#because before this the only hate I ever got on the internet was from julia fox

[m0llygunn]

to that one person that sent me a message last year that said not every one of my fics is going to a blockbuster hit — fuck you yes they are and we can go band for band at the tumblr box office

[caranfindel]

Take these broken wings and learn to fly (15.20 coda)

het, but Wincest-compatible | about 2300 words | PG-13 for language | characters: sam winchester, sam’s blurry wife |

Julia has been widowed (God, what an awful word, widowed) for three years when she meets Sam. It’s a work-based friendship at first. She’s kind of lonely and sad, he’s kind of lonely and sad, and they gravitate toward each other. And then one evening they’re at a bar, the last ones left from an after-work happy hour, both of them drinking more than they should, and she thinks he’s kind and thoughtful and smart and he may be 10 years older than me but he’s still hot as hell and I enjoy being with him and I look forward to seeing him and maybe I should just… and she kisses him. He’s shocked; shocked enough to confirm that he wasn’t just hanging around hoping to make it out of the friendzone. And then he’s holding her face in his hands and he’s kissing her too.

It’s good. They’re good together. It’s not the earth-shattering, all-encompassing romance she had with Shaun. Julia knows she’ll never have anything like that again. Most people don’t even get one soulmate in their lives; no one gets two. And she knows Sam doesn’t have that same desperate love that Shaun had for her; she knows she’ll never have his whole heart. (She knows the woman he intended to marry was killed in a fire, she knows another woman he loved went back to her ex. She doesn’t know which of these women still owns that last piece of Sam’s heart.) But she loves Sam, and he loves her, and they get married.

(The sex is amazing. Sometimes he’s gentle, almost reverent, as if he’s afraid he’ll break her, and other times he’s fierce and passionate and almost tries to break her, and she loves both ends of the spectrum.)

She suggests they melt down her old wedding band to make a new one. It was an heirloom from her grandmother, a plain wide band of yellow gold that she loves, that she thought she’d wear for the rest of her life. But Shaun is the one who put it on her finger the first time. It doesn’t seem right to ask Sam to accept it now. A new band from the old gold seems like a good compromise. No, Sam says, I couldn’t ask you to do that. I know a way we can make it ours. He has the inside of the band engraved with the same symbol he wears tattooed over his heart, and makes her promise to never take it off. Bad luck, he says.

He’s such a contradiction. Scary smart, but as superstitious as an Appalachian grandmother. Calm and unflappable, but with a weirdly hyperactive startle reflex. Kind and empathetic, but capable of extreme violence when pushed to his limits (seriously, don’t walk your drunk ass up to Sam Winchester’s wife and lay hands on her, and don’t get mouthy when she tells you to back off) and just really, frighteningly skilled at that violence.

(A little frightening and also very sexy. Julia’s always had a thing for the hero type.)

They both have nightmares. One night Julia watches Shaun’s face melting under his gear and wakes with a cry of horror. Sam holds her as she tearfully describes living on the knife edge of constant fear that comes with loving someone whose job is literally running into burning buildings. I know, he says, over and over, even though he can’t possibly know. The irony of their first loves both dying in flames is not lost on her, but it’s not like his college girlfriend was a firefighter. It’s not like he watched her go to work every day and prayed she’d make it home alive.

Julia’s pregnancy is a wonderful surprise. She and Shaun had tried for over a year before she was widowed, and she just didn’t count on it happening with Sam. They agree not to name the baby after anyone they’ve lost. Let’s not name him after our pain, she says, and Sam is okay with that. (Or he isn’t. But ever since she showed him the positive pregnancy test, she’s known she could ask him for anything. She’s known he would rip out his heart and serve it on a platter if she asked for it.)

But they haven’t decided on a name yet when her water breaks four weeks early. When their perfect baby boy is born at 12:10 a.m., the nurse announces the date and time and Sam looks up at her in shock and blinks away happy tears and says it’s the 24th. It’s my brother’s birthday. Julia is flying high on endorphins; she loves this baby and she loves this man and she even loves his dead brother she never got to meet, and she says it’s got to be a sign; let’s name him Dean.

She takes off her wedding ring, just this once, to have Dean’s birthdate engraved on the inside. Sam does the same with his own ring. He insists they go to a jeweler who will engrave while they wait, rather than leaving the rings there. She waves a hand at her lumpy postpartum body. You afraid someone’s gonna make a move on all this if you don’t keep a ring on it?

He laughs at her and says you’re onto me, even though he’s the one who needs to be locked away, still with that long lean runner’s body and the amazing shoulders and the goddamn dimples. I just don’t like us being without them, he says. He is a sweet, sentimental fool and she adores him. He bends down to kiss her, carefully maneuvering the baby he’s wearing in a sling, and Julia looks at this man and this baby and this life she didn’t think she was get to have and knows she’s happier than she has any right to be. And she’s relieved when Sam slips the ring back onto her finger, this ring imbued with the men she loves, so maybe he’s not the only sentimental fool.

(One thing she loves about Sam is that he understands why she feels guilty that Shaun didn’t get to share this life with her.)

In July they light a little candle for Dean’s six-month birthday. When Julia wakes the next morning, Sam’s side of the bed is empty and cold. She finds him cuddling their sleeping baby in the living room. I got up to give him a bottle, Sam says. I guess I just fell asleep out here. His red-rimmed eyes and empty coffee mug suggest he didn’t actually sleep at all, but, well. They’re both battling their own private demons. If a night cradling the baby gives Sam some peace for whatever reason, she’s glad of it.

Sam’s fierce love for their child takes her by surprise. If Julia has 90% of his heart, his son has 110%. He parents with a vengeance, is the only way she can think of to describe it. Like he’s making up for something. She doesn’t feel slighted, but it’s impossible to ignore that ever since Dean was born, Sam’s prime objective has been to make sure the boy is happy and safe. Everything else comes second.

(When she notices Sam has been carefully marking his tattoo symbol onto Dean’s clothing, hidden near seams and always in a color that almost matches the fabric, she decides not to say anything. He gets a little funny about his superstitions sometimes.)

Sam desperately wants Dean to have a sibling, and they try for another one, but it doesn’t happen. Julia reminds him that they’re lucky to have even one child. That having a sibling is not a lifetime guarantee of companionship and love. She should know, after all, since Stephanie cut her off after she married that asshole Scientologist and decided she couldn’t have a relationship with anyone who wasn’t also in their stupid cult.

Dean has plenty of friends and tons of activities, which Sam encourages with an almost religious fervor, but he never pulls away from his parents. They have so much in common, Sam and his son. Instead of rebelling as a teenager, Dean seems to grow even closer to his father. They spend hours together, paging through the ancient books in Sam’s study (she hates them, they smell musty and make her sneeze) or driving in the old Chevrolet. They even travel together sometimes, visiting those friends of Sam’s that live up north somewhere. Julia met them at the wedding and they were perfectly nice, thrilled to death that she and Sam had found each other. But she always feels like an outsider when they’re around, like they’re part of something she’ll never understand. So much history, with Sam and the brother she never got to meet. They absolutely dote on Dean though, and he seems to love them too, so the boys’ trip to Sioux Falls becomes an annual event.

(Dean is 14 years old when he comes home from one of these trips with his own version of the tattoo.)

When Julia is diagnosed with cancer, Dean is 16 years old. Sam does his best to ensure life goes on as normal for their son but somehow never neglects Julia’s needs. He throws himself into research and is always on top of the latest treatment, always at her elbow with the top internet-recommended remedy for her side effects, making sure both she and Dean have everything they want and need, all the attention and support they can tolerate. She doesn’t know when, or if, Sam actually sleeps. When she feels up for it, he arranges experiences for the three of them. A week lying on the beach, a weekend in New York City, a night in the mountains looking at the stars. When we look back on this time, he says, I don’t want us to only remember how much it sucked. I want us all to have good memories too.

(She doesn’t know why he’s concerned about her memories. There’s a good chance she won’t have much time to enjoy them. But it’s good for Dean. She doesn’t want this to ruin Dean’s childhood.)

Sam insists Dean go away to college as planned. Julia agrees, although she’s kind of surprised he’s willing to let the boy out of his sight. Aren’t you going to miss him? she asks.

So much, he answers. But this isn’t about me, and what I need. It’s about him. They drive Dean to school in the ancient Chevrolet. Supposedly because the trunk has room for all of his stuff, but Julia is pretty sure it’s just one last sentimental road trip in the old thing before Sam retires it. When they pick Dean up at the end of the school year, it’s in her SUV. Dean promises his father, more than once, that he’ll restore the Chevy someday.

Five years after Julia’s diagnosis, she’s sitting in the doctor’s office learning that her last remission was her last remission. There are no more options. She has months, not years. Sam clutches her hand and nods, once, as if to say I should have known this would happen; I should have expected something like this. Then he takes her home.

It’s a blessing in a way, he says late that night, after a little too much to drink. Knowing what’s coming. Having time to say goodbye. You don’t always get that. And yes, she knows this as well as anybody does.

Sam has always been supportive of her choice not to contact Stephanie, but one day he says Jules, I promise I’ll never bring it up again. It’s just that I don’t want you to have any regrets. I don’t want you miss the opportunity to say things that you’ll wish you’d said. Julia isn’t sure Steph will speak to her. She’s not even sure she’ll have the same phone number — they haven’t spoken since Dad’s funeral, a year after she was widowed — but she makes the call. And Steph answers. And cries. And comes to visit, where she hugs and cries some more. Sam watches it all with a sad smile for a while, then disappears into the garage to sit in the old Chevy.

When Julia takes her last conscious breaths, Dean is holding one hand and Sam is holding the other. She squeezes her son’s hand and thinks I love you, dear boy, and I’m sorry I have to leave you. She squeezes her husband’s hand and thinks thank you for giving me this, thank you for taking care of me, thank you for loving me and letting me love you. Then she closes her eyes and lets the soft, warm darkness take over.

And then. Then she wakes to a cool breeze and the sound of chirping birds. She’s standing at a lake she recognizes. It’s Shaun’s favorite fishing spot. And Shaun is there, waiting for her. And everything is okay.

Sam does show up eventually. Julia’s sitting on the porch of the cabin with Shaun, enjoying the perpetual nice day (sometimes a spring morning, sometimes a fall afternoon, but always nice) when she hears the familiar rumble. It cant be, she thinks. It can’t be that old car. But it is.

I’m glad you found someone with good taste in cars, Shaun says, as Sam unfolds himself from the driver’s seat. He looks exactly as he did the day she met him; no glasses, only a little grey at his temples. Still tall and strong and beautiful. She runs to meet him and embraces him as Shaun watches from the porch.

You found Shaun, Sam says. I’m so happy for you, Jules. I really am. He doesn’t seem to have any intention of joining her (their) Heaven permanently, but he doesn’t seem to have anyone else with him either. Where is the dead girlfriend? How is this fair?

They talk about Dean, and Julia’s heart swells with pride over her strong, smart, kind, brave son. He’s like you, she says. He’s just like you.

Sam shrugs. He’s a Winchester.

But what about you? she says. You’re not — you’re not alone here, are you?

Nah, he says. I’m good. I promise.

(Eventually Julia meets the first Dean, and she understands.)

===

I know a lot of people have mocked Sam's blurry wife, but I actually have grown to love the concept. Because it means she can be anything we want her to be. And yeah, initially I liked the idea of her being Dr. Cara, or Eileen. But now I don't think that would happen. I think Sam would have to start fresh to have that kind of relationship. And I also like the idea of Sam's wife having her own soulmate somewhere, waiting for her, so she's not a huge part of Sam and Dean's shared Heaven. I mean, they're gonna visit, obviously. And then they'll go home to their soulmates.

The title is from "Blackbird" by the Beatles.

[amarantine-amirite]

I Could Fall and Keep On Falling

When you're born in a burning house, you think the whole world is on fire when it isn't. Growing up, what looked like a minor inconvenience always triggered a large cascading failure. I could never believe that little nuisances were just little because of that. The distinction between a small annoyance and the early stage of a catastrophe didn't exist in my world for a very long time.

I thought I had learned the difference between a nuisance and a disaster. Then came the Super Bowl Halftime Show.

I was in a band at the time: Toxoplasmosis Gandhi. We play rock versions of classical music as well as neoclassical stuff. We would be opening for One Direction at the Super Bowl Halftime Show. I think we only got booked because nobody could believe that our band was real.

We took to the stage in wedding dresses, gold chain necklaces, and those nerdy belt buckles like what Howard Wolowitz wears. The first song that we played was “The Silver Fairy” from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty. It went off normally, other than when the lines in our brains got crossed with the song from the scene in the Disney film where the fairies are cleaning the cottage. Between the drums, the banjo, the electric guitar, the upright bass, and shouting “olé” at the end; it had to have been the most badass rendition of Tchaikovsky ever.

The crowd went nuts over it. None of us expected it to be such a hit. You don’t think of football fans as enjoying the works of Tchaikovsky, but there you go. "Thank you, Atlanta!”

We moved on to our next song, Enya’s “Even in the Shadows”. I think it was the first time that I sang instead of Julia. Both of us can sing, but Julia's got a 4-octave vocal range. Hetty (our drummer) is tone-deaf, and Nancy (our bassist) is actually deaf, so neither of them sings.

We ran into a problem with this song. The Chorus of the song is: I could fall and keep on falling, I could call and keep on calling, Wonder why this love is over, Wonder why it's not forever. I tried to sing the above, but all I could get out was “WE CAN'T ESCAPE THE FILIPINO” four times.

I thought I'd be able to do it after the bridge, that what had happened was a momentary glitch. No such luck. Once again, we can't escape the Filipino.

We finished our set. One Direction took the stage after we did. Come the third quarter, I tried to say something about the Halftime Show to Hetty, but no sound came out. It didn't occur to me until after the game that I had a stroke onstage.

Our act went viral. Nobody knew what we can't escape the Filipino was supposed to mean. Based on the number of replies that were variations of the phrase “Yeah, the Philippines is crowded. There are people everywhere”, people in the Philippines must have found it funny.

We thought that my stroke was the worst it would get. We had no idea that there was another catastrophic failure on the horizon. What made it different this time was that it wasn’t just a catastrophe for me, but for everyone who uses Twitter.

How? Well, there’s kind of a long story behind it. Last year, an organization called Tower bought Twitter. Tower is the property management company for public school buildings in the state of Oregon. Once Tower got their mitts on Twitter, moles of people got their accounts canned for “hate speech”; said hate speech was just a bunch of drunken, late-night shitposting. People's accounts got trashed for tweeting something as simple as “Whenever you beat a robot master, you take their name, remove Man/Woman from the end, and make it your name” during a thread about non-binary superheroes. But it doesn’t matter how inconsequential it is. Any tweets that mention LGBTQ+ people, BIPOC people, and people with disabilities were also removed and the accounts were frozen for three months.

As time went on, it got worse. Just before Super Bowl Sunday, they issued an ultimatum: The next person we catch using Twitter to disseminate hate speech, we will delete Twitter from the Internet!

The next thing that went on Twitter that it construed as hate speech: my onstage stroke. True to their word, Tower shut down Twitter for good.

I didn’t find out what happened until I turned on the news the following morning. The top story was the collective shock nearly a billion people felt as they signed into Twitter, only to find it blocked in every country in the world. It felt like a bad nightmare that you sometimes get after eating spicy curry before bed. The next day felt even less like reality when hundreds of millions of people all over the world logged on to their computers and discovered that Twitter had been deleted from the internet, gone forever.

I had only recently learned how to tell the difference between an annoyance and the beginning of a disaster. I thought it was safe to let my guard down. I was wrong, and now I wonder why even bother to ignore the possibility of a cascading failure.

I'm dreading going to school. Everyone will know that I am the reason that Twitter no longer exists.

@heavensghost

[jelloopy]

Murder on The Rockport Limited Notes

Previous: Character Creation, HtbG, Moonlighting

Ch 1

Robbie is a halfling who is pretty shitty but he’s good at making “potions” (Robbie is the roommate that everyone really hates but doesn’t want him to leave because he is their plug)

Taako is on the top bunk, Magnus is under Taako, Robbie is next to Taako and Merle is under Robbie

They are woken up at 3 am to report to Lucretia (3 am really?)

”Yeah it’s like Mario Mario or Luigi Mario” ~Griffin (This is so funny because this actually proves that Taako’s last name really is Taaco. Before Justin played it as a joke but this kinda derails that)

Robbie asks them for Pringles when they leave (Thus the beginning of me and the boys not remembering him by anything other than Pringles)

They arrive in their PJs (Taako is in footie pajamas and Merle’s has a flap in at the butt with a Kenny Chesney tattoo on his ass) (When the hell did Merle get that tattoo. Also, why is Lucretia in her full BoB garb right now? Was she asleep and get changed really quickly? Do her robes double as PJ’s? Did she just not go to sleep?)

Taako says he gets night terrors that’s why he’s in like a full-body Onesie/sleeping bag (That is so fricking sad if you think about his backstory later on…)

Magnus just starts changing clothing right then and there when Lucretia tells them that they don’t have time to get ready (This man really has no shame or boundaries. I imagine it was the same in the century tbh)

Leimann Kessler (half-elf man) was murdered before he was even on the train but was able to secure the Relic on the train (Personally, don’t know a lot about how trains work but this to me is kinda odd. Who knew he died? Do their bracers know when the wearer perishes? Is there like a body temp check and a pulse check in there too? We know that it can track them but… how much more can it do…)

All the relics come from a different school of magic. They were never in the hands of someone long enough to learn what they are capable of (Potentially this is a lie. We would have already known the names, schools of magic, and possibly what they could do based upon that alone. I bet Lucretia is hiding that info in her office)

The Gauntlet deals with Evocation magic (Hmmm, I can only imagine why. Maybe because Lup also worked in Evocation magic?)

Avi is manning the cannon! The whole scene with Magnus High as hell. Avi Never learned how to Wink (Avi you’re adorable I love you. Magnus. Get your shit together man.)

Taako pulls the lever too early and they change trajectory into a swamp

Leech fight! (I honest to god forgot this even happened before listening to it again. Not my fave fight)

Ch 2

Merle gets a lot of blood sucked from him by the leeches

Merle is completely submerged in the swamp and Magnus pulls his ass out (Why is it always Merle)

”Scientists have yet to agree” ~Griffin (I personally use this phrase all the time. It just makes me laugh so hard every time.)

Taako can levitate (I really wished he used this more ngl. I would also like to see some more fanart of this)

They are in Rockport! Covered in swamp shit!

Tom Beaudette! We see his house and they get hosed off then they see him at the ticket station again. (What a nice guy!)

Leimann, Diddly, and Justin Kessler (10/10 best alias’ ever)

Taako Charms Tom (It’s a nice go-to huh?)

Merle really wants to murder tom he wanted him to step in front on the train (Merle really is the one who goes straight for murder)

Ch 3

Hudson, Jess the Beheader, Graham Juicy Wizard, ANGUSSSSSSSS, and Jenkins McShittywizard (My favorite train gang!)

Travis making fun of Griffin for how he needs to sleep with 100000000 pillows (I cherish all of these out of character bits where they really just dog on one another)

Angus, my sweet summer child don’t talk to strangers. We know your grandfather’s name was long forgotten even though you’re going to visit him in Never Winter.

The boys legit think Angus is evil and Griffin yells at them bc they are being racist. (1- how are they being legit racist? You haven’t introduced anything about Angus’ race at all?) (2- Jesus he is only 10 years old my dudes)

Graham is 36 years young and is crazy obsessed with trains and his real name is Percy? He is shadowing Jenkins in hopes of learning more about working on a train

Taako from TV! (And so his legend begins!)

Ch 4

Jenkins is harnessing a limited version of teleportation magic

Angus calling the boys out on their bullshit

Taako calling Angus “pumpkin” (Literally melts my heart. I wish someone called me cute nicknames. Also, Taako hasn’t even talked to this kid that much and that name is reoccurring)

Angus has a nondescript blue book that is able to intercept messages sent through magical means (Where did this child get this book and who let him keep it? This is legit just like letting children under 13 have access to the unrestricted internet. It’s literal Hell)

The bit with Angus and “PRYING EYES AND EARS!” (uh foreshadowing my guy)

They find “Jenkins” Dead body after hearing Graham scream

Merle is able to identify a lot of things by looking at the body (It still scares me that he is technically a Physician.)

Angus pulls a small CROSSBOW OUT OF HIS SLEEVE? (Where did he get this, how did he keep it from Hudson, Why the fuck does he have it)

Angus really said “you guys run I’ll get rid of him!” and grabs Graham and runs (How strong is this child. He’s legit lifting and pulling a grown-ass man without help)

”I’m following Angus I’ll see yall in hell!” ~Taako (Yes follow the badass 10-year old please)

”I wanna tell you about the time about this time there were three ogres…”~Taako

The Foley work bit and then Griffin just snapping “The train derails and you all die” (Another out of character goof that I cherish)

”I shit and take 14 damage” ~Griffin (are you okay? How much health do you have? What’s your max HP dude?)

Taako makes the Crab monster Levitate

Magnus punched the crab monster out of the window and it got scrapped up on the side of the train

Ch 5

They follow the Crab into their sleeper car and Magnus attacks with a chair and Griffin says “I imagine because you are so skilled at carpentry that you’ve had to attack someone with a chair before so you are in fact proficient in this attack”

Jess comes in and finishes the crab off with her Soul bound ax that she can conjure at any time (This legit just means that Jenkins did not need to carry her ax to the crypt safe. She let him do it for shits n giggles. We stan)

Jess got her last name legally changed to “Beheader” and Magnus says that he got his legally changed to “The Hammer” (Really Magnus… this isnt 3rd grade stop trying to impress her. It’s that or it could be another sad reference to “Hammer and Tongs” which would mean Julia was “Tongs” D: that is so depressing and cute)

Magnus and Merle are making good progress in solving the murder

”Alright lads” “oh fuck” When Merle keeps up his disguise as Leimann Kessler (It’s so funny because his fake Leimann Kessler is just his current Argonaut Keen.)

”I cast ZONE OF TRUTH” “Jesus you’re like a zone of truth cleric” (Oh honey. This is just the beginning)

Magnus wakes Graham up with a 5% smack with his left hand and then a 6.5% smack also with his left hand (Wtf is this BNHA? Alright Deku)

Taako is an Alcoholic? (He keeps asking for a drink ...This is a bit concerning but it makes sense)

Magnus slaps Graham again with 7.2% and he popped something in Graham’s jaw and he begins screaming but Merle heals him (OKAY DEKU COOL IT MY GUY)

”I wanna be a guy... with a head!” ~” Hudson” (hehe foreshadowing)

SCUTTLE BUDDY!!!!! (A short but adorable life you have my Lil man)

Ch 6

The “fisticuffs” scene with Taako and Angus (Now this is really concerning considering his backstory. I know it’s a joke because of how many people they accidentally kill all the time but like dude… little do you know…)

Angus leading them through the mystery is so cute. But also you know its Griffin trying to get his family to really think it through and I love it. (It really makes my heart really full to hear Griffin get really excited when they figure it out slowly instead of mocking them when they guess wrong)

MERLE YES! MAGNUS YES! YOU’RE GETTING IT! YOU’RE SO CLOSE! (Teamwork makes the dream work baby!)

Magnus jumps out of the train and Griffin gets really serious and gives him the “if you fail this you will actually die” speech (This coupled with the fight scene that Magnus accidentally skipped and the fact that originally Travis did want Magnus to die so he could re-roll a rogue is so wild)

Magnus is gonna become a wrecking ball Jesus (very Magnus-core)

Hell yeah, Magnus! Knock the meat monster into Jenkins!!

Magnus gets hit for 10 points at 1hp and paries it for 10 points! (Top ten anime near-death experiences)

Jenkins threatens to kill the meat monster. Horribly misses then is thrown off the fucking train by the meat monster (Get fucked wrecked Jenkins that’s what you get for being cocky!)

Ch 7

They find the dousing rod compass that Jenkins was using and find the monocle (Pirates of the Caribbean much?)

Taako grabs The Oculus because he has escaped the thrall of a relic before

It tells him that it can make anything he can imagine (This is really interesting tbh)

The Umbrastaff eATS JENKINS WAND!!! and a Lil sigil appears on the handle of the staff that also looks like an umbrella (Lup gets fed lmao. Don’t really understand the Sigil appearing tho. It doesn’t come up any other time I don’t think so it’s cool)

Taako grabs the teleport wand thing and asks everyone to leave and he grabs a bunch of shit from the Cryptsafe pile (Very Taako-core)

They make it to the engineer’s room and Graham tries to slow the train down but he can’t

Taako wanted to open the gate to Never Winter to Phandalin but they change it to Jenkins’ garden because it needs to be a room with “one entrance” (Solid idea on Taako’s part. If it were to work no one would have been hurt)

Taako pushed Angus off the train and he looses two teeth (This man pushed a whole child off the train… ‘Ight)

Magnus dies by jumping off the train (Top ten anime death scenes)

Taako successfully opens the gate into Jenkin’s garden and the train crashes into the garden

Magnus is stabilized by Merle (Awe so the Cleric can do his job!)

Angus gives them pringles for Robbie and the compass. Taako gives Angus one of the forks from his grandfather’s set.

They go to a nearby Never Winter Clinic to get patched up

Out of character, they choose to work on voices and Griffin calls them out bc he’s been doing 8 “different” voices and Clint goes “Yeah try doing that for 40 years” get fuckin rOASTED Ditto! (Also Griffin I love you but like 3 of the voices were the exact same and 2 were so similar it wasn’t funny. Don’t get me wrong different voices aren’t my strong suit either but ya did give it your best shot so.)

We goin’ back to the moon baby!

AVI MY MAIN MAN! (I will forever and always want and need more Avi screen time)

The oculus works with illusory magic (Which is very interesting bc I know it was made by Davenport because he also worked in allusory magic but I don’t ever remember him using any magic… who knows maybe he has and I just never realized)

Lucretia thought they were gonna get it off the train before it left... woman… (You’ve known these men for how long and you thought they were gonna w h a t?)

Next: Lunar Interlude I, 

[szopenhauer]

What star sign is the last person you text messaged? Aries

How did you feel when you woke up today? not well

Do you know what the person you're dating is doing at this moment? napping

Who was the last person to make you cry with laughter? my gf

Who was the last person you talked about sex/love with? either her or my father

Who introduced you to the person you're in a relationshop with? my high school classmate K.K.

How many brothers does your father have? two

When was the last time you did something which you knew was wrong? I don’t know what’s wrong and what not, ugh...

Do you still speak to your first crush? nope

If you could get your own house with one friend, who would you pick? dad but I’d prefer to live alone

Which is worse, too-tight clothes or much too-loose clothes? too tight are worse

What is something that you are willing to fight for? hmm...

If you jump, can you touch the ceiling of the room you’re in? noooo

Which do you think is worse: ear aches or tooth aches? tooth aches

How many different colors are you wearing right now?  3 (4 counting panties)

You can only listen to one band for the rest of your life, who do you pick? omg I can’t choose :o

Do you like big or small cars better? big

What store do you get the majority of your shoes from? *shrug*

What place, in your mind, is heaven on earth? How about hell on earth? there’s no such thing as heaven on Earth to me as I would bring myself there and ruin everything but almost whole planet is hell mostly because of people

Do you think there is anything scary about midnight? midnight is the time of ghosts but no longer minute before and/or after :P 

Can you snap with both of your hands? yep

In your opinion what is the absolute worst house chore? laundry?

How young do you think is too young to get married? definitely under 20 but I think it’s best to get married 30+

Who do you think is the dumbest superhero?  I can’t believe Green lantern is an actual superhero...

Would you rather be a hair stylist or a clothes designer? clothes designer

Would you rather be 3 inches taller or shorter than you are now? taller

Are there any foods that you think smell good, but taste bad? possibly

Would you ever stay overnight at any of your neighbors houses? why would I? 

Do you think it would be cooler to play a hero or the villain in a movie? hero

If you had the last name of your favorite actor, what would your name be? I like many actors so...

how many syllables does your first name consist of?: 3

do you know someone who is allergic to chocolate?: used to know

have you worn a dress [casual, formal, etc] within the past week?: not within the past week

when was the last time you saw the last person you kissed?: days ago

is that person your significant other?: yup

last person you talked to on the phone and what was it about?: mom, I informed her she probably didn’t take out the matches from my pocket and now she’s washing my shorts with ‘em inside the machine and my instinct was right so she turned it off in the last moment, minutes or even seconds later water would soak the package and that could ruin the clothes, I wish she checked or asked while taking my stuff away

got any plans today?: been to laboratory, done shopping but am too tired to help my parents in carrying wood 

were you born in an odd or even numbered year?: even

did you drive anywhere at all today?: took the bus

which of your parents did you see last?: both at once

describe your current shirt: black tee Nie każdy musi mnie lubić w końcu nie każdy ma dobry gust with Lil My

are you currently listening to music?: I’m very picky about songs today

do you fill out your own surveys or do you think it’s just weird?: I do

where did you buy the shoes you last wore?: Biedronka (Tom & Rose)

last disappointment?: health issues 

do you still talk to the person you first kissed?: yeah

did you seriously believe that the opposite sex had cooties in elementary?: I didn’t think about that 

did you take a nap today?: I barely ever take naps in general

name something random in your car: I don’t own a car

would/did you cheat on someone for revenge or if they wouldn’t find out? neither

would you rather be remembered for something bad or forgotten? forgotten

would you date someone twice your age for money? only if I really had to survive and there was no other way but not forever?

rate your self-confidence, 1 being insecure, and 10 being cocky. I’m insecure but not sure how much 

are you content? I wish

would you knowingly be who someone cheats on someone else with? cheats with me on someone they pretend to love? hell no

would you sleep with a teacher to pass a class you were failing? ewww, yuk

have you ever contemplated physically hurting yourself or another? mhm

are you prejudice against any groups of people? I am

is there anything you chose to be ignorant about? (war, animal rights, etc) maybe

would you replace any family members if possible (& who)? oh well...

do you lie when asked how you’re doing? what for? to blame then for not noticing? to be an ass who’s lying?...

do you have any plans for tomorrow? meeting with M.

are you able to get a tan? not much

the next time you are on an airplane, where will you be traveling to? umm... no thx

are you satisfied with the picture on your id card? could be worse but also could be better

what are your chances of getting with your crush? I'm taken

what color is your car? no car!

is the song you’re currently listening to being sung by a male or female? two women

where did you get the shirt that you’re wearing? it was a gift

how tall is the last person you kissed? taller than me

is anybody in the room with you right now? not rn

how long have you been with your significant other, if you have one? 3 months

do you enjoy dried fruit? meh

How’s your day going? blergh

What does your umbrella look like? I borrow my parents’ umbrella, I hate umbrellas

Do you share a room with anyone? there are furniture with stuff inside that don’t belong to me

Do you have socks on? Describe them. grey

Are you one of those people who has like a hundred apps on their phone? I have spotify, choices, tumblr, tik tok, fb and messenger

Do you have good reflexes? I guess

Picture you think is cute.

Do you like blowing bubbles? sometimes

Are you better at posing good questions or coming up with outrageous dares? depends

Has there been a celebrity death that really affected you? I cried after some celebs but that’s all

If you’re out of high school, have you stayed in touch with your high school friends?  I haven’t :(

Do you think, if it came down to it, that you’d be able to kill someone? I believe I might

Are you good at rating things? am not

Do you get into a lot of arguments? :x

Can you pass for older than you are? can’t even pass for my real age lmfao

Do you talk a lot? at times

Are you capable of finishing a game of Monopoly? it’s not that hard

Do you own any tie-dye clothing? I hate tie-dye 

How much soda do you drink in a week? - Do you like being asked questions? love Are you nosy? slightly

How well can you pay attention to someone talking? depends What is the closest yellow thing to you? rosary Would you mind living on a farm? I’d try Are you a patient person? wouldn’t say so What annoys you the most about people? what doesn’t... Does your computer freeze a lot? my browser freezes right after turning on the computer and my internet dies often

Have you ever ate glue? wtf

When is the last time you took a picture? this day

If you could know one thing about the future, what would it be? when will I die for example

Do you like Ellen Degeneres? she’s awful

Are you comfortable dancing in public? whatever

Would you like to live to be 110 years old? I wanna die already

Do you like getting your picture taken? I’m ugly

Do you like being the X or the O when you play tic tac toe? X

What do you think is the most popular name for a girl? I checked:

Zofia Hanna Julia Zuzanna Alicja Maja Helena Maria Oliwia Pola

What about a boy?

Jan Franciszek Antoni Aleksander Stanisław Jakub Adam Leon Mikołaj Szymon

*do ya like any?

How many people are around you right now? my family’s in the kitchen eating so I’m alone

Do spicy foods give you heartburn or make you make you gassy? both and more

Is body hair attractive or unattractive to you? it’s normal/natural?

Do you prefer bare feet or socks? socks

Hard wood floor or carpet? hardwood

Would you ever want to work in a toy store? yasss

Do you like asking questions better or answering? answering

Do you follow your head or heart more? head

Would you rather give up your hand or your foot? foot

Have you ever tried crowd surfing? too risky and no fun

If you could have 16 wishes, tell me just one you wish: I don’t need 16, 3 are enough

Do you like the movie Bambi? If so, who is your favorite on there? I don’t remember Bambi 

Would you rather be on the computer all day or watch TV? computer

Would you rather be a police man or a firefighter? police

Do you like jokes or riddles better? jokes

Do you like onion rings? disgusting

Do you like odd or even numbers better? even are easier to count

Last song you heard? Marroon 5 - Animals

Ocean or lake? lake

Do you know a lot of people with the middle name Marie? weird but no, Anna is more popular

Do you like loud or quiet people better? smth in between unless in public - quiet strangers are better

Taking pictures or getting your picture taken? taking

Do you like chocolate? meh

Favorite day of the year? New year’s eve?

Favorite holiday? same

Crayons or markers? markers

Snookie or Vinny? Snookie

have you ever been to an animal shelter? that would break my heart

are you tired right now?

who is the worst actor or actress in your opinion? there are plenty  have you ever bought someone else lingerie? nope where are your parents right now? run around the house like crazy if you have a dog, does it bark a lot? luckily not, he howls rarely too have you ever seen a magic show? sure can you juggle? I tried to learn but failed

[onisiondrama]

11/21/2019 Patreon Stream Hour 1 of 5

Notes

They talk about age of consent, Greg says he hates when people “freak out” when he points out the age of consent. He says they’re freaking out about an adult. (The beginning of the stream was cut off so idk who they’re talking about.) He says he doesn’t know why people are mad when he was with a legal adult and if they were younger it still would have been fine.

Patreon says no one has a problem in the UK with sugar daddies that are 50-60 and the sugar babies are 18-20. Says it’s legal so why does it matter? Greg agrees and says people don’t care about the law, they care about their feelings.

He says apparently people waste the FBI’s time because they’re offended. Says there was a whole circus so they had to do something. Says he can’t wait to meet Mulder.

Makes jokes about Mulder and Chris Hansen confronting him for having relationships with 18-year-olds.

A Patreon joins in and makes a joke about how much money Greg has in GTA (the game he and other Patreons are playing on stream). Greg says he will mute them if they keep talking about GTA because he wants to have conversations with his Patreons. Greg continues to ask his Patreons to stop talking about the game throughout the stream, even if he’s the one that brought it up.

Makes a joke about the FBI “allegedly” after him. Says he doesn’t know what’s true anymore. Says it’s an honor for little old him to have the FBI- “you know what it’s an honor to have Chris Hansen to make his whole life about me.”

Continues to make jokes about the people Chris interviewing say they were 18 when they were with Greg.

Patreons are joking about becoming sugar babies for money and Greg says he has a plan for if things go south. He then says never mind and brings up sex dolls. Patreons say they miss his doll and he says she’s in the dump. He says “we” (I guess himself and Kai?) decided she was not appropriate. He says it was eerie having the doll sit in the garage all the time.

Says Christians are kinky. Brings up Julia. Says she was “fucking insane”

Jokes that twitter is on his side. Says they ban people for saying mean things to him, but they don’t ban him for anything he’s ever done. He’s never even been suspended.

He asks what happens when nothing happens with Chris Hansen? How do you imprison someone who fucks adults consensually? Says it’s going to be really awkward.

A Patreon says everyone is using Greg for attention. Greg agrees and says he only gets thousands of views, but when someone talks about him they get half a million views.

Someone asks who Chris Hansen is and Greg and another Patreon describe the show To Catch A Predator. Greg says other than the time someone killed them self, it was a respectable show. Says he feels disappointed because Chris did some good work. Goes into Chris and TCAP legal trouble and says Chris is doing YouTube now. Greg says he gave Chris pointers over email and now Chis is doing well. Says he’s an idiot for doing it.

Says Chris’ channel is all about him now. Says it’s hard to blame someone for talking about someone if they’re making mega bucks.

Greg says it’s crazy that everything he says ends up as a video for someone. Says it’s crazy to be him and it’s such a fucking circus.

Greg asks if anyone said what the actual crime is. Someone says “umm no?” and he laughs. Someone said all they hear is “grooming”, but that isn’t a crime. Greg says it’s not a thing. The person agrees and says if it was, it’s still not a crime. Greg says they have to prove him being mean to someone was some kind of super strategy to get them to like him. He says that’s elementary school logic, a kid likes you and punches you. He says he likes being mean to teenagers because he hates teenagers.

He reminds his Patreons that they have to be 18+. He brings up a troll that said they were 11 when they started watching him and asked to stay on Patreon only to reveal they were 19 and called him a piece of shit. He’s like ok... Someone asked if they paid Greg to lie and call him a piece of shit. He says yeah. Someone compares this to Youtubers that pay for his Patreon for content, but someone else says it’s worth it to Youtubers because they get ad revenue.

Greg asks if there’s an update on the girl that said she was going to sue him, but used the money on a concert. Someone says she changed her username and he seems amused by that. He says you don’t want to get on Onision haters’ bad side. He says you don’t want them as allies wither because if you do something wrong they’ll eat you alive. He says it happened to Joy Sparkle.

They start talking about the downfall of Joy and Greg compares it to the current situation. He asks what they’re going to do when it falls through like it has for the last 11 years? He says they know it’s bullshit. He says the police always side with him.

He says “some chick” says he allegedly masturbated while she cried through the door. (she didn’t say that) A Patreon is shocked and he agrees, “in what fucking world?”

He says this is the girl he called the cops on because she said he was an abuser and she slammed herself against his door. He says the cops told her to leave him alone. The second time he called the cops on her was the video where she said he ruined his life. He said right before filming she said she was going to kill herself and make it look like he did it. He was going to video tape everything she did before the cops showed up to show he didn’t do anything to her. He says the cops take her to a mental facility. Says the cops said he can’t evict her so he should run.

Someone asks if she talked about threatening suicide during the Chris Hansen interview. Greg replies you’re dealing with a person that handles things in a different way. He says there are videos and police reports documenting everything. He says people willfully ignore this.

He says he drove to LA and she tells him there is a gang after him. A Patreon points out that in the interview Shiloh said Greg was the one that called it a gang, but it was really her father. Greg asks “it’s her dad now?” and says he thought it was her grandpa. He said he thought it was her grandpa because he was so old and he drove an old shitty maroon van in Toronto.

He says this guy drove them to drop off Shiloh at a recording studio and this guy immediately hates Greg. Greg says he doesn’t know why. He says this guy saw Shiloh put her head on Greg’s lap at the studio and he glares at them. He took Greg aside and told Greg he had to stop dating Shiloh, Greg says no, the guy says there’ll be consequences and he walks toward Greg with broken drum sticks. He describes the room and says they were practicing for her concert, he says she was an intro band. Shiloh saw and she and Greg got out of there. They asked people outside for help to get away from the guy and the people apologized and said they’ll help. He says Canadians aren’t as friendly as he thought they were.

One of the Patreons says that while they were in the studio, Greg stopped her from working. Someone else says she said Greg wouldn’t allow her to make her own music. (she didn’t say these things. They are mixing stuff up.) Greg is like “oohh she blamed that all on me?” Someone says Greg cut her off from her manager. Someone clarifies that she said he was trying to seclude her and keep her away from her people, and someone agrees that she did say that. (this is accurate) Greg asks then why hasn’t her career taken off since then? He smiles and says he asked a bombshell question. A Patreon relies that she said he smeared her name and she didn’t want to return to the internet. Greg laughs and asks if she’s saying he stopped her from doing her career when she cheated on him and got pregnant with someone else’s baby- a patreon cuts him off to say it was Greg’s baby. Greg says they’re mixing it up with when she said she had sepsis, but she would have been dead if she had sepsis. A Patreon says she said Greg was happy to pay for the bills to have the baby, but wouldn’t pay for the bills to “fix her sepsis”, and another patreon agrees. Greg says he can’t speak accurately about this so they’ll have to go back and watch all the videos he made during that time. He says he already explained everything.

He says he remembers her saying she had to go back to Canada to handle this because she wanted to go to a particular hospital. Then he wanted her to come back and he was paying her bills while she was in Canada and she said she lost her passport. He says he was trying to contact her and her Uncle answered the phone and told Greg she didn’t lose her passport. Greg says he asked “what are you talking about?” and the uncle replied “do you seriously believe anything she says?” A Patron says she said her mom hid it from her. Greg says “ok” and continues his story. He says the uncle asked “dude. do you seriously want to get into this relationship with her?” Greg says he replied “yes I love her” and the uncle said “really?” Greg says the uncle “said some words” about her honesty. He says he was blown away this was her uncle talking. Greg says he made a sketch about it.

He says he made a break up song about all her lies and when she threatened suicide. Greg says she lied about being in a car accident and put makeup on her forehead to look like an injury. In a week it was gone and he asked her about it. He said she said she was a fast healer and he believed it. He says she said she was knocked out in a gym and it turns out she wasn’t, the trainer had no idea what she was talking about. He said it was an ongoing insanity.

He says he’s still friends with her music producer “to this day” because he emailed him about a remix he did with Billie Rae Cyrus (that song came out in 2014) and said they should hang out. He asked Greg to promote the link and Greg said he’s not a good person to promote the link because it’ll just bring drama. The producer said they should work together and Greg asked why and he said because we’re friends.

Greg says when he ran away from her, she called him when she got back to the house and asked why he wasn’t there and he said because you’re insane. He says she told the internet he abandoned her. He laughs about her calling it “abandoned”. He says he asked the producer if he thinks she has an illness and the producer said he thinks she’s evil. Greg says he told him he didn’t think she was evil, that she had a mental illness and the producer was adamant that she was evil. Greg says to this day he thinks she has an illness. He says when you admit you’re a pathological liar, that’s a mental illness.

He says he made a video where he was crying because she said she was going to kill herself. She grabbed her bag and left and he didn’t stop her because he was overwhelmed because she kept threatening to do it. He says he was video taping himself to show where he was if it happened. She comes back with a couple leaves on her shoulder. She told him she tried to hang herself from a tree, but the branch broke. Greg asks where she got the rope. He says it didn’t make any sense, but at the time he didn’t question it. He said he broke her up with her 7 or 8 times, but he always took her back. He said the internet was always pissed at him for taking her back.

He asks his patreons if they ever dated someone and the world is flipped upside down and the world doesn’t make sense anymore. He says he knows someone in a relationship like that right now, no matter how crazy it gets. He says these situations make you do crazier things and they make you think you’re crazy. He compares it to doing horrible things when you’re at war. His Patreons agree.

He says there was a time his ex left the house and the fire department brought her back. She was laying on the ground and they woke her up and they had no explanation why she was like that. He says he didn’t understand why he had to deal with the cops and fire department so much when he was with this person.

Says everything was fucking insane. He says he thought it was crazy and passionate because he thought it was like Romeo and Juliet. He says something about someone telling someone no one will love them as much as they do, but I’m not sure if he was trying to say he said that or Shiloh said that. A Patreon says it sounds toxic and he says it was awful. He says looking back he doesn’t know why he stayed. He says at the time he was told how important he was and how much they loved him more than anyone else. He says he told her he was looking in the mirror in the shower and everything felt different. He felt more alive and the world around him was gone for a moment and she said that’s what happens when they are meant to be and she implied supernatural elements. He says he was an idiot.

Someone asked if this was the person that had different personalities and Greg says it was just Aliana. He said he had a conversation with Aliana and it was crazy. He says he hadn’t met her in person until December and she was already whipping out the personality. He said the personality told him she was there to protect Shiloh. He says it sounds like a movie. 

Greg says he will never be interviewed by anybody because no one gives a shit about what really happened. His Patreons agree.

A Patreon says throughout this whole situation, Greg seems like he’s doing okay. She says he’s not perfect, but he can talk to them and be fine. That he can bounce back from shit and make content. Greg says Kai can’t. He laughs that he’s been tweeting about pussy. He said he’s been dealing with the same shit for 10 years over and over. Magically the moment he kicks someone out of their life he’s a monster. He says some of them told him they wouldn’t do that to him and they end up doing it.

[dancinginodessa]

better late than never

I do a survey every year on New Year’s. It’s currently February 5. We’re going to make it “in the new year” this time so I don’t break my fifteen-year streak, okay?

1. What did you do in 2019 that you’d never done before?

Many things, some of them not suitable for a general audience. (I’ll tell you about Psych Bike when you’re older.) I went camping for the first time, which also means I set up a tent and slept outdoors for the first time. I had a surprise party for the first time, which is less something I did than something that was done for me. I was brave in new ways and drew new boundaries. I finished my first cross-stitching project. I broke my elbow. That last one actually sucked and I am not inclined to do it again.

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

My sole resolution is always to read a certain number of books in the coming year. After an intervention from my therapist back in 2018, I’ve kept that number at 52, and this year I again succeeded with 63 total. I would like to think I enjoyed them more and chose them with greater discretion because I wasn’t racing towards an impossible goalpost. 

I’m keeping my resolution. I’m also keeping the implicit sub-resolution, which is to continue finding ways to be kind to myself. We’ll see.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

I don’t think so, which probably means I’ve forgotten an ENTIRE BABY. Sorry, baby!

4. Did anyone close to you die?

My grandmother, in October. It was long and slow and agonizing and I miss her terribly.

5. What countries did you visit?

Does...does New Jersey count as a country? 

6. What would you like to have in 2020 that you lacked in 2019?

A better singing voice, which means I am going to have to keep singing. But it wasn’t until 2019 that I was brave enough to do karaoke at all, so maybe this is possible!

Also, a short story published somewhere. Hell, scratch that - a short story, finished.

7. What date from 2019 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

October 6: my father’s stroke.

October 7: my grandmother’s death.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Surviving. 

9. What was your biggest failure?

Not telling people what I needed; relatedly, pretending to myself that I didn’t have needs at all. No one benefits from that. It’s just a good way to cultivate resentment.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

I broke my damn elbow while carrying La Croix and no one will ever let me live it down. Also got the sniffles a few times.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Opera tickets to The Queen of Spades, maybe. The jigsaw puzzle I gave Griffin for the holidays, not least because he got me a jigsaw puzzle too and the moment we realized what we’d done was so, so delightful. Honorable mentions: bus tickets, medication, this one really great sweater.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

My mother. Me. Anyone on Twitter who made me laugh, especially Ashley Feinberg. The folks at One Story for being so kind when I left. My therapist.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

My mother. Me. The entire administration. The rest of Twitter. 

14. Where did most of your money go?

Rent, food, and alcohol, perhaps not in that order. If my parents ask: in that order.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

The Fourth of July at the pirate ship; Psych Bike; karaoke night; any of a million things in this neighborhood, because this neighborhood now feels like home, and that’s the most exciting thing of all.

Also, Animal Crossing, though it got bumped until 2020 and I am only just hanging on.

16. What song will always remind you of 2019?

Among others, “The Bad Touch,” because it turns out I absolutely crush that one at karaoke night. Ditto “Truth Hurts.” 

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

i. happier or sadder? Sadder, but how could I not be?

ii. thinner or fatter? Unclear (love 2 have dysmorphia), but I think I gained a few pounds.

iii. richer or poorer? Roughly the same, which is frankly an achievement.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Sleeping. Writing. Asking for what I needed. Crocheting and cross-stitching and watching dumb TV. Kissing. Setting firm boundaries with someone in my industry who was harassing me, though that situation is (mostly?) resolved. Being brave - but I was already pretty brave.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Waiting for bad things to happen. They happen whether or not you expect them.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

My grandma is dead - did I mention? So Christmas was spent with my parents at our house, just the three of us. It was strange and sad but kind of wonderful, too. We are all figuring out how this family fits together now that there are fewer of us.

January 7: went to church, went to the Strand, went home and ate soup with Griffin because he was sick and I wanted to be with my buddy.

21. Did you fall in love in 2019?

Kept falling.

22. How many one-night stands?

Funny story! Funny story that I’m not going to put in writing.

23. What was your favourite TV program?

I didn’t watch much TV, but rewatching Parks and Rec has been great, even if some of it didn’t age super well. I’m also literally the last person on the internet to watch The Great British Baking Show and am 10000% on board.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

No. I’m too tired.

25. What was the best book you read?

I have a whole list, and I could not possibly tell you my favorite favorite. However, a few contenders would be Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips, Maybe You Should Talk To Someone by Lori Gottlieb, Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino, In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, etc. etc. etc...

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

I’m not sure I actually listened to much that would qualify as a discover and not an extension of my existing interests, but I did discover that music is beginning to bring me joy the way it did in college and which I had been sorely missing.

27. What did you want and get?

A diagnosis. It’s good to have the words for yourself.

28. What was your favourite film of this year?

Lord. What even came out in 2019? I only just saw Parasite last weekend, here in 2020, but it counts, and I’m choosing that. Midsommar ruled too.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 28 and went to a nice dinner with my boyfriend that turned out to be a surprise party with my friends. It was great and I cried. 

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

My grandmother.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2019?

Bisexuality™

32. What kept you sane?

Last year I said “In no particular order: therapy, my mom, crocheting, cross-stitching, the New York Times crossword, gummy worms, venting to Karen, coffee.”

And...that’s about right.

Shoutout to Xanax, though.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Ruby Tandoh, William Jackson Harper, Michael B. Jordan, Janelle Monae, the bear from MIdsommar (that last one is a joke)

34. What political issue stirred you the most?

Everything, but especially family separation.

35. Who did you miss?

My parents, especially after the stroke. My grandmother, always. 

36. Who was the best new person you met?

The entire neighborhood crew. I am so lucky to have them.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2019:

You can make it through more than you imagined.

[julia19945-blog]

My transgender story > Julia Irish trans girl

My story......

My name is Julia, I am from Derry, I am currently 26 years old. My parents were born in Ireland. I wasn't born the person I am today the doctor said it was a boy. As I grew up from as far as I remember, I’ve always felt different, I felt like I was the black sheep of the family I felt that there was something wrong with me. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was but didn't feel entirely like a boy. For instance, as a young child I was socially, being told boys play football and girls play with dolls, I was thinking why I can’t wear pink and play with dolls. I was dressing at my earliest memories in girls’ things, secretly using mum or sisters, make up or shoes and clothes, I wanted to be barbie not ken. I never told anyone how I felt, I never told anyone anything relating to what I was thinking and how different I felt. So I went on the internet and typed in "boys feel like girls" and the results that came up was "transgender" which is the terminology for trans women and trans men and nonbinary people and so on, I felt like this was relating to my identity as transgender women. Television, for instance portrayed trans people as a joke, a punch line. When growing up in m teens it was never spoke about in TV or media in a nice way , but as the years went on so many more positive icons such as celebrities came forward who were trans such as a favourite of mine is Laverne Cox from Orange is the New black. So, when I found the transgender community online this was a relief to me.  

I felt like I wasn't alone anymore. I felt like that I could relate to people who were going through the same thing and you know for the first time I felt like I belonged. I am on hormones for about a year, and my mother and family are transitioning with me in the aspect of acceptance and understanding in such factors such as name change and pronouns and losing a son and gaining daughter. In my early days of my transition while trying to explore my identity I struggled with finding my true self, fell into bad habits as many know how easy it can be to turn to the party scene in our community. Got myself into horrible circumstances such as assault. In the last year something horrible happened I was sexually assaulted and took me to very bad place mentally was like a step bad from me, but I am here and fighting and not giving up!

When I look back, I wish I knew then that there were organisations out there to educate and to help overcome issues with my transition such as depression, low-self-esteem and general vulnerability associated with my transition. The reason I am happy with my life at this moment is because of the support networks I have made contact with, friends I have made and the love and I knew I didn't belong in this shell for years this annoyed me and all I could ever think was "I AM A GIRL , HOW CAN I GET OUT OF THIS BODY", So when I finally came out as Transgender , I had some form of support. I know for many people this isn't the case and coming out can lead to more emotional turmoil.

Throughout my life as a 'transgender women' what I’ve experienced so far, has been both good and bad, it's not just being transgender that I must deal with. It's also waking up in the morning feeling like I am suffocating inside a body that doesn't belong to me. It's being told by doctors 'your number 48 on the waiting list'. I'm depressed and being ATTACKED in my local town centre of Derry and even getting things thrown at me or names shouted or sometimes even being spit on when in reality if 'I just got the transition over and done with I know this would have a positive impact on my mental health and the only reason, I am depressed is because of the hate and the length of time I have to wait'.

 I'm thankful for the NHS and the fact we have this in our country and doctors and professionals who have helped me and so many people in my position, but I do think with the circumstances within Northern Ireland it is a lot longer than the rest of the United Kingdom. With no functioning government the NHS and gender Identity Clinic is majorly affected, and this can cause people to have more mental and physical issue as they have with me.

I will wait, I will transition, and I will ignore any negative transphobic comments that come my way, I'm sharing this to raise awareness for younger teenagers and children and possibly adults who are in the same position as me. DON'T GIVE UP, as much this is so easy to do, we must remind ourselves to carry on as we will get there.

I wish I knew it was okay to be trans. I've always been a woman just before my body didn't match and each step towards my final goal is rewarding.

People like me, we go through quite a lot, and we could use friends and more allies.

 Julia brown

[kierongillen]

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine: The Funnies

 Spoilers, obv.

 I suspect this will lean a little shorter than usual, partially because it’s more an editorial, sitting back position than any other issue of WicDiv and partially as DIE is out tomorrow, and there’s a lot of plates I’m keeping spinning.

 But let’s see, eh?

 Last year, when we did the Christmas Special, doing a comedy special was the other option. We decided to keep that in the can, simply because I was trying to visualise what on earth it would be like. Would I ask people to write stuff? Would I write it all? Could I somehow get The Wicked + the Canine to fill the whole issue? We went for Jamie’s idea (which required less conceptual engineering, so was easy, despite being more actual writing work) and saved this for the end.

 Which is nice. End of school party, right?

Jamie/Matt’s Cover: Jamie and I have a piece of performance twitter, where I make puns and he pretends to hate them. Okay, that’s not true at all. He hates them, as is only right, as they are designed to be hated. When we have Skype calls, and Chrissy and I sit beside each other, when I drop a pun, Chrissy makes a face which… well, Jamie’s wants to grab it as a gif. It’s quite the thing.

 Anyway – a variety of responses to puns. The pun is, I suspect, the best one I’ve dropped on twitter. One day I’ll write an essay on What I Do With Puns. But not today. It didn’t get a ludicrous number of retweets when I dropped it (and deleted my whole stream, as I do sporadically – don’t worry, I store everything before I do). It had an afterlife though being reblogged on tumblr (I think last time it was about 130k interactions), used in big websites’ pun round-ups, put on T-shirts and straight up stolen and tweeted by other people.

 So let’s stick it on a cover, and show the variety of responses to it. Of course, Baph would like it.

 I really like what Matt did with the colours here as well.

 Margaux Saltel’s cover: Margaux is great. I got to know her distantly when C was editing superfreaks, and actually got a chance to hang properly at this year’s thought bubble. She’s got a real playfulness to her art, which this fascinating design sense. Adorable big dog staring at the reader was the first thing I thought of when planning this issue, really.

IFC

Intro page to explain what’s going on, with pop-comic design by Sergio, headlines courtesy of C. If you haven’t read it, give it a scan, because I big up all our collaborators.

How did we decide how to ask? Far too many options. Our comic friends are very funny. We tended to ask people as it occurred to us, see how many pages they wanted to do, and then work out how many pages we had left

The Wicked + the Canine

I lured Erica into this by basically promising her to draw six pages of as many dogs as she liked. Write for your artist.

The pun was basically to amuse Chrissy, and grew into a story. I thought it could be longer (and it could have) but realised it’s best to cut it short – the backbone of Ananke as trainer, and the dogs as untrainable pups, is basically the core of it. Plus the big kick in seeing everyone done in dog form.

I threw some ideas into the mix of how the dogs could be differentiated (For example, Sakhmet as a cat and Woden as clearly-not-a-puppy in a cone of shame) but really left it to Erica to draw whatever dogs she liked. I actually suggested they all be Labradors, but Erica wanted to stretch and play, and it’s all wonderful.  The worry is in terms of race-coding the dogs, which is something we avoided.

I think my favourite is Baphopup.

The white-background and “get in the sack” is a wonderful bit of cartooning. How the lack of background stresses it all.

That it was basically done to make C laugh means that it’s part of a history of my dog based comics, which also includes the Christmas issue of Journey Into Mystery, where Loki has to give away seven hell-hounds. I think Thori is the character I co-created for the Marvel Universe who has had the longest life in terms of being used by other people. Adorable sweary murderous puppies can’t go wrong.

I’m pleased that people seemed to like it. That it’s a six page story where the joke is “Evil old lady doesn’t throw trusting pups in the river” is not exactly family comedy special material. I suspect if you’ve stuck along with WicDiv this far, you know what we’re like.

This is also a story which implicitly spoils the book, in terms of Ananke being a shameless manipulator of the pups. A lot of the stories are similar, which means this is a comic designed for relief of those who came along for all the issues.

The Wicker + the Divine Lizz Lunney is one of my favourite British cartoonists, and whole fierce scowl has petrified me for the decade or so I’ve known her. Lunney hadn’t read much of WicDiv before, so we lobbed her the PDFs, and found something fun to mock in terms of how ludicrously call-back-y we are.

Go support her stuff. She’s great.

The Lost God

Chip’s just a phenomenon, and his rising career across the last decade has been basically the most delightful surprise in the period. Immediately I have to swallow the urge to do the usual “Because he’s rubbish” chip-baiting joke, which says a lot. Chip is so much fun. That he’s both one of Marvel’s biggest, most interesting writers now and half of one of the most popular and definitive indie comics of the period is something else. Like, he’d be a legend if only for his internet jokes. That’s a footnote now. Amazing.

Anyway – we meet the first Kieron and Jamie version. Chip’s one is delightful – the over-tortured pun is on the money, but the real joy is Jamie McKelvie’s Hellboy-esque hyper-developed single arm. Every time I look at that, I laugh. Plus the accent. Marvelous.

“Wossat?! Time paste this nob, innit?” is just poetry.

Gentle Annie Vs The World

Talking about poetry…

Chrissy is WicDiv’s editor and also a poet, and has done some indie comics before – as well as co-editing the anthology Over The Line, which is an introduction to Poetry Comics. This isn’t that. This is her just channelling her loathing of Gentle Annie’s obfuscatory nonsense, and I love it so.

Clayton and Dee step in on the art duties. It was Clayton’s idea to drop in the Scott Pilgrim parody Annie at the top, which is very cute, and implicitly shows the modes he can work on. The realism of each scene, and the sense of place is great. Also, the Banshees poster in the doctor’s office is hilarious.

Making A Difference

This is fun. Romesh is a proper famous comedian, and digs WicDiv, so thought it’d be fun to write for the medium. As his script was coming together, I thought of Julia Madrigal’s Giant Days issue, and realised it’d fit well. She had to do it on her trip to Japan, which involved some hilarious jetlag.

Dee’s doing some powerhouse things here with the purple-white lighting too. That’s hyper-strong.

“Fresh Prince of Baal Air” is a hell of a line, in passing, and I think this may have the prize for the darkest punchline of the whole issue.

5 Things Everyone Who’s Lived With Sakhmet Will Understand

I loved Hamish’ Pantheon, which is a playful but entirely accurate retelling of Egyptian myth. Hamish also won this year’s Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Award, so clearly should be doing something else rather than being talked into playing around with us lot. Thankfully, he didn’t.

I think my favourite moment is Persephone’s glance up as Sakhmet walks across the keyboard.

18 Go Made In Wiltshire

Kitty and Larisa have done a bunch of stuff, but I have to put a special plug for where I first met them – TAYLOR SWIFT GIRL DETECTIVE: SECRETS OF THE STARBUCK LOVERS. It’s illustrated prose, and utterly delightful, so was honoured to have them along.

This is all an accurate and extensive skewering of what we’re doing, with a not-perfect Scooby Doo mash-up. I did try to talk them out of including all the characters, as that’s so much work, but they could not be stopped. This meant that working out speaking orders was the main formal issue to worry about.

Now, there’s lots of mockery of me in this issue, but reducing Laura down to “Everyone is so hot! Let’s make out with them!” was absolutely the I Feel Called Out Right Now moment. She’s more than that, right? Right?

While the “WicDiv is a scooby do plot” complete with “Evil old man reveal” is lots of fun, the bit which makes me laugh every time I flick through is the “I would have got away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling ki—” “Oh, fuck off.” Oh, Lucifer, Never change.

Enquiring Minds Want To Know: What’s Your Guilty Pleasure Song

Cover-artist Margaux joined by the irrepressible Kate Leth. I’m really into how the two play together – Kate wanted to cut things tight, and the “Short moment” illustrated with Margaux’s warmth is fascinating. Like, have the two other Norns ever looked more delighted and engaged than they are at the end of page six?

In terms of Kieron and Jamie baiting, Grumpy Jamie in full Captain Marvel Gear and me trying to write an essay in any given space is fun and mean (which is how we like it). And I’ve just realised that writing more about this script would only be underlining Kate’s point, so I better stop.

Secret Origin

I wrote it, and offered it to Jamie. Really, the point of the specials is to create a space in the schedule so Jamie can get ahead, but he couldn’t resist this one. It’s cathartic closure, at the least.

Choosing the puns was tricky – I realised it had to be a chain, so chose this one which amused Katie West, which was tweeted when visiting them in Edinburgh. So I was in range of punching.

As always, this is Jamie expression masterclass, and a little self-mocking of my tendency to go full clockwork in my story universes is fun. I hope so anyway.

28 pages of comics, which is quite the thing. I don’t suspect we’ll be making much (if any) money from this issue after paying everyone, but that’s fine. It’s a party, innit?

Oh, it was nearly 2000 words. It’s never short, is it? It’s never short.

WicDIv 40 is out tomorrow (December 5th), which starts our final arc, “Okay.” Hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for reading.

[purplesurveys]

1211

A

Art: When was the last time you painted something? I don’t remember; maybe about a few weeks before the breakup. I haven’t really been into painting since, but now that I’m over it I should probably dabble in it again soon.

Adventure: When was the last time you really felt alive, and what were you doing? Last Sunday! Watched the Sowoozoo show with Angela and Hans. We set up a huge tent at the rooftop and had fairy lights all around and so much beer and soju and so. much. food. She and Hans ended up bringing most of the food we got home. It really felt like throwing a party with a million other people and it was SO so ridiculously fucking fun.

Allergies: What is one thing that you are allergic to? Slightly allergic to grass.

Answers: What is one question you would like an answer to? If I’ll ever have a family of my own.

Age: What has been your favorite age so far? Hmm, maybe 16. 23 has also been a blast so far; I hope it stays the same.

B

What month is your birthday? April.

Have you ever played house inside a big box? Possibly as a kid. It doesn’t stick out in my memory though.

Are you boisterous? I can, especially if I feel enthusiastic about the situation.

Have you ever dated a bad boy? Nope.

Name one thing you like that is blue: The ocean. Not being in it, but being near it at the beach. < Ooh same.

C

Cinnamon--yay or nay? Yay, I guess. As long as it’s not excessive.

Chocolate: do you love it? I like chocolate-flavored things. Chocolate bars themselves not so much.

Name one favorite type of candy. Gummy bears or worms.

Children: Name one favorite thing to do with kids while babysitting. I only ever ‘babysat’ my much younger cousins; and when I did that more than a decade ago I just enjoyed playing games and toys with them since I too had been a kid who just had to babysit them.

Carefree: Are you carefree? I know how to let go when I want to, but I think most of the time I prefer to be careful and cautious about most things.

D

When was the last time you danced like no one was watching? LOL last Sunday when I drank too much and danced to Boy With Luv, and apparently Angela got it on tape as well. I haven’t checked the video yet and probably never will.

Do you daydream? Quite a lot, yeah.

Dreams: What is one of your dreams? To learn how to cook is one, hahahaha.

What is one thing you are currently dreading? We have an event tomorrow and my team is going to have to host it, so I’ll have to go over my script tonight so that I don’t end up sputtering and stuttering.

Name something delicious. Brownies!

E

Would you ride an elephant if given the opportunity? I have before. I’d do it again but make sure it’s done in an ethical environment.

Do you live life on the edge? Nah. I mean I’m bad at saving and VERY GOOD at spending my money, but that’s probably the most reckless I’ll ever get. Playing safe might as well be my middle name.

Name something you like to eat: French fries.

Do you believe in everlasting life? No.

Name something that comes easy to you. Continued from sometime this week, idek when. Anything that has to do with my reflexes. I can respond pretty quickly.

F

Name a fragrance you like. I like fruity, summery scents, for one.

Are you a free spirit? Eh, not so much.

Are you fickle? I wouldn’t say so.

Are you hiding your feelings from someone? Nope.

Name one flavor you like. Cookies and cream.

G

Are you gentle? This is too vague for me to answer.

Are you generous? I feel like I can say that, yeah.

Name something green. Eyes can be green.

Name a famous giant. My mom was watching something recently about a wrestler named Andre the Giant. He really was. < That’s a good answer :D I’ll just borrow it lol.

Are you a girl? Yessss.

H

Are you generally a happy person? I think more so these days, yeah!

Do you honor the holiness of the day? Idk what this means but if it’s supposed to be related to religion, I don’t really practice.

Do you believe in Heaven? Not the way the Bible describes it but the idea of reuniting with my loved ones when I die is pretty comforting, if that’s what ‘heaven’ is supposed to be, if it exists.

Name one thing you are hoping for. I’d like to be able to go to concerts again soon.

Name one thing you hate. That weekends are only two days long.

I

Imagination: Write the name of one of your imaginary friends from when you were younger. Katrina. Issues: Name one magazine you subscribe to, if there is any. I never did that.

Internet: Name one website you visit often. These days, Facebook.

Itinerary: List one place you would like to visit. Malta.

Interest: Name one thing that interests you. Cooking.

J

Are you joyful? Again, I think I am generally happier these days so yeah.

When was the last time you were filled with joy? Last Thursday when I finally got the BTS Meal from McDonald’s, lollllll.

Can you jump high? As a kid, yeah. We had a childhood garter game that kind of made it a requirement for you to be good at jumping, so that served as practice for me. Idk if I’m still as good, though.

Name one girl's name that starts with a J that you like. Julia.

Name one boy's name that starts with a J that you like. Jacob.

K

Have you ever been kissed? Sure.

Have you ever feared that you would be killed? Yup.

Are you kind? I wanna think so, but idk. This is a question you’ll have to ask other people about, not for me to answer for myself.

Who is your kindred spirit? Angela.

Name one thing you liked as a kid. Chewing gum.

L

Do you love someone? My close friends.

Do you live out loud? I try to make the most out of everything life hands me and enjoy life as long as I can, if that’s what you’re asking.

Do you read food labels? Only when I’m bored and have nothing to do at the dining table. I never read it to actually know the nutritional value of what I’m eating.

Name something local that you like. Balut.

List one thing you like to do at the lake. I don’t think I’ve even been at a lake before...I’ve seen ones, but haven’t been up close.

M

Do you like...

monkeys: Sure.

music: More so these days.

musicals: I never liked them.

mansions: I mean...I guess? I love house tours so if I can get to go around a big ass mansion I feel like I’d have a good time.

miracles: Not so sure I believe in those.

N

Do you want something....

new: I’m well aware that I can be quite materialistic, so yeah I’m always wanting something new.

nice: Too vague.

neat: Vague again.

never-before-seen: As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone, sure.

nature-inspired: Idk.

O

How old are you? 23.

What is the last great opportunity you missed? Erm...my 20s? Because of Covid? if it counts lol.

Name one thing you like that's orange (besides oranges). I don’t like oranges, but I do like Hayley Williams’ Riot! era orange hair.

Are you open? In surveys I definitely am. < Agreed.

Name something odd. Can’t really think of any at the moment.

P

Are you...

patient: Too much for my own good.

perky: With the right people, yeah.

pale: Far from it. I live in a place with sunny weather all year round.

peaceful: For the most part but I can provoke people if the need be.

passionate: Not always, but sure it shows up occasionally.

Q

Do you own a...

quilt

quail

queen-size bed

quill pen

book of questions ^ I don’t have any of those things.

R

Do you like to...

run

rave

riddle

rhyme

rap: If I memorize a verse/song, then yes.

S

Are you ever...

shy

sensitive

secretive

sure

stable

T

Are you...

ticklish

trouble

tall

thankful

tactful

U

Have you ever...

ridden a unicyle

used an umbrella

visited an uncle

been undecided

played a ukelele

V

Do you own a...

violin

vehicle

violet dress

vampire cape

veil for a wedding dress

W

What is something you wish for? Longer weekends.

Wonder: When was the last time you opened your eyes in wonder? I guess this morning? When I realized it was finally the weekend and I could stay in bed and relax and sleep in if I wanted.

Name five words you like. Let’s just go with poignant, which is what I always answer. I don’t feel like thinking of four other words.

What is something you wonder? What my own place would look like.

Name someone who thinks you are worthless. I hope there isn’t anyone; but my mom did make me feel like this for a long time. Either she’s stopped it or I’ve grown completely immune to it – I can’t really tell the difference.

X

Have you ever...

played a xylophone

had an x-ray

enjoyed exercise

had excision surgery

been excluded

Y

Are you young? I think 23 is still quite young, yeah.

Are you youthful? Idk lol my stress level these days makes me feel like I’m 35.

Did you have a big yard growing up? No.

What did you do yesterday? Had what was probably my busiest day at work yet.

Do you like yams? I mean I like ube cheesecake, but that’s as far as I’ll go when it comes to yam.

Z

Zeal: What are you passionate about? My work, to an extent.

Zing: Do you like raspberry lemonade? I’ve never tried it. I think.

What's your favorite zoo animal? I don’t go to zoos.

Do you own anything from Zales? No and idk what that is.

List a name that starts with a Z. Zia.

[phaylenfairchild]

I Just Learned What RadFem Is, and It’s Terrifying

I must be a lot more unplugged than I thought.

As a Trans person, it’s important to strike a balance between having your finger on the pulse of adversity and progress, but also keep a safe distance from the toxicity the can wear you down and ultimately pull you under the current.

Especially in the current climate, where emotions are running at an all time high and common sense has exited the building, which is on fire and crumbling around us like a scene from a Hollywood disaster movie. Minorities, specifically those who have found themselves on the receiving end of an onslaught of political abuse and social terrorism, have to self preserve. Sometimes that means turning off social media, which can inundate a casual user with hateful rhetoric, wordy news articles spreading misinformation, and people they care about, friends, family, casting away their fear of retribution or accountability and putting their prejudices proudly on parade. It can be shocking, deeply disturbing and overall very, very sad.

Knowing when to shut the world off can be a blessing. There is nothing wrong with putting down your sword and retreating to the safe harbor of netflix and pizza, at least that’s what I tell myself. Things are spiraling into some dystopian parallel universe, where upside down is right-side up. Trying to make sense of the chaos and understand the insanity can make you insane.

A lot of people have gone crazy. We don’t call it crazy anymore, though. We call it religious freedom, or alt-right viewpoints or alternative facts. It’s all radicalism.

While on the phone with a friend in the UK, she told me about a woman on the news who created the “Radfem” movement. I had not heard the term Radfem before, but it’s not exactly science to determine that it implies a Radical Feminist. They’re basically TERFS- Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, but reject being referred to as TERFS, claiming it is a slur.

“They’re a hundred times worse than TERFS…” My friend told me. After a few days of research, I discovered she was right.

Radfems are indeed much worse than the traditional TERF. As where TERFS are typically casual with their prejudices, I’ve found they lack self-awareness. They try to logicize their bigotry and sell it to their audience packaged as a “Sophisticated Arguments” and “Clever Rebuttals.” They resist being called a bigot, it offends them. Instead they ask others to sympathize with them for being portrayed as villainous. They are villainous, make no mistake, but they lack the capacity to comprehend why we make that deduction. Therefore, they presume the role of a victim under assault by an army of “Men in Dresses.”

Radfems are a different beast in that they embrace their radicalized sensibilities with pride. They covet their bigotry and wear it like a badge of honor. They aren’t interested in posing as innocent victims of a make-believe Trans agenda, but desire to be viewed as vigilant guardians of femininity, sexuality and womanhood. They aggressively attack, unprovoked, nonsensically hellbent on creating a narrative that paints them as a hero trying to slay a mythical beast. Radfems are completely consumed by their hatred and any awareness of a shared reality is entirely absent- They exist in an imaginarium where only others like themselves exist. They feed off each others rage. They have handed over their freedom of thought and developed a hive mind, informing each others opinions- and their very souls have gone septic, sending them into a state of madness not altogether unlike a rabid dog. They can no longer differentiate between right and wrong, helpful or harmful, kindness or cruelty. They have gone primitive, they only know outrage. They fling their arms about, bellowing inflammatory slurs and when shut out by the public, they complain they have been oppressed for being women.

Despite their vocal intensity, they’re actually a cowardly collective. Their movement lies mostly on social media where they create ridiculous smear campaigns against Transgender women, whom they believe are trying to coerce into their space with the intent of penetrating them by force. Radfems, I’ve noticed, mostly identify as lesbians, and have presumed entitlement over the whole of lesbianism, for example, how lesbians behave, who can be one, and what makes you a good lesbian. If you’ve ever had relationships with men, you’re going to be viewed as traitorous to the RadFem collective. There is one way to be a Radfem, and any departure from that makes you their enemy.

As far as I can tell, the RadFem movement sprouted up like stinkweed, first in the UK, from one woman’s dissatisfaction with the Labour Party deciding to include Transgender rights as part of their manifsto in defending The Gender Recognition Act of 2004. Recently, the GRA has had broad changes proposed, allowing Transwomen to self-identify, rather than navigate years of obstacles and red tape.

Venice Allen — RadFem Organizer

Spearheading the RadFem movement is Venice Allan, a 43-year-old from South London, who was suspended from the Labour Party after an investigation revealed she had been heavily engaged in creating and posting anti-trans photos. Doubling down on her hate-parade, Allan publicly condemned Lily Madigan, the first transgender woman to be elected as a women’s officer in the Labour Party. Then, just last week, Allan also found herself banned from twitter for promoting hatred and inciting violence toward Transgender women. She still has her facebook page.

Transgender women have become more visible in the UK, even assuming positions of power. This alone can likely be credited with Allan’s gory birth of RadFem as an opposition.

Quick to join Allan in the formation of the RadFem movement was Lily Maynard (A pseudonym, she informs us via her website.) Lily is Mother to a 15 year old girl, Jessie, who came out to her as Transgender in 2015. Maynard, who describers herself as a one-time “bisexual, polyamorous, gender-fluid, rainbow-sparkle unicorn (who) lived that way for many years,” was so distraught by her daughter’s confession that she was Transgender, she intervened and claims that, together, they worked their way through it and are now committed to revealing the truth regarding the “Transgender War on Women.”

Maynard wrote and article called “A Mum’s Voyage Through Transtopia: Love and Resistance.”

It’s essentially a confession on how she mentally tortured her Trans daughter, Jessie, brainwashing her into conforming to her birth gender and rejecting Transgender ideation. Jessie, herself, contributes to the article in the postscript, and it is heartbreaking.

“Although at the time I didn’t appreciate it, the constant repetition of “you can’t be a boy” did me good. A lot of good. I had been spending too much time on the internet and I had got it into my head that somehow, biological girls could really be boys, if they “identified” as such (& vice versa).

As someone who’s always had a mostly realistic grip on the world, for some reason I had been pulled into a world where boys could become girls and girls could become boys. I felt that because I said I was a boy, I was a boy” — Jessie Maynard

Drawing a parallel; If TERFS are the Focus On The Family of hyperfeminists, the RadFems are the Westboro Baptist Church. They make great spectacles with the intention of generating attention from the public and recruiting other women into their ranks. It is a warped, cult-like organization that is equally dangerous to the public as it is to the mental state of those who enthusiastically self-declare as RadFems. They have no time for science, facts, and reject the idea of sexual or gender fluidity across the spectrum. They hate Trans women and this wholly defines their identity. It is their only purpose; To serve RadFem justice by spreading propaganda and promoting the erasure of Trans people. To be clear, they state in their manifesto that they do accept Transmen into their legion. Because they Bleed.

No one told the RadFems that not all women menstruate. Many women deal with infertility as well, and have never been pregnant. That doesn’t disqualify them as women. But, I digress.

Allan began organizing efforts to recruit other women into her collective, including Linda Bellos and Shiela Jefferys and eventually decided to take her band of angry Fem-Lesbians on tour, which she called “We Need To Talk: UK and Ireland Tour.”

https://medium.com/media/142b852ca00c440d6bfe34391741c80a/href

Most do not welcome the RadFems with open arms. As soon as they publicized their intent to tour Ireland, dozens of National organizations and hundreds of individuals alike composed an open letter to Allan and her folly, saying, “We neither want nor need your lecture tour. You’re not welcome here.” Many others have followed suit in cancelling RadFem’s “Transgender War On Women” rallies and appearances, including Millwall in Southeast London.

During an event for International Women’s Day, Allan appeared before MPs Heidi Alexander and Ellie Reeves, as well as Steve Bullock, mayor of Lewisham to ask “Why can’t I speak?” But… that’s all she did, uninterrupted.

https://medium.com/media/894544d1e92c8ce4a78e2fdef5bc4902/href

The ire of RadFems is as extreme as it gets, save reounding up Transwomen like dogs and shooting them. This is the kind of rhetoric they post:

It is untrue that 91% of Trans women are autogynephiliacs. So you don’t have to google, Autogynephiliac is defined as a sex-fueled mental illness. This is the kind of material that RadFems distribute in order to shape opinions regarding Transgender women, implying they are “Extremely jealous” and want to “Wear our skin.”

In my foray into their cesspool of hatred and repugnant lies, I found some of their posts humorous, ironically.

https://medium.com/media/7a2b745fd22cfbb85eef670c86d7b62d/href

Sheila Jeffrys, Anne Ruzlyo and Julia Long — from the public page We Need To Talk UK and Ireland tour

Sadly, there is nothing feminist about blind hatred. It clear these RadFem lesbians fear Transgender women. They believe that Trans women threaten their sexuality, or represent some form of competition for them within the lesbian community. They have sexualized the state of being Transgender to the point of obsessively associating the acts of rape and physical assault with being Trans. They become defensive over their lesbianism when broaching the subject of Transgender women, which is ironic, because as far as I had researched, many of these RadFems routinely present outside gender norms- even as the opposite gender- often with such masculinity and dominance, I had to wonder how many steps away these women were from being Transgender themselves.

Historically, we know that the most anti-gay individuals exhibit, albeit discreetly, gay interests. Most staunch anti-gay Republicans have been caught in compromising circumstances with other men, including male sex workers and underage boys.

One this is clear, there is no valid motivation for these extremists. Transgender women cost them nothing and their existence does them no harm. They lose nothing by coexisting peacefully alongside people whose plights they do not know, understand or have any interest in. As with so many instances of social terrorism, there is no winner, there is no genuine purpose except to demonize innocent people who do not meet their standard of acceptability. Odd coming from lesbians who, when it comes to many others, don’t meet that standard either.

Interested in learning more? Here’s their facebook page.

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[twistednuns]

July 2020

Change. Transition and transformation.                                            

Feeling like a proud mum during my first graduation class’ final exam. They’re all gonna leave the nest so soon.

Meeting my colleagues at Michi’s own “Isar beach”. Ordering truffle pizza. Watching the storm clouds coming closer. Retreating to Michi’s flat. Talking to the dude with the guitar about life-changing travel experiences. Making fun of the stalkers across the street. Psychedelics-talk with Lorenz. Having a last drink at Rosi’s. My first time in a bar in many many months.

Tapas with Lena and Maike. Walking in linen shoes in the pouring rain. Listening to Knorkator on the subway.

New clothes. Loose, high-waisted pants, jeans shorts, a lemon print dress. A graphic, artsy Monki dress. A new hat and a bargain from COS (a sweater for only €5,85, wow).

My spontaneous meet-ups with Manu at the Asian take-away restaurant. Last time I started smiling brightly when a little kid walked past us very proudly with their brand new Schultüte.

Rest. A clean apartment. Cleaning in general (weird obsession atm; I even cleaned Manu’s whole kitchen when I was making veggie stew for him during his ear infection; but also I sang Soft Kitty for him). Gardening. Cooling down with water spray, après sun spray and cool-packs from the freezer.

Leoni’s essay actually made me laugh out loud. We had a bet going on. If she managed to use the word turkey in her essay I would have to give her €10. Well, she did it. Also, she invented and app called Teenage Mutant Karate Cats and signed off with Love, Karen. Such a gem.

That feeling when you put the pen down and the work is finally done. So liberating (after grading the final exams).

My blackroll. The only thing that helps after working at a desk for a few hours. My back hates grading papers. And using the kitchen as a temporary workspace. The smell of coffee, the humming of the dishwasher, sitting right by the window. Using all the colours to mark the essays. I love highlighter pens.

The smoke alarm lady’s charm. I only see her once a year when she comes to check on the smoke alarms but I kinda like her.

Staying late. Singing in an empty school. Not having to be quiet for once.

People standing in for gay rights and diversity. Which is why I loved the Circus of Books documentary. And the Netflix series POSE. Blanca and Pray are my favourite characters, of course.

I was satisfied with the Dark series ending. Couldn’t have hoped for more.

Raspberry plants for only 1€. I couldn’t resist.

Teaching some English lessons in other classes. Not actually facing any resistance, they really liked working with me. They asked questions and were interested, what the heck? In the final lesson with the 9d ladies we actually carved out some time to learn the cup song and sing karaoke on full volume. The girls showed my a Dua Lipa song I hadn’t heard before, I really liked it. And they wanted to hear My Heart Will Go On. Just imagine blasting the Titanic song and a whole group of teenagers singing along as dramatically as possible.

Manu feeding me with Toffifee while watching a brainless rom-com.

A day trip to Chiemsee with Sash. We were ON A BOAT, had Aperol Spritz in the sunshine right by the lake. Lots of walking, talking, inspecting flowers and eating good food. In the end we went swimming (for the first time this year?). How I had missed the water. Browsing magazines on the train. Talking about hair care and secret dreams. Coffee with ice-cream for dinner.

Making snack berries. Dipping blueberries in Greek yoghurt, rolling them in grated coconut and off to the freezer. A great healthy snack. (But of course I’m also obsessed with actual Raffaellos this month.)

A day at the lake with Verena, Silvia and Nicole. Great picnic lunch, 90’s revival music. Spotting huge fishies underwater. Taking photos of Verena in order to work on some ideas for her back tattoo. Low point: stepping into a bee and the worst sunburn ever.

The Karlsfeld train underpass. Lots of interesting underwater creatures that actually look like vintage illustrations.

Westpark. One of my favourite green spots in Munich. Lunch at Gans am Wasser (veggie seitan kebab), walking over to Rosengarten, ice-cream for dessert. Cycling home. Stopping to pick some flowers.

BBQ with some colleagues. Playing some weird trampoline volleyball game. Chasing Luise (the weiner dog) around. Being the DJ. In the end I sat there with Michi, Laura and Nicole. Drove home with a quite drunk Michi who didn’t stop talking.

A picnic with the kids and their parents to say our final goodbyes. Culinary presents from the parents, a graduation T-shirt from the students. Taking lots of photos, talking until it got dark. On the next day I had to go up on stage for the graduation ceremony. I was super nervous but so glad when it was all over. I went home with arms full of flower, wearing my constellation dress. On the parking lot Nicole and I even had a little fun with a helium balloon.

I went straight home to visit my mum on the last school day so I enjoyed a weekend there. Singing with my mum and my brother, healthy meals, inspecting the garden, making a gorgeous bouquet with some sunflowers I had brought with me and buddleja twigs from the garden. Walking through the neighbourhood with my mother, feeding chickens (my mother is just as crazy as me, the video I made of her talking to the birds is proof), going to the fleamarket (also for the first time this year). Meeting Michi U., Sash, Julia, Lena and Obi at Yvonne’s vegan cafe. Iced almond coffee, two full tables filled with vegan food. Talking to the owner about creative projects. Meeting Catrin and Andi at Brillengalerie (Birkenstock inspiration!).

Learning about resonant breathing, medicinal mushrooms and the psychological origin of illness.

Salt with smoky paprika and lemon-infused olive oil.

Harvesting pea pods on my balcony.

Talking to a body therapist. A morning walk through Schwabing. Treating myself to some Bircher muesli and fresh juice. Walking through some stores I had never been to before. Discovering a mirror gallery. Later some vegetarian sushi, Pho and a massage appointment. Lying in bed with Manu, right in front of the ventilator. Eating sinful cookies'n'cream magnum, talking about sex, health, music, life. Making late-night pizza.

Talking to Franzi on the phone. Reading a graphic novel set in Munich. Great drawings of the city. I loved the interior of Pimpernel club. Really well done.

Meeting Laura at her osteopathy practice for the first time. I really like her. Later it turned out that she’s friends with Becky! Laura taught me how to sit and stand and felt her way into my scoliosis.She has such a soft approach, let’s see how happy I’ll be with that treatment. But I obviously need to join her Cantienica class.

Hardware store, heavy plant transport. Finding a lot of cheap flower pots in the antique store.

Eating my first home-grown tomato. Just a little herbal salt. So nice. You can actually taste the sunshine.

Gute Laune herbal tea. In the middle of summer. With the doors closed to keep the heat out.

This tie-dye idea.

I sat on the balcony when a sudden thump made a tiny little bird fall right in front of me. It had collided with my living room window. Its wing was twisted so I put it right and the bird hopped off, resting in a dark corner, closing its eyes all the time. I looked up how to help and was really sad because the internet warned me that most birds would die a few hours after a collision but after ten minutes the bird hopped onto a twig, some more hopping, and flew off. I really hope you made it, little friend! Have a nice summer!

Watching The Expanse with Lena and Obi. Watermelon-Feta salad with mint. Drinking homemade lemonade, sparkly bloodorange wine and coffee with ice-cream.

An electric blue summer dress.

The Russian-themed Sjöden autumn catalogue.

Taylor Swift and Bon Iver - Exile. Such an incredibly beautiful song.

Making a fantastic Indian eggplant/chickpea curry with coriander, paneer and tofu. Delicious.

And the last crazy thing I need to talk about this month is Becky. She texted me during the graduation ceremony on the last day of the school year and told me that she’d be one of my colleagues from now on!! Crazy. The trio is back together. I met her at our usual Italian restaurant and we talked for hours. So much to catch up on. She is still a person I vibe and click with. However, I’m also a little scared because somehow she represents a chapter of my life I have closed. So she seems a little out of place in this new little corner of the world I have created for myself. But I’m sure it’s gonna turn out great!

[hellyeahrpmemes]

※ JENNA MARBLES SENTENCE STARTERS, PT. V ※

here’s sentences from 10 more of jenna’s videos! feel free to change names/pronouns/zodiac signs/etc.! I • II • III • IV

OPPOSITE CONTOUR TUTORIAL

“What’re you gonna do…?”

“It’s fun for me…!”

“This does exist on the Internet, and it looks amazing.”

“I’m a professional.”

“I can see up your shorts.”

“I’m just gonna get started here.”

“I’m getting mindfucked already.”

“My cheeks don’t look broken, my nose looks broken.”

“You’re already looking mad fucked.”

“Well, finally, the outside matches the inside. Broken, beaten down, sad, tired, mad fucked.”

“Don’t judge me, okay?”

“I look like Voldemort.”

“Please ignore all of his Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie jokes from a decade ago.”

“I look like an amphibian that belongs in a river.”

“Oh, no, Jenna…”

“I thought you’d be a little more open-minded.”

“Don’t look at me directly, no, don’t…!”

“It’s looking like day 3 or 4 after a bad sunburn.”

“You calling me dirty?”

“Who you calling dirty, daddy?”

“I look like my father.”

“I think it looks good.”

“We went off-roading for dick, and we found it.”

“I thought this was gonna be a little more dramatic than it is.”

HOW MANY BALLOONS WILL IT TAKE TO MAKE MY DOG FLY

“I mean, I’m curious, aren’t you?”

“I love my dogs more than I love people.”

“I wanna see how many balloons it will take to lift Marbles off the ground.”

“You gon’ fly, boy.”

“Let’s start with 10 and see if we can fit them in the car.”

“We have a lot of balloons already, I don’t know how many more we need.”

“His feelings are very hurt by that.”

“It takes 72 balloons to get this off the ground.”

“Welcome to our new living room, it consists only of happy birthday balloons.”

“Are you ready to take flight?”

“The people at Party City hate us.”

“He doesn’t even care.”

“He doesn’t know where he is no matter what.”

“We really thought this was only gonna take 15 balloons.”

“It took us six car fulls of balloons.”

“Is he asleep in space?”

“He does not give a fuck.”

“I did not think he was gonna be this chill.”

“He’s asleep. He’s fucking asleep.”

“Alright, well, this is our dog, now.”

“There’s not much else to do.”

“This is too many balloons.”

“I was happy, bitch.”

“I’m too old for this shit.”

“You’ve been dealing with me for 8 years, you’re a very patient guy, you know that?”

“I hope that this brightens your day a little, because it brightened mine.”

“What a fucking mistake this was.”

“I’ll never let go. Just kidding, I’m letting go.”

“Well, this was stupid.”

GOOGLE DEEP DIVE WITH ME

“So I’m having one of those days where I can’t make a good thought if I tried to think it.”

“This is all I do, which is why I’m so fucked up.”

“You just start googling things and watching videos and clicking on things until you just don’t know where you are anymore.”

“See, that’s what the fuck I’m talking about.”

“This is like my pet peeve in life.”

“Oh, this fucks me up.”

“God, I’m so fucking turned on right now.”

“Okay, that’s actually highkey dope.”

“Here it is, my favorite picture of Kylie Jenner.”

“This is so fucked up.”

“The Internet is fucking brutal.”

“Happy Australia Day, y’all are nasty.”

“If breastmilk is vegan, why hasn’t someone opened a booby cheese café?”

“Whole Foods ain’t that weird.”

“What’s the word for this? No.”

“Stop putting your boobs in my mouth.”

“Where is he going!?”

“This is like, highkey beautiful.”

“That is lazy as shit.”

“Why don’t you smoke a blunt while you’re at it?”

“It’s only $649, to be the laziest fuck you’ll ever meet.”

“She got all the way to the park to do that…?”

“This is the single dumbest thing that costs 600 dollars.”

“Exercise is free, don’t you ever forget it!”

“She’s dead inside.”

“Hello, 911, there’s a lady walking around, she’s terrifying…!”

“Wait, what the fuck is a zorilla!?”

“It’s like a gorilla, but it’s a fucking skunk.”

“Is this everything you hoped for?”

“I’ve never been happier.”

“Look at how many Air Buds there are!”

“So how many dogs are Air Bud?”

“Damn, I forgot how good Air Bud was.”

“That is the same person…!”

“I’m actually crying.”

“There’s literally no way that’s all Julia Roberts.”

“My head hurts. I have a headache now.”

DOING MY MOM’S MAKEUP

“Have you ever gotten your makeup done before?”

“I’m beginning to wonder why I said yes.”

“Step one of getting ready is just don’t have bangs.”

“That brush is sharp.”

“He actually wanted to die.”

“What, are you tired already?”

“I don’t have any blush, so I’ll just rub this dirty brush on your face.”

“You look like J-Lo reborn.”

“Have you ever been so illuminated in your life?”

“You look like a new woman already.”

“I just got insulted in my own salon.”

“If you didn’t want shit on your face, you shouldn’t have agreed to this.”

“You’re looking like a million bucks already.”

“Do you trust me? You shouldn’t.”

“Isn’t this the worst?”

“Drink away your fear of looking beautiful.”

“It sounds nothing like The Police!”

“I know you can’t see, and you think I’m massacring your face right now, but you look cute as fuck.”

“Farther away is better.”

“If you’re scared of eyeliner, drag makeup isn’t for you.”

“We’re off to Walgreens.”

I SUCK AT VIDEO GAMES 4

“Julien is here, mostly to laugh at me.”

“Who would’ve thought that you actually had to do something?”

“I did it. It only took me three minutes but I did it.”

“I’ve never laughed at a pun out of anything other than a courtesy.”

“Stop making everything about aliens.”

“Here I come to fuck yo bitch.”

“You know it’s my dream to make a Twitter account talking nothing but trash to NASA 24/7.”

“There is no 5-second rule. If you drop something, you just fucking eat it at your own free will.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“I think you can eat food off of the ground.”

“Goodbye everybody. Goodbye everybody. Goodbye everybody!”

“I like to fuck all day, forever.”

“Guys, I don’t have a job, I just fuck for a living.”

“Look at these sick moves.”

“Damn, is my family annoying.”

“I would be the most talented male stripper the world has ever seen.”

“Why can’t I shoot my gun underwater?”

QUADRUPLE DOG SWEATER

“He thinks that Cher, Shakira, and Celine Dion all have the same voice.”

“He thinks that Anne Hathaway, Julia Roberts, and Sandra Bullock are the same person.”

“It’s trash and garbage and why would I ever see it?”

“It’s a trash movie and he thinks it’s a cinematic masterpiece.”

“I looked for it on the Internet, and it doesn’t exist.”

“Watch out, kids, because when you turn 30, all you’re gonna wanna do is craft.”

“I wanna do it all the way out, and not in a practical way.”

“I want it to exist.”

“They are so tolerant of my fucking bullshit.”

“This is gonna be a disaster.”

“This is so much harder than I had anticipated.”

“This is a fucking mess, a fuckshow of an idea.”

“Goddamnit, this doesn’t work at all!”

“That’s a different email than you gave earlier, and a song.”

“I did it, I’m so proud of myself!”

“Oh my god, you are so mean.”

“If this doesn’t get me in the Guinness Book of World Records, nothing will.”

“Don’t do this, this is a bad idea, but I’m glad I did.”

SEE YOU IN 2017

“I hope you guys are having a great holiday.”

“I want to say thank you so much.”

“We had a really, really wonderful time.”

“Me in all of my beautiful, everyday glory.”

“We got a leak in the ceiling, very dangerous, very fun.”

“I organized my spice cabinet.”

“I went to the grocery store and held hands with my boyfriend, it was great.”

“This dumpster fire of a year is almost over.”

EXTRAS 2016

“I’m gonna pee my pants.”

“Never say that again.”

“I just want everyone to know this video has been the highlight of my life.”

“I can’t feel my eyes.”

“It burns.”

“Nothing like being fully clothed in your bathtub.”

“She looks like she just did a bunch of steroids.”

“I can see your hands in my periphery.”

“It’s like, never not funny.”

BODY MASSAGE

“I want a body massage.”

“Who wants a body massage?”

“Everybody likes a body massage.”

“It doesn’t have to be a sexual massage.”

“I mean, you guys were asking for it.”

“I make shit like this every week.”

CHRISTMAS GLITTER BEARD DIY

“I don’t ever wanna have a goatee.”

“Why are we doing the goatee?”

“We’re having fun, it’s Christmas.”

“If you’re gonna have that kinda attitude here, then get out.”

“Wow, I hate it.”

“I can’t do your makeup when you’re staring into the abyss.”

“You’re putting that on my face?”

“Oh, god, there’s glue on my face.”

“I’m divorcing you.”

“We’re not married…!”

“Maybe we should cross that shitty, stupid bridge when it comes.”

“Where I am on the moisture spectrum is my business and my business alone.”

“Don’t choke me, don’t choke me.”

“Choke me, choke me…!”

“For real though, is this gonna come off?”

“It looks like, all of a sudden, you just started feeling yourself.”

“Who describes their own penis as chunky?”

“Let us write your Grindr profile.”

“No, please no.”

“I look like I just got beat up.”

“You actually just made me Halloween Santa.”

“You look fucking terrifying.”

“This is not what I wanted at all.”

“I made a terrible mistake.”

“You look so festive…!”

“Don’t, you’re gonna make a mess…!”

“Do you know who I am?”

“I look like I just finished killing someone.”

“Meet me outside and kill me please.”

[whenislunch]

This summer I saw my favorite artist perform live on an island off of Manhattan that used to serve as a jail/mental health institution.

When Frank Ocean came out with his screen grabbed text file posted as a “photo” on Tumblr in 2012, I knew the platform was something special - the one niche he could safely post something so revealing and vulnerable and still not open himself to the direct hate-filled or homophobic comments of any other forum. I had signed up for Tumblr the year prior. I joined with the fantasy of becoming a famous food blogger (and later as a nail artist) so I could quit my publicity job and score all of the PR perks that I so readily dished out to any 'mommy' with a touch of digital pretense.

Personal space on the vast internet was never my craving. I resisted being too present, and enjoyed the ability to control how much I “put myself out there” on facebook, twitter, and later Instagram. With my original two tumblrs, like Frank, I could focus on sharing and following the things I cared the most about: in early cases, it was fan art of Bill Murray, gifs of Daft Punk, and mostly photos of food I had eaten from the everyday life of a new New Yorker discovering the cult nature of the restaurant scene (a similar practice to my behavior as a teen taking shitty photos at punk shows in St Pete, Florida to pin on my bedroom wall). Tumblr became my collection of “curated cool," and nobody cared how hard I was trying or what I put up there, except for me, and it became my favorite place on the internet. Eventually, I realized all of the writers I was admiring on The Awl were including their Tumblrs in their bios, and I was there to follow them. I saw Rebecca Black become a meme before her one-hit would become a wedding band wonder. If sitting at the open kitchen counter at an edison bulb-lit restaurant was the closest you could get to a food industry version of “backstage”, then a Tumblr dashboard filled with all of the blogging generation of the “fake news media” was the analogy. It’s human nature to want to be seen and understood. Selfies perform better than friendies on Instagram - and GPOY’s on Tumblr… well I challenge anybody on music.ly to define the acronym without that peeking at the Childish Gambino Genius page first.

And that’s the tip of the iceberg for where I stand with Tumblr now. After three years of hanging out in the same field, they invited me to meet them at the dugout. After four months of interviewing and pitching challenges and pretending like I was at a digital optimization workshop, I was offered a job. After five years, or nearly, I’m ready for another one. I had the BEST time and the BEST TEAM working at Tumblr. Sentiment is incalculable, and being the Comms professionals that we are, we can swear to the moon that the effect of press results on a brand is unquantifiable when one piece can qualitatively alter the nature of the public’s perception versus the reality of a goal. And I had the the immeasurable luxury to be surrounded by the smartest, most creative, intensely productive, and to borrow a food world phrase - hardiest colleagues in the history of the internet.

My first day at Tumblr also belonged to six others - together we endured a questionable onboarding interaction and then were sent with laptops and branded hoodies to our respective seats at our superdesks on various floors. There were dogs everywhere. I was told that I’d be introduced to the company on Friday and to submit two truths and a lie to help them get to know me. Here they are:

I have photo credits in the New York Times and New York Magazine

I appeared as a backup dancer in a rap video in high school

I watercolor paintings of crustaceans as a hobby

Leave your guess in the comments (oh wait, it’s Tumblr, you can’t). 

Friday lunches were my lifeblood for a couple of months. Every week for at least seven thereafter unloaded a new set of amazing humans to be introduced in some absurd way by Sean from recruiting. I remember @sexpigeon vs Homer’s owner in game of pictionary, Johnny and Jake quickly competing for my heart as #1 engineer dudes, and of course, the instant classic game of Mark Coatney/ Marc Cote/ Marked Coat. Tumblr ramped up fast thanks to Lee, a fundraising series and at the tireless behest of my personal champion, Lindsey Dole.

Meanwhile, more magic was brewing in the cauldron. I heard @amandalynferri talking about some game she invented called Pretty Little Lasagna box, or I heard Maddie recalling the time she had her palm read in 14th street psychic's booth seeking refuge from a snowstorm, or @lexkap who sat on the other side of the building with a dog on her lap DM’d me on hip chat to show me her own nail art blog. Then a few of us won a chance to see a sneak preview of a new arthouse film by Harmony Korine and featuring an ensemble cast of former Disney talent that had been filmed in my hometown with a y2k airbrushed aesthetic - there was something innately emotional tied to each of us with this first viewing of Spring Breakers. When we left the midtown theater alongside the ATL Twins, I realized that this company had curated a community to match the intended behavior of its user base. We all connected on a level beyond any workplace I had experienced before.

And there was the professional side to the job - the work wins came quick because I was so lucky to sit under leaders who wanted the team to succeed. Rick Webb and Katherine encouraged me to dig in, and get deep with these shiny new toys called “evangelists” - Valentine, Nate, Liba, Annie, Max, Rachel, Jen, and briefly DCH. An enviable group of brilliant minds and creative energy who have all gone on to accomplish even more for their respective industries than a marketing budget at a start up could have enabled - and I had the pleasure to help share their Tumblr stories with the world - from a puppy bowl to annual southby's to groundbreaking art auctions to thirteen fucking fashion weeks to 35+ art and music shows (brrr)?

And then Tumblr got acquired and the Jenna Wortham turned the New York Times blue, and I got to do something I’m sure will never happen again in my entire career: I threw a party where the goody bag included a free tattoo, and multiple brave souls got them (Tyler, @bryanasortino, Megan & Johnny, among others).

And then Karen (aka #takingitallin aka @beautifulliving) joined, and me and Katherine gained a new teammate at the same time that I gained a new soul sister (and because of her self-described passion for advertising I never had to write an announcement about a new ad product ever again.) I’ve never been more challenged to succeed as I have over the three years I sat next to Karen - a generous and driven woman with endless dreams of supporting others (literally, ask her about the gap in the undergarment sector), who will always find a spot to squeeze me into a photobooth. Even at her wedding.

And lucky us, because then we invited @lilders into the #teamcomms fold and wow, wow, wow was life good. It was my honor working with Lily as she grew from FIT intern into somebody we should all aspire to work for someday.

Which leads to me to the poker faced improv master of all - Katherine. Allora @alittlespace! I am so lucky she believed that this girl who came into talk about a hypothetical strategy to get Eleven Madison Park on Tumblr and then pitched her a fantasy football launch party hosted by Nick Kroll and Mark Duplass could fit in and have the privilege to join the Tumblr Communications team. KB - I’ve already written you the dopiest thank you letter and shared my orchid growing miracle secrets - but it can’t be said enough - I am so grateful to have worked for you for all of these years. You are the best boss, and we will always be the #bestteam.

Because of Tumblr (and @david), I had the pleasure of working with so many additional incomparable people on projects outside of my designated Marketing Comms position, wearing more hats than we even produced for branded activation swag:

Designing and contenting for months with the relaunch of the precious Staff blog with David, Peter, Damien, Tag, Toph, among others

Setting the inaugural year in review with Danielle, Amanda, Christine loose (and then doing it again and again and again, with the wonderful team at DKC - especially that time we added a serving Kale to America’s breakfast.

Marathoning dozens of events with amazing producers like Julia, Suzanne and Magic - and encountering the native talent that thrives on Tumblr like Humans of New York, Chloe Wise, Sam Cannon, Johnny McLaughlin, Jillian Mercado, to a point where I can honestly say “I knew them when.”

Participating in the first ever Sales Offsite aka the greatest bar mitzvah ever thrown by Lee Brown, Dan Walsh and Sarah Won and the rest of the coolest sales team ever assembled (here’s to you @katemaxx, @jeffdtaylor, Meredith, Ari, Kira, and so many more)

Reaching back into my fashion bag of tricks and launching three different clothing lines.

Creating partnerships to show off super surprises at nerd parties at Comic Con and another breaking the internet for Art Basel

Interviewing the CEO of Shake Shack for the one-time-only live episode of “5 with a side of fries" in front of the whole company.

Urgently dealing with Legal, Ads, Trust and Safety on one of the definitive news story of a generation after nine months of back channeling and reporting.

DOING IT FOR THE CULTURE: Racing with the content and analytics teams for stats on the contentious day of #thedress, and then bling rings, witches, boneghazi, superwholockians, wholesome memes, studyblr, emojis, and of course, the toe thing! Thus redefining what it means to “go viral.”

Cleaned a ball pit for the dude from the 1975 to make a splash into them and trolled a legacy music publication

And wow - it took me this long to mention Post It Forward…I am so proud of everyone who helped make Tumblr the most empathetic community on the internet: Nicole Blumenfeld, Jeff D’Onofrio, @skiphursh “Dolphin", @dougrichard, Andy Sebela, Jess Frank, Sarah Won @swon, @pauwow, the brilliant and diligent Michelle Johnson. From building the blog, commissioning the art, recruiting and onboarding the partners, writing the endless number of give/gets, planning the sponsored posts and social content, running the day to day on the blog (and bequeathing that role to Lily), then doing it again with the Mental Health Quilt and IRL with the Post It Forward Summit - I’ve found my new track as a special projects person who can take on any issue, even suicidal teens. If this is my legacy, I’ve planted seeds in the garden I might never see. And special thanks to Victoria, who allowed me to speak at Obama’s White House about why kids need a place on the internet that can help heal - so long as they can find each other.

As it turns out, adults need that, too. From tailing Frank Ocean’s Ferrari to the most woke, mentally aware community and on to, thank god, a bonafide company to match - I will forever cherish my time at Tumblr and I’ll forever been asking #whenislunch. But from every tomorrow on, it will be somewhere else. And you can find me on the internet! 

Here’s my LinkedIn, I’m looking. 

[milliondollarbaby87]

That’s right I am talking about the 1998 romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, which for as long as I can remember I have totally adored and loved. I think they are even better together in this one than Sleepless in Seattle. It’s one of those delightful little films that you can put on when your feeling a little bit low and feel so much better because of watching it. I even went through a phase many years ago of watching it over and over again, you know as soon as you’ve finished watching it putting it back on again!

So with plenty of passion and love for this pretty much perfect Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan collaboration, I have put together this gushing piece and hope that others feel the same way about You’ve Got Mail as surely it cannot actually be hated when it does so much good?

1. Tom Hanks

Let’s face it he is probably the best actor of his generation, I’m not even messing around by saying one of them. He can really do any possible role and his romantic comedy turns are always enjoyable. With Joe he is not particular likeable all of the time, which is a shame really but he is a Fox and must be ruthless in the business world. Got to love ‘The Godfather’ references and quotes, something Hanks himself loves a lot!

2. Meg Ryan

Throughout the 80s and 90s she really did have it made as one of the big stars of the romantic comedy world, everything about her performances were so relatable which I strongly believe help with the popularity. If you can watch something and really feel for the character that is on another level when it comes to engaging viewers.

3. The Internet Totally ahead of its time in terms of people meeting on the internet. Yes, things have changed a lot since 1998 and many ways you can talk and meet people online. But the exchanges of emails after meeting on a forum is certainly something that doesn’t really happen anymore, I do miss Internet forums they were always a good place for fandoms to come together. The film also manages to highlight that along with online chatting it was also the start of cybersex and its perfectly fine to say no to that too! That little scene is probably not appreciated enough with its big meaning.

4. Starbucks

With a tiny bit of research and believe it or not in the UK the first Starbucks actually opened in London in 1998! Personally I didn’t go to a Starbucks until about 2005ish? But I did go through a very obsessed with the coffee (until it has now got so expensive and nearly £5 for a coffee). Anyway I digress, the quote that Joe says about Starbucks is incredible and still stands now with people trying to order, especially if they have never been in before (or any coffee place) “The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino.” Another thing it totally predicted, I know NYC has a standing joke about a Starbucks on every corner and I remember an episode of The Simpsons where all of the stores were Starbucks. The only thing we can see has changed by Joe’s quote is that coffee was still pretty expensive in the 90s!  

5. New York City

It is one of many films to be a little love letter towards the city that never sleeps. Which is all understandable as NYC is one of the greatest places you will ever visit in your life time. Going through the different seasons within the film is one of the best things in terms of seeing New York in all its glory in those different times. It looks truly beautiful especially in the final scene. This was also the first film that was allowed to film inside classic grocery store Zabar’s (where Kathleen tries to hide from Joe and ends up in the wrong line). Not forgetting that they used a Barney’s store that had just closed to create Fox Books and it looked so good people were actually asking when it was going to be opening!

6. Nora Ephron

She directed and wrote the screenplay for the film and I adore so much of her work. I mean hello we all know that ‘When Harry Met Sally’ is one of my all time favourite films ever. I haven’t seen anything that she has written where I haven’t totally loved it. Her last film being the lovely ‘Julie & Julia’, so it turns out she really likes things linked to the internet as well given the blogger based for that film. I just personally feel she had the ability to write these screenplays which would stand the test of time. I truly believe that about ‘You’ve Got Mail’ I am aware the technology has dated but not much else has when you think about big companies and small local businesses that is still pretty much the same now in 2020.

7. The Cheesy (but lovely) Ending

If a romantic comedy does not have the most cheesy of all lines at the end they have certainly done it wrong. Come on we knew they were talking together and so it Joe for quite a while, which I suppose was a little bit cheeky especially when they became quite close friends. That did make for the final scene reveal even better to see Kathleen’s face, probably more relief than anything when she utters “I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly.” After being told “Don’t cry shopgirl. Don’t cry” which was the utterly cheesy part. But seriously who even cares about that considering just how loveable this whole film was and still is?

7 Reasons to still love You’ve Got Mail That’s right I am talking about the 1998 romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, which for as long as I can remember I have totally adored and loved.

[stileshale]

What are your thoughts on teen wolf? especially writing wise? I have stopped watching regularly around 3b and I wasn't too convinced by what I've seen here on tumblr about the rest of the episodes, in particular 6x10...

i will always have a special place in my heart for the characters i love that the show gave me. i still blog about teen wolf, i write fic, and i enjoyed s1-3a. saying that, i don’t particular enjoy what the show became, or look back on the experience i had as a fan with much nostalgia (i think we were v much used and abused as a fandom online, for sure). i love my part of fandom, though.

short answer about the writing... it was terrible because

1) there was a complete lack of planning and follow through

2) we love this idea/actor/theme for 30 seconds but oops now we don’t

3) they completely misused their social media as a way to a) explain away/correct plot holes in their own writing and b) encourage viewers to watch a show they implied to be many things that it turned out to... not be any of

long answer

as a disclaimer here, i watch a lot of tv, i watch stuff on cbs, abc, fox, cw, bbc, tbs, p much something from every network, and i’ve seen the highs and lows of writing through comedy, drama, medical, supernatural, and everything inbetween. i’m not a professional writer, i am only a consumer. i have, however, over the nearly 20 years of watching shows as a fangirl (where i’ve been into something i follow religiously, and then later became involved in online forums) honed my tastes and opinions. on average i watch 15 shows a week, last year it would have been 21 around february time, but i’ve cut six shows including 3 i started this fall and dropped because of writing issues similar to that of teen wolf, or it just got terrible, either way). i have totally tried to rationalise what teen wolf did and i just... can’t. 

to elongate

1. the whole “let’s throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” approach is terrible. the best thing about breaking bad was that everything was planned to the very minute details. lost only picked up again when they were given an end date and suddenly had to come up with a plausible endgame. every season teen wolf has started off with a new plan, a new theme, and then it’s fallen apart because they’ve quite clearly changed their minds about something and either dropped it completely (they’re especially bad about dropping characters and never speaking of them again, or even acknowledging they were there in the first place), or made up new stuff to fit their new plan (scott is the true alpha so he can move mountain ash, kate is a werejaguar

not to mention they’ve joked about not being able to keep up with their own timelines, unsure how old any of the characters are, forgetting the characters have school/work/should be in prison, introducing siblings, changing history, forgetting actual canon...

2. kinda leads on from 1. where they would introduce an idea or a character and then totally lose interest and instead of trying hard to give them depth or something to do or going somewhere with the concept, they’d just drop it? see, parrish as a hellhound, kira as a kitsune, even way back when with stiles as a spark, a cool idea for thirty seconds to fit in with the plot and then... whoops it never happened, what are you talking about there was never a whole season about japanese culture, that season was about stiles conquering his internal battle with his own psyche telling him he’s never going to be good enough because we always make his dad out to be a total dick to him (surprise, his dad’s called noah, which we know you’ll hate because we dragged it out like some sort of magical plot twist, and also HIS dad is a dick so it’s okay he’s always told stiles he’d rather have had scott as a son) WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT FOXES FOR? THERE WAS NO FOX. THERE WAS NO TREE TRUNK. BANSHEES? THE FUCK? LYDIA JUST SCREAMS EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE AND SOMETIMES HAS MAGIC POWERS. but then doesn’t. pfft it doesn’t actually matter.

 or worse conveniently fix it/disappear it. it was tiring to watch and be confused and wonder why they were treating you like an idiot as a viewer. like the show is on mtv sure, but at least awkward stuck to a clear timeline. awkward covered where characters vanished to. we never actually even got clarification on basics like... why did deaton never want to help derek in season one... even though he was the hale emissary? what did emissaries have to do with anything by the next episode as nothing ever happened with that whole theme... why did stiles have a magic spark... where did cora go... how did she come back and how did the alphas find her before derek... why did the alphas originally start a war with derek, kill off his pack but then decide they didn’t want derek and just wanted scott... why did scott let deucalion walk off into the sunset? WHY IS PETER STILL NOT IN PRISON FOR THE MURDER OF HIS NIECE? these questions are all like three seasons old but that’s all i have and they still bug me. i can’t believe the show has never covered any of these huge issues. it’s lazy. everyone likes consistency, nobody likes writing leaving this big wink like “you don’t really care about this do you???”

again, with the big deaths, the characters they did kill off all had opportunities not to die, they could have had different endings, but each time their death was used to create man pain, probably one of the many reasons i’m not as big on male characters (they always need something to prop them up and make them more heroic and tragic in the long run), and that writing? erica, boyd, allison, was cruel and unnecessary. it did nothing for the show, and it lessened the writing. it actually made it worse when they tried to defend it, because they’d been going on about it for so long before hand as if it was a new and exciting toothpaste they’d all just gotten “now even whiter than before/now with even more death!!!”

the fact they hadn’t planned out a season without stiles (despite knowing dylan was out) and so instead of giving all of the other characters a chance to grow and learn and develop they literally wrote a whole season about stiles (after all of 3b, and from what i can tell most of s4 and s5 was about stiles). every character seemed to be focused on this missing person. the whole season was based around a character that wasn’t even on screen. and all because std fans were promised a big beautiful season of std??? gutted.

3. leading to point three! teasing your internet fanbase with ~thrilling and huge deaths to look forward to all season! using tumblr to answer questions about the plot holes/characters/encourage you to watch for the return of characters and not actually ever going through with it on screen. the teasing. the baiting. the flat out refusal to learn from your own viewership (when more than happy to use their gifs, use their images, their fanfics and their ideas) and then act as if the fanbase are the ungrateful ones. to try and join in with memes and tbt and a bunch of other infuriating actions that made even the actors uncomfortable. the tweets, the writers creating more drama even now, six seasons in, jeff saying “oh yeah if hoechlin had stayed on we’d have tortured derek some more with a fake julia (????? dick) haha i hope the internet doesn’t kill me for that one” as if we’re a bunch of deranged lunatics instead of just fans of a character that deserved better? like he knows what’s up. he’s a grown man. he knows they fucked up, in so many areas, and yet he’s just not willing to learn from it, or acknowledge it, he’s just always said “well if they don’t like it, they shouldn’t watch”... 

i guess we didn’t.