#and in a decade we’re all gonna look back and people are gonna start pointing out how offensive some of this stuff is

[micamicster]

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again Ted Lasso is the glee of the 2020s

[so-sures-blog]

So … is he?

[I thought of this while showering at midnight, then wrote the whole thing in the next three hours on a school night.]

You're really gonna tell me they don't have the same eyes?

***

It always started as a question before it snowballs into something more.

“Dayeon, can we ask you a question?”

Dayeon turned to see 008 and 018 standing behind her. She smiled, trying to seem as open and friendly as possible. The Numbers were nice to her — intimidating in general — but indifferent to her mostly. They mostly kept to themselves and didn’t approach her often, but when they did she tried to be as genuine as possible. Ijin saw them as family and trusted them, so that meant Dayeon cared about them too.

“Yeah, what is it?” She asked 008, who was the one who spoke first.

The man — giant really, because Dayeon had to crane her head all the way up to look at him — shifted his feet, appearing oddly uncomfortable. 018 crossed his arms, defensive and avoiding her eyes.

“Well, 018 and I were discussing about 001 and his normal life — how he’s interacting with normal people his own age and —”

“Oh my God,” 018 interrupted, rolling his eyes. “We wanted to ask, is he gay?”

Dayeon choked and did a double-take. “What? No, he’s not. Why would you say that?”

“Because he has girls literally hanging off him and he doesn’t even notice! No guy would ever act like that unless he’s gay.”

“He’s not gay, just oblivious! This is the first time that he’s interacting with normal girls his age — he’s totally clueless when it comes to romance!” Dayeon argues back.

“Are you sure? Even if he’s oblivious he’s sure to pick up the cues of a girl liking him. He was literally trained to read body language,” 018 pointed out.

Dayeon pauses; that was actually a good point. She thought of all the times Yeona’s crush was painfully obvious. Was Ijin actually oblivious, or was he faking it? “Still, it's not like there were any girls that were interested in him back in the Camp for him to pick up signs; he was nine years old and all he was focused on was surviving.”

“Yeah, but so was 032 and he still —” 008 smacked 018 and he quickly stopped talking.

“What are you talking about?” 016 materialized behind her and Dayeon jumped; she didn’t even hear him coming.

“We’re asking her if 001 is gay,” 018 interjects bluntly before she can open her mouth.

“Is he?” 016 raised a brow. “I mean, it would certainly explain why he doesn’t notice all those girls.”

“Thank you,” 018 guestured to 016 empathetically.

“No, he’s not!” Dayeon said. “He’s shown no interest in guys!”

“If 001 has all those pretty girls hanging off of him and doesn’t have a girlfriend by now then he really is gay. Even if he’s oblivious he would notice someone taking an interest in him.” 016 pointed out.

“That’s because he isn’t even interested in romance. He’s more focused on his family and living his normal life. Besides, he isn’t really … emotionally available, if you know what I mean.” Dayeon winced, trying to phrase Ijin’s decade of trauma as delicately as possible.

“Oh, but 032 is?”

“What?”

“Nothing,” 016 dismissed immediately.

“Alright then. If you want to know so bad, I’ll just ask him myself,” Dayeon said. She turned around and scanned the area, taking note of where everyone was. 002 was off to the side restocking the supplies while 004 was beside him, cleaning his knife. 006 and 032 were settled down across the camp having lunch. She spotted her brother on the other side of the clearing.

Dayeon walked up to Ijin, who was busy organizing his guns.

“Ijin, can I ask you a question?” She asked, adopting an innocent expression. Her brother looked up before smiling that small, sweet genuine smile he always saved for her. For a moment, Dayeon almost felt a bit guilty before she shoved it away.

“Of course. What is it?”

Dayeon plopped to the ground beside him before taking a deep breath and saying —

“Ijin, are you gay?”

On the other side of the clearing, 006 spat out his drink.

“W-What?” Ijin looked startled at the question.

“Are you gay?” Dayeon repeated calmly. Vaguely, she can hear the sounds of 032 choking on his food and the thwack, thwack, thwack, of 006 smacking his back to clear his throat.

“N-No …?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes …?”

“Alright! Just wanted to know!” Dayeon said brightly before kissing his cheek and walking away. She could feel the eyes of all the other Numbers burning into her back and she tosses the group of 008, 018, and 016 a sweet, victorious smirk before heading to find 005.

She would find this hilarious.

[jgroffdaily]

Excerpts from the article (which appeared online as cast and crew were traveling to their first rehearsal today):

On a chilly day in early February, Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez are huddled on a couch in a photo studio in Queens. Not three weeks after Merrily We Roll Along ended its off-Broadway run at the New York Theatre Workshop, gathering again for a photo shoot has made all of the actors cry. (An amused publicist thinks it was the sight of their old costumes, by Soutra Gilmour, that set everyone off.) “It’s just really settling in that we’re taking this to Broadway,” offers Mendez, a Tony winner for Jack O’Brien’s 2018 revival of Carousel. “It’s a big dream for us to get to shepherd this piece, which means so much to so many people, and yet has never gotten its proper due.”

“To hear the overture on Broadway…?” Groff adds. “I’m gonna die.”

In the Broadway production, which begins previews this September at the Hudson Theatre, Groff stars as Frank, ​in turns slickly handsome, roiled with conflict, and sparky as a golden retriever; Radcliffe as an endearingly neurotic Charley; and Mendez as Mary, whose wide smile conceals great depths of longing (namely, for Frank).

For Groff, doing Merrily felt fated. “I had just reached this point in my life where I was really looking back and reflecting on relationships that I suddenly realized were almost two decades old,” he explains. He later learned that Radcliffe and Mendez had done their own “first big New York shows” (revivals of Equus and Grease, respectively) at around the same time. This was no small thing, as they approached a story as concerned with the vicissitudes of a career in the performing arts as anything else.

“The people that start young and then stay in it well into adulthood tend to love it,” Radcliffe says. “They tend to be doing it because there is something in their bones that makes them want to do this. And I think we all have that.” Adds Mendez, “There’s an unspoken-ness between us. There’s a lot of trust, and a lot of teamwork.” (When I ask Friedman about her stars’ touching natural chemistry, she tells me that in Merrily, Sondheim has “written love songs. He’s written about losing love, wanting love, missing love, despair, all the things, but it’s all around love.” So, in the year that she spent building her New York cast, “I looked for loving people.”)

For all intents and purposes, the Broadway revival is the same show that ran at the New York Theatre Workshop. Not only do both productions share the same actors—including Katie Rose Clarke as Frank’s estranged first wife, Beth; Hamilton alumna Krystal Joy Brown as his glamorous second wife, Gussie; and Reg Rogers as Joe, the producer behind the first hit show that Frank and Charley write together—but the same creative and production team, too. “We had a big break between the New York Theatre Workshop and going to Broadway, and every single person has come with it. They all took other jobs in order to be able to do this job,” Friedman says. “It just cast a spell over us all.”

As they move into the Hudson—which Friedman selected for its intimate-feeling scale (of Broadway’s 41 active theaters, it’s one of only nine that seats under 1,000 people)—she is keen to protect that enchantment. “I am absolutely determined not to do anything different,” Friedman says. “The piece is the piece; it speaks for itself. And as long as we keep the integrity of that and the joy and the warmth and the love and the storytelling—it should sing.” This has more or less been her line from the beginning. “One of the things that Maria has said from day one is, ‘I have not changed a lyric of this show or a word of the script. I am doing this show as written,’ ” Groff says. “It’s not like she’s doing a take on Merrily. She really believes in the piece itself without adding any sort of flashy concept.”

Then as now, her deepest regret is that Sondheim is not alive to see the production, but she knows that he would have delighted in Merrily’s return to Broadway. Her only hope is that after all these years, audiences are ready to receive it. “It’s a profound piece,” Friedman says. “If it gets you, it stays with you and makes you ask questions. And if it doesn’t get you, it’s got some great tunes.”

PIANO MAN

Groff wears a Gucci jacket. Pants from The Row. Grooming, Amy Komorowski.

In this story: hair, Ilker Akyol; makeup, Francelle Daly for Love+Craft+Beauty. Produced by The Canvas Agency. Set Design: Viki Rutsch.

[karatekels]

All’s Fair – Chapter 2

Thanks for your patience, everyone! We should be done this story in the next chapter, but I've added some sexy Terry here to tide you over!

Chapter 1

TW: Teasing, coercion, dubcon, groping, fingering, Terry Silver being manipulative and hot about it

Terry’s POV:

A fair? Terry thinks to himself, watching your incessant hopping next to him while standing in line for something called the Drop Tower. Your sweet little surprise was better suited to a toddler than to him. He supposes it’s fitting for you to choose something like this; everything about you oozed a sort of childlike innocence and sense of wonder.

He isn’t sure exactly what it is about you that initially drew his attention – he had been with people far more attractive, intelligent, and powerful than you. Dozens of them, in fact, though he had long stopped bothering to keep count.

He assumes that that’s part of your appeal.

You were so inexperienced, so innocent, that the thought of getting you close enough to let him take all of that from you and keep it for himself forever has him absolutely thrilled. Bagging you required the polar opposite of his typical, more… active pursuits of someone that he wanted to fuck; a test of his patience, his self-control, and his ability to pull you into his web until you were in so deep that you would never get away of your own volition.   

The loud hiss of the ride's hydraulics startles him out of his thoughts as the ride shoots another group of screaming people into the sky, making him tense up.

That was another issue altogether.

Terry had made a habit of avoiding crowds – apart from classier, quieter events – since returning from Vietnam. Being around this many people running and screaming, even if it was from happiness and excitement, has him on edge. Add that to the loud noises coming from the machines and the thought of being shot into the air, and he is already starting to fall into the dark pit of PTSD.

He digs his nails into his palms and forces himself to take deep, steadying breaths, then turns to look at you. Sweet and innocent as you are, he finds that you help ground him in a way. Something like you could never be associated with the horrors of that godforsaken jungle.

The way you act as a repellant to his dark memories and hallucinations makes him want to swallow you whole, to keep you inside of him so that he never has to worry about them rearing their ugly heads again.

Almost as if you had heard his thoughts, you turn and look up at him, flashing a dazzling smile that has something inside him purring with satisfaction. You are positively smitten with him; it’s written all over your beautiful face. You had remembered your little discussion about a funfair from months ago and decided to give him a taste of the childhood he’d never had. So sweet, so giving… and he’s so, so ready to take.

He had slowly been working you through your anxieties and nerves about being intimate, as Margaret would call it. Terry knows that your defences are crumbling, and he thinks it’s high time he pushed past them. He didn’t have a decade to let you gradually get to the point where he could bend you over wherever and whenever he wished; he isn’t a patient man, and he’s been pushed to his limits by you.

If he just took you, skipping all of the steps in between, you might be hurt, sure, but it would speed up the process greatly. Then you could both go back a few steps and he could teach you to enjoy the experience.

And enjoy it you would.

“We’re next, we’re next!” you chirp happily, and he turns to watch the ride come down and free its occupants. He looks at the lap bar and over-the-shoulder restraints with skepticism.

“Babes, I don’t think they’re gonna let me ride this with you,” he says in a low voice, keeping the optimism he feels out of his tone.

“Why not?” you ask with a frown, your forehead creasing.

“I think I’m too big,” he replies, a tad smug.

Sure enough, as he goes to take the seat on the ride next to you, the restraint that pulls over his head cannot accommodate his broad shoulders. Letting out an exaggerated sigh, he slips off the ride. You make to join him, but he puts a firm hand on the lap bar, keeping you in place.

“You should still go on the ride, doll. I’ll be waiting right here.”

“Are you sure?” you ask, kicking your feet where they hang down beneath you. “I don’t mind skipping this one.”

“Nah, are you kidding? Watching you having fun’ll be a blast! And I get to keep my feet on the ground,” he jokes.

“Scared of heights, Mr. Silver?” you tease, giggling at your little joke. He forces himself to chuckle in return. You’ll pay for that insinuation.

“We’ll see who has the last laugh when you’re done screaming your little head off.” Soon enough, he’ll have you screaming more than any damned carnival ride…

He removes himself from the proximity of the ride, moving to stand on the other side of the fence, still right across from you. He stares directly into your eyes and raises a challenging eyebrow at you. You blush, and he drinks in the sight greedily. You have a determined look on your face, but he sees the look of shock spread across it the instant you start to shoot into the air. He observes your ascent with a small, amused smile, hearing your exhilarated shrieks as they rise through the sky with you.

The ride sends you up and down repeatedly, and Terry watches not only your hair rise and fall around your head at the motion, but your skirt moving in a similar way, baring more and more of your legs to your audience below.

You’re a fucking tease, and you probably don’t even know the meaning of the word.

There’s a sudden low, appreciative whistle from off to his left, and his eyes flit to another man enjoying the view.

“Damn, she’s got legs for days!” the man leers with a laugh, and Terry immediately sees red, still on edge from all of the triggers this place was teeming with. He’s grabbed the man by the collar before he even seems to realize it, and pulls him close.

“If you want to keep your eyes in your skull, walk away,” he growls, and the guy turns white as a sheet as he takes in Terry’s infuriated expression. He throws his hands up in immediate surrender – Terry scoffs immediately at the man’s weakness; this punk really thought he was worthy of even looking at you? – and Terry roughly pushes the man in the chest, releasing his grip on his shirt and watching as the man slinks off before he turns his attention back to you, where it belonged.

The ride is coming to an end, slowly lowering you back to the ground. Your cheeks are flushed, your hair is a wild mess about your head, and your eyes are bright in your excitement.

He feels his cock twitch against his thigh, and feels a pang of jealousy. He should be the reason you look like this, not some cheap thrill ride.

Your safety restraints are removed and you come skipping over to him, giggling breathlessly and tossing yourself into his arms, burying your face in his shirt. Well, if these silly rides had you acting like this – throwing yourself at him, that is – the perhaps humoring your little idea of a date night would be worth the trouble after all.

“See? It wasn’t scary at all!” you inform him proudly, beaming up at him.

“Really? You could have fooled me, with all the screaming you were doing,” he retorts with a smirk, taking your face in one hand and relishing in how your blush deepens for him. With his free hand he smooths your hair back into place, trying to tame your wild curls. He finds he’s taking a surprising amount of pleasure in treating you like his little doll, and from the way that he can feel your pulse speed up through his grip on your lower jaw, you clearly like it too.

“Thank you,” you coo sweetly up at him, standing up on your toes to kiss him.

He purrs into your mouth, pulling you flush against him – best start pushing for more now. He keeps his lips on yours for a moment more once you start trying to squirm out of his grip; you need to remember who is in charge here. Eventually, he relents, satisfied by the dazed look in your eyes.

“So what’s next, babygirl?” he croons, pressing you to speak more – your voice took on a delicious, husky quality when you were turned on.

“The… log ride?” you say hesitantly, as though unsure of what to do with yourself in your dazed state. “The log ride!” you repeat with more conviction, once you gain a bit of your composure back.

Christ, he thinks to himself as you tug him through the throng of people. Claiming your virginity had better be worth all of this.

He’ll make sure it is.

---

While he found what was supposedly the appeal of the log ride disgusting – being splashed with treated, reused, communal water – the ride did have some benefits. You being seated between his legs had been a big one. He had snaked an arm around your waist, pulling you flush against his crotch, and used you to shield him from most of the water. You had shrieked with laughter, slapping the tops of his thighs with playful indignation, and he was able to enjoy how good you looked wet, your dress plastered to your body and emphasizing your curves.

He had been appreciating it, that is, until he once again caught more pairs of eyes on you than just his own. He had immediately taken off his jacket, wrapping it around your shoulders to conceal your body. You were clearly charmed by his chivalry, attributing the gesture to him being worried you were cold. The action also had the added benefit of revealing his arms and chest, now prominently visible in just his white T-shirt, and it resulted in other men immediately becoming wary of letting their eyes roam over you. A real win-win, in his opinion.

You had dragged him to the teacups next, and he had taken great joy in spinning the disc in the middle of your seats as firmly and quickly as possible while you begged him to stop. He had never been one to get dizzy, gleefully feeling the inertia of the ride sliding you around the seats next to him, pushing you further and further into his side until he swears your body will just absorb into his own, letting him own you fully and completely, as he should.

You are now incredibly woozy after the ride has ended, clinging to him for dear life as you stumble along beside him, and a shiver of desire moves through him as he controls you like a marionette. You’re drier after the ride, but he insists you continue wearing his jacket anyway; he doesn’t need any further exacerbations to his temper. He leaves you on a bench, keeping one eye on you the entire time as he moves to a booth selling food, buying something to settle your stomach.

Taking a seat on the bench next to you, he watches your lips close around the straw of your gingerale, sipping it gratefully. You then immediately tear into the bag of cinnamon-sugar mini-donuts that he had seen you eyeing every time you passed them since you had arrived. They are far too sweet for him, but hearing the soft moan escape your lips at your first taste has him all but demanding a taste of his own.

He leans in to kiss you, and you giggle against his lips before he takes it a step further, tracing your lips with the tip of his tongue to lick the crumbs from your flesh. You let out a whimper and he seizes the opportunity, slipping his tongue into your mouth, one arm wrapped tight around you and keeping you flush against his chest with your hands trapped between you, his other hand in your hair, holding your head in place. He can feel you trying to push against him, but he only squeezes you tighter until you relax in his grip, timidly kissing him back. Good girl.

Not wanting to make a scene (for the sake of his own reputation), he releases you for your good behaviour, and it takes you a minute to be able to bring yourself to speak.

“Terry!” you hiss at him, scandalized, but you can’t keep the sheepish smile off of your face. “We’re in public!”

He sprawls out across the bench, looking unrepentant. “Why do you think I stopped?” he asks teasingly, and you playfully shove his arm. “Why don’t we go in there next?” he asks, pointing behind you two to a small, windowless building advertising itself as the Hall of Mirrors. He doesn’t know what exactly that entails, but it looks like it would have you two away from prying eyes, so it’s worth checking out in his opinion. He wants to see what else he can pull from you willingly today, before he needs to push for it.

“Wanting to go check yourself out?” you tease with a smile, looking up at him from under your eyelashes. “Not that I’d blame you,” you add quietly, a slight blush spreading across your cheeks.

He could listen to you compliment him all day, but instead he takes your hand in his, interlacing your fingers together before guiding you to the attraction’s doorway. You walk in before him, and he smoothly hands the man staffing the building a wad of bills, demanding that he keep anyone else from entering for twenty minutes, not bothering to wait for a response. Money talked; people didn’t need to.

He follows you into the dark room, finding that the interior lives up to the name; it’s literally just a labyrinth of floor to ceiling mirrors with pale white lighting illuminating the space from above. From the way the two of you are standing, you appear surrounded by copies of him. He feels it’s an appropriate metaphor for your reality.

He approaches you slowly from behind, wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you against him firmly. Placing his head on your shoulder, he gazes into your reflection’s eyes, watching the blush spread across your cheeks just from his stare. Maybe he should have more mirrors installed in one of the bedrooms at home; dozens of possibilities for their use are popping into his head. He breathes deeply, not wanting you to feel him getting hard.

“Don’t we make a cute couple?” he purrs in your ear, making you giggle breathlessly. One hand slides up your body to your neck, gripping your chin in his large hand. “I have very good taste,” he adds smugly, gently taking your ear between his lips and nibbling it gently. Your gasp echoes through the room, and you jump in surprise, though he feels a shiver go down your spine.

See? You wanted this, you just needed a bit of a push; he is more than happy to provide it for you.

“Terry!” you whine, trying to squirm away, but he’s done letting you escape him.

“What?” he pouts, moving his lips down the side of your neck. “You didn’t want to let me play with you in public, so I brought us in here!”

“This – this is still public, T-Terry!” you insist, though you’re stammering as your body responds to his touch. He moves his hands up and down your sides teasingly, slipping them beneath his jacket to feel your warm skin through the thin material of your dress. “Someone could come by any minute!”

“Better give me what I want quickly then,” he quips, only half-joking. He backs you into a mirror, pinning you to it, and he can’t deny the thrill that moves through him as he watches your doppelgangers in the same position all around him.

“W-What do you want?” you ask shyly, looking up at him with wide, innocent eyes. Oh, the things he wants to do with you in a place like this…

Instead of any of the depraved acts that come to mind, he lifts your chin with a finger, gazing deeply into your eyes with his most piercing stare.

“I want you… to let me touch you,” he breathes, lowering his head so that his forehead touches yours, and you shudder.

“You are touching me, Terry,” you joke, but your breathless voice reveals just how nervous you are. He needs to be very, very careful here…

“You know what I mean, sweetheart,” he murmurs, coaxing compliance out of you. “I know I’m normally better at keeping my hands to myself, but you look so beautiful tonight, and you made me feel so special, bringing me here… I just want to make you feel good, baby. Please?” he begs, kissing you deeply before you can give him an answer.

He eventually lets you up for air, and as you don’t immediately protest, he tightens his grip on your waist before running his hands up your body, cupping your breasts over your clothes and playing with them gently, firmly brushing his thumb across where he knows your nipples to be. You let out a throaty moan that seems to take you by surprise, and buck your hips towards his involuntarily. Before you can get a word in, he has sealed his lips over yours again, swallowing any requests for him to stop before you can utter them.

He develops a rhythm, slowly feeling you up over your clothes and cooing his praises and words of encouragement into your ear, kissing you whenever he gets the sense that you’re going to try to put a stop to things until you’re compliant once more.

“I love feeling you like this, babygirl. You’ve been driving me crazy for so long,” he pants against your neck, his hands squeezing your butt firmly while you writhe against the mirror.

“Terry!” you cry out his name softly, with arousal rather than apprehension, and there’s never been a more beautiful sound. Eagerly, he moves his hands to the hem of your skirt, kissing you with everything in him to distract you from your thoughts as his fingers wander up your bare thighs. You’re being so deliciously submissive, letting him have his way with you, and he should tell you as much.

“Yes, Y/N,” he groans against your lips, dipping his head again and again to capture your mouth in kisses until you’re mirroring his movements back at him, bobbing your head to the rhythm he sets as though you're in a trance. “My good girl. I’m going to make you feel better than you ever have in your life; I’m going to give you everything,” he promises, ghosting his finger along the soft fabric of your underwear, and you seem to come back to yourself, your eyes flying open. You move to push him away, but he snatches your hands – gently, so as to avoid frightening you – and pins them over your head with one of his hands, his other returning under your skirt and worming its way through your clenched thighs.

“Terry, N –” you start to protest, but he interrupts you. An incomplete ‘No’ wasn’t a ‘No’ at all in his book.

“Ssshhh, babygirl, it’s okay,” he croons, kissing you once more into obedience. “You’re overwhelmed, I understand, but I know that you just need some help getting over your nerves. Trust me baby, you’ll love this,” he continues. He keeps his hand still, not removing it from between your thighs but not continuing to push his way up to his goal, and peppers your face with kisses and murmured words of encouragement until your thighs unclench around his hand.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” he breathes approvingly, slipping his fingers further up your inner thigh. Your skin is so soft, and warm, and quivering beneath his fingertips, and he longs to bury his face between your legs. “Let me get you off; you deserve it,” urges, running a long finger across your slit over the material of your underwear. You are soaked, and keen loudly at the new sensations. He gently but firmly covers your mouth with his other hand, his eyes dark and glittering with amusement and arousal.

“Gotta be quiet, Y/N,” he teases, even as he starts rubbing your clit through your underwear, making you twitch and whimper against him. “You don’t want anyone to come and find you like this, do you?”

You shake your head vehemently, looking up at him with pleading eyes, and he can tell that you’re trying to stay still and quiet. Precious thing.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” he purrs, his eyes bright as he watches your face, slipping a finger beneath your underwear and into your wet heat. You squeak, and your breathing comes hard and fast, though you try not to make a sound. He knows you won’t last long and sets to bring you to climax quickly, knowing that your remaining time having this place to yourself is coming to an end.

He pumps his finger inside you as deeply as he can in this position, not wanting to cause you discomfort; this first orgasm needs to be good if he wants to get you hooked on his touch. Curling the finger upwards to brush your G-spot, he rubs your clit over your underwear with his thumb, quickly bringing you to the peak of pleasure, your knees starting to give out from the stimulation. He swallows your screams of ecstasy into his mouth greedily, using the hand that had covered your mouth to help keep you upright.

“I’ve got you, Y/N,” he says soothingly, removing his hand from under your dress and wrapping it around your waist, discretely wiping his hand clean on your skirt. You shudder against him, your hands gripping fistfuls of his shirt, and fight to even your breathing. “You did so good, baby. So, so good. Thank you for letting me please you.”

He’s laying it on thick, but again, it was all about paving the way for you to let him have his way with you whenever and however he wanted you. Eventually, you manage to look up at him shyly, a timid smile on your face.

“I–I…you don’t need to thank me, Terry,” you say with a giggle, burying your face in his chest to hide your embarrassment.

“You were right,” you mumble into his shirt, but he hears every word. “You always know what’s best for me.”

And that right there makes all of this worth it. Your willingness to put yourself in his hands, in his control, is his top priority.

He wonders what else he can do with you tonight, and finds himself eager to find out, pulling you along behind him, stumbling from your still-weak knees towards the exit of the Hall of Mirrors.

[^ Terry checking himself out in the Hall of Mirrors]

---

Chapter 3

[mysaldate]

Why Leona and Vil get treated differently – and why not everything is always about race

Yeah yeah, it’s been a long time since this discourse happened... not. Because apparently we’re beating this horse even after it’s deader than Cater’s clones. Somehow this stupid conversation keeps getting rekindled over and over and over and over again, and I’m just so tired so I’m just gonna put my thoughts down so that the next time I get caught up in it, I’ll have this post at the ready. Read at your own risk, this may trigger some people, especially those who claim the only reason anyone would ever dislike Leona is his skin color and not, you know, everything he does.

Leona’s murder attempt was pre-meditated. Unlike Vil, Leona spent quite a long time planning out everything he did in episode 2. He made sure the injuries happened in a way that couldn’t be linked back to him and that nobody could see Ruggie while he was using his unique magic. When it came to the actual murder, he even made a deal with Azul to ensure the event venue was set up in a certain way and that Ruggie got a potion to boost his magic before the whole thing started. Vil, on the other hand, snapped under momentary pressure, and didn’t spend weeks planning how to murder a rival over a competition.

Leona was ready to go through with it. I see a lot of people conveniently ignoring this but someone actually did die during Leona’s murder attempt – Cater’s clones did. Now, whether or not clone lives count as actual lives is irrelevant at the moment because all that matters is that Leona didn’t stop until there were bodies on the ground. Remember he watched the whole thing. He knew what was going on and when to stop. On the other hand, Vil immediately stopped the second a new element was introduced that snapped him out of whatever he was going on. Which brings me to my next point.

Leona acted with full clarity. Unlike Vil, Leona was fully in control the whole time. Vil was in a haze of reliving his past trauma, a haze that he snapped out of the second someone other than his target spoke to him. Leona, while motivated by past trauma, was fully in control of his actions.

Leona never showed any growth. This may be a controversial point for some people. And I understand that Leona is older than most of the other characters, however that does not make him stubbornly refusing to admit he did anything wrong any less jarring. Everyone showed tangible visible growth after their overblot, except Leona.

We are clear on what Leona wanted. With Vil, we never got a clear-cut confirmation that he was out for blood. We know something unsavory would’ve happened to Neige if he drank the apple juice, but truth is, it was never explicitly stated that he would die (if it was in EN, then just chuck that on the pile of things EN ruined). People just jumped to assuming murder because that’s what we’ve seen before and because Vil is associated with poinsons.

And when it comes to how their attempts were handled in-universe, let’s take a look at that.

Leona got called out by Lilia. It was vicious and rude, yes. Was it racist of Lilia to tear into Leona? No. No part of Lilia’s insults had to do with Leona’s race. He compared Leona with Malleus and evaluated which one of them has a personality more suited for a leader – the answer should be clear if you consider which one of them committed murder over a sports contest. This was also after Leona attempted to murder Lilia’s son, his son’s best friend, and a person he’s been taking care of for decades, or possibly even longer. Leona is lucky Lilia is no longer in his general days otherwise he’d likely be made into a throwrug, how handsome is up to your personal tastes. However, Leona’s call-out ended there with no further consequences other than being disqualified from the contest.

Vil got called out by nearly the entirety of the VDC group. Granted, it wasn’t that vicious or rude, but that’s because it didn’t get personal with anyone. Had he killed Neige, it wouldn’t personally affect any of the VDC group members. While Rook is a huge fan of Neige’s, that’s as far as it goes. However, Vil had lasting consequences from this lapse of judgement. You can find my full analysis of that mess here. That alone makes fans less eager to harp on him, since it at least feels like he got what he deserved – or possibly even more – while Leona gets to walk free with one verbal scolding.

Lastly, if you’re here to tell me to kms or harass me, do us both a favor and just click block and hide. I’ve got enough of that to the point where I just roll my eyes and block you back without it really affecting me. You’re just wasting your time as well as mine. You can think Lilia calling out Leona for murder was racist but at that point, you’re just willing to use skin color as a free get out of consequences card, and I have no desire to talk to people like that.

If you agree, feel free to share, if you’d like to respectfully debate, I’m 100% down for that too, just know that I tend to be pretty stubborn😅

Edit: If you are here to talk about wider fandom treatment of dark-skinned characters, that isn't what this post is about so please just make your own. This post is about a specific situation. Of course, there will always be bad people who judge people and characters based on skin color, but let's not act like everyone who dislikes Leona does so for those reasons. There's plenty of differences between his and Vil's situation that can make people like one and dislike the other without being racially charged. THAT is the point of this post.

[gingersnapwolves]

Kouri watches One Piece live action, episode 1

So to start off, I’ll say that I’ve loved One Piece for years. I fell out of it a while back and then the idea of catching up was daunting, but I’m super hyped now so I’m obviously going to have to get back into it. That being said, it’s been well over a decade since I watched/read the East Blue saga so I really don’t remember any of the specifics and any changes they make will likely fly over my head unless they’re major.

“This is a world like no other” is possibly the most accurate thing you could say about One Piece

Baby Luffy is adorable but it is distracting that he doesn’t have the same accent as Adult Luffy

They increased Luffy’s IQ by about fifty points and he’s still so stupid lmao

That’s not a complaint btw, I absolutely adore both versions of him.

Watching this like “oh, people die in this version lol”. My wife and I used to have a running gag to say “nobody dies in One Piece!” because even the villains always survived no matter how much damage they took. The first time I said it after [redacted] my wife just about beat my ass LOL

They made Zoro so fucking hot

I love that a corner point of Shanks’ character is that he knows when something’s not fucking worth it

Nami!!!! She’s so awesome

The soundtrack for this fucking slaps, I’m gonna need it

Did I mention that they made Zoro so fucking hot???

“Interesting choice” lmaoooooo Luffy please

Zoro: what the fuck just happened

Nami and Luffy’s first interactions are so fucking funny

Having Helmeppo be naked for this was a galaxy brain choice

This was such a great fight scene! I love all three of them working together so early

One of my few complaints about the live action is that we see way more of Zoro and even Nami being badass fighters than Luffy himself. I understand that there were probably budget constraints (and ‘how do we make this even look good in live action’ constraints) but Luffy should’ve been able to take out Captain Morgan on his own

Zoro is such a drama queen lol

I loved that they found a way to actually show the “practicality” of Zoro’s third sword

So glad that Koby got to punch Helmeppo in the face

Koby pushing them off is another great touch

Garp: great now I’ve gotta go get my dumbass grandson

“They must’ve been planning this for months” I’m crying

I love how the pirates interact with their wanted posters

Also love how they put ‘this season on One Piece’ like we’re not all aware by now that we have to immediately binge the season if we want even a snowball’s chance in hell of a season two

[lululawrence]

Strange story: I was at work the other day and dunkirk was playing on the tv and I was gushing and being very loud. So this coworker, was like, Cristal are you okay? And I was like YES! There’s Harry! I love him. And she was like, the first thing she said was like, “Is he gay? He’s gay isn’t he.” I KID YOU NOT. My brain malfunction so I was like after 10 seconds of silence “yea he is.” I for sure can’t remember what the specifics of Harry’s sexuality is. And she was like “is he dating someone?” SO MY BRAIN WAS LIKE “do I start larrying or WHAT?!” and in the end, I was like “yeah with his bandmate for since the beginning of his career” and she was like “but he has a gf?” AND I WAS LIKE YEA UM “yeah its pr, like mutually beneficial contract only” and then she was like what’s the bandmate look like, so your miss girl here pulled up a photo of Louis and the first thing she saw was this article about larry where their faces side by side and the first thing she said “OH THEY LOOK ALIKE” so once again miss girl’s brain malfunction and I was like… “what????” and she asked “how long have they been together?” and so like a loon, I said “um—over a decade.” my little larrie heart busrt a little when she said “Ahh, no wonder.” And then after a few minutes she was like “do I know the women he’s pr with???” and so I listed all the names, miss girl was SHOCKED. but ok, we’re alright and then she was like “Ahh it’s okay if he’s not out. His choice.” CRISTAL HERE GOT DEFENSIVE A LITTLE BECAUSE MY BABIES, THE HORROR THEYVE GONE THROUGH. And so I said, “um—closeting is not his fault??” and she then said “but why does he need all these pr???” and so with the patient of an angel, I told him “do you even know how homophobic the entertainment industry is?????!!!”

Anyways, that’s my short story. My point is, how do you let everyone know you’re a larry in a concert without telling them that you very explicitly? And what do you wear???

ads;kgjha;sdlfkjdas;lfksaj oh my word lmaoooooo i love you and your story lololololol

but also like the random questions at the end hahahaha like do you want a literal actual answer? i hope so cause that's what you're gonna get since i always try to code larrie so people can make the conscious choice as to whether to interact with me or not lollll

so like... at a concert, it depends on which concert you're talking about lmaoooo if it's a harry concert, you wear some louis merch and bring all the rainbows. if it's a louis concert, you wear harry's rainbow tpwk tee and again bring all the rainbows. that...... well i feel like that usually gets the point across lolllll but as for what i wear, again if it's a harry/louis (or in the old days, 1d lol) concert i wear all the rainbows. i have big rainbow, bi, and ace flags so i usually rotate between those, i have my eye makeup and nails usually done in the colors of one of those flag options, and then i'm usually also participating in a rainbow fan project, so i'm then also passing out rainbows. so i am essentially a walking rainbow. i also figure that is like... half the job done, yeah? i still bring rainbows to niall's shows too btw but they are much smaller usually and not as overt. because niall's shows just don't feel the same as harry and louis' lolololol and honestly, who needs to advertise as a larrie at a niall show anyway? hahaha

but yeah. i actually tend to more just try to advertise myself as PRIDE FRIENDLY rather than a larrie specifically, but i did once (or... twice i think actually) wear harry's rainbow tpwk tee to a louis show. and one of them was in detroit in 2022 and louis defo pointed at me a few times because it took me a hot minute to recognize and admit to myself that he really was trying to point at me hahahahaha i'd worn the shirt as a snarky way to get back at an anon that i didn't plan to advertise anywhere and i was never going to let the anon know even... i hadn't planned on wearing it to any of the louis shows, i just brought it to wear with my friends on travel days hahaha you probably don't care about any of this lololol

soooooo does that... answer your question? i hope so haha if not let me know and i'll try not to get so distracted this time ahha

[bakfoo]

Opening Post:

It’s 1990, we open with Kangaskhan (Kanga for short) and her baby looking quite peeved.

“So you’re supposed to be my new guardian? Let’s hope you’re better than the last.” Hints that she’s a problem and almost refuses help altogether. 

“Ironic, sending a human to protect me when humans have been the ones to take away from me.”

“It’s alright. I’m not a fan of humans either” the human replies. We’re gonna call him Arthur (Art)

Over the course of the open inbox it’s revealed:

The weapon Art carries is from his time in the Kanto Johto war. He hasn’t fired his service weapon in almost a decade

Kanga and her baby are very much self sufficient and Kanga feels that this is an empty gesture from the people in charge

No matter how they try to evade him, Kanga and the baby are always chased down by Art because he’s that good at his job

Team Rocket is very much on the rise and is starting to get eyes on the safari zone

Art is very distrusting of humans, ESPECIALLY trainers

The baby goes a little bit behind her mom’s back to find out more about Art because she was told a lot of things but this is the first time she’s learning about things on her own

Plot point 1: 

Kanga and the baby get into actual trouble

Art goes through great lengths to get them back to the safari zone but at the cost of his health 

Even still, he refuses to fire his rifle

He’s badly hurt and taken to a hospital. 

Kanga has this nagging feeling that this guy isn’t telling her everything so she demands to go with him.

Open inbox:

Art is fine and he makes it clear he’s been through worse

She questions him, others question him, he slowly opens up:

Tadaaaa backstory/flashback time

Art was a “handler,” an officer who sent pokemon in waves to attack Johto to varying success

He was born in Kanto, but others distrusted him for obviously not having a lineage in the country

That pressure pushed him to send his most trusted companion, a Marowak, to his death. That Marowak's skull is what adorns his helmet.

He would’ve been the most decorated officer in the Kanto Johto war if he hadn’t thrown his medals away in disgust

He was a key figure in a coup that is responsible for the rise of the current Kanto government

He is still so dangerous that he’s considered an “Operator” (think of a trainer who fights along side their pokemon in perfect harmony) without having any pokemon under his command

He never wants to fire his weapon again.

Plot Point 2: 

Kanga and baby go back to safari zone while he heals. She’s all “well damn ok I guess this dude is at least trying to make things better” and slowly over time they become friends

Eventually, they develop a working bond and help kickstart the Kanto Preservation Operators Union (KPOU) with help from other people who are very much like Art.

The baby grows up and is anxious to see the rest of the world, Kanga lets her go with a tearful goodbye. She tells him that she’ll send letters to Art, especially. He feels accomplished for what he’s done.

After their time together, Art finally comes to forgive himself and starts to become a better person, coming out of his shell to make friends with more of the safari zone and even other humans who have like minded views.

Kanga starts to feel trustful again, inspired by the trailblazing that her daughter set out before her since the baby was the first to reach out to Art instead of her.

Plot Point 2:

Team Rocket attack again, but this time, they actually want to take out the newly started KPOU so that they can cause trouble without impunity. 

Art finally fires his rifle. This situation is no longer about him. Team Rocket is the embodiment of everything he hates about his past, and he won’t let the KPOU dissolve before it can do any good. With gunpowder and steel, instead of fighting for a wrong cause, he fights for his happiness. 

Since team rocket know know he’s dangerous, they jump his ass with almost everything they have. He’s almost overrun but Kanga is the one to save him in the nick of time. Together, they fend them off 

Epilogue:

Done via article or written docu-series moment. The KPOU is a resounding success, one of the greatest success stories being the restoration of the Lapras population. Its founders are still living strong, doing better things by the day

The inbox is open for one last time, a final send off is had, and the askblog is over

[canmom]

Animation Night 133: Disney, Dreamworks and the Emperors

Hey everyone, happy Thursday! It’s Animation Night. Come, have a seat~

We’ll get to you, Iron Giant. Hold on.

Earlier this week, I got fixated on writing a post attempting to figure out my answer on the question of why the big American animation studios abruptly turned away from traditional animation in the early 2000s - a subject previously visited, if briefly on Animation Night 31 and Animation Night 49. A string of high-profile 2D and 2D-in-3D failures, such as Treasure Planet, set against a string of 3DCG successes by Pixar, Dreamworks and increasingly other studios may have been the justification for executives claiming audiences no longer want to see 2D animation - but were they really the reason? Did the higher-ups deliberately sabotage 2D with (for example) scheduling decisions in order to make cheaper, non-unionised 3D films?

I’m grateful that people seemed to like my post there, but I actually don’t think my argument is quite satisfactory. I argued CG films by the same studios weren’t cheaper to make by and large (and also aren’t entirely non-union), but I only pulled up a handful of data points to make that claim. A more thorough investigation is due.

But in the meantime, it’s Animation Night. When I made that post, I was critical of the artistic decisions made in the post-Prince of Egypt films of Dreamworks, such as Spirit and Sinbad, which we watched back on Animation Night 43. I speculatively extended that to The Road to El Dorado, which I haven’t seen, and was promptly challenged by fans of that movie to give it a fairer shake. Sorry guys!

Let’s put that right. Tonight we’re going to be taking another look into that era. You’ll get to see this gif...

...and this one...

...in their original context.

But this is Animation Night, so we’re gonna be putting some Context down.

The first decade or so of Dreamworks was defined by sour grapes. To summarise briefly, Jeffrey Katzenberg left Disney after a bitter falling out with Michael Eisner over succession following the death of Frank Wells. Instead of promoting Katzenberg to Wells’s position of President, Eisner took over Wells’s duties himself, in part at the behest of Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney. A furious Katzenberg, who was already not loved by many animators for his heavy-handed meddling in the direction of films, departed and founded a new company with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen. (He’d also start a lawsuit with Disney, eventually settled for hundreds of millions of dollars. It was bloody!)

Thus began the years where Dreamworks seemed to be trying very hard to show up Disney and Pixar - although Katzenberg always denied this and insisted the similarities were coincidental. This was primarily true on the CG side, with movies like Antz targeting A Bug’s Life (much to the upset of Pixar’s John Lasseter) and Shark Tale targeting Finding Nemo.

But the year 2000 also saw a battle of traditionally animated films on the subject of the Maya and Inca, both with the conceit of someone assuming the position of Emperor. Disney released The Emperor’s New Groove, while Dreamworks released The Road to El Dorado. Whether these films were intentionally similar is not entirely clear, but Disney certainly thought Katzenberg was copying them, and both studios ordered their animators to race to get their movie out first. (In the end, Dreamworks won by some margin, releasing in March.)

Since these two movies deal with at least superficially similar subject matter, coming from the same era and animation tradition, it’s interesting to contrast them. Disney’s character designs are highly graphical and stylised, pushing into more angular shapes and generally very broad, exaggerated movements. To an extent its characters share some DNA with Mignola’s designs for Atlantis: The Lost Empire. The backgrounds are just as stylised, the stagings more flat and theatrical.

Dreamworks, meanwhile, takes the same semi-realism approach as all its other designs in this period; its cinematography is a little more towards the live action end of the scale with more close-ups and a stronger sense of space, the proportions of its characters a bit more grounded.

Beyond the setting, the major similarity between these movies is that both were conceived initially as a dramatic story, and retooled into a comedy during production.

In the case of Groove, the story goes that Lion King director Roger Allers was called into the office of Thomas Schumacher, who proposed making a film about either the Maya, the Inca or the Aztecs. Allers liked this idea, and set about drafting a film that would be called Kingdom of the Sun, drawing on 1894 novel The Prisoner of Zenda. An outline of this film is available (ty wikipedia)...

Kingdom of the Sun was to have been a tale of a greedy, selfish emperor (voiced by David Spade) who finds a peasant (voiced by Owen Wilson) who looks just like him; the emperor swaps places with the peasant to escape his boring life and have fun, much as in author Mark Twain's archetypal novel The Prince and the Pauper. However, the villainous witch Yzma has plans to summon Supay (the evil god of death), and destroy the sun so that she may become young and beautiful forever (the sun gives her wrinkles, so she surmises that living in a world of darkness would prevent her from aging). Discovering the switch between the prince and the peasant, Yzma turns the real emperor into a llama and threatens to reveal the pauper's identity unless he obeys her.

During his time as the emperor and doing Yzma's orders, the pauper falls in love with the emperor's soon to be fiancée Nina who thinks he is the emperor that has changed his ways. Meanwhile, the emperor-llama learns humility in his new form and even comes to love a female llama-herder named Mata (voiced by Laura Prepon).[12] Together, the girl and the llama set out to undo the witch's plans. The book Reel Views 2 says the film would have been a "romantic comedy musical in the 'traditional' Disney style".[13]

However, after Pocahantas and Notre Dame failed to make the stonks go up enough, Disney got cold feet about another movie with such dramatic scope. First, they called in Mark Dindal of Cats Don’t Dance to co-direct; then, worrying about making the summer 2000 release, Disney producers Thomas Schumacher and Peter Schneider ordered that the animation team would split in two and fight to the death each produce its own proposal to fix the film. Dindal proposed making it a straight-up farce; Schumacher and Schneider liked this and Allers quit, rather heartbroken at having spent four years of his life on the project.

Thus, starting in September 1998, with about a quarter of the film already animated, the project was extensively retooled on pain of cancellation. The basic premise (evil witch, emperor gets turned into llama) was kept, but the tone changed, and the animation was to be made simpler. A number of people left, notably animator Andreas Deja supervising Yzma, who went to work on Lilo & Stitch. You can read this grisly details here. The whole affair was documented by Trudie Styler as a condition of her husband Sting providing music, which is probably why we know quite so much about it. Sting actually also intervened in the story, demanding a rewrite of a planned ending where the emperor Kuzco, restored to humanity, bulldozes a rainforest to build a theme park (idek).

The movie that resulted from this tortured production process is basically a long string of rapid-fire visual jokes in the manner of a much older cartoon; it didn’t make a lot of money, but nevertheless gained something of a cult following. Which is also something that can be said of Road...

The story with Road is not quite so messy but still pretty messy. While Disney steered well clear of having any Europeans involved, Katzenberg decided to set a film during the Spanish conquest of the Americas, contemporary with the invasion of Hernán Cortés. Cortés, exploiting the tensions created by Aztec imperial rule over the many other peoples like the Totonacs and Nahuas, pursued a divide-and-conquer strategy which resulted in the Spanish and their new allies sacking the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán, thus installing the Spanish as the new imperial rulers... who unfortunately turned out to be even worse than the last guys. In place of the Aztecs’ system of tributary provinces and spectacle of human sacrifice, the Spanish brought in hundreds of years of genocide, epidemic disease, brutal slavery under the encomienda system and indoctrination to Catholicism, which would in the end constitute one of the largest episodes of mass death in human history.

Somewhat fraught, you might say. However, it doesn’t really seem like anyone did say.

The impetus for this movie came from above: Katzenberg summoned two of his screenwriters and said (this is definitely a direct and real quote) “here is a book about the Maya and the Conquistadors, write me a movie about this kthx”. “How about,” said Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, “a spin on one of those Road to... movies from the 40s, a buddy comedy with a guy following a map to a mysterious city of gold?”

“Great!” said Katzenberg. “Sounds like another grand, dramatic animated film like Prince of Egypt! That’s the kind of movie I like.”

“What if it’s a kind of white saviour thing where our guy, who accidentally becomes Emperor, goes on to save the Maya residents of a fictional city from Cortés? And we’ll make it horny, we’ll have a Maya princess love interest who doesn’t wear a lot?”

“Mm, sounds good.”

“OK, cool. Yo, Will Finn and David Silverman - direct it! Elton John, get us some of that Lion King score magic, eh?”

Time passes. The Prince of Egypt is well underway, with all of Dreamworks’s best animators, such as James Baxter, drawing it.

“Actually,” says Katzenberg all of a sudden, “I’ve changed my mind. We need a comedy to follow that. Movie’s on hold. Rewrite it to be funnier. And that’s too horny, let’s keep it PG-13.”

“Oh.” say Finn and Silverman. They leave. Finn writes to Katzenberg to try and smooth things over, but Katzenberg brushes him off. “You don’t quit Jeffrey.” said one unnamed source. “If you do, he closes the door behind you.” Instead, the film goes to some guys called Eric “Bibo” Bergeron (no idea where the nickname comes from) and Don Paul.

Katzenberg’s micromanagement seems to be the throughline for a lot of this. At one point, he was so overbearing that James Baxter had to intervene:

In one meeting, character animator James Baxter, a normally shy and bashful Brit, stood up to his boss in front of the other artists and told him to back off.

“You don’t know what you’re doing.” Baxter said. “You’re too involved. You’re losing the respect of the artists.”

Katzenberg, who respected Baxter, had seemed to listen. For a few weeks, at least, he kept a greater distance from the production. But soon, he was back to his old habits. 

The other notable development in this movie is the increased use of painted CG sets, similar to the tech Disney would use on Treasure Planet. A contemporary Animation World Network article talks about it in detail, describing how the film’s backgrounds were completed on computers by the new generation of ‘tradigital’ artists - so for the first time you couldn’t hold a painting in your hands to review it. As well as a shortcut to complex staging in 3D space, the new technique allowed economical reuse of background elements in different shots. Further digital tricks could be used to add small amounts of animation to background characters without increasing the drawing count. The character animation pushed for naturalism and subtlety to suit the ‘buddy comedy’ tone. And judging by the tone of that article, Dreamworks had high hopes for the reception of this movie.

But on release, the movie was met with... a pretty lukewarm response. Mainstream critics were dismissive of its animation and found its characters unconvincing. Indigenous organisations were especially unhappy; Olin Tetzcatlipoca of the Mexica Movement, appalled, compared it to making an upbeat film about a guard in a Nazi concentration camp that doesn’t mention the Holocaust. Audiences, for the most part, paid it little regard. So, like Groove, it dropped out of history, only to be rediscovered decades later and gain a small cult following who declared it a hidden gem. (A large part of the reason likely being that the main pair is eminently shippable.) A couple of gifs were extracted as memes, as seen above.

What do I think? Haha, well, I haven’t watched it yet. But this is going to be an interesting review to treat after we have.

Now, I’ve covered Disney and Dreamworks, but there was another player in the 1999-2000 period who’s relevant to the story. That’s Warner Bros., and director Brad Bird, who would in the future go to direct The Incredibles and Ratatouille at Pixar; his 1999 movie The Iron Giant is as I recall a good film, and interesting as one of the very few animated films to address a cold war setting and the terror of living under nukes. (We watched another, When the Wind Blows, on Animation Night 26). That’s a story worth telling, but with an eye on the time, I think it’s going to have to be told another night.

So, if you will join me, tonight we’ll be watching Groove and Road. Are they indeed forgotten gems that did not deserve their dismissal? Are they just shallow comedy? Big racist messes? Let’s go and find out.

Animation Night 133 will be going live shortly at twitch.tv/canmom, and we’ll be screening movies in about half an hour (22:20 UK time roughly) - hope to see you there!

[marypsue]

for the WIP ask meme, trust that i'm exercising great control in picking only three. i would be so honoured to hear about: 1) circus luna draft 2 2) groundhog day but it's halloween and every time bob newby dies it get faster 3) relativity falls but it’s stranger things. :-) <3

Hello friend! It took me entirely too long to answer this because in between you sending it and me answering it, holiday happened. Whoops. 

1) circus luna draft 2

This is an original fiction project that’s near and dear to my heart, that’s been trapped in the writer equivalent of development hell for over a decade now. It’s almost entirely unrecognisable now from what it started out as, save for the very basics: it’s a Kids On Bikes story where the primary antagonist is an evil, supernatural circus. 

The current elevator pitch for Circus Luna is ‘Stephen King’s IT meets Karyn Kusama and Diablo Cody’s Jennifer’s Body’. The main cast of characters, over the years, has morphed into a group of five friends, who face the circus once as teenagers and then have to face it again as adults, when they’ve all come to doubt what it was they experienced when they were young. I’ve talked a little more about the premise and the characters here and here. There’s also an inspiration tag on my blog, here.

I won’t share a sample, because I’m hoping to publish this professionally someday in the (far distant) future and apparently that can become a Problem if parts that end up in the final draft have already been posted somewhere. But I can promise that it includes: 

growing up queer in a small rural town in the early aughts!

the seductive appeal and selective memory of nostalgia!

emo hair!

the power of cultural narratives to impact our personal lives!

star-crossed, tragic romance!

Halloween vibes!

the painful, difficult, but ultimately rewarding experience of growing up, and how to mourn the things that are naturally and inevitably lost along the way! 

Goffs Vs. Prepz!

the corrosive nature of fear!

having crushes on all your friends!

trains!

BUGSSSSSSSSSS

and, perhaps most importantly: 

the Power of Friendship (and My Chemical Romance)!

2) groundhog day but it's halloween and every time bob newby dies it get faster

This is Exactly What It Says On The Tin! It’s a oneshot in three chapters set during season 2 of Stranger Things, wherein Bob Newby gets trapped in a time loop and somehow has to solve the overarching mystery of s2 using only the information everybody has up to the point where he dies, if he wants to save the people he loves and also himself. And also, he and Joyce and Hopper are all going to get to kiss. 

I don’t know how much of an audience there is out there for Bob Newby-POV adult-monster-hunting-trio fic out there, but hey, I’ve written weirder shit. 

Because I can, here’s a sample:

...

Jim throws the breaker and then hovers while Bob taps through the series of commands and prompts to unlock each of the doors in turn, pacing and scanning the hulking shapes of the boiler and whatever other equipment is stored down here, with the machine gun held at the ready and a scowl on his face. Finally, Bob has to abandon his task to say something. “Would you please pick a spot and stand there? You’re making me nervous.”

“You’re not already nervous?” Jim cracks, with something Bob thinks is trying to become a smile. But he does stop pacing. “Jesus. Forgot. This must all be old hat for you by now.”

“Yeah. But you never really get used to it,” Bob says, turning back to the glowing black screen. Beside him, Jim gives a little huff that might almost be a laugh.

“Got that right.”

They’re both quiet, for a few minutes after that, the only sound in the room the rattle of Bob’s fingers over the keys.

“That’s the exit doors back online,” he says, coming to the end of the string of commands. “Joyce and the kids should start heading out.”

Jim nods. But he doesn’t immediately pass the information along. “You really don’t think we’re gonna get out of here alive. Do you.”

Bob looks at the computer screen to avoid having to look at Jim’s face. “Well, hope springs eternal.” He lets out a long breath, and decides he can afford to offer Jim a little of that hope. “I’ve never had you here with me before. And I’m sure you’re a much better shot than I am.”

Jim’s quiet, for a long moment. When he does speak, it’s into the walkie-talkie. “Newby says to start moving out. Exit doors are online.”

Bob takes that as his cue, and for a few minutes more, the only thing he thinks about is the screen and the keyboard in front of him, turning on sprinklers and setting off alarms to draw the monsters away from Joyce and the kids, based on the directions the doc relays via walkie-talkie. It’s like some kind of video game, trying to control the movement of a bunch of distant characters through a maze full of enemies without getting them killed. Just with impossibly real stakes.

Bob can’t keep the thought from forming in his head, though. “Why are you here? We both want to get Joyce and the kids out of here safe, I’m sure they could use your marksmanship more than I can.”

Jim shrugs, shoulders tight, the smallest possible gesture. “Told you. I know Nancy Wheeler can handle herself. And if you got eaten on the way down here, we’d all be fucked.”

They’re pretty well fucked anyway. And Bob doesn’t get much time alone with Jim like this, not late enough in a loop that he’s earned a little trust. Maybe it’s that. Maybe it’s knowing that, if and when they do loop, Jim won’t remember anything about this conversation. Or maybe it’s just a combination of masochism and morbid curiosity that makes Bob say it. “You’re in love with Joyce, aren’t you.”

Jim whirls to face him, wide-eyed, startled, like he’s just been goosed. He doesn’t say anything, at first, just stares.

When he finally does speak, it sounds strangled. “I’m not enough of a prick to let you get killed just so I’d have a shot at your girl, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Obviously you’re not, or you wouldn’t be here,” Bob points out. “I’m just – trying to figure it out. What I got myself into. What’s going on between you two.”

Jim cracks a humourless grin, at that. “Some puzzles I guess even the Brain can’t solve.”

He turns his back to Bob again, watching the door. Bob thinks the conversation’s over until Jim says, quietly, “You’re good for her. She deserves something, somebody like you in her life. Stable. Sane. Normal.”

“Not so much of any of those anymore, apparently,” Bob half-jokes, half to himself.

Jim goes on like he hasn’t heard. Maybe he hasn’t. “Joyce hasn’t had a lot of good things come her way. I don’t wanna fuck this one up for her.”

“She might want you to,” Bob offers.

Jim looks a little stunned. He doesn’t say anything else.

He doesn’t have time to, either. The strange screeching, rattling cries of the monsters rise from the stairwell, echoing eerily through the metal of the vents and pipes overhead. It sounds like a lot of them. And they’re coming down fast.

Jim doesn’t take his eyes or the machine gun off of the open doorway to the little room they’re in as he barks, “Give me good news, Newby!”

“All the doors are open,” Bob says, turning to look in his direction. “Think you can buy me one more minute to open the front gate for them, too?”

Jim’s face isn’t visible, his back still turned to Bob, but his voice is grim. “I can try.”

3) relativity falls but it’s stranger things

Yet another WIP that’s near and dear to my heart and taking forever to finish! This seems to be a theme. 

This one was inspired by (as you may be able to tell from the file name) the Gravity Falls Relativity Falls AU, where people swapped the ages of the Stan twins and the Mystery Twins, and also various side characters and antagonists. This fic is a Stranger Things season 1 AU where the teens are in the roles of the adults, the adults are in the roles of the kids, and the kids are in the roles of the teens. Nancy’s the Chief of Police with a broken family and a broken heart, Mike’s the loner who gets thrown together with a classmate by the disappearance of a kid, and Karen is the plucky twelve-year-old determined to find her missing friend. 

I’m stuck in the Dreaded Middle at the moment, because shaking up the roles shook up the plot, and I didn’t plan ahead for how to resolve it quite enough. There’s a reason outlining has become my best friend. 

There are a number of samples in my sample tag, but also, since you asked so nicely: 

...

The girl’s eyebrows crumple together and she makes a soft, wordless little noise as Mike and Will lower her carefully down, spread out along the length of the couch. Like it hurts. She’s already bled through the blue strips of bandage that used to be Mike’s t-shirt. Not for the first time, Mike wonders what the hell he thinks he’s doing.

“I’ll – I’ll check on the water,” he says, dropping the girl’s heavy black Doc Marten boots on the arm of the couch. He doesn’t wait for Will to answer, just makes his escape across the room to the kitchen sink. His ears are burning, and he has no idea why.

The taps at the sink refuse to turn, at first. When they finally do, it’s with an ominous creak, and then a slow and rising rumble that makes the faucet shake before it abruptly spits out a clot of slime and rust. The water that comes burbling out after it is brown and freezing cold.

“I forgot,” Mike says, as he rejoins Will by the couch. “This place is on a well. The tapwater might not be any better than the rainwater. Actually, it might be worse. But there were some clean dishtowels in the drawer,” he finishes, offering up the stack, along with the cereal bowl he’d filled with brownish water. “And I think there are still some towels in boxes in the bathroom, so we could dry her off -”

Will, Mike notices, has a smile like a sunbeam. Somehow it makes Mike even more embarrassed of his babbling. “That’s great. Do you think your mom or her uncle would’ve kept any antiseptic and bandages around?”

Mike spends the next – he doesn’t know how long, starting up the cabin’s generator to get the lights on, lighting the cast-iron stove in the corner, running and fetching and washing and applying pressure under Will’s quiet but certain direction. He’s a little amazed by this side of Will. Mike mostly only knows the Will Byers he sees at school or when he has to pick Karen up or drop her off at Joyce’s. The Will Byers with his nose always in a sketchbook or a novel, who lets the bullies push him around with an air of silent exasperation, who rarely if ever talks back or raises his hand in class. Seeing him this confident, this focused, is new. He really seems like he’s in his element.

Mike wonders briefly how Will learned so much about medicine and first aid, and then feels stupid. Of course. He knows Will works, has worked at just about every odd job around town since he was old enough to start. He knows Will was a lifeguard last summer. And – it’s just Will and his dad and his sister, and Will’s dad works odd hours, with the paper, and long ones, at the general store. Will probably cooks, too. And does laundry, and all the other stuff Mike’s dad has somebody come in to take care of.

That thought makes Mike feel incredibly – something. Maybe guilty, though he’s not sure why. He’s got bigger things to worry about right now, though, so he shoves it to the back of his mind.

The girl frowns, and whines, and at one point throws an arm out and smacks Mike hard across the chest, but she doesn’t wake up. Mike presses the inside of one wrist against her damp, pale forehead, under her close-shorn fringe of hair, and starts. “She’s burning up!”

Will glances up from the wound in her side. “Fever’s a bad sign. Can you get a couple of cloths and run them under cold water? One for her forehead, one for the back of her neck.”

Mike comes back with three cloths, and another cereal bowl full of icy wellwater. There’s just something fundamentally – grubby about the girl, now that he’s up close and personal, like she’s been camping for weeks without a proper bath. Mike tells himself it’s important to get her cleaned up to keep her wound from getting infected. But mostly, there’s just not a lot else he can do, other than putting his finger where Will tells him to to hold bandages in place while Will ties them off.

And Mike just thinks that, if it was him who was hurt and hiding out and unconscious at the mercy of a couple of strangers, he’d at least want somebody to clean the smudge of dirt off his chin. And the dried blood from the crevices around his nose. And maybe wipe off some of the black eyeshadow that the rain had melted down his cheeks.

The girl’s face is narrow and sharp, her cheekbones high, the bow of her lips sweet, her lashes dark against her cheeks. When her face screws up in pain, Mike gives one extra, unnecessary brush of the cloth over that cheek, as gently as he can. He doesn’t dare touch her with his bare hands, without the excuse and barrier of the cloth in between them. But he wants to do something to comfort her.

Without the makeup, without the scowl, she looks – so much younger. Almost delicate, despite the hair and the boots and the leather jacket and the tattoo. Almost vulnerable –

The girl’s eyes snap open, and fix on Mike’s.

Mike’s not sure what happens next. One second, he’s kneeling beside the girl, carefully washing grime off her face. The next, his back is smashing into the wall across the room. There’s an ominous rattle, and the mounted deer head high on the wall goes crashing to the floor between his feet. He raises a hand to his spinning, aching head, and tries to focus, to figure out what just happened.

The girl is wedged up against the far arm of the couch, knees tucked tight against her chest like she’s trying to make herself as small as possible. One arm’s flung out in front of her with the palm facing Will and her fingers all splayed, like she’s directing traffic. There’s a bead of blood inching down from her nose, but she doesn’t move to wipe it away. Her eyes are big and furious and scared and flicking back and forth between Mike and Will. If she was a cat, Mike thinks, her back would be up and her ears would be flat against her head.

Her voice is clear and sharp as she demands, “Where am I?”

Will’s got both hands in the air, like the girl had pulled a gun on him. The bowl of water Mike had brought him – which is a pinkish brown now, Mike notices, with a lurch in his stomach – is splashed all over the floor by Will’s knees, slowly soaking into his jeans, but he doesn’t so much as shift away from the slowly-spreading puddle.

“It’s okay,” Mike says, wincing as he starts to straighten up. He’s not sure why the look Will shoots him is so frightened, but then, he’s also not sure how he ended up on the other side of the room. Maybe the girl’s some kind of ninja assassin or something. She doesn’t look strong enough to throw Mike across the room, but – Mike knows maybe better than anybody how appearances can be deceiving.

The girl’s attention snaps to Mike as well, and she whips her arm around so that the palm is facing him instead of Will. Mike stops trying to get up, raising one hand instead in surrender. “It’s all right, okay? We’re not gonna hurt you. And we’re way out in the woods here, nobody’s gonna find you.” He glances down at the girl’s side, where fresh red is starting to seep through the bandages Will had so carefully wrapped. “You should probably lie back down, it looks like you’re opening that back up -”

“I’m leaving,” the girl says. Somehow, she makes it sound like a threat.

“Okay,” Mike says, as she unfolds herself from the couch and takes one uncertain step forward. “Nobody’s stopping you. You don’t have to, though. You’ve got a fever. And a bullet wound. You can stay here until you feel better, Will and I won’t tell -”

“I,” the girl repeats, wobbling and nearly crashing back down onto the couch, “am leaving.”

Will meets Mike’s eyes with a panicked look. Mike’s sure Will can see as clearly as he can that the girl isn’t going to make it more than two more steps before she falls over. But neither of them, Mike thinks, knows what to do about it.

“Who’s after you?” Mike asks. Maybe, if he can keep the girl talking –

She fixes him with a glare. And then flops back, heavily, onto the couch. She looks briefly surprised and indignant, like her own legs have betrayed her, and pushes herself back to her feet, even though she looks even wobblier than before.

“Mike,” Will says, low and urgent and frightened.

“What? You want to know too, right? If they’re the same people who took Joyce -”

“Mike,” Will repeats, with a warning flicker of his eyes in the girl’s direction.

Mike’s getting the feeling he’s missed something. “What?”

“It might be a bad idea to piss her off,” Will hisses at him, still with that pleading, scared look.

Mike pushes himself to his feet. “Yeah, well, murdering bank robber or not, I don’t think she’s in much shape to -”

He doesn’t get the rest of the sentence out. Because the girl glares, and waves a hand. And Mike’s back smashes into the wall again and stays there.

Mike kicks, and struggles, and gasps. But none of it does anything. It’s like there’s a gigantic, invisible hand pressed flat against his chest, squeezing the air out of him, pinning him in place. The girl’s glower turns to a slow, small smile, which is somehow just as ominous, her dark eyes never leaving his.

She lifts her hand a little higher. Mike can feel his windbreaker drag against the wall behind him as his feet leave the ground.

And then the girl’s eyes roll back and she collapses gracelessly backwards across the couch. The invisible hand holding Mike pinned abruptly vanishes, and he drops, hits his feet wrong, and winds up on the floor on his hands and knees, inches from putting an eye out on one of the deer head’s antlers.

For a frozen moment, nobody moves.

“Oh,” Mike says, finally, straightening up with care.

“Yeah,” Will agrees.

They both turn to look at the unconscious girl.

“Well,” Mike says, for lack of anything intelligent to say, “that might be why somebody’s after her.”

...

[ask me about a WIP!]

[spynorth]

 psa to say that yeah, this is a lucas north rp blog (obviously) - but i veer off so much from the popular way of thinking about him because I don’t want a character that is entirely excused by trauma, because for one I don’t believe that’s acceptable. But for another, being able to face up to some fucking awful mistakes and finding the courage to be the person that did those awful things while starting the next step after over a decade of hiding is something that really strikes a chord in me. I think writing is a way for authors to exorcise a lot of our own demons and come to grips with things that have happened to us in a way that allows us a different perspective from outside the situation. It’s just important to me that I write this character in a way that means people who make decisions without no true ‘excuses’ can still come back just like the trauma motivated ones. A quote from Lucas that is really used a lot on gifsets etc is when he says I’m nothing, in regards to the colleague he’s confronting asking if he’s Lucas North or John Bateman (which is obviously the question of, are you the man who did those things or are you the man you’ve been pretending to be? you have a choice.) and that’s a line of dialogue that hits so close to home. I’ve spent seven years being asked that same type of question in therapy sessions and appointments with my psychiatrist since my mental breakdown that led to my diagnosis and I’ve answered the same way he does so many times. I’m starting to learn that there doesn’t have to be a Taylor vs a Lucas .. I’ve spent the last 6 months since creating this blog trying to show myself that the great thing about being human is we can be whoever we want to be, we’re not defined by actions. I look back at the last seven years and I look at those months leading up to my first psychotic episode and that sense of loss when it was all over and I wish I could sit next to that version of me and tell him it was going to be okay, that he was gonna make it and find his pride again. It took away so much of me. 

I came back afraid of the most inconsequential things, like the fucking toaster. Me, extroverted as fuck me, couldn’t talk to people. I was scared of the AC, like to the point where I kept it turned off while hunter was away from the apartment even if it was one of our -50 days. I became violently angry, which I think was a part of the anxiety and the fact that I was also trying to recover from alcoholism etc at the time. I would hide in the closet or under the bed because I had crippling anxiety. I didn’t read a book for 4 years. I dropped out of my master’s program. I stopped riding. I had nothing. I was nothing as far as I knew based on what i had always used to define myself and people’s reactions when they found out. If I could, I would want nothing more than to tell myself I didn’t have to spend so much time keeping up a giant divider between what I was then and who I became post diagnosis. I stood on the roof just like Lucas and contemplated the same thing he did, but I had a lifeline and I want to use this blog to explore what happens if he did too while not excusing what he did or apologizing for him by pushing the blame onto other things. I believe that we all have a choice in how we react to things. I have to believe that. It’s the only thing that’s gotten me where I am today. anyways this is an emotional post to explain why I dig so deep into certain parts of this character and why having what I decide to do respected is so fucking important to me. 

[sorryaboutyourwindow]

Okay okay okay I’m gonna let my ego take over for a bit and answer these for myself cuz these are fun to think about-

1. Three things that shaped me into who I am. An old pocket watch my aunt got for me in Taiwan with my Chinese Zodiac on it, a Snow Globe that’s decades old now that was a baby shower gift for me/my mom, and a plaid brown blanket my grandma got me from London when I was three. I guess they’re all constants in my life and maybe I’m taking a more symbolic approach to this question but it’s fine.

2. Picture of my handwriting.

This was brainstorming for an engineering model project I was on a bit ago.

3. 3 films I will never tire from. Grosse Pointe Blank, Tangled, and Mean Girls.

4. Inside joke. “Poot poot, im scared”

5. I was a Pinterest girlie that relied on uploads but couldn’t keep up with this one Haikyuu comic, I forget who it was by but the ship was sakuatsu. Eventually I caved and made an account and now we’re here.

6. Best/worst part of being online. Never being able to get away from people. I’m an extrovert and love my friends, I’m just bad at dealing with people and need space. It’s nice I can talk to them whenever tho!

7. What scares me the most and why. Eternity. I am terrified of the unknown and what’s to come after all of this shit and I don’t know if I could live with myself forever, but I love to exist so so much and don’t think I could ever be ready to not if you know what I mean?

8. Reoccurring dreams. There’s this one, it’s more of a nightmare if anything, of being trapped in a beach house during a hurricane and I’m in the corner watching a blonde woman holding her son to try and save him. It’s short but I don’t know where it came from or why it sticks around.

9. Story about my childhood. I have always had the tendency to be a bit of a control freak so I would often just end up playing by myself because I just got annoyed. I used to play in my grandmas garden and pretend that I was a fairy or witch and shave chalk into powder to make “potions” and “fairy dust” and climb their trees to pick pecans. There was this one time I was kinda in my own little world and they had a porcelain dove on the bench, and I went to pick it up to acquire another familiar. This little bitch had a hornets nest inside of it so when baby me went to pick it up, I got stung smack dab in the middle of my palm.

10. Am I emotional. Yes, very, but at odd times. I get worked up really easily and passionate about the smallest debates or subjects but then if I go to break up with someone I don’t shed a tear. Yet somehow, every decision I make ends up being with my heart instead of my head despite how analytical I try to be.

11. What do I consider to be romance. This one gets its own few paragraphs.

In short, romance is when I’m so consumed by the person that I don’t care about what anyone else thinks. Ive dated a girl for two years who turns out never had feelings for me, I dated a guy who was my best friend and ended up being my stand partner for the rest of that year, I got groomed (all the same year btw). All of those kinda sucked for me and looking back there’s a good chance we were using each other and I was kinda embarrassed to be seen out in public with them let alone be affectionate.

I hate the sappy shit, hate the cheesy dates, hate the stereotypical rom com romancing because I just thought that was embarrassing. But right now it’s like really fucking weird for me cuz I have a boyfriend that I actually am actively proud to be around and show off to my friends and will lean on in public and don’t give a shit if he kisses me in public. It’s really fucking weird but really fucking nice, he loves the cheesy shit and honestly I’m starting to love it too.

12. Advice. Don’t make it official before the first date, set boundaries and restrictions with yourself on how physical you wanna be with a person on that specific date, if you’re scared to confess just do it and move on to rip the bandaid off, no “I love you”’s until at least the fourth date uhhhhhhhhhh

13. What am I doing right now. Eating spicy ass soup I made. It’s so good.

14. Something I’ve always wanted to do but too scared to. Tell my Abuela I cannot stomach her cooking. That or skydiving.

15. What do I think of when I hear the word “home.” That Edward Sharpe song.

16. If I could change one think about myself what is it. My tits are two different sizes, I just want my bras to fit okay.

17. Three things that make me happy. The beach, bookshops, and hanging out with friends after events when it’s really fucking late and hey we’re in the city anyways.

18. Do I believe in ghosts/aliens. As much as I would love proof, I’d like to keep a bit of hope out there for either. We don’t actually know what the afterlife looks like nor if there’s life out there in an infinitely expanding universe. Cannot qualify or disqualify, plus it’d be cool if they were and I wanna be hopeful.

19. Favorite thing about the day. Sunrise, it’s so goddamn pretty and it’s especially nice if you’re seeing it with someone.

20. Favorite thing about the night. Stargazing, I can never do it because of light pollution, but when I’m out in the country I’m genuinely in awe.

21. Am I spiritual. Spiritual as in there is something greater than us out there, not religious.

22. 3 things about someone I love. He’s strong, not just physically but like he’s been through some shit and I’m proud of him for still being here. He actively tries and seeks criticism because he just wants things to be as good as he can possibly make it for someone, doesn’t matter what. He’s an extrovert, and gets along with people, and gets along with my friends and it’s so sweet to see him interact with people.

23. 3 things about someone I hate. I don’t hate him, I’m just hurt. He has a right to want me out of his life since I definitely fucked up. He doesn’t realize there are other smart people in the room. He never actually acknowledged that I’m not stupid.

24. One thing I’m proud of myself for. My body, baby me would be proud. I dealt with an eating disorder for a while and it’s been a slow recovery process. But I get compliments on how I look now and I fit into the clothes that I want to and goddamnit I’m proud of my stretch marks. I’m proud of my body.

25. Favorite season. Spring, I’m a plant person and it’s just a season of rebirth and it’s summer without the temperature being in the triple digits. I love it.

26. Favorite color. A sunflower yellow, it’s just bright and cheery and pops and I love it.

27. Nicknames. Isa mostly, but my little sister accidentally called me Isi once and I loved it but it hasn’t happened again.

28. Collection. Trinkets for my bookshelf, cool guitar picks, books I want to read, and Starbucks mugs from cities and countries I’ve been to across the world.

29. What do I do when I’m sad. Play Angus and Julia Stone and turn off my lights and stare at the ceiling. Or call a friend and binge rom coms.

30. One thing that never fails to make me happy/happier. When my boyfriend texts, it’s stupid and cheesy but goddamnit I love talking to him.

31. Messy or organized. Messy in my room like I actually cannot walk in here, but control freak organized with my bags and files like I will never not know where something I need to use is for work or school.

32. How many tabs open. Just on my laptop, over 76. On my phone, it’s 67 in one tab group and another 38 for Ao3.

33. Hobbies. I play upright bass, electric bass, guitar, ukulele, harmonica, piano, and sing plus love going on deep dives on plants and space shit. I also surf, kick box, love to read, garden, and follow LFC.

34. Pet peeves. When someone messes with my cooking to check if it’s done immediately after I say “give it a second it needs more time.”

35. Trust easily. Yes, it’s gotten me assaulted twice.

36. Open book or walls up. I have really really really bad rbf to the point where a lot of my classmates are scared shitless of me if I correct them, but if you get me to start talking I’ve probably told my entire life story like sixty times but just not all to one person.

37. Secret. I kissed him.

38. Fave song atm. Red Wine Supernova by Chappell Roan.

39. YouTuber I’ve been obsessed with. Omahdon I think was the name. They did ow comic dubs a while back and I binge watched them when I was sad.

40. Bad habits. I pick at scabs and cuticles, I have never once finished my tbr or been over 10% of catching up, I forget to bring down my mugs of tea, and I never fold my clean laundry. Ever.

OH MY FUCK IM DONE BYE

questions I think would be fun to be asked

what are 3 things you’d say shaped you into who you are?

show us a picture of your handwriting?

3 films you could watch for the rest of your life and not get bored of?

what’s an inside joke you have with your family or friends?

what made you start your blog?

what’s the best and worst part of being online/a creator?

what scares you the most and why?

any reacquiring dreams?

tell a story about your childhood

would you say you’re an emotional person?

what do you consider to be romance?

what’s some good advice you want to share?

what are you doing right now?

what’s something you’ve always wanted to do but maybe been to scared to do?

what do you think of when you hear the word “home”?

if you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

name 3 things that make you happy

do you believe in ghosts and/or aliens?

favourite thing about the day?

favourite things about the night?

are you a spiritual person?

say 3 things about someone you love

say 3 things about someone you hate

what’s one thing you’re proud of yourself for?

fave season and why?

fave colour and why?

any nicknames?

do you collect anything?

what do you do when you’re sad?

what’s one thing that never fails to make you happy/happier?

are you messy or organised?

how many tabs do you have open right now?

any hobbies?

any pet peeves?

do you trust easily?

are you an open book or do you have walls up?

share a secret

fave song at the moment?

youtuber you’ve been obsessed with and why?

any bad habits?

(this post was stolen from @teenage-mutant-ninja-freak, since it couldn't be reblogged anymore)

[jodilin65]

I would have gotten my entry posted earlier if I wasn’t fighting the usual battle of fatigue. Again, better than anxiety, but anything that affects your daily activities or peace of mind is never good.

Tom was sent home from the plasma place after they said his arms were too bruised. He feels like that’s their fault for pressuring him to put heat on his arms when he’s noticed that this actually makes it take longer for the bruises to fade. He’s going to look and see how far another plasma company is.

Yesterday was painting day at the clubhouse and we painted manatees. Mine came out okay. Could have been better, but it wasn’t that bad.

I have a funny story about painting class but first, I’m so glad I had decent energy yesterday! I walked down in the warm sunshine and back and still felt good. The day before was horrible. I was just so tired to the point that it was really getting me down. I still think the main culprit is my thyroid, so I hope going back on multivitamins will eventually make a difference. There’s vitamin D in them and while it’s not as much as a typical adult dose there’s a bit of concern that it may go the opposite way and make my thyroid work a little too hard and make me anxious but I can skip the vitamins on some days if I have to.

It’s just frustrating because like I said, while I think my thyroid is the main culprit, I don’t know for sure. If not, then I don’t know if it’s something in the way I sleep or if I really do have chronic fatigue and this is just the way it’s gonna be for half of the time or more.

Tom says he doesn’t think I’ll have it for the rest of my life because my problems change.

Yeah, after nearly a decade, maybe.

I had burning down there yesterday that made me begin to doubt the soap. So because I have $25 of store credit every 3 months, I ordered a yeast infection kit. Could take a week to get to me, and I don’t know if I’ll have to fight with the applicators, but at least it’s free. For now, I took some leftover Monistat cream, put the biggest glob I could fit on my fingertip, and shoved it up there last night before bed (excuse my explicit description here, lol). I haven’t had any burning so far today, which now leads me to think that it was a yeast infection. I started to highly suspect this at the end of my day yesterday just by the symptoms and the fact that it had been several days since I used that harsh soap.

I don’t know why (to replace primary care visits?) but my insurance company will pay me $100 for someone to do a home check where they come to the house. They take your blood pressure and go over your meds, make sure you’re safe, etc. So I said sure, why not? So we’re gonna schedule that sometime soon. We have eye exams scheduled for the 4th.

Tom walked with me down to the clubhouse because he wanted to get more steps. I’ll admit that I’m glad he didn’t come in with me because it’s nice to have some things we do on our own like how he does the plasma thing on his own. We just don’t need to do every single thing together.

The redneck was actually kind of funny yesterday. He was coming up the street on his golf cart with Happy and as soon as he saw me he goes, “Oh no!” and puts a hand over Happy’s mouth, lol.

A surprising number of people turned out to paint and a few didn’t even show up. I ended up sitting next to a woman named Sandy and she was pretty nice. She was quiet and soft-spoken.

Behind me sat Debi, a rude Trump whore I never liked. She was rude to me in the group a couple of years ago as people who disagree with you often are instead of politely making their own point and leaving it at that. You know, the my-way-is-correct-and-your-way-is-all-wrong kind of thing.

Before class got going, Debi stood up to lower the speed of the fan between our two tables because it was causing a disco ball effect with flashing shadows as the blades swung under the recessed lighting. She looked at me and smiled and said I had it too. It was noticeable on our canvases but Sandy and I didn’t mind. I just wanted some air flow because it was hot in there.

So then Gail, who was leading the class had us all introduce ourselves. This was something I didn’t want to do because I was there to paint and not socialize. Also, because of my unique name, I knew Debi would know who I was. With a temper like mine, if she pissed me off bad enough, there’s no saying what I might have done.

So now the few people in the group who might not like me because I don’t always agree with them knew who I was but no one gave me any shit.

When Debi walked by me later on, she didn’t even glance my way. I had to fight the urge to stick my foot out in front of me just because I hate the little bitch. At the end of the class, when we were having our pictures taken with our paintings and I was talking to someone else, I thought I saw her looking my way with a contemptuous look on her face, not that it matters, of course. It was actually kind of funny.

The only thing I didn’t like about the class was that it wasn’t quite as structured as I thought it would be with Gail guiding us step by step but at least she was there to answer questions. It was nice to get out for the two or so hours I was out of the house.

And to leave my paper journal in the bathroom, lol. I always thought it would be interesting to see if it was mentioned in the group, but there’s been no mention of that or any pictures posted from the class yet.

[cartoonyappreciation]

On Growing Up:

I’ve recently graduated from college and for the first time I’m moving out of state. In a couple weeks I’ll be moving the furthest away from all my friends, siblings and parents. I’ve packed everything in boxes, gathered them all into the garage, in preparation for the Uhaul we’re renting to start this new chapter of my life.

For the past five years, I’ve prided myself on being independent, getting shit done and making every choice to put myself in the best position I can to succeed. For most of my undergrad career, I figured I would go into industry like the rest of my peers, make money as soon as possible and get on with my life. Then just over a year and a half ago, I decided to go to grad school instead.

I think it’s actually a pretty common fear for people who go to medical school and graduate school; the fear of life passing you by. Your friends settling down, having families, going on vacations, while you spend another half a decade prolonging finding your actual job. And while most of us (I assume) know that we’re doing this for a better future, having that longterm mindset can be really difficult.

I guess I don’t really know how many people actually have that fear. Maybe people who achieved a better school/work-life balance don’t feel that way. While I was doing my best to enjoy undergrad, I think I still had this underlying mindset that it was just an intermission, a countdown until the time I could get on with my life. A main factor I kept in mind while choosing which grad school to go to was that I couldn’t think like that anymore. If I’m going to spend all my 20s in college, I can’t spend it miserably. If I ended up going to a school that made me hate my future then what would be the point?

Anyway, this isn’t the reason I started making this post 😅. I actually wanted to talk about the now, this transition to what is essentially a full time job away from my family. No longer can I drive two hours just to visit my parents for the weekend. This new chapter almost feels like the end of my childhood, even though I guess there are lots of phases of childhood. It’s made me feel extra emotional lately. I feel like I’m mourning, as dramatic as that may sound.

My mom is pretty sick right now. As I walked into the kitchen to grab some water, I could hear her coughing and it sparked this memory I had from when I was much younger when I was sick. My throat really hurt and I felt terrible so I was walking downstairs. Turned out, my dad was still awake and watching something on TV while he was folding laundry or something. We both sat there eating popsicles and watching whatever was on the TV until I was ready to go back to sleep. For some reason, upon recalling this memory, tears started pouring down my cheeks. There I was, the kitchen illuminated only by the light of my refrigerator, as I stood there silently crying. While I feel pretty stupid and I can’t be completely sure why that set me off, I’m guessing I kinda miss these simpler times. My dad’s still alive, it’s not like I can’t sit on the couch and eat a popsicle with him now. Ugh, I feel like the girl from Inside Out, when all the yellow core memories turn blue. Sad that another chapter is complete, too uncertain of what the future holds to be truly excited about it. And I know I’ll be fine; I literally chose this for myself. But I also know that nothing stays the same and it’s okay to mourn the changes in your life while still looking forward to the future.

So here’s to growing up. It might be scary, but it’s all gonna turn out okay.

[galaxy98]

You ever look at a situation and just go, “If I even make one judgement call, I’m gonna later regret it for the rest of my life” ?

Because I can think of the few times—even recently—where this is applicable.

And I wouldn’t be so hung up about it if I didn’t considered it from a moral standpoint. You can’t go through life being a fence sitter or else you’ll end up like Boogie2988. You can’t always depend on your gut just because the truth is inconvenient to you.

I get that we’re only human, but I should know better by this point.

I’d LIKE to think that I’ve gain some wisdom over the years based on how this keeps happening time and time again. But there’s always that situation where I can never be so sure of what’s true or not.

And we’re not talking about minor stuff here. This stuff that involves things like people getting hurt or some form of enabling or misconduct.

To give you an example, take Michael Jackson for instance. For the past few decades and post-mortem, we’ve been trying to uncover any truth to whether or not he was a pedophile. And we’ve thought we had an answer with the Leaving Neverland documentary. But then this other stuff started coming about the muddled details regarding its existence that now it feels like we’re back to square one.

That’s when I threw up my hands and said, “Fuck it! I’m going to die not knowing whether he did it or not!”

And that’s what tears me up inside.

Yeah yeah i know “LiFe IsN’t FuLl oF EaSy AnSwErS” and all that crap but sometimes I wish it was. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to constantly live with that guilt.

Maybe I am beating myself up over nothing.

But I’ve been betrayed so much that I no longer have any faith in my own judgement anymore.

It’s been like that since 2016. And if you lived through that year, you will know what I mean.

[the1975attheirverybest]

As a member of Gen Z I don’t think it’s fair to place all the blame on our shoulders. It’s not our fault that we inherited a world that was full of racism, homophobia and climate change. Can you really fault us for wanting to make that better?

I agree that at times the actions of our generation haven’t been the right ones but isn’t it better that we make mistakes and learn from them rather than do nothing at all. Ghandi said “be the change that you wish to see in the world” and he was right. You can’t have change without action.

As a member of Gen Z I frown upon cancel culture I think it’s awful and it ruins peoples lives but I don’t frown upon respectfully calling someone out if they are in the wrong.

And on the topic of mental health, I don’t think it’s out generations fault that we have chemical dispositions in our brains. To be frank my parents are at fault for my eating disorder. I didn’t decide that I wanted to make myself sick or be depressed. It doesn’t work that way. It was never cool to be sick. It was never fun.

Anyway sorry for this rant but I had to get it off my chest while we’re on the topic

-♥️

Yeah, I agree with you!! Your starting point as a generation is NOT the same as past generations, so it wouldn’t be fair to hold you responsible for these things. Like, when people complain about gen z having different priorities or whatever, it’s like….what do you want them to do? Work hard, save up to buy a house, etc? LITERALLY HOW?! jobs don’t pay like they used to. The housing economy is INSANELY different than it used to be, most kids are going into debt trying to get an education, so when they leave school and go into low paying jobs and high interest housing situations, they’re also carrying that burden on top of it all. And if they, god forbid, should have a medical condition? Fuckin forget about it, bro.

all while the economy is collapsing, the climate is slowly killing life on earth, politics is leaning conservative. The progress we have made for women’s rights, civil liberties, LGBTQ+ rights are regressing….even if this generation were somehow made of superheroes….where are they meant to start?

While not all of mental illness is environmental, I mean, who WOULDN’T be depressed in a world like this?

Also, I think older generations gotta take responsibility for their part in this too. Gen z just got here, relatively speaking. The world we are living in is a result of decades worth of problems accumulating. Why are we suddenly blaming it all on the young people? No society is ever gonna move forward productively if it’s incapable of looking back and acknowledge and learning from its mistakes. The past isn’t nearly as rosy and sweet as we like to think of it. We got here for a reason. Kids can only do so much with the hand that they’re dealt.

Doesn’t mean they don’t have their flaws. Not all aspects of culture are going to continually move in the right direction. We have to make mistakes to learn what to do and not to do. Some mistakes are bigger than others. Some could have been prevented and some are just necessary or inevitable. The only way this happens is if you take the long view of history and wait it out. Things start to filter themselves through. Every generation fucks up. Every single one. No exception. So, it’s a bit unfair to me to act like gen z is a class of lazy, toxic, misguided, fragile people. Like….anyone who says that seems to have forgotten what it was like to be young, lol.