#anyways. as aforementioned the endless cycle is endless and a cycle so things will keep on keeping on :-)

[vigilantejustice]

disordered eating content in the tags skip it if it’s no bueno :-)

[godraet]

غُدْرَت

ɢod̪ˈɾæt̪ʰ — ( n. ) power.

padishah ganondorf dragmire of the legend of zelda franchise.

a study of [ . . . ] divinity and kingship in its purest form, endless lifetimes, forging your own soul, breaking the cycle.

by percival (30+, he/him). mutuals only!

affiliated with [ . . . ] @salesduo ╱ @perditos ╱ tba

⎛ ₁ legend. ₂ verses. ₃ dynamics. ⎠

rules under readmore!

𝐨𝐧𝐞. #GODRAET is an independent, private, highly selective and mutuals exclusive writing blog for ganondorf dragmire of the legend of zelda franchise. its my sacred duty now to rewrite TotK and also cherrypick from every other iteration so i am doing just that!

this blog is 18+. please do not follow me if you are under 18!

on this note, this blog will feature dark and triggering themes. gan's entire story is a whole mess and he chooses violence very often! i will make sure to tag these things with the format of #trigger so that they can be filtered out!

𝐭𝐰𝐨. shipping is not the priority here- but for reference, gan likes women or fem-leaning individuals; in general what he likes is femme because he associates femme with familiarity and also strength, for real what else would anyone expect.

if shipping happens, it will require a LOT of plotting and will not be with any mun or muse under the age of 21.

i am very open to other sorts of bonds, though! because it isn't just romance when people talk about ships- i am open to seeing how things go nonetheless!

i should also note that i will accept mains and exclusives!

𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞. please DO tag #trypophobia for me, it makes my brain do big bad.

𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐫. i am known for writing metas across the blogs i have. in the wise words of a friend:

with this in mind, the metas i write are portrayal specific to this blog, so please give them a read! i know i can be rather wordy- anyone who has followed me elsewhere may know this, but for my first time followers, worldbuilding is one of my favorite things to do. i am particularly fond of analysis of character psychology.

𝐟𝐢𝐯𝐞. to the point above, i do have other blogs! and i have no organizational skill so im all over the place ... and i have a job that steals my energy

and by this, i mean i work 32-40 hours as a registered nurse in an inpatient psychiatric unit. i am busy, i am tired, and i can't keep letting my focus go all over the place. inevitably, it still may do that because i have a tendency to be scattered, so if i don't get to something immediately, it isn't you, it's me!

also related to that, i do love communication! i struggle with reading the room (it's the Autism tm) and so if something's up or if you're bothered, please be direct with me! i will not take offense, i quite appreciate feedback so that i can be better as a person! in return, i will communicate back! i am learning to curate my space (after 10+ years of being on tumblr).

𝐬𝐢𝐱. there are people i won't interact with due to various reasons- my dni list is on the carrd of my other blogs. i won't interact with genderbent versions of characters, people who are Real Life Individuals (not counting fictional depictions like in the typemoon franchise or whatnot because those really have nothing to do with the actual individual they're supposedly based on?).

please stay far away from me if you fall under the following categories (i'm censoring things because god knows tumblr just picks shit up idk): proshipping, writing inc*st, p*dophilia, r*pe/n*ncon, are transphobic/homophobic- the usual gross behavior! use your moral compass!

on top of that, i am a firm believer that we learn from the media around us. full censorship is just as dangerous as the aforementioned things- the world isn't all sunshine and rainbows! please refer to this post which essentially summarizes the gist of what i'm trying to explain.

𝐬𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧. anyway, hello, i'm percival. i am 30+ and use he/him pronouns exclusively! i am a hobby artist (it's my side-gig from nursing) and sometimes i post my art, tagged #whats my art tag considering i constantly forget my art tag if it's fancy. please do not repost my art without my permission.

mutuals, feel free to ask me for my discord, since i am much easier to reach there!

i look forward to writing with you!

[asomatousaria]

🌌

In a phase of her life buried underneath unfamiliarity and apathy, unrequited feelings were for once not so unwelcome. Unrequited feelings gave her something to do. 

They were a perpetually unanswered question; a railroad track always folding outward, never finished; a wave building forever, never crashing; a drop of ink just barely clinging to the tip of its pen, yet refusing to fall. In the endless repetitiveness of space that had grown a tired sight to her, a sight she could not dispel out of her duty to her moirail, what better, more thrilling chaos could she so easily inject into her own life than pining she knew only found hive in her own heart? 

Indeed, her aforementioned moirail was the first fleeting object of her question, as her head explored and reevaluated its own attachments in light of the cycle of memory loss marching ever-onward. It was brief, and at the first sign her moirail may have been asking the same question, her flushed inclinations faded. Aradia Megido was many things, many unclean words and unsafe ideas, but a troll to break up her own moirail’s matespritship for vacillations was not on the list. Whether or not Sollux would have ever permitted that to happen, Aradia did not let herself get close enough to the risk to test. 

Weeks passed, but her interrelationship introspection didn’t. After finding herself at peace with so many she had let go of, with renewed gratefulness for those few she had found reason to keep near, the role of the man she had spent so much of her recent spare time revolved around came next under the microscope. 

It was, in its own way, pure chance. It was not him that she was seeking to catalogue or examine, anyway, but an exchange with the last lover she had ever formally permitted in a quadrant. Unpleasant as the unraveling of that matespritship was, like she had said many times -- most recently, most notably, to him, ironically to say the least -- to know is better than to not. As the burden of the knowledge of her timeline’s ever-growing future stretched forward, and her own place on that timeline moved forward along with it, so too did her own personal memories fade with no more delay than a sweep, and Aradia understood as well as anyone that being able to recall what had happened in her own life would always be more advantageous than to not. The former, at least, meant she had a choice.

Her records were fairly extensive by this point, the majority of the content in their pages since-forgotten, but permanent fixtures all the same by staying where she could find them at any moment. Everything important, recorded and written down. Everything like the argument she and her once-matesprit had over him. 

She remembers how their jealousy shone brighter than stars over her friendship with him, and in trying to most accurately recount the conversation, she understood for the first time how truly undeniable the jealousy was. It was jealousy for something deeper than even romance; her partner had at no point accused her of being, nor, in her true belief, thought her to be, unfaithful to them for favoring him in any way. No, they were jealous because it was plain to see their ease with one another: how easily she and he settled into banter, settled into judgment, settled into beautiful and eloquent declarations of the divinity of disorder and decay, all to the same melody without needing a guiding note to rely on. They were jealous because then, surely, if he had problems with her partner, then she endorsed them, by essence of being near him. They were jealous because in Aradia’s life he was both a threat and a mirror, they were jealous because she and he shared roots so deep in the soil that it felt to her now as though they had simply always been there. 

Her friendship with him, after all, had surpassed her recollection. She could have met him one sweep ago or when she was only one sweep old, both scenarios would have felt the same, as they did: as though they had known each other forever. Such was the nature of memory loss. The extent of her memory was simultaneously, to her own experience, her entire life, however much she may write down to try and convince herself otherwise.

Suddenly, he took precedence in her thoughts, and rather than completing her entry on her former matesprit, she was flipping through old pages and old books. Had her once-partner’s jealousy not been, in its own way, entirely valid? Had he not been the one with such matter-of-fact faith in her from so early on? In her strengths, in her weaknesses, in the sort of passive way absent the need of explicit enumeration that showed true faith in her true colors? Would she not have chosen him without hesitation, had the once-partner demanded she then and there choose between the two of them? And was he not now still the person she turned to when she wanted to escape, disappear, pretend, listen? 

And what better person to occupy the space in her mind of a perpetually unanswered question, than him? Aradia imagined (potentially self-indulgently) that he would take pleasure in knowing he had been delegated such a position.

All he had told her of his life in recent nights and weeks would run the risk of making her think he was actually beginning to trust her the way she already trusted him, but notes in her books from conversations passed reminded her of the footnote he had once delivered her himself, that she could talk as much as she needed but never expected him to feel the same need. He was as pleasant as he was elusive, and to try to hold him would to be to try to hold air, or to hold time itself. Surely her younger self had no idea how important these words would be for her to read in this moment, and yet, then again, with all she could know with one mere look... perhaps, indeed, she had. 

And that settled it. Her perfectly and contently silent secret, her perpetually unanswered question with solid reason it never needed pursuit nor address, and something she could wonder on anyway. His circle, his life, his past, was so far from her own, that she could comfortably believe there was no risk in quieter pining like this, a desire so doomed to fail that she is instead granted the privilege of simply enjoying the warmth in her stomach at the thought of him, by being granted the freedom from temptation to action. Who says that shouldn’t be enough on its own? 

Aradia had been rummaging through her recorded memories of him for hours, and finally elected to put it all away, a small smile still on her features at the discovery of something new within her from a place so unexpected. She promised herself she would be quiet about it, to whatever extent she even needed to be, as no part of her felt compelled to anything near confession. 

Her homage to her tattered previous matespritship would have to wait for another night.

[fluffmugger]

introspectivenavelgazer said: I’m curious about your thoughts OH HOLD ON BB I GOT OPINIONS. ITS BAD. 

sabacc said: ah, the disturbing things bingo movie oh no. nononoo. Make no mistake. This was not a “nooope” situation.  There was precisely one moment in a teaser that actually triggered me, and that was so fucking poorly done in the end product I ACTUALLY ENDED UP LAUGHING. I’m  not exaggerating, check the post. First time I saw that it pulled a very hard visceral cord, and when the Kersh scene came up in the movie, I was huddled up in my chair, hoodie on, ear blocking ready to ride out that wave of programmed fear.   Instead, I fucking laughed because the whole thing was so fucking ridiculous. What was a deft, vicious piece of editing got completely fucking wrecked.  And that’s pretty much what happened to the story, that film was a hot mess of absolute bullshit.  It not only completely fucked up the overarching themes of the original story, it made no fcking narrative sense in and of itself as a movie verse Lo, there be spoilers...

While some parts I can understand for expediency - such as sidelining Audra and shifting Bill’s obsessive run to IT being based on a local child that he ultimately fails to save, why the fuck have Audra in it in the first place? A five second appearance so ...wha, you can make a running joke on Bill sucking at writing endings that’s just an endless sledge against King? What was the fucking point of that?     Likewise the inclusion of Silver, stripped down to a single cameo that only got vaguely saved because it put him in the place where he could meet aforementioned kid (now living in Bill’s old house in a most contrived of plot points but I will allow it because it works) and form an emotional connection. The whole reason for them standing to face IT is shifted from the pact they formed - the childhood vow they could never break - to Beverley instead somehow magically seeing the future while trapped in the deadlights, and realising that if they didn’t finish IT once and for all, even after the cycle they would all eventually take their own lives like Stan did, unable to live with the taint.  While this could be a interesting take in and of itself - if you do not face the demons of your childhood, they will destroy you one way or another - it completely shifts the core motivation to one of self interest.    Initially the Losers (especially Bill) did actually take on IT from a position of self interest (and young Bill actually has a moment of self agony over it, is he only leading  his friends into a deadly crusade because he wants vengeance for Georgie? Does he have that right? Is he nothing but a “selfish little shit waving a tin sword”), but it became so much more, and these children became monster slayers.   It’s the hero’s journey.   And shifting that makes it a corruption, not into a subversion.   It was also so damned messily handled - it could have been interesting , the idealism of childhood shifting to pragmatism of adulthood, but it was reduced to a handwave threat, and they didn’t need to be threatened.  The original story had a whole intertwined creep that was fucking beautiful, this veneer of adults in control of their own lives and destiny being stripped away in thin layers, with the Losers gradually beginning to dimly perceive they are simply parts  of some great cosmic machinery and their illusions of control and indeed  their entire lives are all just that - illusions. The undermining of reality and stripping of power were great Adult Fears that played fucking beautifully in the book.  The silent unspoken Imposter Syndrome, hinted at, but never directly addressed, that all their successes were simply due to being touched by IT.  In the movie? Oh man we’re all gonna kill ourselves if we don’t fix this and it means ...nothing to the characters. Seriously. They all still walk anyway.  And   way too much fucking time is wasted on characters abruptly deciding to leave only to Not At The Last Second.   It’s just a big fat clumsy mess.

They completely chunked out Bowers taking Mike out of the final battle, yet still included him in the film - Why? what was the fucking purpose?  They also intimated that IT was responsible for killing his father - ironically the one fucking murder Bowers did commit -   and adult Bowers was delightfully played, but he served  no fucking purpose whatsoever. Not to drop them to the lesser number of power (5 as opposed to 7), not to drive them into the sewers, what was the fucking purpose of having him there? He shows up, doesn’t even break Eddie’s arm (so there’s your other purpose of resetting the gameboard to the positions of the last confrontation) gets stabbed, gets killed, and they go on la de da.

Michael’s story is absolutely fucked into unrecognisability.  I’ve already ranted about killing off his parents - it’s a dumb fucking decision and I will never fucking excuse it. William Hanlon is a key player in the books, inadvertently preparing his son for his role of watchman.  This is completely lost to the most basic of fucking racial stereotypes.   Holy shit they actually refer to his parents as fucking crack heads  at one point (although this is later revealed to be a fake out by Pennywise), but what does it serve?   While you can argue that removing him is what destabilises Mikes character THERE IS NO FUCKING REASON TO HAVE AN UNSTABLE MIKE.   In the sequel, Mike is clinging to sanity by less than the skin of his teeth, drugging Bill against his will at one point, actively leading everyone into danger with a false promise of victory and generally acting like a desperate fucking madman. Why take a dignified black character and turn him into an unstable Kassandra?  You don’t need a fucking unstable Kassandra, the very nature of what IT is, and its horrific, aeons-long parasitic relationship with Derry is so fucking unbelievable in and of itself it does that for you.   

Likewise Eddie’s adult career  is suddenly changed to being a ...investment? insurance? boring person thing? what the shit? Why not have him own the goddamn largest fleet private chauffeurs? Why change? that one tied back into his navigation skills at least, and there’s serious coin in that shit.   And fucking hell do not get me started on fucking Myra fucking hell if you want to touch a complex and fucked up relationship like that, you don’t handwave it. His entire rampant hypochondria is shifted to  something closer to ...smart arse with some small neuroses?  Ok, but you’re telling me this..why? what is the purpose of this?

Completely out of left field, Richie is heavily intimated to be Queer. Ok.     But they then go on to jam in additional homophobia (and this is on top of Mellon’s death that to be fucking honest is shot way too fucking far on the side of “lookit the smartmouth gay get stomped”)  and Pennywise threatening to reveal Richies Great Secret to the point I literally leaned over and asked His Lordship “The script writer does know this is set in the fucking 21st century, right?”   It could have been a fascinating side story of a man whose trauma keeps himself in a cage even when he doesn’t have to, but it’s not. It’s a hot mess of what the fuck let’s throw a gay (but not too obviously gay we’ll do it so we can claim he’s not so it still sells in china and we have plausible deniability hide your queers, hide your queers!)  in just so we can kill the object of his affection.  YOU DON’T NEED TO AMP UP THE ANGST OVER EDDIES DEATH. WE ALL KNOW ITS COMING. AND IT HURTS.    You know what woulda been ground breaking? You’ve laid the groundwork with Beverley already, have Richie in the deadlights as he is, have Eddie do his Big Damn Hero Save, and then have richie see what’s coming and shove eddie out of the way.  Having Richie die instead of Eddie? Holy crap, no one would have seen that coming. It would have blown up fucking everyone, film, telemovie and book fans alike.   (Also holy shit adult richie, far from being the smart, funny man we all know is a wanker. His comments at the chinese dinner party have none of the genuine humour of the book or even the  Curry adaptation, he comes across as a mean spirited bullying dickhead that you’d all go to the toilet at the same time and climb out the window to avoid. In a kid it’s funny. Kids have no filters. From an adult, it’s fucking poison)  

We also have all these elements of childhood coming back, but there is no purpose to them in the film.  In the book, it’s the wheel turning, the gameboard sliding back to where it was last time they faced IT, a very real embodiment of unfinished business and an inability to escape your childhood - a fact the characters are very well aware of and in varying ways horrified by their own regressions -  but in the film it’s just leaving the audience wondering why are they doing that? why’s that there. what the fuck man. why have bill stutter? So you connect the adults to the kids by using the broadest fucking flanderised tropes possible?  It doesn’t even stand on its own two feet, it relies on way too much back knowledge from other sources. And it reeks as it they bolted on large chunks of some other horror movie script that was presented to the studio and changed the names.  There’s no psychological implications, there’s no deftness, hell there’s no fucking chemistry with any of the fucking actors.  It’s reduced to a jumpscare gore fest. It doesn't even compare to the first half.  It got so bad that by the second act I was literally pointing at the screen and BAM right on cue, there was the jumpscare. That’s how fucking predictable it is.   The CGI was shithouse (I actually burst out laughing during the Paul Bunyan scene as well as the Kersh one it was so fucking bad) the ending is..my god they literally prance around him screaming “fucking clown” until he shrinks, they pluck his heart and crush it. Fuck me, the Curry adaptation had its problems but the savage, ritualistic destruction of IT as they all fell to their knees around and tore it apart with their bare hands had fucking balls at least.  And BTW, it’s only the caverns and the house on neibolt street that get destroyed, the rest of the town is just fuckin’ dandy and it’s like DUDE THE TOWN WAS LITERALLY BUILT ON IT. DERRY CANNOT SURVIVE WITHOUT IT.  IT’S A PARALLEL FOR THE HORRIFIC CANKER  AT THE HEART OF EVERY “LOVELY” AMERICAN SMALL TOWN. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY SOMETHING TO PLAY WITH.  and then, THEN they end it with a letter from Stan. See, Stan didn’t kill himself because in one brief, horrific instant he remembered everything, and even as a child knew he couldn’t face it again and bailed, no... he knew he was going to buckle and killed himself so..he wouldn’t die they wouldn’t all die what. the fuck. was the purpose. of THAT.

In short, it was a phoned in, badly written, badly edited piece of shit, completely purposeless and not even worthy of its predecessor. 

[dcarhcarts]

regarding recent absences

And other such updates!

If you want the tl;dr, here it is: my mental health isn’t in the greatest place right now, and I figured I ought to explain why I must ask you for continued patience for the snail speed on this blog. I’m not announcing official hiatus, but just know that I...might continue to be pretty scarce, but I’m trying my best to be here and to be writing here. To hopefully get me more active here, I plan on dropping a few threads and cleaning out my dash re: people who follow me but aren’t writing with me. You’re more than welcome to keep following me if I unfollow you, and if you want to write with me and just haven’t gotten the chance and would like me to re-follow you, pls just go ahead and shoot me an im. I will be making a separate post about both those things, it’s just that I can’t deal with how fast my dash is moving at the moment.

If you care for the long version, under the cut so as to not bother everyone else!!! Be warned that it’s uh...it’s l o n g. TW for depression and anxiety and the general things my brain does to me lolol. 

Wow I haven’t used the post title function in a l o n g time. Anyway, hi, it’s me, Ro, your friendly neighborhood mun of a 20+ muse mumu. Don’t let the kind-of-serious format scare you - nothing bad is happening. I just have a few things that I felt the need to address that have been happening either in my life or just in my screwed up brain :D Buckle in and get ready for the ride, I guess?

Starting with something y’all already know about - I’ve not been here a lot recently. I joke about that a lot, but really, if you catch the pattern, my activity here is: exclusively after 10 pm, 2 drafts at most a day, inbox straight up clogged from like a month ago. IMS basically desolate, because I haven’t worked up the courage to pick them back up since I last forgot about them in the endless stream of things I had to do about a month ago! (that being said, uh, if you want to talk to me your best bet is probably through discord. Ro#6782 - pls, mutuals only, and tell me who you are!)  

And - because I h a t e being that mun that reblogs memes and asks for for them and then never answers their askbox / puts out starter calls when she has 10000 drafts / puts out plotting calls when she has unanswered ims, (no problem at all when other people do this but somehow when it’s m e I’m like “no you’re a terrible person”???? hmmm), I’ve also been avoiding t h o s e. If you’re new and you followed me in the last month, I’ve been putting out n o t h i n g that indicates a willingness to interact with new/more people, while the opposite is true. I’m always willing to interact - if I follow back, I want to write with you, only, well, aforementioned issue aside, I also have m o r e problems.

Namely, IRL and the fucked up thing called my brain. 

As most of you know, I got a job ~end of may or early juuuune~ and....well it’s pretty damn time consuming. I can’t have my phone during the course of my job - by the way, 4 hours - and so in those 4 hours (from 4 pm to 8 pm) I can basically get nothing done here. Then there’s also the fact that the time my shift is placed mentally and physically drains me a lot. Because it starts at 4, most of my morning is spent thinking “god I don’t wanna go to work” and because it ends at 8, most of my evening is spent trying very hard not to doze off. It also drains me a lot socially - I work at a call center, and all day I’m basically calling people who don’t want me to call them and are very irate even when they pick up, and uh, that already doesn’t do well for my anxiety haha. 

The other thing, of course - is my sort-of-seasonal depression. Winter tends to equate to anxiety for me, and summer tends to equate to depression. Again, I think I’ve joked about this a lot, but I apparently can only do drafts when I have 3 finals tomorrow and I haven’t studied for any of them. When it’s break, I get into a really weird slump - when i wake up in the morning, I don’t really want to wake up, and sometimes just stare at the wall for like, an hour. Nothing that I enjoyed during the other months, I seem to enjoy doing now. There’s too much time and too little time. It’s like i spent the whole day doing absolutely nothing meaningful but I can’t break myself out of the cycle so I keep doing that, rinse and repeat day after day, and sometimes my definition of spending time is just lying down in bed again and doing nothing for an hour randomly in the middle of the day. I feel guilty for wasting time as much as I am clueless as to how to fill it in a fulfilling way. “But Ro, you could do drafts!” A Concerned Person May Say. “You like writing!” Well, Kind Person, on some of these days, absolutely n o t h i n g Sparks Joy. 

“But Ro, I follow you on your other blog too!” The Concerned Person might continue.“You’re kind of active there, aren’t you?” And the answer, Kind Person who supported my career even if that blog is mostly obscure af fandoms - is yes.  I am kind of active on my other blog, @storyblcd. This brings us to the third and final reason why I’m.....moving at snail’s speed here, and that, my good friend - is anxiety. Well, mixed with a certain amount of mental exhaustion, of course. Note: this is n o t anyone’s fault. People’s interactions with me have not been negative - and they are not responsible for how my brain chooses to reaact to it. 

I’ve not lost muse for the muses on this blog, per se - but I’m getting burned out really fast writing them, for multiple reasons. First, muse imbalance. Now I know, I definitely k n o w - that sometimes people like one muse more than another, or have more interest in writing with one or the other, and I get that. I’ve said multiple multiple times that that is p e r f e c t l y fine. But honestly the reason I’ve lasted so long on a multimuse is because I can pick which muse I have muse for when, and I can respond accordingly / ask for interactions accordingly. But when I get so many people coming at me at once for the o n e muse when I have t w e n t y it sometimes gets a little? Discouraging? It makes me question whether or not only that one muse is popular for a reason. It also exhausts me re: the portrayal of that muse, because I”m putting out so many replies for that muse in a lot of sort of similar plots/scenarios that I just get burnt right out. And then I get scared that if I keep going I’ll want to drop the muse, so I’m staying away from those threads a little bit.

Second, I’m at a point in my portrayal of certain muses where I feel like there’s a certain expectation for how it’s going to be. My personal feelings aside, I think every mun expects their own portrayal to be different and unique and exciting - and it’s not different for me, only now I feel like the expectation and the pressure of coming up with something good and meaningful outweighs the feeling of exploration as I’m “discovering” the muse. Like most writers - I still crave validation, though more and more lately, I’m at a place in my writing where I f e e l like me from 2 months ago could have probably done a better job. While it’s not necessarily true, and these pressures are coming from m e and not any outside source, I f e e l like I have to consistently Make Good Writing, and simultaneously feel like some days I sit down and I try to do drafts and all I write is garbage. It just - doesn’t feel the same? So - more and more, I’m staring at the empty drafts page and then closing it - because if I don’t w r i t e I don’t have to admit I peaked two months ago.  

Both of these reasons have made me rather a bit avoidant of my muses here / this blog. Now, I’ve been struggling with anxiety for long enough that I know that a lot of this is - well, p r o b a b l y just my brain lying to me. See even as I’m writing this post now, my anxiety is saying “haha guess what n o one cares you’ve been gone” and my rational Anxiety-is-a-stupid-asshole voice is saying “nahhhhhh your brain is probably just lying to you.” But! In the battle, anxiety is kind of pummeling me now. I will r i s e again and win the war, most likely - but for now it’s anxiety: 1 and ro: 0.

AND finally - if you made it all the way down here, you’re a c h a m p. The solution! Well, as much of a solution as I’m hoping to get anyway - we’ll have to see if it implements well. I’m going to unfollow a few blogs so I can get my dash cleaner/more organized/less fast-moving and b r e a t h e. I’m going to drop a couple of threads, I might make a couple more muses request only/exclusive only for the like 2 people that have threads with them, I might drop a couple muses (though I don’t think this will really happen, Idk tho). There will be separate posts on those things coming soon, this is just to notify y’all. Thank you for all of your patience, thank you for all the wonderful people who’ve allowed me to write with you, I love all of you!!!!

[soft-sarcasm]

mark lee: almost-almost.

33. “Be a little quieter, I’m trying to take your makeup off.” + 44. “I can hear your smile through the phone.”+ 15. “I love just being around you.”

Pairing: mark lee x reader.

Request: Anonymous: Hello, i know youre not writing for the dreamies but do you write for mark...? If so can i request a drabble with prompt 33? Thank you so much and have a great day! + @anothernctzen: Helllooo can I have mark lee with 15 and 48 for the drabble game? Thanks in advance! 💞

Genre: fluff, sleepy and pouty mark.

Word count: 2+k.

a/n: so obviously I don’t know what a drabble means because I literally am only writing pieces over 1k but oh well, hopefully you guys aren’t sick of them yet. I had yet to do one of these drabbles with over two prompts so this was definitely an experience but when I was writing the storyline just seemed to meld together. Anyway, hope you guys like it and feel free to request if ya’ll want. (also i’m tagging you @kaylee-jade-camp and this has it’s own title because three pompts is too long.)

request a drabble.

  In theory, it is far too easy to say you’re going to do a multitude of productive things. The difficult part is even the completing of these tasks but rather conquering the ever-menacing foe of procrastination and actually gearing up to do the 101 productive things you list for yourself to do every day. The feat is made especially difficult when one is not just combating laziness but also the struggle of being pinned down by another human onto the bed you’re already having to coaxingly convince yourself to leave.  Everything becomes even more strenuous and taxing when the aforementioned human looks incredibly peaceful as they continue to sleep on, most likely oblivious to how inconceivably difficult they’re currently making your life.

Just the peaceful expression on Mark’s face was enough to make you want to throw in the towel and just stayed curled up with him in bed for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, despite the endearing, unconscious pout on his lips and the smudges of day-old makeup that was a side effect of him coming straight to your apartment (and in turn straight into your bed) after a music show; you needed to get up. As reluctantly as ever, you extracted yourself from his grip as carefully as possible, wincing at each and every creak you made as you tip-toed away from the bed.

Wednesday was the only break in your class schedule which meant that it was also the only day you had to catch up on all of the non-school related work that you had otherwise been neglecting. This meant the mundane things like washing and folding clothes, scrubbing your apartment of the dirt that Mark always teased was ‘nonexistent’ due to your near obsession with keeping your living spaces permanently immaculate and food shopping because your fridge was just depressing at this point. Thankfully for you- you had always been an earlier riser which meant it was usually easy to lug yourself out of bed at the latest 7:00 in the morning. However, as previously stated, adding Mark into the mix usually made the parts of you that wanted to be productive so you could relax and the conflicting opposition that much rather procrastinate and cuddle with Mark battle it out in the early hours of the day while he simply slept peacefully on; unaware of the internal war that was happening within the person he had cuddled to his chest.

Today productivity had won which meant you were grabbing a discarded hoodie from the floor over your oversized t-shirt and leggings that you most definitely had not worn to bed the night before, never. After having something to shield you from the cold that you were now so painfully exposed to due to the lack of having the perpetually warm Mark Lee wrapped around you, you grabbed for your phone that had been dutifully charging throughout the night before scampering out of the bedroom as quickly as possible so to not further disturb it’s unconscious inhabitant.

Your next course of action was attempting to fill your washing machine and clean the lingering dishes in the kitchen sink with as little noise as you could muster. Every small clutter of plates or silverware made you cringe and your spine prickle as you cursed the paper thin walls of your shoe-box apartment. Finally, you pressed the button labelled ‘Regular Cycle’ on the machine and listened carefully for the quiet mechanical wire before sighing in relief as no noise of consciousness emerged from your bedroom. Now that the most pressing and time-conscious tasks were done, you were able to complete your venture in acquiring the true necessity of life; food.

You could only hope as you scrambled to grab your handbag and slip out of your apartment that the previous day’s workload would be enough to keep Mark asleep until you returned home from the shop that was thankfully in walking distance from your building. There had been once when you had snuck out to grab two lattes from a coffee shop on one of the few mornings he had actually slept over and you had received a stern talking to when you had returned back as Mark had awoken to your absence. It had been a tedious thing, taking him seriously that day while he stood before you, shirtless and hair ruffled by sleep as he attempted to berate you for giving him no warning of your departure. His gripe was made all the less convincing when he had conceded to your lax apology of a pout and a kiss on his lips.

 Your body was half but half inside the seemingly endless meat-filled freezer as you painstakingly searched for the cut of beef you both wanted and could actually afford. Your fingers pried petrified package from petrified package only to be halted by the shrill sound of your ringtone that made you instantly recoil from the frost-bitten produce. Instinctively, you grappled for the cellular device, mindlessly running your near frozen finger over the ‘Answer’ button with no inherent caution.

“You left without telling me again.”

You could almost feel the sulky pout that accompanied Mark’s opening statement and you couldn’t help but roll your eyes, going back to surfing through meat packets as you kept your phone pressed to your ear, “I’m getting you food.”

The pout most likely increased, “But you didn’t tell me- I would have gone with you.”

“Yeah right,” You scoffed, having to concede to a cut that was not in your usual price-range for the sake of your sanity and your fingers, “And have my trip take at least twice as long because you’ve gotten distracted? No thanks. Besides, you were asleep.”

“I’m not anymore,” He further brooded and you could hear the distinct rustling of sheets that meant that he was still in bed, “And I take great offence to that previous comment about getting distracted.”

“Good,” You snarked, a taunting smile twisting like smoke at the corners of your lips as you reached for a bottle of Mirin, checking the price only briefly before throwing it into the cart that carefully peddled along under the guidance of your hand. “But anyway- you had no reason to mope, I’m almost done anyways.”

“Almost done or almost-almost done?” Mark pestered like the persistent idiot he was and you had to suppress the chuckle his adamant childishness summoned, “And stop laughing at me.”

“I’m not laughing at you,” You instantly rebuked, attempting to smoother your grin to no avail as you joined the line that thankfully only contained two other sleepy-eyed customers besides yourself.

“I can hear your smile through the phone.” He stated all too dryly and you could help but squawk out a laugh that resulted in you getting side-eyed by the clerk who was busy restocking the shelves to your right.

“Don’t worry love,” You soothed, placing your chosen items onto the counter, “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“You better- otherwise I’m leaving you.” Mark declared adamantly, “But only after I eat breakfast, might as well get some sort of compensation.”

 “Honey,” You crooned as you pushed open your door, a task that proved rather difficult as your hands were currently occupied by heavy-weight shopping bags, “I’m home.”

Mark’s only sign of recognition from his spot at you the tiny table you had purchased for the sole purpose of not being falling into the student trope of eating dinner at your coffee-table was a disgruntled hpmf. He scowled at you as he further cocooned himself in the comforter he had completely wrapped around himself, nursing the cup of coffee you had left for him in the microwave in the hand which was also the only part of him besides his face that was visible.

“Finally,” Was all he curtly grumbled out as you shuffled past him in the direction of the adjoining kitchen, “I see you meant almost-almost instead of almost.”

“Is that a Canadian thing or is it just a Mark thing? Because I have no idea what the difference between almost and almost-almost is.” You questioned as you began to distribute your purchases into their designated positions.

“Almost means that I’m two minutes away, almost-almost means that I’m almost, almost ready to leave.” He clarified while begrudgingly trailing after you into the kitchen where he took a seat on the counter.

You took a moment to glance back at him, placing down the sugar you had been busy pouring into its container so that you could quickly scamper over and press a kiss to his jutted out lip, “You learn something new every day.”

His glower only increased at your taunting as you resumed your previous task and left him moping in his blanket on the opposite counter, “I really don’t like it when you leave without telling me.”

“Sorry,” You gave an uncommitted shrug, “I didn’t think it would be necessary because I thought I’d be back before you woke up.”

“I can’t sleep without you,” He griped and you couldn’t help but coo at his endearing admission.

“Well then I’m actually sorry,” You said in complete sincerity shutting the fridge after you had successfully finished resuscitated its contents, quickly swiping one of the few remaining packets as you toddled back over to Mark. “I thought you would want some food seeing as I didn’t have any and you love food so much.”

“We could have ordered,” He countered, only half watching as you began to extract a makeup wipe from the freshly opened packet, “And anyway, I would have been fine without food anyway if it had meant you being here when I woke up. I love just being around you.”

You couldn’t help but scoff, shaking the makeup wipe slightly before raising it to his face to work at the remaining smudges of eyeliner and concealer that still littered his skin, “You’re being awfully confusing you know. I don’t know if you’re annoyed or hopelessly in love with me.”

“Both,” He simply summarised, blinking furiously as you attempted to remove the faded black line from the corner of his eye, “But you know it is rather rude to just leave with no warning, I mean what if one of these times you’re kidnapped and I just think you’ve gone out for some coffee. I mean really you should-”

“Be a little quieter, I’m trying to take your makeup off.” You butted in after you missed a particularly resilient spot of mascara for the second time due to the amount his head was wriggling as he continued to spew out his rambles, “And I already said I was sorry, are you really going to keep whining?”

Mark’s lip jutted out just in time for you to swipe the applicator across it causing him to recoil at the chemical taste and for you to grin at the disgusted look on his face, “Fuck that’s disgusting.”

“Well they aren’t really for eating,” You cooed, giving the left side of his face a final wipe before pulling back, satisfied with your work, “That’s what the food I just went and got you is for.”

Before Mark could voice any further complaints, you smothered his gripes with your lips on his and you couldn’t help the feeling of coy satisfaction as you felt him gradually melt under your presses. He was further sedated when you pulled back, reaching out from his blanket fortress to grab for you when you attempted to step back.

“Nuh-uh, I’m not done yet.”

You allowed yourself to be pulled back, wrapping your hands instinctively around his neck, “I thought you were annoyed with me.”

“I am,” He clarified, a content smile threatening the edges of his mouth, “But I’m also hopelessly in love with you.”

“As you should be- I’m a catch.”

“Alright, maybe I’m just annoyed.”

DRABBLE MASTERLIST. 

[onceuponamirror]

something wicked this way already came; “dark” betty cooper, utilitarian ethics, and the trolley problem

@village-skeptic tagged me in a wonderful meta post by @burberrycanary and my response spiraled into a whole monstrous thing so rather than hijack i thought i would make my own—

because over this past week i’ve noticed some really heated discussions and opinions about morals and judgments about what betty did to cheryl, and although i’ve already discussed it once [x], i decided, yanno, that just wasn’t enough for me. so.

THE COMPASS DOESN’T POINT NORTH

the entire series opened with betty declaring that she did everything for everyone, and she wanted just one thing for herself—but once she got a taste for it, or once a girl whose entire identity was shaped by external expectations of her, she started to realize the purpose in doing more for herself.

and like anyone who doesn’t know the limits of their newly found strength, she takes it too far. she’s a sheltered, privileged girl who is just now realizing that the system only plays to her, not her boyfriend or his family. she’s learning that the world is unfair as she goes.

or, what i’ve been trying to say is—dark betty didn’t disappear when a wig was stashed inside of a locker. she never went anywhere at all, in fact. 

“dark betty” is betty, fists unclenched, and that rage finding purpose. it’s the same girl who has been told what she can’t do her whole life, who has had nothing but rules and expectations about such.

because betty is an anti-hero, or becoming one, and has been for a while. 

i think that a lot of people hold betty to a much higher moral compass because she’s quite literally several angelic tropes come to life, particularly in her appearance and demeanor. (literally—the reason the archie comics have always been successful is because they’re compilations of cultural tropes.)

but betty when herself said that jughead was the soul of riverdale, this is the writers laying out their moral compass—it’s jughead, not betty. his journey, his foot on each end of the town line, his turbulence through political systems and cultural expectations—he is the ethical middle ground. 

i love her, but betty is not, and has never been, even as she presented that way. 

her sense of justice developed as self-defense, which makes sense considering her family; there’s nothing more machiavellian than the desire to encourage the stepford fantasy.

as in, she was raised to do whatever it took to appear perfect and pleasing, but meanwhile her parents are people who tell her to keep her head down and look out for herself first and foremost. hal and alice cooper’s ethics end beyond extensions of themselves, and that was something passed onto betty.

as in deux, an anti-hero is someone who does the “right” things the “wrong” way, and usually for personal reasons. 

(cheryl blossom could be considered one herself; and frankly, she and betty are hardly so different. they’re both deeply loyal and thus highly protective, willing to do whatever it takes to appease their inner sense of justice, and now forcefully against being defined by anyone other than themselves.)

but anti-heroes are often loved as male characters, and much more easily hated as women. author roxanne gay said it best on an essay profiling “likability” :

“[likability] is a very elaborate lie, a performance, a code of conduct […] the unlikeable man is inscrutably interesting; dark, or tormented, but ultimately compelling even when he might behave in distasteful ways […] when women are unlikeable it becomes a point of obsession in critical conversations.”

betty did something highly unlikeable, and that was the whole point. it was deliberate, it was part of her character. a person’s greatest strength is always their greatest flaw—this is because it is the most defined part of the personality, and thus it manifests loudest.

betty’s loyalty is her strength; it’s what drove her to want to protect the girls she knew from a harasser. but it’s also her flaw; it’s what also drove her to handcuff said harasser and drug/nearly drown him.

but i bring this all up not just because it’s a fun feminist tangent (though it is) but because betty’s cornerstone arc last season is the same one as it is now, as the old favorite utilitarian ethical dilemma—do you do one wrong thing to achieve the greater right?

CONSIDER THE TRAIN

or, for example, the trolley problem, an old standby in summarizing ethical thought experiments. it goes like this:

a trolley train is barreling on the tracks towards five people unable to move. on the other track: one person, who also cannot move. you have the ability to throw the switch, which will kill the one person, but save the five. 

if you do nothing, five people will die. 

for many people, the answer is obvious and simple: five is worth more than one. 

but—the follow up to this experiment is to reconsider it less passively. the scenario is the same: the trolley train approaches five people trapped on a track. 

instead of throwing a switch from afar, however, you are standing overhead, watching from above. next to you stands another person. the only way to save the five people is to push the person next to you onto the track, forcing it to stop but certainly killing the person beside you. 

but when you ask many people this, they balk. the answer suddenly feels that it’s wrong to push someone, because that’s a physical act, one of certain death that you will have to watch. 

but the end result is the same—one person dead, five saved. and i don’t bring this up to be an edgelord presenting an endless cycle of ethical theory, but my point: 

reactions to moralistic decisions feel more exaggerated when you see someone getting pushed. 

as in, i think many people felt strongly about betty “pushing” cheryl to save jughead and his father because it was a physical act of manipulation. we saw it play out. it felt worse, seemed heightened. 

there is no simple conclusion to this, and that is the whole damn point. because that is the nature of ethics as a theoretical discussion—you can go in circles forever, speaking in hypotheticals and arguing what you would do in the situation, or passing judgment, etc.

but doing nothing is an ethical choice too, when you’re on a set track—and i’m taking it out of the parable and speaking to the systemic track of the prison industrial complex or broken justice systems that i can’t believe is respectfully being brought up on this otherwise soapy teen drama—

anyway.

so, in the case of betty, cheryl, and jughead, she decided there was no way to save multiple people without pushing one. 

but people reacted very strongly to betty and her choice this past week. like. very strongly—from fans of her and from those who already were unsure about her. it was an interestingly visceral range of reactions, but one that i think comes from all of the aforementioned above, and requires a lot of consideration about the individual’s theoretical opinion about ethics vs it applied to situations. 

and so, the question becomes—what would you do? 

[guyawks]

A Guide for the Falling Game

Adrenaline is one hell of a chemical- or, neurotransmitter, to be technical. You could drag out any addictive substance in the world, from crack to booze to heroin, and you still couldn’t recreate the effect that a true, organic dose of adrenaline provides.

Of course, it’s not like people don’t already go looking for it.

They jump out of aeroplanes all the time, attach themselves to huge bungee cables and leap from towering cliff tops. All for a few minutes of high-altitude exposure and a hearty rush of good ‘ole adrenaline. But that’s fairly cumbersome, impractical even. What if I told you that you could get a hundred times that amount of adrenaline in one go- and live to tell the tale?

How would you like to, instead of spending inordinate amounts of money on a finite shot at excitement, fall through the very surface of the Earth?

Yes. I’m serious.

For those few incorrigible, thrill-seeking, chaotic daredevils out there, The Falling Game might just be for you.

Why is that? Well, because the act of falling through the Earth- and the arcane void which exists beneath it- will provide any mortal being with a rush of adrenaline so vast, so powerful, so unquantifiable that its impression will remain with them for the rest of their earthly days. Nothing you could experience here could compare. But then, that applies to the game’s risks too.

You see, playing The Falling Game is an incredibly dangerous thing to do.

It was never intended to be attempted, let alone carried out successfully. When the various heavenly deities (or cosmic serendipity, if you’re more secularly inclined) assembled the multiverse, they did so with a very clear design and order. Punching a whole through the fabric of our reality and taking a joyride through it was not a part of that.

Now to go and call this system sacrosanct would be overkill in my opinion as, believe me, there is nothing holy about what lies beneath the face of the Earth. But these boundaries exist for a reason, and fucking with them is akin to asking for trouble. When you start messing with reality, the lines between what is real and what is false begin to blur and you risk the lives of far more people than yourself.

When playing The Falling Game, there are a multitude of things which can go wrong. Should the correct measures not be taken by the player, you may find that you never touch ground again.

And then comes the question of what happens when you do- but I’ll get to that part later.

Now, I’m not going to outright go and tell you not to play the game. That would be pious and quite frankly, a little hypocritical of me. I’ll just remind you- caveat emptor. Buyer beware. Know exactly what you’re signing up for. Because, make no mistake, playing The Falling Game is an uphill battle. And once you’ve followed through with your fall, there is nogoing back.

Should you truly wish to proceed with the game- should you feel you’re courageous and adventurous enough, or that you have nothing much to live for, or that you simply don’t believe me and want to take the piss out of my story, read on.

And prepare yourself for the wildest- and potentially the last- ride of your existence.

In order to play, you will be required to obtain the following objects: an hourglass, a root pulled (not cut) from the soil, a pair of scissors, and a stick of plain, white chalk.

The ritual to fall through the Earth must be performed at a fairly specific time. That is at either dawn or sundown on any calendar day. Given the global variations in these two events I’ll leave it up to you to ascertain the exact timing. Just know that the sun must be touching the horizon when you begin and you must be finished by the time it had dipped beneath it.

You’ll need to find an elevated platform of some sort which is at least 10 metres (33 feet) above the ground. I’d recommend the rooftops of warehouses, them being buildings where you’re less likely to be noticed and labelled a suicide-case off the bat.

Arrive at the location during the aforementioned time period. Draw a semi-circle around yourself using the chalk, joining it to the ledge of the platform. The semi-circle must connect with the ledge- or the ritual will not work. Take the pulled root and sever it approximately in half using the scissors. By doing so you are symbolically cutting your ties to the Earth. Finally, turn the hourglass over and approach the ledge from which you plan to jump. Fixate your mind on exactly what you wish to accomplish as you do so.

It is at this point where you might stop and ask yourself how a set of such seemingly innocuous tasks could grant you the ability breach dimensional walls. Surely people must have strung together this miscellaneous list out of pure coincidence before? A child playing on a balcony, a street artist transposing their vision on concrete. Well- I didn’t make the rules. And to answer that question: not everyone who has played The Falling Game, has played willingly.

If you’re honestly ready, now is the time. Stand on the ledge, close your eyes and take the plunge.

Now, I’m sure I needn’t note that I assume no responsibility for any death or injury incurred by your failure to properly adhere to my instructions. I suspect a bunch of desperados such as yourselves should be familiar with the act of waiving your rights to safety for the greater good of entertainment.

And besides- if you’re going to fuck up at some point in this game, you’d much rather be dead on the pavement than alive beneath it.

If you’ve followed the rules correctly up to this point, you should find that after several seconds of free-falling- to your bewilderment- you have not shattered your spine on the concrete.

Open your eyes.

You will find yourself falling through an open, infinite, golden sky. One very much like the one above Earth, except beneath it instead. You’ll drift through layers and layers of clouds as if you were skydiving through the troposphere. But you won’t be. You’ll really be in the ether between dimensions- an endless void free of all boundaries. An adrenaline junkie’s paradise- and a fool’s nightmare.

Bearing consideration for you time, I should probably get to the rules- and how to avoid that pesky problem of not getting stuck here. The solution is both extraordinarily simple, and unimaginably difficult.

While you are in free fall, it is paramount that you maintain the belief that you will reach the ground. Given that this is a realm which encompasses the intangible, not the physical, the power of your mind here should come as no surprise. Should you allow your confidence in your safe return to waver, even momentarily, you will find that the surface you so greatly wish to land on never materializes. And as your doubts turn to reality, you will consequently spiral further and further into your newfound fate. A self-perpetuating cycle of limbo, doubt, and agony.

Hey- I told you it was no picnic.

It is also advisable that, during your fall, you do not close your eyes for any extended period of time. This isn’t really an official requirement or anything. It’s just… safer this way. This is not the kind of environment where you want to display complacency of any form.

Should everything go right, an indistinguishable period of this falling will pass. The time itself isn’t so important- it’s not like any time-keeping devices of yours would function here anyway. What matters is that once you’ve gotten your so desired “fix”- and only then- will you finally see a bird’s eye view of the ground that you jumped from emerge through the clouds. You’ll brace yourself for a gory, and seemingly inevitable impact…

And then you’ll wake up.

You’ll be in your bed. You’ll rise and wonder what a strange and life-like dream you just had. Give it a few minutes. Slowly, but surely, your recollections of the game will return to you. You’ll realize that it wasn’t a dream, that what you thought was impossible really did just happen, and that you made it through every second of it.

Congratulations. You’ve just successfully completed The Falling Game- traversed between realms.

You can now feel free to yawn and let out a sigh of relief, pore over the memories of the indescribable adrenaline shot you just received, go to school, tell your friends about it and, in general, live your life. You’ll even be able to log back into the sorry website you found this tutorial on and post a comment about how amazingly it worked.

Your life will resume as normal, you having fulfilled your quota for rebellious fun, and it will almost be as if you’re right back where you started.

…

Oh come on. You didn’t think playing would be that simple, did you?

On an existential plane with gravity, falling can only take you further away from the point where you began. Surely that was obvious to you. It’s only logical. You can’t fall in a loop.

So no, you won’t have landed on the exact same Earth you leapt off of.

But it will be the same for the most part, at least. Such is the nature of most parallel worlds.

You might notice that people act…differently here. Not in any significant way really, just small, subtle, nondescript things. The high school bully who has always tormented you might flash you the occasional, knowing wink. You might realize that your best friend spends an extra few seconds laughing at your jokes. And you might come home one day to find that your mother’s normally pensive expression while chopping meat more resembles that of hatred. But you’ll for sure tell yourself that you imagined these things, or that they are unrelated to what you did.

Like I said. Small, little, incidental moments like that. Nothing really worth worrying about, unless you’re the type that’s predisposed to that sort of paranoia to begin with.

Now, whether or not you choose to play the game again is what will decide whether these differences are going to become a problem for you or, eventually, a threat. Some people can live with just one fall- but others require more.

The worlds directly below this one are essentially mirror images of each other- harmless. With every fall however, those claims of safety become less certain. More things will change in each successive Earth you fall into. In what ways? I can’t necessarily predict.

But if you’re short on ideas- or just pretty dense- it might be helpful to note: down is the same direction as Hell.

If you keep playing The Falling Game, you might find that your repeated machinations do not go unnoticed. You may begin to see things moving, in the clouds, with each plummet through the sun-stained sky. And as you approach the ground, They may be standing there, waiting for you, watching while contemplating your presence in growing numbers.

As I told you, reality isn’t something you want to play with on an ongoing basis. That is, unless you want reality to play as well.

But- no need to get so serious. The game is a once in a lifetime experience. What’s the point of life if you don’t take any risks, right? I know that- despite the ridiculousness of it all, the danger, my warnings, the dire risk of physical and psychological harm- a good bunch of you will still blunder your way all the way down to the lowest level of existence. All in the name of- you guessed it- adrenaline.

Godspeed to you predictable few.

I could use some company.

[leighkhoopes]

The first big meme of 2017 has arrived and it's List the Top 10 Albums That Influenced You As A Teenager. This was an almost impossible selection for me, so I gave myself some additional ground rules: these albums all came out when I was an actual teenager (13-19, to be precise) and I promptly wore them out something serious. These are also albums that I continue to listen to and enjoy to this day. I also took the *complete* album into consideration—almost all of these are total listen-throughs for me, even though there may be some other songs and singles that had more of an impact on my impressionable teenage brain. 

 So, here's the list, how old I was when they came out, and some thoughts, in no particular order: 

Sleater-Kinney - One Beat (2002) I was: 17, in between high school and college This was the first SK album I ever bought, and I'm not ashamed to admit that. It was on one of those listening stations at the local music store (RIP ear-x-tacy) and the opener with its urgent drums, spindly guitars and fantastic vocals and harmonies drew me in immediately. Apparently One Beat was their "political" album and that makes sense, but the infectiously jangly "Oh!" remains one of my all-time favorite songs to this day, and though I've listened to the rest of their catalogue, One Beat remains my favorite to this day. 

Christina Aguilera - Stripped (2002) I was: 18, college freshman Fun fact: I was one of those angsty teens who mocked pop music while hiding my secret shame at loving every bubblegum beat and boy band dance jam. When you're a teenager, you have to keep up appearances—I knew I wasn't one of the popular types, so I tried to be a "rock" kid and turned up my nose at what turned out to be some really great songs. My dear Ms. Aguilera changed all of that for me. I had already loved her first singles (You cannot deny "Genie in a Bottle," so don't even try) and her complete ownage of "Lady Marmalade" for the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, so when Stripped came out in all its sexual and bold yet vulnerable and honest glory, I found the soundtrack to the twilight of my teenage years. Everyone knows about "Dirrty," "Beautiful," "Can't Hold Us Down," and "Fighter," but have you heard the soft sensuality of "Lovin' Me for Me"? What about the deep piano soul of "Underappreciated"? This album is packed with both gems and jams, and remains relevant to this very day.

Eve - Scorpion (2001) I was: 16, high school junior I came late to the rap game, since I wasn’t allowed to buy CDs with parental advisory stickers until my senior year of high school, so I've made a lot of progress, but I didn't get the kind of hip-hop education most of my friends have besides what made it onto the radio at the time. This was post-Tupac/Biggie but pre-50 Cent, and the airwaves were mostly dominated by the aforementioned pop and its bad cousin pop-punk. So when Eve's basically flawless "Let Me Blow Ya Mind" featuring Gwen Stefani's damn near perfect hook and what I would learn is a quintessentially Dr. Dre beat dropped, all slinky and sexy and sassy, I was beyond obsessed. The rest of the album is on point, too: "Who's That Girl?" became an anthem for me because I could easily sing back "LEIGH's that girl!" (la la la-la, la la la-la); "Gangsta Bitch" was a sick collab with Trina and Da Brat; and "Got What You Need" is a great call-and-response banger courtesy of Swizz Beats and some other lesser Ruff Ryders rapper who is probably mad that Eve destroyed him on this track and probably in real life as well. 

The Kills - Keep on Your Mean Side (2003) I was: 19, college sophomore Somehow I got this CD for Christmas? I don’t remember how or where I heard about it, but this album for me is the perfect combination of sexy and scuzzy with raw guitars and sparse, swampy beats and endless, unbearable chemistry between VV (Allison Mosshart) and Hotel (Jamie Hince) that continues to this day. Fifteen years, four albums, and multiple side projects (and one very high-profile marriage and divorce) later, and I am one of those fans who firmly stans for them to live happily ever after in musical harmony and continuing rock n’ roll cuteness. They’re just SO PERFECT TOGETHER, OKAY? Anyway, this album is great, and you should listen to it if you haven’t already.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2001) I was: 16, soon-to-be high school senior If I had to pick ONE album that was the most influential to me of all of these, it would be Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ seminal self-titled EP. It dropped right before my senior year of high school, when I was finally starting to figure myself out a little bit and realizing that I liked loud music by loud ladies that I could dance to and scream along to, regardless of genre or format. The Strokes, The Hives, The White Stripes, and all their ilk were kicking off a new rock revolution, but there were so few ladies out there making as much noise as I needed them to. Karen O was not a great singer, but the way she whispered and groaned and wailed over the wall of sound that Nick and Brian created with just a guitar and a drumset was revelatory to me, especially after I got to see them live a few years later, smushed up against the stage at the Southgate House and rapt as the speakers pounded in my chest and Karen sprayed beer and spit on all of us, and she leaned down at the beginning of “Our Time” at the end of their set, when I was exhausted and enthralled, put the mic in front my face and together we crooned “To break on through-ooh!” YYYs continued to put out some great music and evolve their sound not-so-greatly in the following years (sorry, y’all, but Mosquito was not good), but nothing seared itself so firmly on my psyche as Karen and me covered in sweat, singing what should have been an anthem for the pre-1990 Millennials: “It’s the year to be hated / so glad that we made it.” If that doesn’t sum up everything everyone’s ever said about those of us born between 1980 and 1999, I don’t know what does.

Daft Punk - Discovery (2001) I was: 16, high school junior If there’s another album I had to name as one of my top all-timers, completely different but still equally influential, it’s Daft Punk’s Discovery. Daft Punk allowed me to embrace my love of dance and electronic music, and built a perfect unifying force among me and my friends, providing that anthem we’d been waiting for with “One More Time,” a song that still fills me with joy every time those first few beats fade in and I can’t help but smile when it drops and that surprisingly, beautifully warm vocoder voice comes in over the spaces between. The rest of the album is literally iconic as well, and really cemented Daft Punk as the arbiters of dance parties for everyone, all-inclusive, delirious and endlessly entertaining and ultimately joyful.

Le Tigre (1999) I was: 15, high school sophomore I’ll admit it: I missed the Riot Grrl movement by several years, so Kathleen Hanna and Le Tigre were a new experience for me. I loved the edge and the anger in her voice, the fuzzy throwback sound and sampling that made it seem like something I could do if I just tried harder and wasn’t so shy and scared to raise a ruckus and my voice. One thing I’ve noticed about so many of these albums and groups is that I really liked stripped-down music with big sounds created by small groups of people: duos and trios make up the bulk of my favorite albums during this era. I got to see them live as well, when JD Sampson joined the lineup and became my introduction to confusingly, distractingly sexy nonbinary people, and it was at the height of the Bush era, in the middle of my college years, and while I didn’t feel the exhilaration of singing with Karen O, I felt the freedom of dancing my ass off and screaming until my lungs my ached, unafraid of who I might bump into with my unruly booty, unafraid of who I might offend with my burgeoning baby feminism. I was sad when they stopped recording and disappointed at their recent lackluster Hillary Clinton track near the end of the election cycle, but I’ve loved the resurgence of The Julie Ruin and the ongoing reinvention and determination Hanna continues to project in the face of so much bullshittery that permeates our world and culture today. 

The Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium (2003) I was: 19, college sophomore At the Drive-In was another band I missed out on the first time around, but The Mars Volta popped up in my circles of smartass potheads once I started to find my tiny tribe of people in the rural Kentucky college town in which I lived for four years. I’ve always loved a man unafraid to belt out an anthem, and Cedric Bixler-Zavala golden throat soared over Omar Rodruigez-Lopez’s prog-rock symphonies and movements, and it sounded just as good when I was stone cold sober as when I was self-medicating in the name of social acceptance and anxiety avoidance. I will forever associate them with giant spliffs and endless laughter, letting the discordant sounds wash over me and and Cedric’s voice burn through me, as well as making myself a zombie prom queen Halloween costume under a waxing moon after a bad breakup, working some kind of dark magic to transform myself into someone no one would recognize, even if only for a night. There was always a sadness that permeated these songs, something that got lost in their later, more esoteric albums I could never get into, and there was something on this album that made me feel okay with being sad, allowing myself to feel my feelings that I tried to keep hidden for far too long.

Ludacris - Back for the First Time (2000) I was: 16, high school junior Again, the most rap I had ever really listened to before high school was MC Hammer and Will Smith’s squeaky clean radio-rap, so Luda’s debut was a major eye-opener for overly-sheltered white suburban me. "What's Your Fantasy" and "Phat Rabbit" were titillating, sure, but also fantastic rhymes and beats, and "Stick 'Em Up Bitch" and "1st & 10" were darkly hilarious under their gangsta veneers. "Southern Hospitality" brought bravado to what could have just been another Neptunes beat, and throughout it all, Luda's flow was so sick and smooth, so full of wit and wordplay and unashamed sexuality, and I loved to blare it driving through my parents’ neighborhood, even after the speakers in my car blew out and sounded like nothing but surly vibrations as I dawdled on my way home for my 11pm curfew. If I had to come in at what I considered an unfair, oppressive time, I was going to wake up everyone else in the process. Yes, I was a not-so-secret dick when I was a teenager–weren’t we all? Side note: I'm kind of sad Shawnna never made it all that big, and this video is the absolute perfect time capsule of the year 2000.

Peaches - The Teaches of Peaches (2000) I was: 16, high school senior I’ll also admit this: I fucking loved “electroclash.” That amalgamation of punk and dance music was everything to me, the perfect blend of rock guitars and big beats that enmeshed everything teenage me loved about being loud and dancing like everyone was watching and not giving a fuck either way. Peaches was gross and vulgar and rapped about sex with no emotion but pleasure, and she got even dirtier as the years went on, but The Teaches of Peaches was seminal and shocking and just the kind of thing a slightly crazed and endlessly awkward, horny teenage girl needed to hear to start embracing my own weird sexuality and rampaging hormones and confused feelings, instead of keeping them locked away and shameful like I was supposed to. Everyone knows and loves "Fuck the Pain Away," thanks to its cameo appearances in Lost in Translation and the Jackass movies, but "Lovertits" was always my personal favorite from this album. The moment that breakdown takes over is pure brilliance and one of my favorite moments in any song ever. Peaches dancing in front of the mirror in this video is teenage me, always and forever, singing to myself when no one was looking and finally finding away to sing to myself in public, out loud, and not caring who heard me. I'm still working on it, but I think these albums did a lot to push me in the direction I've gone and to get me where I am now as a feminist and a lover of music and dance parties for life.

Honorable Mentions: 

Beck - Midnite Vultures (1999)

No Doubt - Return of Saturn (2000)

Madonna - Ray of Light (1998)

The Strokes - Is This It (2001)

N.E.R.D. - In Search Of... (2001)

[givencontext]

Excellence is Not an Act, It’s a Habit

This adage from Aristotle gets kicked around a lot. We all want to be Excellent, right? Then again, some of us want to spend a lot of our time watching Star Trek reruns. I have to believe that there is space in my life for both.

At my previous job, I had this quote posted at my desk. I had that job for a long time, so I am not sure when my fascination with habits started, but I began following James Clear and Gretchen Rubin several years ago. I just finished the audiobook of James’s new book Atomic Habits. I plan to put this on my list of books to read/listen to at least once a year. This would put it on par with some of the books that have been most influential in my life. Stay tuned for another post covering that list of books in more detail. (Note to self: link back to this.)

Be Excellent

As the habit gurus explain, if you want to be something, it is a good idea to identify exactly what that something means to you. For the sake of argument, let’s say that I do, in fact, want to be excellent. What will that look like for me?

Authenticity – I want to show up as myself – whatever that means today. As discussed in this post where I expressed my desire to embrace inconsistency, my moods tend to change, and I want to be a person who is growing and learning. It is important for me to be able to bring whatever comes up today to the table.

Balance – Can we get back to Star Trek reruns now? I need downtime. Much of the advice we get for “how to be excellent” revolves around an endless to-do list. Yes, I have one of these, but I sometimes go several days without looking at it. I recently talked about working with lunar cycles. This is a great tool for recognizing the natural cycles and patterns that take place in our lives. You see, balance is not about being perfectly even-keeled, all day, every day. Balance is about the long view. I try to spend approximately as much time on one end of the spectrum as I do the other… and I try not to get to the extreme ends of that spectrum. Another buzzword for this strategy is Self-Care. More on that below when I get to some actual habits.

Connection – Before I joined Bright Line Eating, I did not give this one enough credence. I have some really awesome friends, but I always had a tendency to keep my connections limited. I was “selectively social,” as one personality assessment put it. In the past few years, I have branched out and tried to connect with more people in ways that speak to some of the different areas of my life that need connection and support. This ties closely to points one and two by providing a network full of people ready to give me a boost in whatever direction I need.

Nearly anything that I want to do with my life can be tied back to one of these core values. If it can’t, I will finagle it until it fits or else it probably isn’t important.

Time for Habits

What are the habits I use for my personal brand of Excellence? These are a few of mine, and of course, they are constantly evolving.

Morning Routine

I pride myself on being flexible, easy-going, and not being hooked on consistency. BUT. I do find that my life runs more smoothly when I have a good morning routine. A routine consists of several habits. This is a good place to make use of the Atomic Habits idea of “habit stacking.” You can tie a new habit you want to implement to something you already do. I am an annoying morning person, so my day is front-loaded with many of the things I consider important.

Tracking

I use my Rituals for Living Dreambook and Planner to track my four top priority habits (B,W,M,T.) I also use my Nightly Checklist to track a more extensive list of habits. Let’s start with the Big 4.

B,W,M,T

This is my code that I write along the bottom of my planner to remind me to check off my four primary habits each day: Bright Lines, Writing, Meditation, Tap.

Bright Lines

I am a Bright Lifer. This means I follow the Bright Line Eating plan. I get a check mark in my planner for each day that I follow all four of the Bright Lines: No Sugar, No Flour, Eat only at mealtimes, Eat my planned, weighed, and measured portions.

Writing

Ideally, I would work on my blog every day. That is not always the case. The habit gods tell me it is more important to do something consistently than to do it perfectly, so I try to write something every day. I fall behind even writing a few lines in my Five Year Journal daily. Writing is important to me, so I will keep tracking and working towards that consistency.

Meditation

This is one of my favorite habits, but is also one that is first to slip when life gets crazy. It should be an easy one to keep when I travel, but it tends to slip there too. My husband is used to hearing me do guided meditations from YouTube, but recently I have done more “snooze button” silent meditations. I never actually get back to sleep when I hit snooze, so this is a good chance to get centered and focus on my breath before I ever get out of bed. Nine minutes of meditation counts!

Tap

One of my strategies for dealing with Empty Nest Syndrome was to find things to keep me busy. One day my oldest kid (22) tagged me in a Facebook post from her life-long dance studio. They would be offering an adult tap class on Wednesday nights. Years ago, when I was at the studio with her anyway, I had taken a “moms” hip hop class. I am not a good dancer. However, as previously mentioned, I am an annoying morning person, which also means…. I LOVE TO MAKE NOISE! Tap dancing classes are perfect! Not to mention that my kid could take these classes with me, so it double-bills as Quality Time (her love language,) a chance to grab a midweek meal together after class, and (oh yeah) activity. My kid is a flipping *WIZARD* at tap dancing. She was seriously born to tap. Somehow she was born out of my womb and… I do NOT have the aforementioned mad skills. I suck. So the last of my priority habits is to practice my tap steps every damn day. If I do it for one minute, I give myself credit.

Nightly Checklist

Each of the Big Four are in my Nightly Checklist as well, but this contains several other things. Admittedly, some of these are “nice to have.” I do not expect myself to have 100% on this checklist every day. In fact, I rarely do, but if I want to achieve something, I find that putting it here helps.

Short inspirational reading

Meditation

Read a positive reminder

Plan tomorrow’s meals

Post in online support community

Gratitude Journal (I have multiple locations for this, but only doing this doesn’t get me a check mark for “Writing” above.)

Track hours slept (not so accurate since my Fitbit died)

Kept my Bright Lines (individual check boxes)

Physical therapy exercises

5 year journal

Artist’s Way (I keep falling off this one)

Morning Pages

Read a Shakespearean Sonnet

Write for my blog

Declutter

Tap!

Complete my Nightly Checklist!

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