and as we drove out of time, I turned my thoughts to Benji. But it was too late for me. It had already begun. A seed had been planted, I just didn't realize it yet.

During the end of that summer, I remember spending a lot of my time watching  MTV2. The top twenty countdown was a big deal to me on MTV 2. I put less faith in the VH1 countdown, since it was kind of clear to me that it pandered to easy listening and adult contemporary a little more. It didn't have the flash. And MTV, on the rare occasion when it did play music videos at all – which was rare (generally the only thing on MTV was reality shows with a bunch of washed up celebs living in a house together and fighting all the time) would usually stick to hip hop. And even though rap has never been my thing, the rap of the early 00's stank for the most part. Nelly and 50 cent were just terrible. The bling and the lady dancers didn't hold my interest, and a lot of the real creative and more in depth endeavors by rap musicians in that time were probably overlooked and didn't make it to television.

I flew into a rage by the end of the summer. This dumb band called The White Stripes was winning Good Charlotte! Unthinkable! I remember just hating 'Seven Nation Army'. I thought the music video was boring. I was confused. I couldn't stop talking about it. Where were all the other performers? You can't have a band with only two people! Why did their music sound so clangy?? Why was that silly looking man's voice so strange? This wasn't music! Allison and David remember well, being mystified as I yelled at the television and threw something at  it.

And I became even angrier when Radiohead came on. I remember having silly thoughts like 'Good Charlotte is ten times the band that Radiohead is (ha), and I didn't understand the vocals of 'There There' and was weirded out by the music video which I cannot even imagine disliking now. I was very dumb. I remember talking about how ugly I thought Thom Yorke was. I had this ideal in my mind, that the only 'real' music video was one where there was a thin white heartbroken young man waling about a lost lover or at the very least, a song where he seemed witty and humorous. Someone like Thom Yorke just seemed strange. I was a fool. There is no other word for that.

Ava's boyfriend Cody and his brother Justin decided to join the football team. They were going to be schooled in the high school this year, and they were both really excited about it in a way that only home school kids ever are, with this foundless faith that they would become immediately popular and loved by all their fellow students. Football practice starts a few weeks before school actually starts – I guess to get the players prepped and ready for the games. From Sarah's window, we could usually see the players out in the distance doing mysterious runs and passes before stopping abruptly for no reason I could ascertain and going back into their previous positions. Cody wanted Ava to go watch these practices, and so we ended up going down to the first one with Ava.

It was boring. I have never been able to endure watching any sport other than boxing. As the practice went on, the sun began going down, but it wasn't quite night yet. Sarah and I sat there. During breaks, Ava would rush up to Cody with water. But Cody was acting strangely and distant, pushing Ava's attempts away. Things seemed to be happening. I didn't see it all. What I did see was this. The entire football team was snickering uncontrollably at Ava and Cody. They could barely contain themselves. And when they talked to Cody, they started to make fun of him for dating an unpopular fat chick. They kept looking over at Ava and making strange sexual suggestions. And you could see Cody was instantly put in a position of shame – you could see it written all over his face. He naturally had been attracted to Ava, maybe for no better reason than she was a female, but he had not had a problem with her weight. He for whatever reason was not conditioned to have a problem with it, and now he was seeing that there was indeed a problem with it. High school boys would not allow it to be otherwise.

The whole event made me sick. We watched as Mr. Driskoll, the football coach, told the boys to hold the football like it was a sacred tit. How this would help anyone throw around a hard pumpy orange ball shaped like a lemon was something I never understood, but the whole thing was incredibly sexist and gross, particular coming from a grown man. As the game progressed, the jokes about Ava and Cody became more outward and cruel. Mr. Driskoll joined in. He started calling her a fat disgusting cow, and saying he would only fuck her if he was drunk and he could do it from behind without having to look at her, or else he would only accept a BJ. Had I been older and known the extent of how inappropriate this was, I would have turned him in. That was sexual harassment.

Ava was balling by the end. I didn't blame her. The whole thing was beyond horrible. She was trying to talk to Cody, and he shoved her. Called her a slut, said she had ruined his reputation, called her disgusting. And then he broke up with her. Ava sobbed all the way home and got a ride home with her mom home. I try very hard not to judge men as a whole, but it's been something I have really had to work through and dissect over the years. Looking at my life up to that point even, all I had really seen is absolute egotism, violence, degradation, and a sense that I should be either subservient or fearful of men, be it my father, the principal, the football coach, the boy next door or my little brother. If you aren't motherly enough, or sexy enough, you will find yourself discarded at best. Responding to this male world was second nature to me at this point. I didn't consciously think about it. I wasn't someone who caught feminism in a college course. It happened in the places I inhabited.

By the end of the summer my fourteenth birthday came. I don't really remember my birthday too well other than, I think that I had a sleepover. I sure thought I was really cool. I let Ava cut my hair, which by now was half way down my back. She was only supposed to trim it, but she became crazed with power, and she ended up cutting half of it off, so then my hair was to my shoulders. Strangely, we did this hair cut outside in the front of her house by the road. And stranger still, nobody ever picked up the discarded hair. It just was kind of left there. I walked past it for the next year on my way home from school. Each day it took on this yellowy green color.

After that, Ava, Sarah, and I walked through the town until it was dark, screaming and running around. I remember getting up on something in the park, and screaming out 'GREEEN DAY!' I must have thought I was really something for being a fan. When we got home, my dad had bought ice cream and made chicken. All of us girls gathered around and ate and talked. Life was so simple. I don't exactly miss these times, and I like who I am now much better, but it is strange to look back at a time when I didn't have bills, I thought owning Dookie by Green Day was some kind of indication that I was some untouchable punk girl. It would be a week before school upon me yet again, for another insufferable year of my twelve year term of hell.

My mom popped by for five minutes that week. I didn't really see her – as I was at Sarah's, and she had to be going so it was quick. She just stopped by to give me a small indication that she had remembered that it was my birthday. She bought me a pair of socks that were still packaged since the eighties and one of those weird you grow your own moon man packages. She had no money, and was living precariously, working in the back of the Good Will. She was back in Lewiston. What was really strange though, is that she had met Sarah's father at the bar, and the two had begun dating. Sarah and I were flabbergasted. What on earth was going on here? My dad had dated her mom in the early seventies. My mom was now dating her dad. We could not help but feel that we must be sisters in some alternative universe somehow. Though, this relationship didn't last. Sarah's father Dean is completely crazy. He thinks he was in Viet Nam. He wasn't. He randomly pulled a gun out on my mother once when he woke up, and she thought it was because he suffered from PTSD. Upon finding out that he was never in the war, she got kind of freaked out. They quit dating after three months.

The Saturday before school started, I rushed down to the grocery store to pick up the new subscription of Tiger Beat, which Ava had told me had a nice big poster of Good Charlotte. I entered the store, and there was Zack. He was much taller than he had been before summer. I tried to pretend not to notice him, but I couldn't help but notice that he was staring at me intently, and smiling. I looked over, gave him an uppity look, and tried to pretend I wasn't in the mood to bother with his sort. For some reason, just his existence in my premise was not something I could ignore though. I felt immediately as though the energies in the room were all concentrated on him. I felt dizzy. This made no sense. I almost couldn't find the magazine I was looking for. I could just feel him standing there in the check out, thinking about me. As he was leaving after buying his stuff, he passed me, winked, and said 'Hi Renee'. I was beat red and frazzled. My impulsive response wanted to be to act aggressive in defense, but I was old enough now where I knew that would not really do much but make me look like a fool.

I bought my magazine, and left the store. As I walked out, I was relieved to see that the bastard was gone. I clutched my magazine and started on my way. But just past the ice machine, there he was, in front of the drug store on the bench. On his right arm, he had Melissa. And on his left arm, he had this blonde girl from the class below named Valerie. I was alarmed. Was it jealousy I was feeling? Certainly not! I probably over exaggerated a look of stern determination as I walked on past. Zack smiled at me from the bench and made a gesture towards me. I put my head up high and snuffed him. Which I think amused him more than anything. I walked on home, till I was out of the danger zone. And then I had to remind myself of Benji again and again. I didn't stop to wonder why.

On a side note, i really want to thank those who read my story so far. I might possibly have stopped early on had i not been given the positive feedback. I have gotten so much encouragement from people who seem to support my writing, and you have no idea how much that means to me. I am not very good at expressing gratitude, but i am grateful.

PART 27 - http://tinyurl.com/ydcj5fgf

PART 26 - http://tinyurl.com/y73nvl73

PART 25 -  http://tinyurl.com/y6v6pgoj

PART 24 - http://tinyurl.com/ycak5d8r

PART 23 - http://tinyurl.com/yac6sk3g

PART 22 -  http://tinyurl.com/yat6cfnw

PART 21 -  http://tinyurl.com/y783egno

PART 20 - http://tinyurl.com/y8jskymt

PART 19 - http://tinyurl.com/rfhbms8

PART 18 - http://tinyurl.com/ycrznrwk

PART 17 - http://tinyurl.com/y77unlng

PART 16 - http://tinyurl.com/yadpsv8c

PART 15 - http://tinyurl.com/yb3lt6k5

PART 14 - http://tinyurl.com/yb4cfedq

PART 13 - http://tinyurl.com/yalanq9s

PART 12 - http://tinyurl.com/yc79mw94

PART 11 - http://tinyurl.com/yc9qhj84

PART 10 - http://tinyurl.com/yb734w24

PART 9 - http://tinyurl.com/yc2t6vfw  

PART 8 - http://tinyurl.com/ybl37utq

PART 7 - http://tinyurl.com/ybvo283g

PART 6 - http://tinyurl.com/kbc9dwu

PART 5 - http://tinyurl.com/msnz4am

PART 4 - http://tinyurl.com/k9x8esg

PART 3 - http://tinyurl.com/mwp9atx

PART 2 - http://tinyurl.com/lbt6xq2

PART 1 - http://tinyurl.com/l8xbvg8

[donutstopeatingpdx]

Twister.

What a weekend. I wish you all could know the first-world-but-very-real struggles I’ve just endured for you. Well I mean, it’s kinda for me too, but it’s mostly just so I can show off for you.

I’m of course talking about my attempt to make   donuts     Natalie Portman fall in love with me  croissants. Some might believe this to be a simple task, but I can assure you that despite its [relative] simplicity, impeccable accuracy doing said simplicity is key to having any kind of success. It’s not like making regular bread; you need to form a pastry that is buttery, light, and above all, flaky. I’m talking like, “college BFF / sorority big” flaky.

“Lol she really think I’m bouta go to this party with her tho...I can’t WAIT to cancel these plans.”

This is not an easy task. It’s a four-quarter game, and there are a lot of steps that need to happen correctly for this to work, which means there’s plenty of room for error. Only through patience, meticulous deal and proper execution can you impress your friends at the next dinner party. (And some posh table wine would probably help too.)

The first step is doing the proper prep work: having a chilled butter-flour block to work with, and having a good dough made with the proper kind of flour (side note: if your roommates tell you that the brown flour is all-purpose even though you’re pretty sure it’s wheat flour, you’re probably right).

The second step is keeping your ingredients cold as you work with them, which means having the restraint to stop working if they get too warm and put them back in the refrigerator for a half-hour or so. You’ll be ill-pressed to rush the process of making croissants. This is not a “hmm, maybe I’ll make this today” sort of thing...more like a “hmm, maybe I’ll make this a decade from now” sort of thing.

Me at age 11, planning to make croissants seventeen years later.

Oh, and you’re probably gonna want to start climbing. You’ll need the kind of forearm muscles that only climbing can give you, because there will be a lot of folding & rolling dough. Practicing some minor surgery won’t hurt either - that way you can measure precisely and handle a small knife easily to cut loose edges. Forming nice rectangles is a theme to working with croissant dough.

If you make it through the second-quarter madness of single turns and chilling dough repeatedly, then you get a 4-hour halftime break of letting the dough settle in the fridge. Get a good nap in, because the next part is gonna get serious. Some brief calisthenics after the nap wouldn’t hurt either.

Now THOSE are the calves of someone who’s ready to make a good puff pastry.

The shaping of the croissants is the denouement of this saga. It will take the average person quite some time to cut and roll them, but apparently there are people that can make them so fast that Gordon Ramsay can’t even keep up. Honestly, what sort of hope does that leave us mere mortals? Not much, but you can try. And honestly, the shape isn’t your main concern - it’s the texture - so just give it the ole college try. Remember that you’re on a clock - this dough is best worked with cold - not cool, but cold. I’m talking “ex-girlfriend” cold.

You asked for it.

Now comes the final act. Cover your creations with a towel, and watch them make like the Dark Knight and rise. After about 90 minutes, you’ll want to preheat the oven...but don’t you DARE put them in yet. You’re forgetting arguably the most important step to ensuring your texture is spot on.

THE EGG WARSH

A quick glaze of egg wash is key to making sure the top of your croissants brown and easily flake off the top. If you knew this already, good for you, but I don’t give extra credit for being a know-it-all.

Now, you get to see if all your hard work paid off...in exactly 20-25 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

If you are successful, this is what you will see:

If I am successful, this is what I will see:

Rather, WHO I will see.

My first attempt at making these bad boys was a solid effort. I followed the recipe as best as I could, but I ultimately used the wrong type of flour (cough cough roommates), and was also not ready for the challenge of whole wheat croissants...not to mention, what kind of psycho actually wants whole wheat croissants? Despite knowing about this mistake halfway through, I decided to see it through to the end, baking [and even eating] them.

Though this ship was ultimately doomed to sink, it was a beautiful one.

As you can see in the image above, my croissants actually looked pretty good. But after baking, they did not hold their shape, and the center was underdone while the outside was overdone. And although they tasted alright, they were quite dense. Some of this could be attributed to the flour, but I bet a lot of it was just my general inexperience. But, I am working on a second batch as we speak, which will hopefully yield Instagram-worthy results.

Only by fitting the mold may I break it.

All in all, for a first official attempt at baking, this was a pretty tough technical challenge. I’ve learned that croissants are very under-appreciated, and are an intense time investment that need the utmost attention to pull off. I had a good time making them, and suffered a great first failure which allowed me to learn quickly and give me the motivation to try again.

The best part of all this? If I plan things far enough ahead in time, I can drop this line at the end of a third date:

“I can drive you home now if you’re ready. But before we go, I thought you should know: in the morning, I’m making croissants...

...from scratch.”

“...Did you say ‘from scratch?’ ”

A little planning goes a long way.

[nightmare-deer]

IFH has become such a big debate. I think people are kinda getting into  (ง'̀-'́)ง mode unnecessarily. I get it, mental illness is so personal and probably something most people on tumblr go thru on some level. Your mileage will vary with what bands help you. 

My take has me in many minds. Like, I think they have some really good songs. I think they try and put out those positive vibes. I think Ariel is my age and so she’s probably not any smarter than me on the topic of mental health but I think she cares. I just think she has this aura of like, people who get really into self help and kinda go overboard. I can’t be the only one who knows those people. 

I do think they have some lyrics that have personally kinda rubbed me the wrong way. In the song Pieces I feel like “ You say you try, you're after something better/ it doesn't show, You're still not put together” is kind of a bitchy take imho only because I think no one is probably ever going to feel together and I feel like taking a “if you were really trying I’d see the progress” stance is inaccurate. I know Ariel had a history of friends where she felt like they were miserable for the sake of it but I feel like that’s not a thing you can stroke over all people who are struggling. That said, I mostly like their “shit is hard but we’re gonna survive” vibe .I think sometimes they tackle topics that are a little over their head and sometimes I find the battle cry vibe a little emotionally exhausting. 

That said I feel like often Ariel is addressing herself and she’s entitled to her own narrative for her own struggles and I do believe that at the end of the day she’s trying to help people who are struggling too and for a lot of her fan base that seems to be how they relate to her music. When I was younger and really sad I did find some songs helpful and then I kinda grew out of the band and that’s just a personal thing for me because I just tend to be happier when my mental health isn’t the big core of my personality and so artists where that’s a big theme like IFH or Emilie Autumn get less listens now. I still think Hope of Morning is a beautiful track. 

I feel like if some people are offended and find that their message doesn’t gel with them -- just find another band. good golly, some of y’all will try a mold a band into what you want them to be before you seek out other artists you might like and put some coins in their pockets. (not addressing the confessor here)

I see the debate time and time again about Icon For Hire’s lyrics. One thing I try to remind people is sometimes their lyrics are meant to be sarcastic or ironic. Also, because everyone experiences mental illness differently, some of the lyrics that people find offensive might describe someone’s battle with mental illness perfectly and might help them feel less alone. They’ve never strayed from talking about the ugliest parts of mental illness, and I think those are often the lyrics that become most controversial. But that’s my interpretation. I can’t speak for Ariel or for others. Like with all music, lyrics can be interpreted in wildly different ways, and usually there’s not a wrong way.

21334

[wallyaxiom]

not another walt questionnaire !

Describe the character’s height and build. Is he heavyset, thin, short, rangy?

I’m 5’8” which is probably at the shorter end of the male spectrum.  I’m on the smaller side but curvy - like very i got a big, big bum. I used to be tight and toned with a tiny waist but over the last few years i’ve put on some weight so I have a  little ‘tummy’ now. I used to hate it but i’ve grown used to it

2. How old is he?

Twenty-one

3. Describe his posture. Does he/she carry himself well or does he/she slouch?  

One does not get considered a prince without a regal posture, thank you.  I’m not the kind to slouch and besides, if I’m going to be a little short I might as well make up for it by standing upright.

4. How is his health? Is he fit or out of shape? Any illnesses or conditions? Any physical disabilities?

I try to keep myself in the best shape I can manage. I used to play soccer in high school. As well as skateboard, when I get the chance I like to surf but other than that I don’t do a lot of physical activity since i’m at home with the kids most of the time. I have some spring allergies which leave me a little sniffly if I don’t take my meds.

5. How does he move? Is he clumsy, graceful, tense, fluid?

I like to consider myself graceful and ‘fluid’ I suppose. When I walk my hips kind of...sway back and forth more so than they should, at least I think so. 

6. How attractive is this character physically? How does he perceive himself in the mirror?

I’ve been told i’m very pretty individual - attractive. I mean if you ask Oliver he’ll go on and on about how he finds me attractive but he’s my husband so like he kinda has to say all those nice things. I don’t find myself unattractive by any stretch of the imagination, at least not anymore i’ve  come to love myself and my flaws, but it’s nothing to brag about.  If anything I’m a bit too delicate, hence the attempts at a manly scruff in the past. But I quick that since Oliver prefers me baby faced and i’ve embraced being delicate and dainty. 

7. Describe his complexion. Dark, light, clear, scarred?

I’d say I’m of a medium to light complexion; I tend to be fairly tan year round.  Skin is smooth and I do my best to keep it free of blemish. 

8. Describe his hair: color, texture, style.

My hair is caramel in color and is pretty soft.  As far as styles are concerned, i’ve had every style under the sun as of now it’s usually swept off to the side or I wear a hat when i’m too lazy to do anything with it. Oliver likes it when my hair is styled in a quiff but that doesn’t happen often anymore. I went through a whole quiff phase it was interesting to say the least

9. What color are his/her eyes?

A very vibrant light blue - kinda like the sky

10. Does the character have any other noteworthy features?

My cheekbones they’re very defined. I also have three little freckles that I refer to as a little constellation on my face

11. What are his/her chief tension centers?

Definitely the back of my neck down into my shoulders, following down my spine.  If you hold yourself like I do tension tends to build there and I honestly could probably do with a nice full body massage once a week to relieve that tension.

12. What is the character’s wardrobe like? Casual, dressy, utilitarian? Bright colors, pastels, neutrals? Is it varied, or does he/she have six of the same suit?

Usually I wear like sweats, sweaters, hoodies, leggings, comfy clothes since i’m around the house. I love adidas and I wear a lot of Oliver’s clothes. When I go out though I love dressing up. My wardrobe includes skinny jeans, bright colors, very posh and fashionable. I loooove fashion. (x)(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)

13. Do his/her clothes fit well? Does he/she seem comfortable in them?

It depends. If i’m wearing Oliver’s clothes they’re big on me, obviously have you seen our size difference? If they’re mine they’re very, very fitted. 

14. Does he/she dress the same on the job as he/she does in his free time? If not, what are the differences?

My job is raising our two kids so.

15. You knew it was coming: Boxers, briefs or commando?

Boy shorts. Don’t knock it til you try it. 

Speech

1. What does this character’s voice sound like? High-pitched, deep, hoarse?

My voice is a bit high.  Not like girly high but just a light, slightly lilted tone.  It gets hoarse easily as well if I’m shouting or… whatnot.

2. How does he/she normally speak? Loud, soft, fast, evenly? Does he/she talk easily, or does he/she hesitate?

I used to have a really bad stutter but not anymore. I speak quite loudly the only time I do speak softly is when i’m talking to my kids. 

3. Does the character have a distinct accent or dialect? Any individual quirks of pronunciation? Any, like, you know, verbal tics?

I have a valley boy ‘accent’ it’s gone away some but there’s hints of it when I talk, so. Oliver makes fun of it. 

4. What language/s does he/she speak, and with how much fluency?

I speak English fluently and took a bit of Spanish and Latin back in high school. 

5. Does he/she switch languages or dialects in certain situations?

No.  I wish I could break into a thick Irish accent when I got angry but nope.

6. Is he/she a good impromptu speaker, or does he/she have to think about his words?

Unintentionally impromptu, I don’t have a filter sometimes. I try to think about my words before I say them with most anyone.

7. Is he/she eloquent or inarticulate? Under what circumstances might this change?

Eloquent in 75% of situations.  The only circumstances in which it would change is in times of high stress or emotion.

Mental and Emotional

1. How intelligent is this character? Is he/she book-smart or street-smart?

Pretty smart, I think.  Probably more book smart than streets though. 

2. Does he/she think on his feet, or does he/she need time to deliberate?

I’d prefer more time to deliberate. I do act rashly or impulsively depending on the situation.

3. Describe the character’s thought process. Is he/she more logical, or more intuitive? Idealistic or practical?

As of late? logical and practical with a hidden dreamer. More so Intuitive back in the day. I wanted to be something much more whimsical and fun than a stay at home dad. But that’s just not how life worked out but i’m fine with it. 

4. What kind of education has the character had?

Well, I went to public grade school and middle school, a private high school for a year then ended up transferring to public which landed me in Walt and I finished my senior year a semester early because Josh came into our lives. I planned on going to school and being a theatre major...or minor with education as a major. I don’t know. I never really decided since I didn’t have the chance to. 

5. What are his/her areas of expertise? What, if anything, is he/she interested in learning more about?

For as much as I complain, I’m not terrible at menial task work so that’s fine.  I read and comprehend things quickly.  I’m good at memorization and can be organized when the job requires it.  I want to look more into the arts sides of things. 

6. Is he/she an introvert or an extrovert?

Extrovert

7. Describe the character’s temperament. Is he/she even-tempered or does he/she have mood swings? Cheerful or melancholy? Laid-back or driven?

It depends on the day...I can be quite moody sometimes. I have mood swings a lot actually. But mostly i’m very cheerful,very loving. I like to think i’m laid back. But as a whole I guess I’m pretty high-maintenance.  I’m prone to over dramatizing situations and being a ‘brat’. As Oliver puts it. But that’s only with him

8. How does he/she respond to new people or situations? Is he/she suspicious, relaxed, timid, enthusiastic?

I love meeting new people, i’m quite the people person

9. Is he/she more likely to act, or to react?

Probably react.

10. Which is his/her default: fight or flight?

depends on the situation mostly flight

11. Describe the character’s sense of humor. Does he/she appreciate jokes? Puns? Gallows humor? Bathroom humor? Pranks?

I think I have a good sense of humor except puns I hate puns and yet i’m married to the king of puns, go figure.

12. Does the character have any diagnosable mental disorders? If yes, how does he/she deal with them?

Yes, Bipolar Disorder, Depression, Anxiety, I had an eating disorder about two years ago but I recovered from it. I don’t really deal with my bipolar disorder. I don’t like to think about it - kinda pretend it’s not real but I deal with the other two. I have to

13. What moments in this character’s life have defined him/her as a person?

There’s a lot. Meeting Oliver when I was six, playing the lead in a musical in high school production, the BNL gang and all the abuse I endured during that, not becoming the axiom hire, falling in love with oliver, the coma, the memory loss, meeting my biological parents, getting engaged, having kids and of course getting married.

14. What does he/she fear?

Losing Oliver

15. What are his/her hopes or aspirations?

I’d like to be an actor. It’s been a silly dream of mine since high school. I love performing and making people happy

16. What is something he/she doesn’t want anyone to find out about him/her?

Anything involving my past, whether it’s the BNL gang, the entire Eve situation, my party boy days, I don’t want my in-laws to find out i’m actually really fucking rich as much as I love Georgette i’m afraid they’d think i’m shallow like her oh and my bipolar disorder. No one can find that out.

Relationships

1. Describe this character’s relationship with his/her parents.

Good. I’m a momma’s boy i’ve always been significantly closer to my mother than I have my father. She’s always been more gentle and loving whereas my father was often more harsh and cold. He’s always put me on a pedestal to be this perfect little boy - the perfect Axiom boy and I couldn’t fit that mold not matter how hard he tried. Not to mention he was a bit...homophobic towards my relationship with Oliver at first but we’ve gotten over it all and our relationship is better now. He’s softer. All and all I couldn’t have asked for better parents. Blood or not I love them and they love me.

2. Does the character have any siblings? What is/was their relationship like?

Yes, Marjorie Beamer. She’s my biological sister. I didn’t know about her until I was seventeen so I missed a good chunk of her life but I love my sister, I adore her. She’s my best friend. 

3. Are there other blood relatives to whom he/she is close? Are there ones he/she can’t stand?

My biological parents I guess? I really don’t know much about their family other than my grandmother. I’m not close at all to the Axioms. Besides Monty, they’ve all kind of disowned me for various reasons. 

4. Are there other, unrelated people whom he/she considers part of his family? What are his/her relationships with them?

Silvermist is like a sister to me. Obviously Roger and Olivia Spade. My in-laws are like third parents and when he was alive, Fagin. He meant everything to Oliver and he meant a lot to me as well. 

5. Who is/was the character’s best friend? How did they meet?

This is totally cliche but it’s Oliver. We all know how we met by now don’t we?

6. Does he/she have other close friends?

Silvermist & Hallie.

7. Does he/she make friends easily, or does he/she have trouble getting along with people?

It’s really easy for me to make friends, at least I think. I love people and love making them feel loved and welcomed. I’m a people person. 

8. Which does he/she consider more important: family or friends?

Friends, I suppose.  They’re the people who stick around you by choice, not by force.  They have to like something about you. Family is important too.

9. Is the character single, married, divorced, widowed? Has he/she been married more than once?

Happily married.

10. Is he/she currently in a romantic relationship with someone other than a spouse?

absolutely not no.

11. Who was his/her first crush? Who is his/her latest?

Oliver Spade and uh Oliver Theodore Ryan Spade. He’s cute shh.

12. What does he/she look for in a romantic partner?

Oh wow, do I really need to answer this? Everything I ever wanted in a partner I found

13. Does the character have children? Grandchildren? If yes, how does he/she relate to them? If no, does he/she want any?

Yes, two; Joshua and Olivia. They’re my world.

14. Does he/she have any rivals or enemies?

Auto motherfucking Axiom.

15. What is the character’s sexual orientation? Where does he/she fall on the Kinsey scale?

Bisexual, probably a 5 on the scale.

16. How does he/she feel about sex? How important is it to him/her?

Oh god I love sex. I didn’t before but now I do. I really, really do. It’s not that important to me but it happens a lot. Trust me I don’t have to worry about the spark ever going out. My husband can’t keep his hands off me, so!

17. What are his/her turn-ons? Turn-offs? Weird bedroom habits?

You’re asking a very loaded question and I’m going to leave a bit of mystery to the public and keep it between my husband and I.  Let’s just say I can consider myself a fair bit… frisky.

Beliefs

1. Do you know your character’s astrological (zodiac of choice) sign? How well does he/she fit type?

I’m a Capricorn so I fit on the seeking stability, calculating, don't show their emotions easily for fear of being vulnerable, quite sensitive with those they care about, though they can be ruthless in business and when going after what they want, stubborn and seeking recognition aspects.  The part about no silly impulses though, yeah, they haven’t seen me when I used to get drunk off my ass

2. Is this character religious, spiritual, both, or neither? How important are these elements in his/her life?

I’m Spiritual sometimes but religious, not really no.  I live by my own philosophy.  Obviously in the one year of private school setting I had a fair bit of religion jammed down my throat but when I decided I liked kissing boys as well as girls, well, religion took a detour.

3. Does this character have a personal code of morals or ethics? If so, how did that begin? What would it take to compromise it?

I’d say definitely.  You’ve got to live by your own code or other people are going to define you your whole life.  It started at the end of high school when my parents’ (the axioms more likely) reins loosened and I could do more things for myself.  Have fun, carry yourself as you want to be seen and try your hardest not to have any regrets.

4. How does he/she regard beliefs that differ from his? Is he/she tolerant, intolerant, curious, indifferent?

I’m not terribly against people whose beliefs differ but if they are strongly opinionated that my beliefs and ways of handling myself are wrong, I’ll defend myself.

5. What prejudices does he/she hold? Are they irrational or does he/she have a good reason for them?

I try not to. It’s hard sometimes because the environment I was raised in because they believed most people were below them.

Daily Life

1. What is the character’s financial situation? Is he/she rich, poor, comfortable, in debt?

Comfortable.

2. What is his/her social status? Has this changed over time, and if so, how has the change affected him/her?

When I was growing up obviously I was upper class. I had a damn silverspoon in my mouth. However now that I refuse to depend on my parents in any way i’m middle class. Things aren’t perfect, especially with a one person income but Oliver is the hardest working man I know. I just wish...I could help but I don’t miss being rich, i’m content and happy with where I am.

3. Where does he/she live? House, apartment, trailer? Is his/her home his/her castle or just a place to crash? What condition is it in? Does he/she share it with others?

An apartment with my husband and kids. It’s clean when the kids don’t scatter their toys about or when I don’t feel lazy.

4. Besides the basic necessities, what does he/she spend his/her money on?

Clothes, food and smoothies. Oh and food.

5. What does he/she do for a living? Is he/she good at it? Does he/she enjoy it, or would he/she rather be doing something else?

Basically, i’m a stay at home-mom and house wife. I take care of the kids, the apartment and my husband when he comes home. I mean yeah I would but house-wife is kind of the job i’ll be having for a while since we plan on having a lot of kids. Eventually i’d like to go to college and get a degree in something.

6. What are his/her interests or hobbies? How does he/she spend his/her free time?

Going to see local theatre productions, curling up and reading, hitting up local coffee shops, setting up a fire in the fireplace, playing piano or guitar, surfing, movie marathons, star gazing, baking, stuff like that.

7. What are his/her eating habits? Does he/she skip meals, eat out, drink alcohol, avoid certain foods?

Oh, i’m a bottomless pit. Eating is my number one hobby. I love food. I don’t skip meals anymore. The only time we ever eat out is on special occasions most of the time I cook or Oliver does. We kind of share that, really. I don’t drink anymore, no. I haven’t since Josh happened. Please does it look like I avoid certain foods? Besides Brussels sprouts they’re evil. 

Associations

Which of the following do you associate with the character, or which is his/her favorite:

1. Color?   blue and pink 2. Smell?  Strawberries 3. Time of day? Night 4. Season? Summer 5. Book? Pride and Prejudice. My mom made me read it in high school 6. Music? Depends on my mood, right now?  Something light— indie-esque. Although I think my favorite kind of music is 90′s music.  7. Place? Next to Oliver 8. Substance? Not anymore, no. 9. Plant? Cactus, they don’t die! 10. Animal? Koala

[the-heroic-changeling]

So I think I did okay at my interview today

So in celebration, please have my full draft of my post apocalyptic sequel to my vigilante short stories. It's quick, brief, but kinda depressing and melancholy. So please be aware this is a bit sad. And then it gets weird at the very end. 

Anyway, here it is. Tagging @jogress @akirakan and @renaroo

I scuttled across Home Three, my six legs clattering behind me. My feet sent impulses through me, the texture of the ground mapped with each touch. My main sight however was electroreception, the ability to sense electricity, both organic and inorganic. I could feel pulses, small flickers like stars poking out through bloated clouds.

The world existed in starlight, like dots among an endless void. Not black, not white, not anything that could be adequately described, just an absence. No sound, no light, just little flickers below me, and scattered shards of jewels dulled and faded with dust.

It was all-consuming to my autistic mind. It was a giant maw of emptiness, broken up only by the impulses and sparks of the scattered life that still squirmed and grew. I tried to focus on them, on the tardigrades, on the lichen, on the survivors

When I had to see I could project into Voyager I and II, Opportunity, or Curiosity, Akatsuki, Huygens, Mascot, Minerva II, any of the rest of the still functioning landers — or even the multitude of stranded UUV that dot that oceans. But there still wasn't much to see there, unless I piloted it to one of the vents. At least, there was nothing to see like home. I mean it was home, this was Earth but it ... it didn't feel like it. It felt empty. Only little sprinklings of life.

...I wonder what the Earth looks like now. Like, through eyesight.

I could only stay on Home Three for short amounts of time, it would be selfish too stay here long, even with my planting. I had to look for movement, try to cultivate the octopi and uplift them, and had to salvage on Mars and the Moon. I had felt bad crashing so many satellites, but I needed resources, and I had known they would crash eventually anyway. Might as well aim them by my bodies so I could have metal, circuits, and electronics. Ideally some that had not been fried by the nuclear war.

The satellites of Earth were all gone now, most of them had fried long ago, the rest had been aimed by me to crash either near Home Three or any of the UUV's. Lucas had been very loving to this body, she made its claw very articulate. It had nothing on a human had, but it still could manipulate well. For emphasis I tapped my claw against my back, strumming the plastic card I carried with me. I could almost feel the card, blind as I was.

...I miss hands. It's hard to stim without hands.

I pulled my claw back and dropped it in front of me like a cane. I probed ahead, feeling for anything interesting. Most of the world in front of me was just bits and pieces of electronics, rusted metal - I was no engineer, though Lucas had tried to teach me. I-I had gotten better over the ... decades? I think it had been decades. Probably not a century had passed yet, at least I didn't think so. Point was I still had plenty of machinery to manipulate and try to build with. I had given up making eyes ages ago though, too difficult.

I paused, feeling something under my foot. I stepped back, and with my claw I clasped at the shape. It was rough but patterned. Probably another infertile seed. Still, I clutched it, and scuttled over towards the planting ground.

I had churned and molded this patch of ground for ages, and lichen and other 'plants' had flourished there. Sometimes even lasting long enough to launch spores and seed new life. No large plants ever grew, no matter how many seeds I tried to plant, carried by the wind. Still, had to try, just in case one seed actually worked.

I dug it in, as the light squishy plants pressed against my legs. I paused digging so I could feel the plant, feel the moldable soft surface. I squeezed over and over, before pulling back and burying the would be seed. As I did I could see tardigrades squirming alongside a pillbug, if I identified it right? It was a big creature, it dwarfed the normal wildlife, that was for sure. But electroreception was not as a precise a long as vision.

I finished burying the seed, and clattered away, leaving the oasis behind. Lichen did grow everywhere here, same with mold. But here in my ... garden I supposed, here they actually grew a bit stronger.

I went back through the emptiness, scuffling my feet as my claw draped in front to help me see. I could feel the squishy plantlike life that clung to the ground, feel tardigrades crawled through them. The tiny beasts were common now, some of the most complex life in Mexico. Well, what was Mexico. Now the country was water logged and empty.

This had been Lucas's country. That was what Home Three was, her grave. Where she finally collapsed from the radiation poisoning, my last friend. I had tried to bury her, but my body here was small, weak, it could not ... it could not lift a person, it could not dig the earth enough to bury a human sized body. I ... again I was helpless.

I reached down and squeezed some lichen, letting the soft material ooze through my claws. I padded it, molded it, trying to calm. At least calm as best I could. There was still life here. Animals, plants — life persisted.

I knew in the deeps more complex life lived, mostly sheltered and cut off from nuclear winter. There were shrimp, clams, tube worms, crabs, snails, eels, some ray-finned fish, and even octopi. Octopi! I ... I fixated a lot on the octopi. And not for special interest reasons.

I knew it would take ages for sentient life to evolve again, even with my help. It would even take ages for complex life to recolonize the upper oceans and the surface. But octopi were a good chance for a successor to humanity, they were smart and they had appendages similar to hands and a very complex nervous system. I had used my UUV to contact them, gesturing to them with the machines' mechanical arms, tried to show them things. It felt mostly like failures. But I kept trying. Some of their groups had grasped how to use tools like rocks to smash open clams, three colonies seemed to grasp that meat cooked near the vents tasted better. It was slow going, but they were learning. Some of them anyway, it varied on the species or the group. But some learned, and some even taught each other without my help.

I relied on those teachers. Because otherwise I ... I might have to do something evil. And I did not want to be evil, not now not ever.

I knew they were still a long way from intelligence like humanity had. And it would be a longer time until I can teach them the Torah, or at least what I remembered of it. I remember a lot but I was no teacher, just a superhero in the waning days of humanity. I ... I also felt nervous about converting the octopi, in Judaism we didn't exactly focus on conversion, we welcomed new Jews but we didn't really make it a mission. At least, not my synagogue.

But I just ... I wanted out stories to continue. I wanted the covenant to be honored. I know it was after the end of the world but I ... I still ... I needed to know we survived. I needed us to have survived. And I was just one Jew in an empty world.

I was a superhero once upon a decade, I could project my consciousness into machinery and switch mechanical bodies at will. I was called the Drone, I helped protect people, disrupt lynch mobs, smuggle supplies to vulnerable communities. I was not the best hero, but I tried. And I ... I did some good. At least I had before the world ended.

I rambled a lot, my thoughts drifted and churned wildly. No medicine to help me focus, no mouth to take it either. And no one to talk to except the occasional octopi. Well, them and the things I couldn't really see.

...

I piloted this unmanned underwater vehicle down, nearing the octopi. I had named this group the 'Smoked Twelve' since there were twelve of them regularly together, and they were one of the groups that cooked their clams in the smoking vents. They were very intelligent, they used rocks to smash open then clams, then held them by the boiling vents to cock them and add flavor. I had tried to teach them that, but they did the bulk of the work learning.

They were descendants of one of the first groups I contacted, a group of refugee octopi not native to the vents. Some of the upper ocean life had managed to sink below and adapt, many by feeding off the massive tons of dead sea life from the fallout, much of them still lived there.

Others like the ancestors of the Smoked Twelve moved into the vents as the rotting ocean floor began to shrink and food began to grow more scarce. They were ill adapted to the heat and the dark, but they were smart. And so far they had survived in the vents for three generations, alongside the native species of octopi.

Only Algae and bacteria clung to the surface of the ocean, and their dead sank down. But animal life was rare in the wider ocean, impossible in the irradiated poisoned surface, and still mostly uncommon in the depths, save near the vents. But it was becoming more common. Crabs and eels from the vents occasionally roamed away from the vents to feed on the decaying corpses of animals killed by the fallout of the war, a massive food source with barely any competitors. The octopi followed too, same with the occasional snail and fish. Surface life also came below, breeding and living off the death. There was still a number of food away from the vents, and life was beginning to adapt to that niche.

My mind drifted a lot nowadays. In the present I hovered in front of the octopi, and they drifted towards me, swimming closer. I worried I was taming them, not educating them, they just were conditioned to obey not to learn. But I ... I wanted hope.

I drifted to the floor of the ocean and moved my metal arms down, before I grasped a rock. Then in my other claw I lifted up a second rock. I swam in front of the octopi group, never learned their proper group name, and I bashed the rocks into each other, slowed by the thick pressure of the water. But still the rocks chipped and splintered, forming little pieces of rock fractals.

The octopi mostly just encircled me, so I repeated it again with new rocks. I had been trying this particular lesson for a bit now, a few years I thought, at least with this group. I was no biologist, no scientist, and I wasn't trained to teach animals. I had pets once but they knew no tricks. But I hoped that if I smashed rocks enough, they would begin to learn how to make knives of stone. And that meant cutlery, the ability to give potions of meant, better cooking on the vents, and possibly more food. And more food meant more risks and experimentation.

One of the octopi grabbed a rock — I recognized the older Octopi, it was Lucca. I had named them for Lucas and the inventor from the Chrono Trigger video game - because they were better at understanding things and experimenting than the rest, they seemed to understand more bits and pieces, figure out more of the concepts. They really did the heavy lifting in understanding me. Right now they pounded the rock into the ground, pounding it until it began to shatter.

I had my body's arm release one of the rocks, and then reach out, struggling, struggling to grasp a shard of rock from the collision I caused. I waved my mechanical arm back and forth, trying to grasp, close, almost, nearly there, just got to strain—

Finally I clutched the shard of rock, and held the chunk of thin sharp rock up. The Octopi did not respond, just staring at me blankly. At least I thought the stares were blank.

I took the knife and drifted down towards a crab they had been eating. One of the Octopi swam past me in a burst of speed, and picked up the crab, hauling it away. That was probably the one who had caught it. I stared after the octopi, as it carried the crab to the vents to cook it. I drifted back away, another failed day.

Lucca had bash the rocks together many times before, maybe fifty. They still didn't know it was to make the knife, or how to use it, or why. They knew how to make the tool, that was fine. But cutting open meat, scooping out the insides, they still struggled with that. I rarely got far enough to show them that motion.

Still Lucca still followed after me, even as their fellow octopi went back to their usual routine. So I might as well had tried to take advantage of this moment. I carried my knife with me, Luca following behind, as I reached a clam.

Swallowing I plunged the knife down, scooping at the inside meat, cutting it away. I felt uneasy, icky, but less so than when I first did this process. And I wasn't eating it, so my guilt felt smaller, as little sense as that might make.

Luca stared at me as I acquired the meat, as with my second hand I pulled out the meat of the clam. I threw it to Lucca, who caught it with their tentacle, and began to swim away. I followed them, before they held the meat out over the vent.

They bite into the meat with their beak, tearing it apart in big chomps. I waited more

And then they left.

I followed after her of course, their body shifting and swimming. They propelled bubbles from their sideways jet, launching them father from me than I could swim.

When I finally caught up they were winging a rock around, seemingly playing with it.

Smash! they struck the rock against the ground, it exploding into stars. They swept their tentacles through the debris in a series of whooshing motions, before abandoning the shards and picking up a new rock to smash.

I stared as they smashed that rock too, then another. The pieces gradually drifted to the ocean floor. I had failed again to teach, there was still too much mental distance.

But at least they had a new toy, a new way to play. It was ... disappointing it was so destructive though. But it was only rocks. And I would rather Lucca pounded rocks together than say tear clams apart for fun.

Lucca would teach the others how to play, I knew they would. It was ... back in human days people said you were not supposed to project human qualities onto other species. Human behaviors were not animal behaviors.

But Lucca ... I would almost describe them as a fellow asexual. They were older than the rest, but they had never mated, and they had taught pretty much all of the Smoked Twelve how to cook and how to club clams.

But they were getting older. One day they would ... they would d-die. And then who would teach the next generation?

I was grasping at any wisp of hope I could find, as ridiculous as some of those hopes were.

I drifted back away, there still was hope as the behavior was taught to play with rocks, they would eventually figure out what they could use the pieces for on their own. But again, that was probably asking a lot from the mollusks.

I ... I wished mammals had survived. Or maybe birds. Both kinds of animals often were very smart, had lots of parental investment, especially birds. I ... I would have loved to have worked with a species of crow or raven, they were very intelligent, they understood so much. But the planet was too irradiated, and birds are very sensitive animals to distortions in climate. They all had perished long ago, the brief survivors suffering as the skies went dark and the atmosphere became a poisonous stew.

So I depended on crustaceans, cephalopods, and fish. Most of the fish were not as smart, but I was a vertebrate consciousness, and I still rooted a little for the eels and anglers that lurked in the deep. Crustaceans were already on land, at least if those were animals were types of pillbug. So they also had a good chance in the new world. They were almost unchallenged on the surface in size and power.

Overall, life would take ages to return to humanity's intelligence and power, maybe millions of years. I could wait, but so many nukes went off, and deep down I feared that they had drastically shortened the Earth's lifespan.

There were ... other things on the surface. Strange things. I knew of about five places with movement on the surface. But they did not glow right. One did not produce electricity at all, and I only knew they might be there by the animals they moved away. Others ... flickered faintly. They had shapes, a flow of electricity, but they were not as bright as living things. I ... I almost wondered if they were ghosts of some sort.

...

I screwed in the plates with my salvaged screwdriver. It was a cobbled together mess, bits of exposed wiring was visible, strange hybrids of cameras erupted from the base, and salvaged solar panels sprouted from it like strange metallic feathers.

I called it my Golemoon, because it was a construct I had made crudely on the moon. Crashed satellites, landers, equipment left behind by human expeditions - I took them all and melded them slowly into something like a rover.

It wasn't done, it was never done. But I had taken apart so many satellites and landers,  both on asteroids, Mars, and on Earth, that I had figured out bits and pieces. It was slow, I wasn't that smart, but I had had decades to learn.

I pulled Yutu back, letting my camera take in the sight. I had found the Chinese rover in good shape, surprisingly good, she just needed some repairs on hand with a human intellect. It took some effort, it was hard to manipulate tools with the other rover's arms, but I still managed to fix her, and she now was my main hands on the Moon.

I refused to take apart Yutu, I needed hands after all, but even when Golemoon was completed I wouldn't dissect her. She was ... she was a human invention, a countries first landing on the moon. I couldn't bring myself to kill her.

The Golemoon was not done. It might never be done. Again I was no scientist, definitely not a engineer, I had just taught myself with what mechanical knowledge Lucas had shared. And I was never sure if that was enough.

Sometimes I tried to boost my confidence by reminding myself I was the smartest human alive. I then remembered I was also the most incompetent, and I ended up feeling just as useless.

I backed up Yutu, before turning to gaze towards Earth. It was white with pus, thick clouds blocked much of my view. There were cracks, but from here I couldn't see those peeking beams of sunlight. All I could see was a large fog blotting out the planet.

I wheeled again, to my wall. With my crude claw, built with parts from other rovers, I grasped at the ground, before picking up my rock. I wheeled over to the Plain of Memory, and began to carve again.

I sculpted words, first in Hebrew, then English, then the pidgin Lucas taught me. It was mostly based on Spanish, but with more Mayan and Aztec words mixed in than in the usual Mexican version of Spanish, along with some grammar. She had engineered the pidgin with help from Riccardo, as a sort of code for the three of us to use on her missions, and also to take pride in her Maya-Mexican heritage.

Lucas Rodriguez was the superhero called the Grasshopper, she could leap a good six yards into the air, kick people scores of feet away, and she had retractable armor resistant to most weaponry. Riccardo was her superhero mentor, and I helped scout for her and kept her in contact with the other superheroes on Earth.

I had written about her of course, about the Silken Seer, about Lightning Bug, Cadena, Slick, the Asper, Alchemy Man, my fellow heroes. And I also wrote about the history of our world, our mistakes, our triumphs, the discoveries, the genocides, the hate that destroyed humanity, but also our evolution, our relatives like chimpanzees and bonobos, our beliefs, as many as I could summarize well. It was a mad scribbling with little order in what I wrote, but it kept growing.

I knew a meteorite could shatter my work, but as long as I could I would repair it, keep the stories going. I had wanted to be a writer before I got my Power, and this was the most important story. Though the parts I told as a story were a bit ... altered to fit narrative flow better. As in I worded them differently.

I kept writing, today I was repairing a story about Mu'lan, it had gotten damaged recently. It was a nearly word for word translation of the original ballad, I knew it by heart. I knew we as humans were supposed to be wary about interpreting other cultures, but the last line about the hares, I viewed her as genderfluid. So it had been a source of strength growing up, that trans heroes existed for well over a thousand years.

I wasn't sure if the Octopi would understand gender, or if their future society would. Assuming they could and would develop a society, it would be alien to human society. If I told them I was a trans woman they would probably be confused about everything in that concept.

I continued to carve it, ugh I wish I knew Chinese. Mandarin, Cantonese - any Chinese dialect would be good. More people lived in China than anywhere else during the Fall of Man, and they were one of the sides in the war. They had less bombs, but not many were needed.

My former country was the other side. We had ... there were so many superheroes in the end because we were fighting against an evil dictator - elected with the aid of hateful monstrous bigots who wanted the extermination of anyone not like them. The election was tampered with by a hateful foreign dictatorship, who used our nation as a puppet.

In the end of a tyrant who couldn't understand restraint and a budding world power with everything to prove clashed, and the world ended in first fire, then snow, then rock.

In February 17th of 2018, that was the day of the Fall of Man happened. It felt like only the space of a few hours. Then for the next three years as the atmosphere turned thick and bloated and the surviving humans died off of starvation and radiation poison, an asteroid plowed into the Earth, finishing off the rest.

Humanity had known that asteroid was coming nearby, but with the planet's orbit destabilized by the hundreds of nuclear explosions, the planet was thrown closer towards the asteroid, letting it smash through and devastate the rest of the planet.

Now tardigrades and pillbugs ruled the surface, while in the depths octopi, eels, and crabs ruled.  The smartest remaining species were some of the octopi, but it would probably take millennia at rest for them to understand things.

I pulled back from the Plain of Memory, the repairs were done. I roved away from the site, before pulling over to stare at the collection of writings scribbled onto the lunar surface. Just to take it all in. If Yutu broke down, I would want to have a full view of the writings.

I paused, before projecting out of Yutu. I flew about, the moon becoming an empty space with only a few lights flickering. I could not see the Moon itself, nor the Earth, I just could see the storms of Earth, flashes of radiance.

I flew back towards the storms, back towards the body Lucas made me. I had a couple ways of helping find bodies, I had a sorta of sense of where my former bodies were, like a spatial memory. I could find new bodies through electroreception too, I had the sense mostly when I was outside of bodies, only the body Lucas made me let me harness that sense.

I drifted suddenly. There was ... among the hum of plantlife drifted one of the "ghosts" I sometimes saw. But it ... it was far away from the other ghosts of its type. It was swinging its arms back and forth like ... like it was rowing.

The flickering unstable image was not of a human, but of a monkey. Like ... like a gibbon. I could only see its bioelectricity, and I could only see it flash. Again like it ... it wasn't real. There were many monkey ghosts, they were about the most common I could see. But they all clumped up in the remains of southern China, at least I thought it was China, it's hard to tell when you can only guess by the outline of animal life, the location of water, and the position compared to Mexico.

Regardless this ghost of a monkey was far to the East of their normal home, closer to my pillbug body. So then, it was sailing. Over the ocean.

I decided to risk it, and flew into a UUV, one close to the surface. I could not program, but I could give simple orders. She would rise up and head to where I see the monkey ghost, crude as this was I ... I needed to see if I could genuinely see these flickers. Because if they were real and not hallucinations, if there were mammals, not only mammals but tool using primates — oh I could check. Finally I could put the monkey business to rest, and the fear that I was going insane from loneliness, lack of a body, and lack of medication could finally be faced.

I was scared but ... this opportunity was right in my grasp, I had to face it.

Finally I sank into the little pillbug lobster creature of a body, feeling the soft squishy lichen against me feet. I scuttled away, might as well check on that seed, it was probably not awoken yet, even if it was fertile, but I had to check.