#before then it’s sort of interchangeable sometimes youre a girl sometimes woman

[orangecreamdreamscene]

new concept for girlhood vs. womanhood distinction. when you’ve had a period for longer than you haven’t had one you’re officially a Woman

[autumnblogs]

Aside Glance: The Palpable Absence of the Dubiously Canonical

So you might have noticed throughout my writings that I have at the same time avoided directly talking about any of the expanded universe material while also occasionally alluding to it just enough to make it noticeable. At least, probably.

So to nobody’s surprise, let me say;

I don’t like the Homestuck Epilogues.

Before I dig into why, I wanna dig out what I think I actually do like about the Homestuck Epilogues. CW: for mentions of suicide, sexual violence, fascism, genocide, etc. Spoiler Warning for the Homestuck Epilogues, although if you haven’t read them by now, good; don’t. Keep reading for my thoughts on the Epilogues.

I do like that the Homestuck Epilogues say quite loudly and clearly that Fascism Is Terrible, and that Neo-Liberals are often Discount Fascists at best in terms of the material effects they have on the world that we have to share with them. They can often end up being interchangeable, and events can cause someone with a temperament predisposed toward Neo-liberalism down the path of bloody reactionary sentiment the way it did with Jane.

Homestuck has always been a pretty soundly anti-authoritarian work, and pretty aggressively contemporary work, so it makes sense that Homestuck^2 would reflect an internet culture rabidly obsessing about the politics of the Trump-Era United States, cast its villains as parallels to the Trump Administration, the grody religious movements it catered to, and the hyper-rich dingalings who benefited from it.

I do like that the Homestuck Epilogues develop the theme of criticizing the author and continues to call attention to its narrators, this time by explicitly casting them as villainous, and morally ambiguous/incomprehensible respectively. A central idea in Homestuck is the relationship between Author, Audience, and Characters, and the blending of the lines between them.

I like that it calls attention not just to the idea that a story’s narrator is an agent themselves, but also to the reality that the narrator may not have the best interests of either their readers, or their characters in mind. I like that the authorial powers of these characters are represented as overtly dangerous and evil when they are addressed at all.

I also like that the Homestuck Epilogues are rather brutally honest about the fact that sometimes, the people that you grew up with - your close friends - grow apart from you, and turn into kind of bad people. I’ve watched that happen in real time, and have had to stop hanging out with people because they just kind of... turned evil. That’s something that needs to be discussed more in fiction, and more honestly than the usual way. When the most visible example of like, someone you knew and loved turning into a bad person is like, Anakin Skywalker, maybe the world needs more stories about that.

So good, that’s what we’ve got for things I think were good to say. Well done.

What don’t I like about the Homestuck Epilogues?

In a word, I think, they are cruel. Relentlessly cruel. Even actively malicious.

Homestuck has, of course, always been rather mean-spirited and adversarial, pretty much since page one. And really, so has Andrew’s writing in general, since the days when he ran the site Team Special Olympics. His humor walks a fine line between and outrageous and genuinely offensive, as he dares you to say, “That’s fucked up!” so he can respond “it was just a joke, where’s your sense of humor?”

But the Epilogues transcend the usual sardonic envelope-pushing we can usually count on Andrew for, and instead opt to sink their teeth into the readers in an assault on the senses, and on the sensibilities. Reading the Epilogues is a brutal experience to endure emotionally, and in a lot of places, morally offensive.

And they are this way practically from the first page; our very first impression of the Homestuck Epilogues is a content warning that presents itself in such a way as to be almost unmistakably parodic. The stylization as an AO3 work, particularly in the context of Homestuck, where these sorts of overzealous content warning pages are associated with preachy jerks like Kankri, it comes across as a direct challenge to the viewer, and by a challenge, I really mean an attack. It is a mean-spirited joke at the expense of people who have a desire to curate their media experience - and then the authors have the gall to say that the one of the goals of the Epilogues is to challenge people to curate their media more.

Every time a character could conceivably make a bad decision, or become a more ill-conceived version of themselves, they somehow manage it, which becomes all the more unbearable because of the identification of character and audience that has been the case throughout all of Homestuck. If Homestuck introduces us to this entire cast and says, this is you, the Epilogues seem to follow up with and there is nothing good about you. Jade Harley somehow transforms into a grotesque caricature of a trans-woman, a girl who is sexually incontinent and predatory in a way that is directly tied to her having a dog penis - a state of being which the text variously slut-shames her for in Meat, or alternatively uses to blame her for ruining Dave and Karkat’s relationship in Candy.

John Egbert is severely depressed and dysfunctional, and this leads him either to go off and kill Lord English to chase the thrill of adventure and his own sense of purpose (in direct opposition to the all-but-explicitly-stated takeaway from Homestuck which Dave gives us, that the better option is to just leave the story alone altogether - explicitly the worst decision he could make according to the rules of Homestuck) or descend into decades of nihilistic solipsism while the world disintegrates around him.

Dirk’s worst natures take over him and transform him into a person who can only conceivably be satisfied either by becoming an arch-villain, or by murdering himself.

The Epilogues are aggressively cruel to Jake English, choosing to double down on the lack of emotional resolution he suffered from at the end of Homestuck, and squarely placing the blame for his own misery on his own shoulders, in a way which is pretty hard to read around, which is part and parcel of the general malice which Homestuck has historically treated mentally ill characters with. Nearly all the kids in Homestuck have suffered incomprehensible levels of mental and physical abuse, and the text expects them to simply overcome it sheerly by force of will. Sure, Jake is miserable but it’s his own fault, the text seems to say; if he’d just get his act together, like Dave, maybe he could get on with his life without being mind-broken by Dirk, or raped and whipped by Jane.

This isn’t even to delve into the flagship reveal of Homestuck 2, that Rose and Jade in the Candy Timeline have not only had a daughter of their own (without telling Kanaya), but that furthermore they have replicated their own trauma in her. Rose and Jade’s daughter has grown up completely emotionally alone, in the care of her Moms’ archenemy.

The point in all of this is not that the Epilogues have made everyone behave out of character or anything like that - I think it’s clear after a re-read especially that all of this is a conceivable direction that these characters could have taken. Rather, the Epilogues reliably choose to believe the worst of the characters of Homestuck in terms of their writing decisions. Everyone always makes the worst decision that they could make, or at the very least, nearly the worst. And because of the identification of reader and character, we can’t help but take away from that a sense that this is what the authors think of us as well.

And in case it wasn’t stated explicitly enough, a running theme throughout the Epilogues is that all this conflict and badness taking place is, to some extent or another, because we the audience are looking at it. As Andrew stated in relation to the Epilogues, there’s a kind of Happily Ever After possibility bubble around the characters that intrinsically collapses into conflict the moment we observe the events again - in other words, by participating in a story, we the audience members are somehow complicit in the characters’ suffering. Yet not all stories must be driven by conflict - and who triumphs and who fails in that conflict says a lot about what a story has to say about real life.

The Epilogues engage in a kind of voyeuristic cruelty, a kind of pessimism and cynicism, a kind of relentless ugliness that I have seldom seen, and to what end? The whole thing seems to me an attack on the audience.

Aside from general, abstracted claims toward authorial intent (which I think is there), I also want to say that, I can’t emotionally engage with the Epilogues, for a personal reason; as somebody who has struggled with almost daily suicidal ideation for most of my adult life, the way that the Epilogues deal with that subject goes from troubling to malicious and hostile in its treatment of Dirk’s suicide.

And staying personal, while I haven’t had to deal with some of the other sensitive topics that the Epilogues handle recklessly, handle them recklessly they do - Jake is serially raped by Jane, and in a way that he serves as a vehicle to move the plot forward, rather than with any kind of compassion for Jake’s condition. The possibility that Tavros Crocker might be being molested by Gamzee is brought up flippantly in one scene and played off as a joke.

The Homestuck Epilogues play at maturity through handling dark themes and sensitive topics, and reveal a profound immaturity in their authors because of the ways in which they are cruelly, insensitively handled over and over again.

I guess I’ll close with the least egregious thing. The Homestuck Epilogues just aren’t funny. Even at its bleakest, Homestuck has always been funny. In their relentless pursuit of cruelty, and the shared misery of their audience and characters, the Homestuck Epilogues forgo even this most basic element of Homestuck, which Andrew has always described as being basically a comedy.

Anyway; I will not be doing a thorough analysis of the Epilogues. I hate them too much and they suck.

[dearest-alexander]

Hither and Thither- 365 DNI fanfic

Summary: She saved him, in so many ways a man could be saved. Massimo x Laura. 

Author’s Notes: I’ve uploaded this on AO3 & FF. I’m more active there, than here. Please check the sites for updates. 

Read it here:

Archive of our Own

Fanfiction

CHAPTER 1

The Don was talking about something.

The gentle, raspy voice was contrary to the cunning, dangerous man his father could be.

"Molto bene, molto bene, Mario." His father exclaimed in that giddy tone and slapped the man's shoulder, sitting in the front passenger seat. The man gave his father's hand a reassuring squeeze.

He couldn't help but wonder if his father's animateness was a good or bad thing. Being in the family business, the terms are sometimes... interchanged, by certain and normal people anyway.

"What would we do without him?" His father, the Don Torricelli, continued, looking at him for acknowledgment.

"A couple of fun things, for a start." He jested, earning a chuckle from his father and Mario.

Mario was his father's most loyal friend and confidant. He was there ever since he can remember. He was practically family, almost like a second father to him. But he was the strictest man he knew, even stricter than his father. Though, not more dangerous.

He gave a deep sigh and settled in his seat, switching his attention to the familiar scenery of Cefalú.

The familiar streets and alleys blurred as they passed. Locals and tourists alike flooded the white sandy beach. Their big umbrellas providing color to the already-rich scenery. Food carts swarmed the shore, providing refreshments in the scorching Italian summer heat. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the heat.

Everyone one except him.

It was the heat. If there was one thing he hated more than disloyalty and disobedience, it was the fucking heat. He almost didn't want to come today because of it.

But he had to.

"It's part of learning the trade." Mario reminded him this morning— just as he had done on more than one occasion.

Not that he wasn't interested in what his father does—which he was, a hundred percent. But there was this, sort of, defiance. Knowing that the choices he wanted to make have already been made for him, gives him a compelling urge to rebel. To break free and try his own luck in the business.

He wanted to step in, take over, show his father what he's capable of. Show him, without words, that his son was ready to take over. He wanted to see the notorious Victorio Torricelli actually grow old.

He wanted his father to finally surrender his gun in exchange for a quiet life. Because, he was aware that a lot of people in their way of life don't and won't have the same option.

But, like a young cub, he's shunted of his efforts.

"Learn how to walk first before you can run, figlio."

Despite his personal afflictions in anything that involved emotions, he loved his father. He revered him more than anyone else. His father might be the only thing in this world he truly cared about.

And money, of course.

The car stopped at their destination; a restaurant in the middle of a marketplace, right at the heart of the town. He exchanged a disapproving look with Mario through the rearview mirror. It was unusual for the Don to pick such a public venue for a meeting.

He was not hiding his objection and tried persuading his father to change location since the day he knew.

"Pa, it's too public. You can't be serious."

"Ah, figlio. Always worrying about me."

And why shouldn't he?

When your father's the most feared, most dangerous man in Europe, you learn to sleep with a gun in your hand.

As accustomed, they waited for a few minutes for their detail to secure and check the place. He usually assisted them, but under this weather?

No fucking way.

Mario and his father fell into a quick conversation about when they were teenagers. His dad had retold countless stories about his and Mario's prime. Just two privileged Italian legacies, against the world.

"You remember those girls at the beach?"

"Ey! Didn't you sleep with one of them?" his dad chirped.

"No, I didn't!"

"You did! You son of a bitch!"

"I slept with two!" Mario carolled, making him think of something gross.

They laughed, that good-natured laugh, he could aways expect from them.

He only half listened and continued to ogle at the mundane events happening before him.

The crowd was a river of people from all walks of life. A riot of colorful clothes under a huge tent of different loots and merchandise.

Everyone seemed to move from all different directions. The cacophony of blabber outside reverberated even on his tinted windows. Heat radiated their jolly faces. He could easily spot the tourists by their awful hats and big ass cameras hanging around their neck. And the locals, with their loud and rude gesticulation.

There was music coming from the makeshift stage on the beach. A few sunburnt, drunk, and barely clad guests were swaying to the bass. If everything went as planned today, they could stay the night here and he could slip to the rave.

His eyes fell on the bookstand a few feet west from where their car was. A couple of skateboard punks wheezed through the stand. One of them nudged the corner of the table and mountains of books toppled on the sandy pavement. He could hear the owner screaming at the kids, who didn't even turn back. His face was crimson with anger, a book threatening to fly from his hairy hand.

A petite woman with dark hair scrunched under a floppy hat, approached him. Her light skin was a fair contrast to the blue summer ensemble she's donning. She squatted down to help the poor man.

It startled him for a second.

Kindness has always been a mystery to him.

To him, kindness was the coercive reaction and result to fear.

Nothing in this world has been ever genuine—he realized that from a very young age.

Must be a foreigner. He thought. No local could be that generous.

He watched as the man, who appeared flushed all of a sudden, stood up, books recovered under his arms. The lady, who still had her back to the car, offered her gathered books back to the vendor. She must have said something because the man was nodding in a very vigorous manner. She then proceeded to slide her fingers on the display of books.

The merchant was still staring at her with a stupid smile on his wrinkled face. The woman picked up a book. She showed it to the man who nodded and grabbed a bag from under the table.

He observed, with an amused and curious expression as the people passing by the tent all did a double take at the woman. Some women narrowed their eyes, as if envious while all men have sheepish grins on their faces.

He sat straighter in his seat.

Turn around, baby girl.

The woman was and completely in her own element. He found himself transfixed by the way she's skimming her slender fingers on the book stacks

He caught himself and frowned.

What the fuck?

"Cosa pensi, Massimo?" His father asked.

He whipped his head back to his father, and tried to look anything but distracted.

A knock rapped Mario's window, saving him from his father's inquisitive brow. Outside, Domenico, his half-brother, gave them an assuring nod.

Mario got out first, before him and his father. Perspiration trickled down his neck in an instant. His hair clung in clusters on his nape.

He cursed.

He couldn't understand how anyone could enjoy themselves when the weather was dry and as hot as a desert. He could feel the gravel smoldering beneath his shoes. He might as well ask one of his guards to fry an egg on the sidewalk to prove the point to his father.

His father knew how much he hated the Italian summer heat.

"Whoa! Hot! Hot" His dad smirked at him, a teasing glint in his eyes. He was fanning his hands with an exaggerated flair before an umbrella came to his aid.

He groaned and rolled his eyes at his father. Taking pride in himself that he was the only person allowed to do so.

Six men from the entourage, stood beside them as they walked towards the restaurant.

Upon entry, they're welcomed by the loud blabbers and aroma of Mediterranean dishes.

"Buon pomeriggio."

A tall, lean, olive-skinned woman greeted them, her dark eyes lingering on him the most. He removed his sunglasses and tucked in on his dress shirt.

He heard the woman's breath hitched.

He couldn't help the smug smirk that formed on his lips.

Mario stepped in. And the woman bowed her head, as if finally recognizing the dangerous men before her. In an instant, she cast her eyes down and moved out of the way.

May be I'll have my fun with her later.

Domenico lead them to a wooden staircase and outside the balcony. A couple of diners were there, seated under their own umbrellas. Cocktails, appetizers on hand.

Great. More parching heat.

He walked to a secluded tent in the corner, away from the impertinent eyes and ears of civilians.

Two men were already sitting under the canopy, waiting, looking angst.

As they should be.

They're negotiators for a new venture his dad was looking into.

They lowered their eyes as they shook his father's hand. Their adoration was plain on their faces.

But were they real though?

He learned that love and fear, like good and bad, have interchangeable terms.

In this lifestyle, anyway.

Their men spread out and around the perimeter. Their authoritative presence was alarming some of the guests, who didn't hesitate to up and left.

His father and Mario sat down across the two men. While he maintained his distance.

This particular time, he wasn't allowed to join them. Considering what happened last week, he's banned from all negotiations until further notice.

He stood over the railings to past the time and asked for the binoculars from his guard. He occupied himself with the arid and suburban landscape of Cefalu. The heat was emanating from all surfaces and buildings. It's making him even more thirsty than he was

"Get me a bottle of beer. Ice cold. Have that beautiful lady receptionist bring it up to me."

Alek, his guard ever since he was sixteen, nodded and left.

He was looking out into the water when he heard the heightened pitch of his dad. He put the equipment away and observed.

From the pronounced scowl on his father's face, he could assume that it won't be getting any better. His future plans to sneak out later this evening was automatically canceled.

His father stood up and raised his hand in a dismissive wave.

That was the end of the discussion.

He looked pissed.

But as soon as the Don met his gaze, the old man smiled, the corner of his eyes shining with mischief.

"Fucking opportunists." His father cussed, clapping him on the back.

"You want me to talk to them?"

The Don shook his head and glanced back. "Mario's handling it." He gestured to the binoculars. "We don't want you threatening them away again, do we, son?"

He simpered, "But it's so much fun."

"Figlio, sometimes, you have to compromise. We have to make sure that we have certain people on our side exactly when we need them to be."

"I don't think you need anything or anyone else anymore."

His father laughed, removing the binocs from his face. "Have I thought you nothing?"

That's when he realized what how he must have sounded.

"Non accontentarti mai, anche se hai tutto, Massimo." His dad reiterated, forcing another smile from him. "Don't ever-"

"Don't ever settle. Even if you have everything." he repeated. "I know Pa, I know. My bad."

His father grabbed his shoulders so he was facing him. "And you do your best not to forget it."

He beamed down at him. "Sì."

His father cupped his face, like when he was a kid. The dark eyes, feared by many, gleamed with a raw and familiar with emotion.

And he knew why; he has his mother's eyes. His father often told him that he could still see her stubbornness alight in them every time they talk. He placed a hand on his father's forearm.

"You're-" He heard a sharp whoosh of wind and his father's sentence abruptly stopped. The paternal smile faded and a shocked expression replaced it.

His mind and body went numb.

Behind them, someone shouted. And chaos breaks.

He held his father. One hand on his shoulder, the other on the gushing wound staining his chest.

What's happening?

He was trying to keep them upright, but he felt weak, like someone's, something, was sucking the life out of him. His father slipped from his hands and dropped on his back.

His world went into a complete standstill.

A tight, burning pressure permeated from his torso and he fell down. Arms splayed out, the bright, yellow sun, blinding him.

The men were running, their guns poised in the air. The guests on the balcony scrambled down the staircase, screaming their heads off. He saw a flash of blue before he heard Mario shouted different orders to the men.

He closed his eyes and tasted the rust on his tongue. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound ever came. A pain shoot from his side, like a thousand hot electric needles pricking him. His muscles were tense. He was sweating, but at the same time felt like someone poured a bucket of ice cold water on him. He coughed and thick, warm liquid spurted out of his mouth.

No.

He became aware of his heartbeat slowing down, its weak thumps vibrating in his ears. The excruciating pain doubled, paralyzing him even more. His breathing became shallow, fast, gasps. He heard his name shouted over the dry wind.

Domenico.

Domenico crouched down and shook him. He slapped his face, his expression livid.

He and Domenico loved wrestling and kick-boxing, since they were kids. Being older and bigger than Nico, gave him a huge disadvantage; he always wins. Nico doesn't have a chance.

He almost wanted to taunt his brother and point out that this is the first time he couldn't get up to beat his ass.

"Wake up!" He grabbed the lapels of his shirt, pulling him up. "Don't you dare die on me!"

He winced, both from the pain, shaking his entire body and his little brother's trembling voice.

Idiot.

Leave me alone, Nico.

He never felt so exhausted.

Papa, Go to Papa.

He wanted to sleep.

Leave me be.

He just wanted to fucking sleep.

Domenico stopped shaking him. Somebody from behind grabbed his brother away. Domenico cried out, struggling to get back.

Get him out of here. Get both them out of here.

He closed his eyes and swallowed. He heard voices, so many voices. But they're muffled, like someone put cotton in his ears, drowning him out. He could feel each footfall vibrating on the ground. Somehow, he couldn't feel the heat he felt from it earlier.

He only felt the cold.

Good. I hate the fucking summer.

Everybody seemed to have abandoned him.

Finally.

He wanted to rest.

Time to rest.

But then, a shadow fell above his closed eyes, blocking out the blistering sun. A warm, soft hand touched his, raised it and pressed it on his chest. He felt it ran over his face, leaving tingling, warm impression.

It surprised him.

Without warning whatsoever, the warm, comforting sensation pulled him back. Away from the cold, drab void sucking him.

Then, the warmth left him, as swiftly as it came.

No.

Come back.

It was a struggle to open his eyes. But he did.

He blinked and sees someone, a woman, hovering over him.

Why does she look so familiar?

Then it hit him.

The woman in the bookshop.

The moment his eyes focused on her, she seemed relieved.

He felt it resonate through him.

Somehow, she appeared brighter, more unbearable to look at than the fucking sun above them.

She removed her floppy hat, placed it behind his head and used it as a cushion. She smiled down at him. Her mouth was moving, but he couldn't hear what she was saying.

He concentrated on her dark eyes, and even darker, almost, raven hair, flowing freely over the wind. Her lips were pink and soft as a carnation in full bloom. Her nose, tall and prominent. Her jaws, chiseled to look at but felt so delicate to touch.

He felt the remaining air knocked out of him.

He wanted to reach up and caress her beautiful face, but his body wasn't cooperating with him at the moment. Because everything hurts.

Everything fucking hurts.

The woman worked above him. He couldn't tell what she was doing. But his eyes bulged out of its sockets when he felt her, pressing her hand, hard, on his side.

He looked down and saw her holding a blood-soaked napkin on his torso. A sharp pain lanced through him, making him bite on his tongue. He closed his fist around hers.

Please, stop.

The woman cradled his head, soothing him. Her sweet, but firm voice, muffled by the pain. "We have to keep applying pressure. You're alright. You're okay."

The discomfort from his side was making it harder to think. He saw colorful spots flashed before his eyes, merging and splitting into thousand circular patterns. He let out a strangled scream and held the woman's wrist.

Make it stop.

"I'm sorry, I know it hurts. But I have to, okay?"

Her face swam back into focus again, clearer than everything and everyone else.

Her hair was falling around her face. He wondered what her hair would feel like wrapped around his finger. He wanted to tuck it behind her ear and see her blush.

He wanted to see it more than anything else.

"It's okay, you're gonna be okay." He heard her cooed through the haze before then she roared, "You work for him?!" Her voice as sharp as her face.

"Ye-yes." He recognized Alek's voice, the only one in his men who can speak English.

"Okay!... Bring me a flat surface... No… I don't care! Break the table, if you have to! He needs to be lying down!"

He never heard someone yelled at his men like that, not even his father, not even him. This tiny woman was barking orders to his people like she fucking owns them.

Atta, girl.

He felt his body spasm out of control; he was trembling again. This time, it's more unnerving than the last. The consciousness, he was trying his best to hold on to was slipping.

He was falling through the empty, dark space again; the space he knew was reserved for people like him.

"Hey! Hey! I'm here! I'm here!" she shouted at him, raking her fingers through his hair.

That felt good.

"Look at me."

And he did.

Her eyes were enthralling, it felt like they were the only thing keeping him here. It felt like it would hurt more to look away.

What color are they? He mused.

A flashback appeared before his eyes- a forgotten memory. He's eight again. He's baking. His mom was laughing beside him. He missed her laugh. She was letting him whisk the melted dark chocolate for the cake. She dipped her fingers in the bowl and bopped him on the nose.

Mamma.

"No, no no." he heard the raven-haired woman again. Her voice, disembodied like she's talking from behind a veil.

The wonderful slender fingers stroke his jaw again, like she did those books. "Stay with me." she said. Her tone was the borderline between a plead and a direct order.

He wanted to laugh. Nobody orders him around. But he did as he's told.

"That's it. Eyes on me." She uttered with her big, penetrating eyes.

Gray. Her eyes were gray, like the color of a giant sea storm.

"Where's that table?!" she howled again.

He kept his gaze on her, trying to name and decipher all the grays in her eyes.

If his life wasn't ebbing away, he would've found the situation ludicrous. The great Massimo Torricelli was finally taking his time gazing at someone else's eyes for the very first time.

And the last time.

How fucking twisted is that?

"Stay with me. Stay with me. They're coming." She whispered. One hand was holding his head up, the other was still in the gnashing bullet wound, applying pressure. The blood spilling from him was staining the blue romper she's wearing. He felt sorry. Why does he always have to destroy beautiful things?

I'm sorry. He almost wanted to say.

Dying really does bring the firsts out of people.

"Hurry up!"

He stared at her beautiful, angelic face, committing everything in his memory.

"Stay with me." she murmured again, flicking her eyes to his face and wound every now and then.

His dry lips cracked into an agonized smile. He wanted to comfort her, tell her it's alright.

But he knew.

He'd always known.

From the very first time he pulled the trigger.

Nobody's coming to save the devil.

He stopped believing in God decades ago. But in these few moments of limbo, he realized that this- seeing her for the first and last time- was the cruelest punishment he could ever have.

He clutched her hand with his shaky ones, rallied the remaining power in his body and choked, "Mio Angelo."

And the darkness welcomed him, like the prodigal son that he was.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5 years later.

Warsaw, Poland

-I'm so sorry. I'll come over tomorrow. I promise, B.

She received the reply a few seconds later:

-Girl, it's okay. I have my wine and a half naked Paul Wesley on tv. It's fine, I'm not thinking about whatishface.

She texted back, guilt shrouding her:

-Are you sure it's okay?

Again, she didn't wait a second for her response.

-I am! Go and kick their ass, Laura. x

The text elicited a smile from her. She shoved her phone in her bag and storms the elevator.

Furious was an understatement.

She's supposed to have dinner with one of her best friends tonight. But because David Sawicki can't do his job properly, she's stuck here for the next hour. She heard the echoes of her most prized heels on the floor tile. Her fists clenched beside her, her lips pursed in a straight line. She felt the anger emitting like, from her skin.

The employees on either side of her parted and flattened themselves on the walls. She made her way to the board room, avoiding anyone's judgmental gaze.

They don't know what happened. Let them look.

She reached the heavy wooden door of the conference room and pushed. There were only four people in the room.

"Good evening, Miss Biel." Oskar, the PR manager greeted. She returned his warm smile and sat on the empty swivel chair next to him.

James, the head of their security sat in the nearest chair by the door. Marissa, the senior head's secretary was eyeing up the bastard sitting across her. But Sawicki was ignoring her. He was ignoring everyone in the room, except her.

She met his belittling gaze.

"Have you packed your shit already, Miss Biel?"

She sneered back at him. "Shouldn't you be asking yourself that question?"

Before he could make a comeback, the doors opened and the senior head entered.

"Good evening." Hayden Marek addressed the room, his eyes glued on the stack of folder he's holding.

Without further ado, he took his seat at the center of the table. "Now, can anyone please explain to me what the hell happened yesterday-"

The room was quiet. Her eyes remained on Sawicki, challenging and unfaltering.

Marek raised his voice. "-And how the fuck did it happen?!"

Sawicki was quick to point fingers—as the child that he always has been. "Why should we ask Miss Biel? Excuse my language, but one needs to have balls to have this job."

The room turned to her.

"Miss Biel?"

"First of all, it's not my fault." She started, cool, calm, and collected.

"Listen, Ma'am-" Sawicki butted in.

"I haven't finished yet." She hissed at Sawicki. "As I was saying Mr. Marek, it's not my fault. I'm in charge of bookings and reservations. It has never been my job to temper rowdy customers."

She narrowed her eyes at Sawecki. "And I think you should explain to us, why in the entire building there are only two security guards in the building? I remember explicitly suggesting that we need more. Since the band is Beatles level famous. I remember telling you that at our briefing, Mr. Sawecki."

Beside her, she could feel her friend trying to hide his smile.

"I booked the band at our hotel on purpose. They're at the top of their game and we need the publicity. We gave them and their team the best rooms. We even closed down the bar and buffet room to give them their privacy. Me and my team went to them ourselves and asked for anything they might need. Even if it's not part of our job."

She continued, holding everyone's attention. "Everything was going smoothly, until a roadie got past security and caused a scene. One of the members got mad because we promised them privacy."

Sawicki was speechless. He knew the story himself, having happened before his eyes.

"The roadie sent messages, bragging how she got in. And before we knew it, a legion of slutty teenagers bombarded the lobby. The band barely got out. If it weren't for the efforts of my team. I dealt with the press and strategized a new approach so we wouldn't lose our loyal customers and patrons. I'm proud to say that we are now booked for the next four weekends." She slid the reports to Marek, whose eyes widened at the numbers at the bottom part of the paper.

Yes, keep the ugly, greedy man fat with money.

Marek averted his annoyance to Sawecki. "You, in my office. Right away." And he stood to leave, James and Marissa followed him.

She leaned forward, elbows flat on the table. "This is exactly you need balls for."

Sawecki glowered at her before turning his leave.

Oskar clapped a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Good job, girl." And he too left, leaving her alone in the big, cold conference room.

She gave him another amiable smile, hoping it'll ease the tension in her chest.

Unlike many, Oskar is different. She felt at ease with the old man. Oskar was probably her only friend in this building. Most of them either feared her or wished her out.

They were unsuccessful with that last part.

But she has to admit, she's tired of this. Men constantly disparaging her and her achievements.

Because of what? Her gender?

Unlike those dumbasses she met in med school, she presumed that men in the hospitality sector would be more... non-discriminatory. But no. All men appear to be the same sensitive, egotistical and easily threatened rats she experienced them to be.

Yes. Even her boyfriend fit the bill, sometimes.

Men always tell society that they need strong, intelligent, independent women. But what they really want were cheerleaders. Someone to boost and feed their ego.

She exhaled the deep breath she was holding.

Calm down, Laura.

To distract herself, she checked her phone for the very first time since lunch.

Still no messages from Martin.

"How surprising." she scoffed.

She has never been the clingy type, but a simple short text after a long day at work would ease her stress.

She and Martin had been dating for four years already.

He came up to her at a hotel event and made an actual fool of himself to get her attention. She thought it was cute. Two years into the relationship, she sold her apartment and moved in with him. One year of living together, he proposed. And to this day, she didn't know what came over her to say yes.

For the past few months, they've been having more arguments. His reason? She's spending way too much hours with her work and no time for him at all. And she felt guilty, because it's true.

Thus, she's been trying to redeem herself. She tried to come home early, prepare his food and do other stereotypical duties of a good fiancé. But still felt... insufficient. Like something was missing.

Olga was having none of it. She hated the man. Unlike Bianka, she has never warmed up to Martin, even after all theses years. "You fool, don't settle for that lazy, bald freak. You're not his maid. Let him wash his own smelly gartered underwear." and she added, for good measure,

"Passion is essential to every relationship, as important as love."

Olga was always the voice of reason- whenever she wanted to be,

But she loves Martin.

She felt passionate about him.

She loves him.

Right?

If that wasn't love, why did she buy their tickets to Sicily for her birthday weekend? Why did she booked those romantic getaways? Martin was pretty excited about it.

That's love.

"I love him." she convinced herself. "You love Martin, Laura. Stop overthinking it."

The door creaked open again and the maintenance guy went in, pushing his mop cart. The man stopped and apologized.

"Przepraszam, Miss Laura. I thought it's empty."

"No, no. It's fine. I was just leaving" She smiled and gather her things. "Have a good night."

"You too, miss."

The floor was now empty, except for the cleaners who waved in her direction. She waved back, sincere and friendly.

As she was about to press the elevator button, when Oskar called her from the doorway of his office.

"Laura?"

She turned. "Mmm?"

"Marek told me that he wants to meet with you tomorrow. His office at 4."

"What?" She couldn't help but the thrill in ringing in her voice. But she toned it down. "Why?"

Her friend jiggled his eyebrows at her. "I don't know. Marek called me to say that Sawecki no longer works here. The General Manager position is open."

Laura squealed and hugged the man. She has not been working her ass off for four years to settle for the beta position. She knew she deserved so much more than what they're already giving her.

"Thank you, thank you!"

"Hey, all you sweetheart." Oskar kissed both her cheeks. "As an early gift, I have my driver take you home."

"What, no-"

"No buts. Besides, I have a date. A very hot date."

"Oh! Where'd you meet him?" She teased.

"Now you know that I don't kiss and tell, Laura sweetie."

"Kinky! I love it."

"Now get your ass out of here, Conrad is already in the lobby."

"Thank you so much." She enveloped him another tight hug before hurrying down the elevator.

Her mind was still reeling from, the possibilities of her promotion. She went over her mental list of the changes she could make to the management. This was probably the best birthday present she's ever had in years.

As he promised, Oskar's driver was waiting for her. Conrad has always been shy around her. He was standing by the passenger door and opened it as she approached.

"Dziękuję Ci." She smiled.

The man turned pink and nodded.

She didn't need to tell him the directions since Oskar has offered to take her home countless of times. Most of those times were, when Martin forgets to pick her up.

It wasn't a long ride, only a good thirty minutes—including the traffic. She could take the cab, if they weren't too damn expensive this time of year. If the bus fumes wouldn't kill her, she would literally take the bus every single day.

She was in her third year of MED school when her grandmother fell ill and died. Due to debt and budget constrictions, she's forced to quit the one thing she cared about the most.

She loved medicine, she loved studying it. The lengthy explanations, crucial step by step procedures, the jargons appealed to her.

With the death of her grandmama and her quitting medicine, she had a relapse and fell into a mild depression.

That's when her body developed it.

She was out with Olga that day she first fainted. She thought it was only panic attacks but it became more frequent. She consulted her doctor and found out she has Supraventricular Tachycardia. In simpler terms, she has a heart palpitations. That meant that her heart was beating more than it normally should. Her condition causes her to, sometimes, pass out and hyperventilate. This prevented her from engaging in strenuous exercises, smoking, stressful situations and caffeine.

She hated it. Everyone who knew has treated her like she's something fragile, like, she'll break at the tiniest push. It was disconcerting. So, she decided to keep it a secret, that even her parents didn't know.

She had no plans to tell Martin because it might affect their relationship—which it did. He accidentally found out a few months after they moved in together.

She couldn't tell anyone at work, except of course, the HR manager. She couldn't let assholes like David Sawicki get the slightest indication that there's a chink within her armor.

The only persons who do know were her college best friends, Bianka and Olga, and her doctor.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket.

Martin.

Finally.

Hey honey, I'm coming late from work. Don't wait up for me.

Wanting to prove to herself that what she felt for him was still valid, Laura smiled deviously. She glanced in the rear view mirror to make sure Conrad wasn't looking where wasn't supposed to.

She unbuttoned her blouse, down to the last three buttons. She recorded a video and captioned it with:

Aww. But they miss you.

When he didn't reply in the first three minutes, she sent him another. She hiked her skirt to her upper thighs, widened her thighs and snapped a picture.

I miss you.

She was feeling hot that she slid her fingers on her inner thighs. She kept her moans to herself.

She waited for his reply, but it didn't come. Not even when she reached their apartment.

The frustration was twisting her abdomen, evil and needy. Martin's coming off late ever since... she couldn't remember.

A few weeks ago, he's required to put extra hours for the insurance firm he's working for. It was a slap to her face; she's finally having a taste of her own medicine. But she didn't pressure him on it. Nor complain to him about it. She loved a hard-working man. Besides, that way, he could finally get off her back for doing the same.

But as a consequence, she's left… dry and unsatisfied. With only her toys and fingers for company.

She sighed and threw her bag on the hook, and shook her hair out of her bun.

She took a quick look around.

At least, he left the apartment clean before he left this morning.

Martin was the messiest person she knew. Seriously, how hard is it to throw your wet towel in the dryer? Or put the scissors back where he got it from?

The knot in her abdomen tightened and she bit her lip. She went to check on her phone.

Still nothing from Martin.

She called him, but it went straight to voicemail.

"Oh, fuck it."

She poured herself a glass of wine before going to their bedroom. Even though she's alone in the apartment, she closed the door as a form of habit.

Martin doesn't like it when she pleasured herself.

She pulled out her special drawer and grabbed the black toy hidden among her sweat pants. The sight of it alone made her insides clenched in excitement. She took s huge gulp of wine and began to undress herself.

Her fingers traced her curves, slowly. The pads of her thumbs brushed over her nipples. She let out the loud moan she's been holding in the car before she switched the vibrator on.

The buzzing filled her ears, making the fire in her belly burn even more. She grazed it over her bra. Her nipples erected in their lacey confine. She removesd the clasp of her bra, to her own slow pace, and shimmied out her drenched undies. She lay on the bed.

There were certain advantages of studying medicine. Aside from treating other people part, this was one of them.

Shew was gasping now. Her hand was rolling the toy over the sensitive spot. Just the right amount of roughness, if not, more. Something Martin could never do, no matter how many times she told him how.

Her moans rocked their stilled apartment. She arched her back as she pumped against her own palm, using her legs and feet to meet her strokes.

She bit the back of her hand as she felt the white heat dripping from her. Her back landed back on the mattress and she waited for her heart to slow down.

But she knew she could take more.

God.

She could take so much more.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[trashcatsnark]

What’s your opinion on Kerry being available to only male V when it’s mentioned in-game that he’s bi (correct me if I’m wrong, I have terrible memory)?? I feel like they should’ve had bi romance options if they were able to implement both gay and straight ones.

Oh anon, oooooh anon. I love you dearly, but you intentionally or not might as well have thrown lit dynamite in my ask box. This discourse has been such a strange beast within this fandom and I have definitely shared some vague thoughts about it before. I’m putting everything under a read more, to help stave off some....harassment or putting it in people’s lives who may not want it. 

 I still remember I was frankly heartbroken and upset when I first learned Kery wasn’t romanceable by female V when the game first officially came out, but before I played it; River and Panam weren’t even really known about, cause they weren’t talked about much in the promo material,  plus Kerry was shown in romance scenes with what looked to be female V. So, if you go back far enough you’ll find me in December cope posting and being the saddest and angriest of beans, because other than Johnny who I knew was likely off the table. He was one of the only characters I wanted to potentially romance. Now, I’m further away from it, have  processed my feelings regarding it and am more rational I believe regarding the issue. 

But, that being said, a large issue of this sort of discourse is that; no matter what anyone says, someone somwhere is upset. I’ve been insulted, blocked, accused of fetishizing gay men, and so much over my opinion regarding this matter. I’m still currently debating if I even wanna tag this, cause the issue almost always brings negativity to my blog and to me. I have very little interest in being berated for this, so we’ll see how I feel after I finish typing this all out. I’m going to try to go through all my issues, my points, my troubles and feelings about the matter. But, at the end of the day, it is merely my opinion. If someone disagrees, fine, just don’t attack people or berate them over pixels in a video game. Just dont. That’s all I ask. Okay, so I’m gonna divide this into talking points and whatever, now. 

Firstly, Kerry is bisexual. Point blank, period. I’ve seen folks try to argue that his wife was like comphet, which if you dont know means that sometimes exclusively homosexual people will try to force themselves into heterosexual relationships because society has conditioned them to believe they have to be straight. While, I’m not negating the fact that this happens, as a bisexual/pansexual (I use the terms interchangeably to define my experience and feelings)  person I’ve struggled with it when making sense of my attraction to women. It genuinely is something that happens. This is not the case for Kerry; he doesn’t ever hide his attraction to men, between TTRPG lore and the video game he has had two wives , and he is stated by game developers and TTRPG creator to be bisexual.He is bisexual. Getting that out there, saying other wise, in my opinion is a level of bi erasure. That being said, I do still have my grievances with how the game chose to handle his bisexuality and bisexuality as whole, also imo, the game generally doesn’t seem...to treat players who are attracted to men well… 

But before I get into that, I wanna make clear, I feel like Cyberpunk 2077 should have had more romance options for every orientation. If you’re not going to create a player-sexual style of romance; ie where every romanceable character is attracted to the player regardless and wish to focus on each character having their own predetermined sexuality; only have one character for each sexuality is kind of bullshit. If you’re a lesbian player and you’re not into Judy, you get nothing, except a fuck around with Meredith (who I will get to later). You’re a straight woman, but not into River, shit out of luck. You’re a gay man who’s not into Kerry, sucks to suck bud. You’re a straight man who’s not into Panam (kind dont get how you wouldn’t be but who am i to judge), well, you can fuck Meredith… so woooo. Oh also, if you’re not attracted to women, you will still be forced to watch in first person pov a sex scene with Alt and if you want Johnny to like you, you gotta date a girl. Also, all the male love interests will be sidelined mostly…. Hooray… But I digress, either go in with all romance options bi/pan/player sexual, or give more options for romance. Cause now you have the issue of people not getting the partner they hoped for and not liking their only option. Now, you got people trying to make the Judy  bi, which is lesbian erasure and lesbophobic, along with people saying Kerry isn’t bi and can’t be with women which is bi erasure and biphobic. Whereas, if you had just gone in from the get go with either more options or a player-sexual romance system; we wouldn’t be here, CDPR. 

Okay, so next thing, now that I’ve addressed my issues with the entire romance system and that yes, Kerry is bi. Should Kerry have been able to be romanced as female V? Yes and no. Which sounds vague, but I’m going somewhere. With the current set up of it; Kerry being romanceable to a female V would have unfairly given female players an additional love interest over male players. Female V would have the option of Judy, River, or Kerry. And Male V’s would have the option of Kerry or Panam. That’s not fair. I get that, inherently. CDPR painted themselves into a corner, by only letting there be two romances for “each” gender, one for “each” sexuality, and then using a canonically bi character for one of them. They played themselves, they were either gonna have to give an unfair amount of love interest to one side of their gender system or make a bi character who will only pursue one gender. So, they went for the latter. 

Now, some people feel thats fine, because Kerry having a gender preference is fine and its okay for bi people to lean a certain way in regards to gender and its okay for them to not be attracted to people. And that is true. I am a bisexual woman who leans a little more towards men, I get that. However, I have only been given one reason for Kerry’s preference for male V over female V. And it was by a developer of the game who stated that Kerry pursues Male V and not Female V because Male V reminds him more of Johnny… And I hate that. I personally, hate it so deeply, because to me it does a complete disservice to Kerry and V’s relationship and Kerry’s arc. Because even with female V you see him being preoccupied with Johnny and V’s connection to Johnny, then you see him move past that. So, to then state, its still a deciding factor in him romancing V is so wrong to me. Like why???? Why would you do that to people who like Kerry??? Why would you put that in their heads, that Kerry on some level, subconsciously or not, was thinking about Johnny when he decides to romance V. Cause that’s not in the game, in the game you get the vibe he’s moving on past Johnny, like he’s growing, developing, genuinely likes V. But that stupid tweet, just radiates rancid vibes, whyyy???  

And then, outside of that nasty tweet, I have to ask what other reason is there for why he prefers male V over fem V.  They’re...the same characters essentially, just with different pronouns and body type. They also can look like whatever you want; they’re completely customizable. So, Its based off of what the game associates with  gender characteristics and nothing else, meaning, his attraction is rooted solely in their gender and he turns down fem V by virtue of them being a woman and nothing else. Which, yeah, bisexual/pansexual people have preferences but when that preference completely excludes a gender based on nothing but gender…. Uhh????? See my issue???? 

And I’ve seen people saying, well, its better than CDPR playing into slutty will date anybody bisexual stereotypes. But, the thing is...THEY STILL DO THAT which is what drives me up the god damn wall; they managed to do slutty bi stereotypes and I don’t even get kiss the boy, which again, I get the need for fairness but wow, just wow. And lemme explain. 

Meredith is the only character, other than joytoys, whom you can have sex with regardless of gender, body type, etc. She is the only character who shows that she is attracted to V on some level regardless of gender. 

She is a one night stand. Her sex animations are the same as joytoys. She treated like a promiscuous love phobic woman.  And having characters like that is fine, my own V is promiscuous and love phobic. But, we can acknowledge that in a video game by a AAA game company having the only character who is at least physically attracted to the player no matter what, be nothing but sex fodder...isn’t great bi representation, right? 

Oh, and Kerry himself still is a promiscuous bisexual man, he just won’t romance female V because apparently, according to a dev, they don’t remind him of Johnny enough. AND THATS THE DEVS WORDS, NOT MINE, I HATE THAT. Like, Kerry is shown to have people’s lingerie around his house. He’s stated by Johnny to be someone who fucks around. He gets a blowjob from a man in a stairwell. 

The two most blatantly canonically bi character in this game are promiscuous; one wont romance V at all and just wants sex, the other will only romance a male V because at worse, he’s comparing them mentally subconsciously to his dead friend and at best….because….reasons…. Literally, from what I understand for Kerry to romance V, they have to have the “male” body type and “male” voice. Meaning, fem V could literally by all appearances look like masc V, body type wise, but because she uses female pronouns and has a feminine sounding voice...no… the stars say no… 

In my honest opinion, it is bad bisexual representation and a not so well thought out romance system for a game. 

But, that being said, I literally never romance anyone, because I’m a Johnny simp. So, the fuck do I know.

oh god do i tag this.... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[writingithink]

The Full Pub Experience Pairing: Ten x Rose Rated: T Wordcount: 3,834 Summary: The Doctor suffers through another honeymoon interruption for Earth wedding related things. Notes: FINALLY, this is my fic for Day 7 of @timepetalsweek ! And it's a free day. So you would think that it wouldn't be so late, but everything in my WIP folder rn promises to be long.

This fic would definitely make more sense if you've read the ones that came before it. That being said, I still think that if you know they accidentally got bonded that's also probably enough to jump in.

Super special thanks to @hey-there-juliet for betaing!! <3

All mistakes are mine.

I own nothing.

READ IT ON AO3 -> copy/paste link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25590310

With a sigh, the Doctor kicked his feet up onto the armrest and sunk into the sofa. Finishing up their honeymoon was starting to seem like a nigh impossible task. Who would have thought that trying to do seven romantic trips in a row would prove so difficult?

Sure, they’d had to sort out the Isolus when he took them to the Olympics, but after that things had gone on without a hitch. And yes, they had taken a day to do wedding planning things with Jackie midway, but then they’d gotten right back to it. Now, though, it was starting to get irritating.

His attempt to take Rose to a winter village on Sirius Colony VI had failed - they landed three years late and ended up having to stop a coup. Then he tried to take her to see the Rings of Akhaten but something went wrong with the TARDIS and they were flung out of the vortex, landing on an asteroid being used as an illegal zoo of endangered species. He’d almost been turned into an exhibit!

Once they finally made it back to the TARDIS, before he could come up with a new honeymoon destination Rose got a text from her mate Shareen. Now here they were, back at Jackie’s flat, for more wedding planning type things (he wasn’t sure on the details, just that this time he wasn’t ‘needed’).

(Not that he’d even been needed last time).

“Oh, cheer up,” his wife urged, leaning over the back of the sofa and running a hand through his hair. “How bored would you have gotten if we didn’t have a few adventures?”

The Doctor did not dignify that with a response, but did lean into her touch.

“Y’know, we could still try to get to that cabin again. We don’t know for sure if we actually missed the reservation,” she suggested.

“I suppose,” he huffed, trying to resist moving away from his foul mood. Maybe he wanted to sulk.

“Oh, come off it. Why don’t you find something to watch on the telly? Or play in the kitchen? Mum’s out, so I’m sure you could work on the perfect piece of toast.”

It was annoying, how she seemed to know just what to say. (It actually wasn’t, he was a terrible liar).

“C’mere,” the Doctor muttered before pulling her down further and giving her a kiss.

A kiss that quickly turned into a snog, him hauling her the rest of the way over the couch to sprawl on top of him. Just as he moved his hand under her shirt and up her back, there was a loud rapping on the door.

“Ugh,” he sighed, dropping back down onto the sofa as Rose quickly stood up, trying to fix her hair and clothing. For a Time Lord, he really did have an atrocious sense of timing sometimes.

We can pick up where we left off later, y’know, she telepathically reminded him.

He wondered if he could just nip into the TARDIS and move forward just a little, early evening, when ‘later’ was likely to be ‘soon’. This got him a quick zap through the bond before Rose opened the door.

“Rose!!”

Then there were hugs and squealing and he didn’t think he’d ever heard his bondmate’s voice get quite so high pitched. But the worst part was that her barriers had shot up, so all he could get from their connection was her general state. The Doctor did find himself pleased, however, when the squealing became about Rose’s ring - he had made it himself, after all. The gemstones and metal weren’t of Earth origin, but looked similar enough to the untrained eye. The center stone was quite diamond-like, surrounded by two gems that could be mistaken for morganite. He’d used an old, broken TARDIS part to create the band, which Jackie had criticized as looking too copper-like, but they had both ignored her. The Gallifreyan metal had unique properties, meaning he was able to biotune it to Rose’s finger. It would always fit perfectly, and only she could take it off.

Most importantly, Rose loved it.

“And hullo, Doctor.”

He looked up to see Shareen peering at him from the other end of the couch, and she really didn’t have to say his name as if it was a joke.

“Hello.” He hoped his smile was cheery, that’s what he was going for.

“’S it fine if I call you, what was it- oh, John?” she asked.

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Well, I don’t get why you go around havin’ everyone call you ‘Doctor’. I get that John Smith is a boring name, but really.”

A glance at Rose revealed her trying, and mostly failing, to not laugh. Not even her barriers could keep him from feeling how amused she was.

“Anyway, how are you?” he drawled, trying to remember what his wife had last told him about her best mate (on Earth, that is).

“‘M fine. Aren’t you headin’ out?”

His brows furrowed and he opened and closed his mouth a few times, trying to figure out what kind of segue that was supposed to be.

“Heading out?” the Doctor ended up repeating.

“Yeah. To like, I dunno, hang out with mates down the pub or somethin’?”

“Hang out wi- ? Down th- ? Why would I do that?” he sputtered.

“Well we’re gonna plan out Rose’s hen night! No blokes allowed! ‘Specially not the groom.”

“Oh, that’s not fair, he can stay,” his wife came to his defense before he could say anything else idiotic.

“Nope.” Shareen crossed her arms. “I hardly ever get to see ya anymore, and this is a girls thing. You two could do with some time spent apart.”

And as much as he didn’t want to, the Doctor worried that maybe Rose’s friend was right. They did spend pretty much all of their time together, even before they accidentally bonded. Sure, sometimes they would split up for a little while if they were on a safe planet, but that hadn’t really happened since they started their honeymoon.

So he found himself standing up and saying, “Fine, fine, I can get out of your hair.”

“Are you sure?” his bondmate frowned, walking up to him and needlessly adjusting his tie.

“Yeah, yeah … I’ll, erm, be back this evening.”

“But what are you gonna do?” You don’t actually have mates to go down the pub with, she laughed in his head.

“I- I can definitely ‘go down to  the pub with my mates’,” he informed her, not really helping his own point by doing air quotes. “I’ll- I’ll ring Sarah Jane! I’m sure she’d love a trip to the pub.”

Actually, he wasn’t sure at all that she’d love that. But that wasn’t really the point.

“Sarah Jane ? He’s off to spend time with another woman?” Shareen asked Rose, though honestly she did it so loudly and right in front of him, she might as well have just asked him.

“The Doctor’s allowed,” Rose huffed, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow. “He ain’t Tommy.”

Shareen winced. “Tommy’s changed, though. Whole new man, really.”

“What?! Don’t tell me you’re still hangin’ round with him!”

This seemed like the perfect time to leave, so the Doctor silently (and quickly!) exited the flat, telling his wife goodbye over the bond before putting his own barriers up. He had, after all, overheard many of Rose’s phone calls with Shareen and was aware of who this ‘Tommy’ was. Now that he realized her best mate had pretty much been accusing him of cheating on his bondmate, his thoughts were less than flattering.

Eventually he found himself standing outside the flats, a bit at a loss. He put his hands on his hips and looked around, surveying the area. Was he really going to ring Sarah Jane and go to the pub?

It was just- it was so … humany.

There had to be something more interesting for him to do.

The sun was shining, a few children were playing with sidewalk chalk, people were walking about. Everything was calm. Not a lick of danger in sight.

With a sigh, the Doctor walked over to the nearest phone booth, lifted the receiver and sonicked it. After a moment it started ringing. And ringing. And ringing.

He was just about to hang up when she answered.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Sarah Jane!”

“Doctor?!”

“Yes! How are you?”

“What’s going on?” she asked, not answering his - very polite, not rude at all, very much knowing how phone calls are supposed to go, ta - question.

“Oh, erm, I don’t kno-”

“How in danger are we?”

Oh, oh.

“No danger! None at all. Why does there have to be danger?”

He could actually go for a spot of danger, but it would probably get taken the wrong way if he told her that now.

“So this is a social call?” Her obvious skepticism was offensive.

“It is! What’s wrong with a social call?”

“I mean, nothing. I just didn’t think that was something that you did.”

“Well, it is.” Now, at least. Apparently. “I was wondering if you’d fancy going to the pub?” The words felt very wrong on his tongue.

“Where are Rose and Mickey?” she asked him, once again ignoring a question.

The Doctor scowled before sighing. “Mickey moved universes. Rose is busy. I’ve been kicked out of her mum’s flat, which I didn’t want to be at in the first place, really. So it’s all worked out for the best, don’t you think? It was suggested that I go down to the pub, and isn’t it  interesting that which pub isn’t specified? So really, if you want to go, any pub you like. Though I do know which pub they meant, because they always talk about the same one. It’s the one down the street. Rose dragged me there once for New Years. It’s … fine, I guess. I mean, they’re all pretty interchangeable, if you ask me. A bunch of humans drinking, watching the match, maybe playing a spot of darts. Or billiards! We could play billiards! If you’d like, I could turn off my alcohol-inhibiting enzymes. I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten drunk on Earth alcohol before. If I have, I don’t remember. Or we don’t have to drink at all. We could, I don’t know, have lunch? I know they have chips, or most pubs have chips? Well, the pub Rose goes to has chips, which is probably why Rose goes there. So what do you say?”

“I- blimey. Yes, I can go to the pub. I’m sure the one you’re near is fine, just give me the address.”

So he did, and shortly after she rang off. He wasn’t sure how long it would take for Sarah Jane to get there, but since he obviously had nothing better to do, the Doctor headed over to the pub. Since it was midday, there weren’t too many people around - definitely not as packed as it was for New Years. So he ordered a pint, realized that he hated beer, spat it back into the glass and then ordered a banana daiquiri. The bartender didn’t seem very impressed with him, so once he had his cocktail the Doctor slunk away to a booth to wait for Sarah Jane. 

By the time he noticed her walking into the pub, he was on his second drink and debating the merits of trying out jalapeño poppers.

“Sarah Jane! Hi! Over here!” he called, waving his arms in a wide arc to make sure that she noticed him - she did. “Have you ever had jalapeño poppers?”

With a disbelieving laugh she walked over, taking off her jacket and sitting down her bag before sliding across from him. “Can’t say I’ve ever tried them. Suppose we could give it a go.” She got comfortable in her seat, looked around them, then focused on him. It felt almost as if he was being analyzed. Then the tension broke, she shook her head and let out a small laugh. “This is so strange.”

“Strange? Why’s it strange?” he asked, even though he agreed with her. The thing is, he knew why he felt it was strange, but she was human. This was something humans did - hang out with mates at the pub.

“Well, I mean, you’re you. I didn’t think this was something you did.”

Ah, same reason, then.

Before he could respond to that, a waitress appeared to take Sarah Jane’s order. They got the jalapeño poppers, but also each an order of chips in case those turned out to be rubbish. She also ordered a pint (but why? They were not good) so the Doctor preemptively ordered another cocktail so that he could avoid having to be subtly mocked by the bartender again.

“How many of those have you had?” Sarah Jane asked once the waitress was out of sight.

“This one is my second.”

“And did you turn off your, what did you say on the phone again? This you talks so quickly sometimes and the connection was so poor, I was having a hard time keeping up.”

“Ah, yeah, was calling on an old payphone. But yes, alcohol-inhibiting enzymes. I have them. Turned them off. It’s starting to get a little tingly. Reminds me of Rose laughing.”

“What?”

“You knooooow. Or you probably don’t, actually. I wonder if the daiquiris are affecting me more than I’d thought. It’s like … oh, I don’t know. English is a rubbish language for describing telepathy. Cancel your beer and get two banana daiquiris and that will be like if someone is laughing in your head. The nice kind of laughing. Not the you-just-did-something-stupid kind of laughing.”

“I think I’ll pass, but good to know,” she laughed. “Wait. What happened that had you and Rose connected telepathically? I thought you usually avoided that kind of thing. And as far as questions go, you said Mickey moved universes? I think we have a lot of catching up to do since I last saw you. Not to mention everything before then. It sounds like you’ve been busy.”

She wasn’t wrong. So first he told her about the parallel world, and the Cybermen, and Mickey deciding to stay there. Then he told her about Rose, and a very edited story of how they accidentally ended up bonded. Married. Same thing, really.

“Wow.”

“I know,” he agreed, finishing off his third drink and wondering if he should order a fourth.

Sarah Jane opened her mouth to say something, but then their food arrived. She ended up finding the jalapeño poppers surprisingly good, while he felt that they didn’t go as well with banana as chips did (he ordered the fourth drink - might as well get the full Earth drinking experience, right?).

“Am I going to end up having to carry you back to the TARDIS?” Sarah Jane asked him.

“Nooooo. If anything, you’d have to carry me back to Jackie’s flat. That’s where Rose is. Unless you rang her and told her to meet you at the TARDIS. Or you could ring her and have her carry me back to the TARDIS. I’d rather not have her mum see me drunk. I’ve never actually been drunk in this body before. Don’t know what it’ll be like. I pretended to be drunk once. To fool some robots. Rose didn’t think it was funny.”

She chuckled, shaking her head a bit. “I just can’t believe you’re married.”

“Why’s that? I’ve been married before this. I don’t know how many of them actually count, but I’m over 900 years old, I’ve been around.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that.” Sarah Jane rolled her eyes. “When were you married before?”

“Well, I was definitely married on Gallifrey. Arranged union of houses. Very proper. Loomed some children and everything. I, er, wasn’t a very good husband. But I’ve also never been a very good Time Lord. It’s complicated,” he sighed, leaned back, picked up a chip and fidgeted with it.

“Considering you were exiled when we met, I think I believe you. What about these other times?”

“Oh, I’m not sure they really count. One of them happened in an anti-matter universe, pretty sure it was fictional. I did actually marry a human once. For world saving reasons. It ended up going decently well, actually, but it didn’t really last. And now that Rose and I are bonded, I feel like … I don’t know, I think I was wrong about how deep our connection really was,” he admitted.

“What’s an anti-matter universe?!”

Before he could answer, his cocktail arrived. Thank Rassilon, because he could definitely use another drink if this is what they were going to be talking about.

“Sooooo what’s new with you?” he asked after taking a long sip.

“Oh, I don’t think so. We’re not done talking about you and the fact that you’ve just gotten married.”

“Not according to Jackie,” the Doctor rolled his eyes. “She’s having us do an Earth wedding. Ancient Gallifreyan bonding isn’t good enough for her. To be fair, I haven’t actually researched it properly yet. Maybe once I can explain it better, Rose’s mum will- ahhhh what am I saying. The day I’m able to reason with Jackie Tyler will probably herald an apocalypse.”

She laughed, which was good. Things were much more tense with Sarah Jane now than they were back when they traveled together. And, of course, that was his fault. But it was nice, spending time with her again. Even if it was in a boring old pub.

“And what does Rose think of all of this?”

“Ohh, she’s got mixed feelings. Sometimes she’s excited about planning the wedding, sometimes she wants to cancel. Apparently I’m not much help, but really I-”

“Not about that, about you two being married,” she corrected.

“Oh! We’re both very, very happy about that.”

“Good. I’m not going to lie, it does seem a bit fast. Then again, I don’t know how long it’s actually been for you.”

“Mmm … maybe about, I don’t know, how long has it been for you since you last saw us?”

“It’s only been about 2 months.”

“Nearly a year, then,” he quickly calculated.

“Really?”

“Rose wanted to catch up her real age to the age she’s supposed to be on Earth. Don’t tell Jackie.” His eyes widened at the potential slap that would get him.

“I’m sure if I ever meet her it won’t come up,” Sarah Jane laughed.

“What do you mean ‘if you ever meet her’? Aren’t you coming to the wedding?”

“Oh. Well, I didn’t want to assume-”

“Of course you’re invited! Not only are you one of my oldest friends, you’re one of my best friends!” the Doctor exclaimed.

“Don’t know how I feel about oldest friend.”

“Please, I’m much older than you are,” he rolled his eyes and leaned back, propping his feet on the table, idly playing with his newest little umbrella. He had quite the collection accumulating.

“Yes, but you seem to be regenerating younger.”

The Doctor winced a bit and tugged his ear.

“What?” she asked, after finishing her drink.

“I may have picked this regeneration on purpose, a bit.”

“Oh? I didn’t know it worked like that.” Sarah Jane raised her eyebrows.

“Takes a lot of effort. Usually I don’t care which body I get, but …”

“Had a reason for looking young?” she teased.

“881 year age gap,” he frowned.

“Obviously can’t be much of an issue, considering what you told me about the bond you two have now.”

“Eh.”

He downed the rest of his drink.

“Be right back!” the Doctor announced, standing up. “I’m going to see about getting a pitcher of these. Provided they put a lot of umbrellas in. I’m using them to keep count.”

“Keep count of what?”

“I want to see how many it takes to get me drunk. Even without the enzymes, I still have a superior biology. And Earth alcohol is famously tame.”

“Are you, really?”

“I’m getting the full pub experience! What do you say to billiards when I get back?”

“Doctor, how long are you planning on staying here?”

“I told her I’d be back in the evening. And I mean, we don’t have to stay here. We could go someplace else, if you’d like. But, as I said, as far as I know and for certain in this body, I’ve never been drunk in a pub. Plus, it’s not like I’m planning on having a stag night, and you and I are both here right now, and you’re my only friend on Earth aside from Rose, so maybe this would count, right? I mean, from what I’ve seen on films, getting drunk in a pub is pretty much what a stag night is … well, there’s also ones with strippers, but that’s all a bit too human for me. Not that there’s anything wrong with it! I’m just sayi-”

“Doctor!” Sarah Jane interrupted him with a laugh. “I swear, the gob on you this go around! Of course this can be your stag night. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.”

“Yeah, but who needs predictable, eh?”

“Yeah,” she smiled.

The Doctor put on his best grin as he went to see a man about a pitcher.

Hours - and many daiquiris - later, he felt a surge of amusement across the bond before Rose’s barriers dropped. He turned around, and there she was.

“Rose!” he bounded over, quick to wrap her in a hug, lifting his wife off her feet in the process.

“Hi there,” she smiled up at him when he put her down before giving him a kiss on the cheek.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Not that I’m not glad you’re here! I’m very, very glad you’re here.”

She laughed, and the feel of it combined with the alcohol was indescribable. “Shareen and I were drinkin’ wine and laughing at bad telly when I got a call from Sarah Jane.”

“Oh? What was it about?”

“She said I should get down here quick or I’d miss a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

“Really?! What’s that?” Also, why wouldn’t Sarah Jane tell him about it? She’d just agreed to be his groom-party-best-person, whatever it was, and it was his stag night!

“Doctor, you were about to perform, remember?” When had Sarah Jane come up behind him like that?

“Oh, right!” he bounced on his toes a little. “Karaoke! I’m about to go up!”

“You were right, this is gonna be amazing!” Shareen laughed, pulling out her phone.

“I’ve already queued up the song, I didn’t know you’d be coming, but we can sign up for a duet!” the Doctor said, getting even more excited.

“I’ll think about it,” Rose giggled. “Think you’re a few drinks ahead of me for karaoke.”

“It’s funny that you say ‘a few’,” Sarah Jane laughed.

And he was about to ask her why, but then his name got called. He’d have to ask her later.

[psychomoxxie]

Don’t Say You Love Me (Falling For A Psycho Girl)

So if you read the last post, you know i’m just dragging myself by the teeth and unkempt nails out of the dumpster fire that is my so-called “heart”;

I.e., yet another relationship bit the dust. The first one in 4 years. It was new, but i fell hard, because he was different and not an abusive fuck, was super-sweet, and had the brain-cooties too (not like mine, but still), so i could relate to him on a deeper level than most. But turns out, he’s already into someone else, if his FaceBook memes are any indication (which they almost certainly are), which makes me feel incredibly stupid and naive that i didn’t see it coming. He was probably talking to this girl romantically before things ended with us. Which puts things in a whole new light.

 That light being — i am, and i reiterate, incredibly stupid and naive.

 Which brings me to the next bit.

The very next day after things imploded in my face with this guy, a friend – a male friend – talked to me for three hours on the phone to cheer me up, make me feel better about my stupid little heart; and after we hung up, he messages me to confess to me that he’s in love with me.

 Here’s the thing. It’s not that I don’t “love” this guy friend. In as much as I can feel love for him or anybody else. That sort of thing is reserved for a very small pool of people, and I’m not very good at it. Ask anyone who knows me, and they’ll tell you. I will disappear off the face of the earth for weeks at a time, and expect you to be ok with that. I have a hard time being emotionally available for most people.

 My capacity for being In Love with a capital “L” is severely limited, and probably not defined in the way most people think of the word. I’ve experienced real, actual, true Being In Love probably twice in my life. Where it hit me hard, and i was both viscerally and emotionally affected by it, and wanted to put that person’s needs before my own and all that sort of thing, where i felt that gut-wrenching emotion when it ended for whatever reason. Where i felt emotions that had to do with THEM, and not just ME. Not just the selfishness of “romantic love”, which mostly has to do with how that person makes you feel, and less to do with the actual person. But when I did feel it, I felt it all the way. And crawling out of it is certainly no easy feat. In fact, I still love my first True Love — but he died many years ago, so there’s not much I can do about that.

 I’ve certainly developed feelings, even felt love for a couple people I’ve dated — which evolved into true friendships, which I consider to be a type of love that’s different from being In Love, though still very worthy and much more likely to occur in a person’s life multiple times. Those instances of love are the people that i still speak to, despite whatever pain it cost to get us here, because we still actually had a real connection after the romantic bit ended. (The guy in the photo being one of those).

 Of course, the question is, was it genuine Love ™ i felt for the Guy I Fell For if it wasn’t actually reciprocated? If he’s already moved on to someone else, then clearly it was one-sided on my part since i still have feelings, and he clearly does not.

I don’t know. The thing is, I can’t transfer my feelings from one person to the other so quickly. Or at all. Because for me, I rarely feel them to begin with.

 Oh, in the past i’ve felt serious infatuation. When i was younger and unmedicated, i was capable of obsessive infatuation. Of course that ended when that person’s flaws came to the light, or they disappointed me. I see this one’s flaws quite clearly and still have the feelings. I hate it, but there it is. Maybe that’s the problem. For him, it was just infatuation.

 Part of the problem of being a Psycho bitch — like, literally, I have ASPD (Anti-Social Personality Disorder, my secondary diagnosis, and it’s not severe, but it’s significant enough to be problematic. This is the first time I’ve talked about it, because the stigma surrounding it is so fucked up) — is that it’s not easy for me to connect with other people. Not in any genuine way. It’s considered to be, in my and many cases, the result of certain childhood experiences. It’s a fairly common reason for this fairly uncommon disorder. A protection that the brain constructs as a result of physical and psychological trauma. I recognize it, and i try to work on it. It’s not easy.

 Here’s where the Mental Illness Education Bit comes in, folks. Because yeah, we’re doing that now. ASPD is a relatively new diagnosis – or rather, TERM for a diagnosis (in general, and also for Yours Truly), and it’s often interchanged with Sociopathy, which is often interchanged with Psychopathy. It’s not a Mental Illness, per se, but a Personality Disorder. Which might be wrong, for me, since it’s co-morbid with Schizoaffective Disorder which has some symptoms in common, and they gave me my ASPD diagnosis several years ago for what they thought previously was Bipolar – which is fairly obviously not my problem. I don’t have mood swings, per se, but i do have impulsivity, and lack of empathy, and other things that jive with the ASPD diagnosis. Apparently, my being slightly Sociopathic makes more sense. Honestly, i sometimes think they just liked slapping the label on a woman because it’s so rare.

 On the other hand, it does kind of fit, if i’m going to be honest. I’m very good at the whole social mask thing. And i don’t feel things normally – haven’t ever, really.

 I’ve never murdered anyone (yet), but i will certainly admit to having a lack of conscience or empathy where many things are concerned. Or, perhaps just a lack of emotion in general. My psychiatrists say it’s due to severe PTSD and trauma. As is true for many people with the disorder, as i mentioned.

The misapprehension people have, however, is that people with the disorder NEVER connect, or are incapable of it. This isn’t true. When we do connect, it’s definitely genuine and deep. We just don’t do it with many people at all. Mainly this is because we’re basically self-centered and pretty selfish. And not very “nice”. We have to work at it. We aren’t “empaths” or any of that new age crap. We don’t connect with the outside world very easily, or well. We can be manipulative. And in some cases, fairly narcissistic. Definitely overly-logical when being emotionally sympathetic is clearly called for.

 But every once in a while, i really connect with somebody. And when that happens, it’s really not easy to let go. But when i finally decide it’s time that i do, it’s like that person never existed. It’s very black and white. Again, a protective thing my brain does, i suppose.

 And God knows what I did to fuck things up with The Guy I Fell For, because that’s just it — i will do things out of my inability to be empathetic sometimes. Or patient. People will tell me that I’m sweet and kind, but really I admire those qualities in others, and try very hard to emulate them. I think I have those qualities in me sometimes, but I have to work at them. The very few people I do love bring them out in me. But even so, I fuck it up. Often. I didn’t have anything to model it after growing up, you see. So my version of compassion and normal love and affection looks rather like Helen Keller’s version of trying to describe the color blue, I rather suspect, sometimes.

 But, i digress.

So, this friend – we’ll call him The Limey (because oddly enough, he’s also living way the fuck in another country) confesses his love for me, and i realize off the bat that my emotional response is all wrong. The wheels in my head are turning in all the wrong directions. It’s a welcome distraction, and an ego boost, and i latch onto it like a drowning woman for about a day. In some ways, he’s a perfect match for me. We’re good friends. He’s single, a talented musician, whipsmart, witty, kind of an asshole in all the right ways; he’s willing to come right out and tell me how he feels. He’s incredibly attractive, and sexy as Hell. He wants me to leave the damn country with him, for fuck’s sake. All the things i so desperately want. And, yes, i do like him, a lot.

 But do i Love ™ him? No. Which comes into stark relief when he pisses me off by being a jerk to one of my friends – someone i do love (not romantically, but definitely love) and my first reaction is FUCK this Limey. I don’t even give him the benefit of the doubt.

 My emotions are so shut down at this point that i can’t even conceive of giving the Limey a chance. Him, or anyone else for that matter. Because i’m done. I’m done connecting with people for a good while. I have the very few people in my little Universe of Discourse, and that’s all i need.

 Clearly, the point here is that i’m damaged, but i’ve always been. I don’t think it means i need “help”, and i certainly am not asking for sympathy. I’m perfectly aware that i am fucked up. In fact, on one level, i’m happy to know that i’m still capable of falling for someone, as misguided as it may have been, and as hurt as i am from the way it all ended. It shows me that i do, in fact, still have a soul. That i’m capable of actually feeling something real, as opposed to my usual screwing around with abusive men — which is not love, but some weird head game i put myself through out of some need to torture myself.

 Soooo, this post digressed wildly.

 The point IS, i was flattered and moved by this friend’s declaration of love for about 48 hours before he pulled some crap that made me want to beat him over the head with a tire iron, and then i responded in my usual unsympathetic and offhand fashion because that is my default.

I’m fairly convinced at this point that i should just avoid romance altogether. I’m obviously bad at it, i pick the absolute wrong person nearly every single time, and then wonder why i’m miserable. Then i spend the next 3-4 years perfectly happy all by myself, which is just long enough to forget how miserable relationships make me. Rinse, repeat.

 Plus there’s that whole thing where i have to explain that i’ve got the Brain Cooties…or Brain Worms (thanks, Jay, for that new term), which is never a fun conversation; like, “No, dear, i’m not going to knife you in your sleep, and no, i don’t hear voices telling me to roast your spleen with a nice Chianti. At least, not usually. NO, BABE. THAT WAS A JOKE…”

 I just…i can’t.

 If i end up like one of those old ladies with her cats living with her female roommate in the boondocks collecting furballs and molding them into puppets and selling them on Etsy, then so be it. Right now, it seems like the sane choice.

 *photo of me and The Samurai – dear friend and fellow artist

[stone-man-warrior]

December 24, 2020: 9:52 pm:

Extra Bonus Christmas Present Secret Santa Thunderbird’s Information:

These intro character presentations say a lot about what Thunderbird’s about. These images, (I only put those two, there are others for most of the main characters) all include a blank silhouette cardboard cut-out of the characters, and also a photo that fills in the silhouette cut out area.

So, I have my Cracker Jack’s Secret Decoder Ring, Indestructible model w/built-in Homing Device for when it gets misplaced, and am going to use that for saying stuff about those characters.

The card-board cut-outs are there to tell the terror soldiers and operatives to fill in the blanks. You are supposed to pay attention to the characters, every last detail about them is important parts of the Global Domination Under The Cross that is being planned within the stories, and is told to terror soldiers, and high ranking terror Generals, on TV in the 1960′s and 1970′s, so, with Global Domination in mind, what those characters do, and how they are portrayed is very important, is life or death information for terror soldiers and terror Generals alike.

So, we need to fill in the blanks with more information than a photo.

I only thought about this last night, so, these are just some rough observations, some food for thought for later on.

First, I need to know what I am looking for... that really helps, and is step number 7 for using Secret Decoder Ring “You are the master of your own destiny”.

Ok... what are we to look for then?

I am seeing that “Amp Guru” and “One Hour Martinizing” are a big part of the Thunderbird’s episodes, so, I am looking for more information about Amp Guru and “One Hour Martinizing” in here.

I already have decided that “Amp Guru” is “Music Industry from Britain”, powered by “Vatican Choir HQ”, at the Vatican.

I already decided that “One Hour Martinizing” is the “TV and Broadcast Industry”, probably in Britain, but I don‘t know much about the “One Hour Martinizing” part of the Thunderbird’s, want to know more.

Some observations, not in any particular order:

There are some boys who are sons of “Father”.

The boys seem to change names sometimes, either that, or I am confused, need to pay better attention.

There are at least two blonde boys, and at least two dark hair boys.

The two blonde boys: One is in space, one drives a submarine.

The two dark hair boys: One is “With Mom”, drives Thunderbird 2, the other is able to go out on his own, does scout work, is first responder when something is going down in the neighborhood.

Ok... could say more, but the Decoder Ring is screaming to have a look at just that...

Blonde: up; high; space; above; over; .... low; down; under; beneath; below;...

Dark hair: Does surface work. Does ground work. “Johnny on the spot”. Can fly. Is as a fly when shit goes down in the neighborhood. Goes fast. Carries the load.

Ok.. I have some stuff to think about with that.

I know these guys are church guys, they have a Cross built-in to their characters. The blonde ones are the vertical part of a cross, they are “Up & Down”, and the dark haired boys are the horizontal part, they go sideways, on a cross built-in to their character as a family group of boys.

Also, they are high contrast, blonde vs brown. That is more “One Hour Martinizing” information gained right there. TV.... light vs dark, high vs low, contrast is there. The blonde ones are a volume knob on the Queen‘s Black & White Television, an old one, the brown haired boys the contrast knob.

There are three areas covered by these boys. “Space and Below See Level” with the blonde ones, high and low frequencies. The brown hair boys do Mid-range work between those two extremes of space and below sea level. The brown hair boys are the Mid-range, the Space Blonde is the Treble, and the Submarine Blonde is the “Bass of Full Range High Fidelity Stereo” from the 1960′s. That’s more Amp Guru information right there.

So far, we have more supporting information that suggests the International Rescue is “Vatican Choir”, and some more information gained about broadcast TV on Volcano Island, “One Hour Martinizing”.

We need to know who this “Father” person is.

We know he is British, he is close to the Vatican, is close to British music industry, he is politically motivated, he is an “Astronaut” they say, has been to the moon. That is Super high frequency, like a Dog Whistle. He does Soprano work then. Someone who knows about radio frequencies would be good to know right now for going in that direction in radio frequency areas of this subject. (I’ll let you unwrap this part more on your own, there is a lot of wrap going on with “Father”)

I am reminded that the space module has a lot of radio equipment in there, lots of communications can be heard at the space module all at the same time, and you don‘t need a special frequency to make contact there, it’s automatic, happens just by using a radio on any channel, you can reach International Rescue that way, just start talking into a microphone (Confessional Vocal Isolation Booth) w/transmission (Trance Mission) is all that is necessary.

With all of these parts coming together, “Father”... is Pope John Paul VI. He has to be. Was at the Vatican when JFK was killed. We already know these guys want to get Lyndon B. Johnson elected a second time. I think we just got real close to the Sun. Very close the reason, and persons responsible for John Kennedy’s assassination. (please unwrap carefully, is covered with “News Flash Paper”)

Ok... now what?

What I was thinking last night was that Brains stutters.

“B-Brains” is how he says his name if you ask him.

B-B-rains

B-B-Reigns

B-B-all the water in the whole world (rains all fell all at once, made the oceans, the sea, the water went into a hole, made the sea. Holy See)

B-B-See

B-B-C

Brains is BBC news at the “Vatican One Amp Hour Guru Martinizing, HQ”. He is “Every Engineer of All Kinds” also. He is not a doctor. He is Engineer, can do science too.

Brains is the Brightness Knob on the Queen‘s old Black & White television.

Penelope is next. I am just going to say she is as close to God as a woman can get.... Penelope is Heroin. She is the Picture Quality, as Whole.

=========================================

So, in conclusion, I think that was a productive use of the Secret Decoder Ring w/Built in Homing Device, Indestructible Model.

We learned more than we did before going to the realm of the Card-Board Cut Outs. and found precisely what we set out to find, more connecting information about Thunderbird’s and Vatican, and “Amp Guru”, and “One Hour Martinizing”, and as a bonus, we tripped over the Queen‘s old Black & White Television in the process, not too shabby.

With that new information, we can better see how the Thunderbird’s episodes were used as vehicle of The Vatican and Britain as a means to announce their plans of Global Domination Under The Cross, on television in the 1960′s and 1970′s to their terror operatives, globally and covertly.

And that’s the Christmas Present Extra Bonus Secret Santa Thunderbird’s information.

Have a Joyous and Merry Christmas.

Happy Decoding!

=============================

Welcome to Jamaica. Have a nice day.

==============================

11:18 pm:

Pope John XXIII should not be overlooked as a Global Gangster. Same is true about Jim Dunlop, maker of Guitar Picks and Cry Baby Wah-Wah Peddle. It has been said the “The Pope’s change from time to time, but the Jim Dunlop, is always the Jim Dunlop”. All of the Pope’s go to the same church, same one as does The Jim Dunlop.

===============================

11:26 pm:

Secret Decoder Ring says Father is “The Jim Dunlop”, is all Pope, all the time.

===================================================

December 25. 2020: 2:00 am:

Darn... I forgot to put the batteries with the gift.

Here, some batteries. C size should fit, Duracell, copper top, cadmium rechargeable:

Those cardboard cut-outs are two-dimensional, that’s more information about “One Hour Martinizing”, actors say that they are two-dimensional, so, the cut-out is a sneak-preview, silhouette commercial sort of view of the actors ahead of the broadcast presentation in living color.

Those boys seem to change their names sometimes, and so does “Father”. Their roles change from time to time, the characters take on alternate roles. Tin-Tin Kyrano is listed in available information about the Thunderbird’s as one single person, maybe that is the point, a single male stud sort of guy, and a single available female sort of “Girl Next Door”. They are two different characters with one full name. They seem to interchange in mysterious ways. You could take that ball and run with it in the direction of “The Entertainers Who Have Only One Name”, the “Sonny & Cher” variety of special operatives outside of the confines of the Puppet Show. That is more yet supporting presence of Screen Actor Guild, or perhaps British equivalent of SAG, or, perhaps simply “Fascist Idealism” placed into the plots and story lines, and is symbolized with use of name change and mysterious character role changes and enhancements to the Thunderbird’s characters. Actors never use their real names publicly, they all seem to have a alter ego they use as a stage name, we don‘t know the real names of the people who we devote so much time to on the TV and in the movies and other entertainment we enjoy. Actors train themselves to be the very best tree that they can be, they rehearse to the extent that they can convince others that they are not only a tree, but a particular species of tree. Actors are people who’s pay increases along with their skills of deception. The symbolism is in the card-board cut-out of Thunderbird’s characters, they can play any role that is placed in the card board cut out for them to play. The puppet characters extend the card board out into a three dimensional version of the card-board cut out, in two dimensions, for your Russian Hoax Fractal View considerations. SAG may also prove to be the Board from which the (SAG) cards were cut, with Frank Sinatra as Chairman of the Board, subsquented by his offspring, Nancy... they make casts, must be orthopedic surgeons, plastered, from Paris. I am able to see better after this exercise about how the One Hour Martinizer is the broadcast and movie industry marinating the world with their secret sauce before we all hit the ovens. I feel like Dean Martin must have felt, all knowing about the heat in the Nevada desert while they completely pulled the shammy right over Sammy Davis Jr.’s eyes... do you see the joke they played on him? “Sammy Da Vice Jew-nior”... just a little black guy, always smoking, he was the “Token Schvartza”, a nod to the dangers of rectally holstered tanks of nitrous oxide gas... carbon. I wonder who chose his stage name. But the king of all insults to USA injury, ever, is Bob Hope. That son of Russian Hoax Whore is what happens when they pass out hope for free, it’s the stuff that remains when everything else is gone, then, Bob Hope comes along, and cuts off the hope, the hope they gave us, for free (see “Cul-de-sac” from yesterday’s reverse police entrapment 12-Bar Blues number here on this account, for Russian Hoax Fractal View considerations. See “Bill Barr is resigning” on Twitter to see SAG Presidential command orders to play the Blues).

=======================

12-25-2020: 2:33 pm:

It’s roasting in here...

I’m sorry, It was late... the instructions are written in Hong Kong Chinese, the thing was made in Japan, and it’s supposed to work in English... I must have put it together wrong... is this an IKEA model?

  Let me try again... these spare parts must go somewhere... there are no spare parts... just parts that are not in there yet... shoehorn oughta do the trick... that and some airplane vodka... and...viola!

Ok try it now...

I think the problem was that those four boys with the contrast hair, need to all be there to make the contrast knob work on the Queen’s old Black & White TV, all four of them are the contrast knob. They don’t do Volume work like I put it together the first time, they do contrast work... so... that leaves this extra Volume Knobbbbbb... where does the Volume knob supposed to go on here...?

Father!... He is the Volume Knob on the Queen‘s old Black & White television.

There. That should work better now.

===

2:54 pm... the thing still is not working?

Hmmmm..... must be one of those new fangled digital models. What if... you pull on the contrast knob out a little bit... then turn it, to make the contrast go in one direction, then, push it back it and turn it, to make the contrast go in the opposite direction? The same way as the High Fidelity Stereo knobs work... you have to pull it, same knob goes two ways.

What happens then?

Ohh yeah, you’re right, Jane, that’s the on & off button that you push & pull...

The instructions don‘t convey the assembly in satisfactory way. It’s not very intuitive, have to read between the lines, the picture is backwards, the one they show is Right Hand Drive. Just turn it off, stop this crazy thing, we can return it, it must be defective.

=====================================

3:27 pm:

I got this History of Mark Twain book for Christmas once... By Samuel Clemons.

That reminds me what Sam Said, he said that the very best time to start over, is when you are happy with the way things are now.

Ok... I think figured out the problem... it’s with the Secret Decoder Ring Instructions. Step 7 says: “You are commander of your own destiny”.

That one goes twice... It’s also step 1.

So, that means there are eight steps to the instructions to the Secret Decoder Ring... not 7.

Have to start over...

===

3:36 pm:

Darn it, was it History of Mark Twain, by Samuel Clemons?

Or was it History of Samuel Clemons, by Mark Twain?

I forget.

===========================

3:42 pm:

Eight Steps? Or Seven Steps?

If it was a Stairway.... in the dark...

Bustle in the hedge row could happen.

Step 1: You are commander of your own destiny

Step 2: Keep the Ring with you at all times

Step 3: Observe what is happening around you

Step 4: Compare reality to what you are told

Step 5: Remove all of the labels you were provided

Step 6: Think, think, think some more

Step 7: Apply new labels

Step 8: You are commander of your own destiny

Step 1: You are commander of your own destiny

Hmmmm, the Ring has a glitch, sort of.

Ok, it is a new fangled digital model.

Apple Mac OS vs Microsoft Windows

Apple uses 7 bits to say the same thing that Microsoft says with 8 bits.

Why?

==

3:58 pm:

Those are Bytes, not Bits. (airplane Vodka is in here somewhere)

Of course it’s digital, it’s a Ring... a Secret Decoder Ring, on your finger... so, digital. An analog digital ring.

Ring says to get my finger out my ass, contemplate Belly Button instead.

That leads back Bob Hope, USO shows, US Navy (remove lint, apply naval jelly).

Bob Hope. He brought a circus aboard the US Navy ships during “War Time”. With him came electronic equipment of all kinds, cameras, transmitters, cords, cables, carts and cases filled with stuff. They brought a coffee maker aboard the ships, and put ammonium nitrite into the coffee maker... Corning Ware. They turned loose the secret weapon on board the ships, Pretty Girls.

No army on earth could hope to defend against a small platoon, of Patty Gurdy’s.

===

USO

US O

US + That hole where the US Military fell into.

Bob Hope.

==============================

Welcome to Jamaica. Have a nice day.

==============================

4:58 pm:

Secrets of Meditation (Ancient Chinese Secret)

A quiet place is best, but not a necessity.

Anywhere will do, noisy bus stop, or mountain prairie, either way, anywhere, everywhere.

Your goal is to clear your mind, find peace within.

Simple, old way...

You visualize that you are a daisy. You check the condition of the daisy. Is it tall, upright? Is is leaning over? Is it all wet, trampled, or standing tall and warm?

Stand the daisy up tall, make it warm

You can step back. Where is the daisy? A meadow? By a pond? In the freeway median? On someone’s roof growing in a rain gutter?

Put the daisy somewhere nice, in a place where a daisy won’t get hurt.

Step back some more... is the daisy place in the mountain prairie yet?

It needs to go to a place like a mountain prairie, you have to put it there.

Maybe that is as far as you get in the meditation. That is OK, is the reason why you should meditate.

I noticed some birds the other day at Monroe’s, big white birds. I did not know if the birds were ducks, or geese. I knew they were not mallards. So, I thought to myself: “I don’t seem to know the difference between a duck and a goose... That is something I really needed to know about, that I don’t know if it’s a duck or a goose”... could have been some other kind of bird... I still don‘t know what kind of birds those were at Monroe’s. But I know that I don‘t know what they are.

So you try meditation again later. The daisy is far away, in a mountain prairie, sun is shining, it’s a nice day. You are a mountain prairie, filled with daisy’s, grass, trees, lots of bugs maybe, maybe not. You check condition of your mountain prairie.

You can step back. If all is good, keep stepping back, looking at the condition of the region where the mountain prairie is at.

The horizon is there. You need to know what is on the horizon in your meditative state, at the bus stop, or your front yard, or anywhere you are, you need to know what is on the horizon.

There should be some mountains in this meadow prairie where daisy’s grow with trees and bugs, animals and rain, clouds, Sun, and rainbows. You are the horizon, you are on the horizon.

You can step back, to become the mountain range, for miles in every direction, you are the earth.

There is water there. You need to check the condition of the water.

For the old Chinese way, there is a valley between two mountain peaks, and a lake is there between, in the Valley. Many people can never get close to the lake in their meditation, those who do, are able to see the water.

It’s your mountain. It’s your lake. You need to see the water surface to see what condition it’s in. Is it choppy? Is it flat? Does it reflect the sky?

Find out.

Only very few people are able to one day see the reflection of the moon on the lake in the valley between the mountain peaks where there are meadows filled with daisy’s, and bugs, and animals and trees.

Those who see the moon reflect in the lake, see Buddha.

They are enlightened ones.

======================

6:28 pm:

“Father” is “The Jim Dunlop”, a culmination of all of the Pope’s, all of the time, is where we wound up on the Card Board Cut-Out exploratory mission... for more Thunderbird’s thinking,

He is a Volume knob on the Queen‘s old Black & White Television also.

His sons are knobs on a 1960′s High Fidelity Stereo Unit, they are Treble, Mid-Range, and Bass controls. They also do Contrast work on the Queen’s TV, but are either broken, defective, or pontentiometers are dirty, or something else is wrong with them, and that is a condition of the the Queen‘s old Black & White TV. It seems to be part of the ingredients of the symbolism that the TV knobs don’t work exactly right. So, you have to smack it up side the cabinet to get the picture to be satisfactory. That, is part of the condition of the Queen’s TV.

The smack is the terror army heroin. That is the Lady Penelopy. The terror army that gets their instructions from the Thunderbird’s episodes, are controlled the same way as the Queen‘s TV operates. She dials in the controls, it’s not perfect, the knobs don‘t work exactly right, so, SMACK! upside the cabinet to get those tubes to connect, or whatever happens inside the tubes that the old TV’s were made from. That is the magic that makes it possible to reach International Rescue from any frequency, anywhere. It’s instruction to have terror family cells (the Tracy family) go on scouting missions, and other attack missions, then, they report back to the church at the “Vocal Sound Isolation Booth” (confessional) or, just go talk to whoever the leader is at church. The reward for doing the work that International Rescue does, is the heroin, they do “Trance Mission Work”, where the Trance is the high from the heroin, and the Mission is the Church.

Ok, so, that is something I already have known is true for a long time, that the Canadian terror army is powered by heroin. How to get national security to see that Afghanistan is for the Queen’s Heroin Production seems impossible. US Military is sent there to Afghanistan, who knows what happens when they get there, with so many false friendly's around?

Still need to put a Volume Knob on the High Fidelity Stereo Unit. The TV has all of the knobs accounted for, except for a way to turn it off. The High Fidelity Stereo (all is symbolic place holders for saying terror comm) has the Equalizer accounted for. I suspect that “Father” is also the Volume Knob for the Hi-Fi Unit.

What can be said?

He is way out in the Universe somewhere above the space module where one of those Blonde Boys, John I think, is stationed. “Father” is out in space farther, he’s an astronaut. Ok.. so, is that maybe like Volume pegged at 10 on the knob, all the way up? If so, that makes Earth at Zero on the knob. Ground Zero. Physically then, “Father” is way far away from Ground Zero. But terror bastards are sneaky bastards, he could be right there at Ground Zero. Maybe Hawaii, or SAG President, or Pope like we already figured Pope Paul XXIII, he could be right in the very center of public eyes.

That is more information that can be decoded with Secret Decoder Ring farther.

We need to find some basis in the information in the Thunderbird’s episodes to go farther in that direction. It’s only speculation so far that he is the Volume Knob for a High Fidelity Stereo Unit. Maybe that is all we need to know, it’s speculation, and speculation is what the TV is for, it’s for staring at, so take the Volume knob from the TV, put it on the High Fidelity Stereo Unit.

That makes “Father” a important person at both “Amp Guru” and at “One Hour Martinizing”. We already figured that out yesterday.

Columbia Records. Columbia Broadcasting. Columbia Pictures.

Columbia shows up on Decoder Ring RADAR.

Maybe the Jim Dunlop is from the Columbia Trilogy.

=============

Go a different way:

There is entertainment, and there are electronic gadgets that we use for seeing and hearing the entertainment. If there were no gadgets, all of the entertainment would be live entertainment. “Amp Guru” and “One Hour Martinizing” both simplify down to “Entertainment”, but that is not enough, it’s “Electronically Reproduced Entertainment”.

There is a much closer relationship between producers of electronically reproduced entertainment, and manufacturers of electronic gadgets for use to actually play the media the entertainment is recorded onto, than previously considered, possibly.

We are getting into the realm of the Zero.

With written history set aside, the new Step 7 for Secret Decoder Ring Use, is Apply New Labels, so, we are in a place where only few people have gone before, and lived to tell about it. We need to take much of the established and accepted history as it was told, and turn it all upside down, and backwards, play the turn around on the twelve bar blues back the way it’s supposed to be played, and see what gender the history is. We have to make sure history is not transgender. Take apart, clean it, put new labels.

The “Japanese Zero’s” at Pearl Harbor (Thunderbird’s Volcano Island shows up on Decoder Ring RADAR. so do Thunderbird’s with a different label: Zero’s) were fitted with Mercedes Benz Motors (maybe was Rolls Royce, I forget, but were not fitted with Japanese Made Motors) were fitted with European Made Motors, and there is photographic evidence still around. Most of the old history books have been rounded up, collected by Scott and Virgil already, and destroyed, but there must be some around somewhere. Those are TOP SECRET! If you have old text books with photo’s of crashed Zero’s, you should protect those. Don‘t allow Scott and Virgil to see them. They will steal them, and destroy them.

There is a connection between the attack at Peal Harbor to the US and British, perhaps European Electronically Reproduced Entertainment Industry. What that connection actually consists of is not known, yet.

There are too many puzzle parts here where Entertainment, Pearl Harbor, and Gadget Manufacturing all collide.

Make speculation: Japan at the time was advanced in manufacturing, and Japan is far away from prying US Regulatory Eyes. I speculate there was/is, blue-tooth-like technology that is/was not made available to the public, was small radio transmitters, ones that no one knows what they look like, are hidden inside of the Japanese made products. Maybe Japan was hijacked so that the Electronic Recorded Media Producers could install the necessary spy equipment into the products made in Japan, for the purpose of Global Domination efforts. Further speculation is that the reason the media, vinyl, VHS, Beta Max, cassette, compact disc, etc, changed format so often, is also part of advancing installation of the small transmitters into media players. People won’t by new electronic gadgets for playing the entertainment media if they don’t have a reason to, so, change the format of the entertainment media often so that fresh spy equipment can be placed in the homes of potential victims...maybe the batteries in the small transmitters did not last as long as they do these days. There are human considerations of trafficking, slavery and depopulation also to consider.

Now, I am way out in space with not much supporting information there.

The European Motors in the “Japanese Zero’s”, however, will prove to be very solid ground, Ground Zero.

Maybe “Father”, is a airplane manufacturer at Jim Dunlop HQ, or, an engineer with money and access to airplane manufacturing, where fake Zero’s could be made fitted with Mercedes Benz motors.

I was just trying to put the volume knob on the Hi-Fi, when “Olive the Above” happened.

=======================

8:05 pm:

Britain controls Hong-Kong. For hundreds of years, they rule Hong-Kong. In USA, school education did not emphasize that Hong-Kong is much different than China. Most of my life, I thought Hong Kong was China. But it’s is not, it’s Hong Kong. Technically, Hong Kong is part of China, but it’s a weird, funky sort of condition, is like when your neighbor insists on parking their car in front of your house, where you want to park, but, that other car is in the way, have park somewhere else. China has to park somewhere else, because Britain is parked at Hong Kong.

In 1960′s, much of the electronic gadgets were made in Japan, lots of stuff said “Made in Japan” on it. Later, in 1970′s and afterwords, those same kinds of products were saying they were “Made in Hong Kong”, not “Made in China”. There was a visible differentiating thing between Hong Kong, and China for manufacture of products destined for USA markets, it said so on the products.

A question I have, when following the connecting dots made from “Japanese Zero’s Fitted With European Motors”, is why would Britain take Japan, by and through US Military, and with a lot of bullshit, if they already had Hong Kong for the manufacture of electronic gadgets that the dots lead to?

The answer seems to be in the idea that those who planed and carried out the Pearl Harbor fiasco, basically, were a “Nation Without a Country”. Where to go from there is a mystery.

We collectively know less about Pearl Harbor attack than we think we do.

There is that Franklin D. Roosevelt speech to congress on the following day:

The whole thing seems to have a completely disingenuous vibe to it.

“Weeks in planning” he said. Like they just decided one day at breakfast to attack the largest army’s of the world, and then in the same week, rolled that out with the trash while collecting the morning paper from the front driveway.

Is Roosevelt a SAG Member? What church did he attend? Winston Church on the Hill?

I am going beyond things I have any knowledge or experience with when thinking about the attack at Pearl Harbor. Lost.

===========

8:45 pm:

Step back... wider view:

No one knows more about radio transmitters than the people who rely on the equipment for their lively hood. That makes radio broadcasting corporations the source of the oldest and most complete knowledge of transmitters.

US military has the most knowledge, don‘t they?

I don‘t think so, US Military contract’s the equipment they need from the private sector, they turn to broadcast industry engineers for their radio communication needs.

That’s bad news, makes a situation where US Defense was and has been playing into the hands of the ones who are currently doing the global takeover. When the tech is developed per requested necessity by those who contract for the consignment work, there are times when other tech happens as a result of providing what was asked for to be developed, same way we tripped over the Queen’s TV when looking at card-board cut-outs, it was bonus. Tiny transmitters, conceived by broadcast engineers doing military contract electronics development, but kept secret because it was not what they asked for, is what I think could have happened. I know small transmitters exist, I could show one to someone interested in seeing it, small, about one-eight inch diameter cylinder shape, about one-quarter inch tall, is all it is. That is the transmitter and the battery that runs it. They are installed secretly as dental posts, the kind that dentures attach to, or, when a tooth is broken, it can be strengthened with the small transmitter post with a crown on top, like the one I have, and is done covertly, without knowledge of the ones fitted with the invasive tiny transmitters. The I had crown broke off, the post remains deep in my jaw. Transmits to about 500 feet range, and has an odd delay feature, or bug, or characteristic of the technology that makes it work. The delay is a substantial one, up to 15 seconds delay before the receiver picks up the signal, as far as I can tell, and the delay is not consistent, seems to be dependent on distance between transmitter and receiver, however, the delay characteristic might simply be the way the receiver is set in order to produce the desired affect. I only know I hear my own voice coming from devices that other people have, and there is a delay between what I say, and then hearing that same sentence back, live. I have seen slightly bigger ones in the mid 1980′s. The earlier models I saw consisted of more than one tiny part, could occupy a space about three-eighths inch, by one quarter inch. This one installed in my jaw is about one eighth inch diameter cylinder shape, by one-quarter inch in height, w/broadcast range about 500 feet. Installed in the jaw of top officials, and corporate executives, without their knowledge, after visiting a dentist, priceless.

==========================

9:25 pm:

I’ll go a different route to try to get some help to come to Oregon:

The Tiny Tim Route, It’s Christmas Day, so, I don‘t want to leave Tiny Tim unattended today.

It’s a wheel chair.

That one, can‘t be moved by the occupant of the chair.

Real local Oregon terror includes that the whole medical establishment is hijacked, is controlled by Canadian terror soldiers, and has a large presence of Screen Actor Guild terror leadership within the medical establishments. The Social Security Administration was also hijacked, is controlled by the same group of terror army specialists, ones who specialize in terrorism done within the medical fields. They prey on elderly and disabled people with access to the Social Security Data Base.

Some victims are kept for show, the ones that need to use a wheelchair are put in one like that one, and are paraded around at medical facilities and other places for show, in case someone is counting the number of people there are, and some of those people would be expected to be disabled people in wheelchair.

So, you have to imagine you are in the chair to see how the terror works. The person in the chair cannot move that kind of wheelchair, the wheels are too small, it’s a “confinement chair”. A person in one of those might ask for help, so, the person asked starts to look around for the caregiver that goes with the chair. That won‘t work, the caregiver is a terror soldier/actor. The person in the chair says “no, you don’t understand, I am confined in this chair, I can’t move it”. The person who was asked for help, knows already that the person is confined to the wheelchair, that is what it’s for, it’s wheelchair, for people who can‘t move.

That is all of the help that will happen when someone is in one of those kind of small wheel wheel chairs. The person who was asked for help does not see that the chair has small wheels, is not the kind that someone can move on their own, they only see that it’s a wheelchair, and no matter what that disabled person says, will only make the situation increasingly hopeless for them.

You really do need to think hard about the cruelty of the Tiny Tim chair, they are used at all of the medical facilities, and no one notices that they have small wheels, the person can‘t move it, is reliant on the terror bastards from Hollywood who are using the person to steal their prescription pain meds.

Other backwards wheelchair terror, is that most, or all of the US disabled citizens are already dead, were attacked long ago, so, disabled and elderly terror soldiers are paraded around in those chairs. The idea is for a “Save the Princess” scenario, where someone might actually be able to help, but are not present in great enough numbers to combat the enormity of the terror army.

Information I have about that is ongoing, I have seen both kinds of conditions, where the occupant of the chairs truly are in great distress, and, I have seen the “Save the Princess” variety set-up for attack version as well. The terror take over has been advancing at a nominal pace for more than twenty years in Oregon, so, they are pretty much done doing the slaughter part, they do maintenance and scout work, eliminate outsiders as the outsiders show up.

===================

12-26-2020: 1:39 am:

I said it before, so I’ll say again, a different way:

Those who control the heroin, also control the Christian/Canadian terror army.

The secret to conquering the enormity of the terror army, lies in the septum in Penelopy’s groin.

============

12-26-2020: 2:55 am:

I can’t count, there are five Tracy’s, plus “Father”.

Five boys are all pilots, two light haired, two are dark haired. One Auburn.

Five pilots are a three band EQ.

White Knight High-V Trinity Power Trio.

There is more to explore in that addition.

Lyrics from Cumbersome: “Too heavy, too light, too black, too white, too wrong and too right, yeah tonight, cumbersome” ~ Seven Mary Three

Alternative lyric from Cumbersome: “Two heavy, two light, two black, two white, two wrong and two right, yeah tonight, cumbersome” ~ Seven Mary Three

The song turns into a body count of an Oxcart Driver on a Saturday night in Pleasantville.

The sound of a high-five is Penelope’s name, whispered into Frank Sinatra’s microphone in the basement of the Capitol Records Building, on a Saturday night.

[cameoamalthea]

illegalslothings:

I think the one thing that  miffs me about certain fujosji is the toxic views some have on gay relationships and often many women who write fanfiction have some very.. misinformed ideas?? And some of them tend to fetishize gay men (reguardless or not if they're lesbians or straight women) I USED to be one of these types of people and i didn't realize how damaging my ideas and 'fetishizing' was until I was in my early 20s. Just some food for thought

Thank you for your response. I can understand how you feel that way. Especially given that plenty of fujoshi are teenagers on the internet and teens can be obnoxious. There are annoying fans and plenty of bad fanfiction (especially if it’s written by people without much experience, but hey, safer for girls to explore sexuality and make mistakes in a story than exploring with another person where they could get hurt). 

I get what you mean about problems in yaoi. And honestly, it’s the same problems I see in a lot of het romance (and sometimes gay romance made by and for guy male audiences, like I was into Gravitation at the same time I was into Queer as Folk re-runs, there were overlapping tropes and overlapping problems).

However, I’m hoping that maybe I can give you some food for thought too. And please bare with me as my responses tend to be very long and tangental but I want to talk about this...

First, could you define “fetishizing” because I’ve seen the term used simply to mean ‘women thinking something is hot”. 

Kant’s take on sexual morality was that any sexual attraction is objectifying (or fetishizing, I suppose, since fetishizing and objectifying seems to be used interchangeably in the discourse. Kant’s reasoning that sexual attraction "makes of the loved person an Object of appetite. . . . Taken by itself it is a degradation of human nature" (Lectures on Ethics, p. 163) Source.

The idea is if you think someone or something is hot you’re not treating them as people and just as something to ‘get off to’. Therefor, any and all sexual attraction is evil.

I agree with Kant insofar as physical attraction is objectifying someone, but disagree that it’s inherently wrong.

Rather, I think  sexual morality hinges on consent. If you treat someone as an object without their consent, that is wrong. If a guy asks me invasive questions about my sex life or harasses me and the girl I’m with because ‘lesbians are hot’ or ‘I love bisexuals’. He’s trying to use to me to fulfill a sexual fantasy without my consent and it’s creepy and wrong.

Using people without their consent is always wrong.

Him finding the idea of two women together hot doesn’t really effect me because it doesn’t involve me.

Consent is also a two sided coin. No means no, but yes means yes. It means that if I want to do something, either on my own or with other consenting adults, I’m allowed to do so...

I reject the idea that how other people who aren’t involved might feel about it negates the right of an individual to consent.

If I decide to hold hands with another woman in public or kiss her and it makes some people uncomfortable, that’s not my problem. They’re not involved. Our relationship is between us.

If I decide to write a romance story between two guys for other women or rp as a guy with another woman and it makes some people uncomfortable, that’s also not my problem. Again, they’re not involved. Everyone involved is consenting, whether consenting to read or to play. 

The fujoshi community is for the most part women exploring their sexuality with other women in a women dominated space. 

If a woman sexually harasses anyone, man or woman, then that of course is wrong, because there’s no consent. That’s what harassment means, doing something to someone without their consent and/or in spite of their clear lack of consent. 

Note, consent is between the people involved. 

If I cosplay a guy from Ouran High School Host Club and give roses to girls and consensually pose somewhat suggestively with my cosplay partner to make them happy, everyone involved consents and there is no problem. 

If someone sexually harasses cosplayers, demands they do poses they’re not comfortable with...that’s a problem. 

If someone sees us cosplaying two guys and posing with our arms around each other and is uncomfortable...that’s not my problem. 

I just can’t agree with the idea that consensual activity is wrong because it makes people who aren’t involved feel uncomfortable. 

Whether a sexual act (sexual used here to mean any activity linked to sexual attraction) is moral hinges on consent between those involved, not how other people feel about it. 

Their feelings are valid, they may be genuinely uncomfortable, but feelings aren’t facts. Something making you (a general you) uncomfortable doesn’t make it wrong. 

Again, plenty of straight girls might be uncomfortable with me because ‘what if I liked them, that would be gross’ but me existing as a person who likes girls or expressing that I like girls in general isn’t actually a threat to them. Me liking something doesn’t = being predatory, attraction doesn’t = sexual harassment.

And the same goes for me liking guys or the idea of being a guy in a relationship with another guy. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I support criticizing media.

It’s important to critique media. Media reflects culture. By criticizing how relationships in media present predatory behavior as romantic can help us to pause and question where is this idea coming from?

As a romance fan (someone who read and wrote  romance, since like, middle school) - I will say that there are issues with the romance genre as a whole. Like any issue with the yaoi genre also exists in the romance genre because yaoi is still a subset of romance. The romance genre is full of toxic and unhealthy views of relationships (sometimes that’s the point, sometimes it seems the authors don’t understand when behavior is creepy as opposed to romantic). 

However, harmful messages in media don’t exist in a vacuum. They reenforce or subvert harmful ideas that exist in culture. So lesbian porn where the plot is a straight man turns lesbians straight should be criticized in light of reenforcing the idea that all women exist to please men and should want men and be available, even lesbians. Meanwhile, gay porn where the plot is a gay man turns a straight man gay doesn’t really reenforce anything.

Gay men don’t have the power to oppress straight men. Gay men’s fantasies about straight men can’t reenforce oppressive ideas because straight men aren’t oppressed.

Likewise, I don’t really think porn made by women about men can oppress men. Women don’t have societal power over men. Lesbians do not hold any privilege over gay men.

Rather, men have ‘male privilege’ which may be part of the draw of yaoi for lesbians. The opportunity to explore sexuality while using a male avatar. To explore sexuality with the baggage that comes with female sexuality (am I writing this character too slutty, will people hate her for it, what if they think this is me, what if I get sexually harassed for posting about sex things- Things you think about if you’re a woman writing porn that involves women that vanish if you write about men instead). And that’s besides the fact that in fandom content most characters in mainstream media are men and the most developed canon relationships tend to be between men. 

Lesbians ‘fetishizing’ gay men? Women fetishizing the idea of being a man/maleness? 

I just don’t see how lesbians have the power to harm gay men by reading, writing or drawing porn about men. 

Or see how whether something is harmful depends on the gender. So if my husband does “rabid fangirl’ things, it’s not fetishization but if I do...it is?

Also, what about non-binary people and intersex people? I have PCOS, which is a form of intersex and sort of makes my gender identification shift depending on how much T I have in my system in a given time. Sometimes, I want to present as male and feel more comfortable as a guy. Most of the time I identify as a woman. (And sometimes I’m a sobbing mess of double dysphoria). 

So like...if I like yaoi while I feel like a guy it’s fine, but if I do it while I’m feeling more like a girl it’s fetishizing?

I just question any logic that boils down to ‘it’s only bad if girls do it’. Which I see a lot of...

That doesn’t mean we can’t criticize girls for bad behavior. If you treat real people badly or treat non-consenting third parties like they should be your sex toys, that’s absolutely not acceptable. But thinking about boys or reading bad romance stories about boys isn’t hurting anyone.

Again, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ever question media. When media reflects harmful norms we should discuss what’s wrong with this picture so that we can consciously reject the harmful ideas. That said, it’s still ok to enjoy problematic media. It’s not about never enjoying something that isn’t it’s perfect. It’s about thinking critically so you won’t reenforce any harmful ideas you’ve picked up due to societal norms and so you can instead question those norms. 

For example, Star Wars featured some pretty toxic stuff. However, it’s ok to like Star Wars, and to like Han Solo and like his relationship and chemistry with Leia. You can like it and still acknowledge that the narrative frames predatory behavior as cute/romantic. Liking it doesn’t mean you’re predatory or support predatory behaviors. 

If you haven’t questioned predatory romance in Harrison Ford movies before and have misinformed ideas about relationships, that’s not your fault. We grow up in a society that has some messed up ideas about relationships and doesn’t give us the information we need. 

In the U.S. at least we don’t even have access to basic sex-ed let alone classes on relationships. This is a problem because we need tools to recognize abusive relationships and make healthy choices. It doesn’t help when media doesn’t really give great examples. 

However, the issue isn’t fiction not teaching us good lessons. Fiction exists to entertain not educate. That’s what the non-fiction section is for...

Making decisions about relationship based on fictional romance books isn’t a good idea. Making decisions about what pet to get based on fictional dog books isn’t a good idea either. The good news is, you can fact check. That’s part of what criticism is...looking at something is presented and thinking about it critically means fact checking.

Women interested in BDSM because of 50 Shades have been hurt as a result. Families interested in Dalmatians because of 101 Dalmatians have been hurt as a result and have hurt a lot of dogs and the breed as a whole. 

That doesn’t mean enjoying the fantasy of an unhealthy relationship in a romance book is wrong, or enjoying unrealistic stories about puppies. That’s not a problem. Using fiction as if it were a guide book is a problem.

I’ve talked about this discussing “The Shallows” and how sharks are portrayed in the media. Monster movies about Sharks aren’t really the issue. The issue is people who treat fiction (whose purpose is to entertain) like non-fiction (whose purpose it is to educate and inform). “The Shallows” isn’t a documentary, we shouldn’t treat it like one. And really, the bigger problem is more when actual documentaries sensationalize things. The issue is less with Sharknado and more with so called ‘educational channels” which purport to be non-fiction, informative sources try to be entertaining for ratings (Shark Week makes me angrier than the Shallows). 

(sorry, shark digression...)

My point is genres that exist to entertain aren’t meant to educate. They can still be criticized (all media should be criticized), but they shouldn’t be help to a standard of something it’s not. A romance novel is not a sex-ed book, it’s a not a relationship guide book, it’s a form of entertainment. 

To quote Oscar Wilde “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.”

What’s true for books also applies to fanfic and manga and all art. The purpose of fiction is to entertain. It doesn’t have to teach moral lessons or leave the reader more informed. Note that I distinguish fiction from propaganda, as propaganda exists to purposely support a certain point of view, and so it is necessary to judge it on the point of view it’s pushing. So I think you can say that the philosophy advocated in “Atlas Shrugged” is morally wrong because that’s propaganda, but I’d argue “The Picture of Dorian Gray” isn’t morally wrong because it’s a book, it’s job is to be entertainment and judged on whether it’s well written or badly written.

Note, criticizing media is different than judging it as moral or immoral. I can write an essay about the character of Dorian and what makes him an bad person in the novel. That’s different than saying the book itself is immoral or that Oscar Wilde is bad for writing it and his fans are bad for reading it. Yes, it’s a problematic book, that’s part of the point of it. It’s not a guide book on behavior, it’s art.

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Rokuhoudou 1 - 12 (REWATCH) | Fruits Basket 25 (FINAL) | Demon Slayer 25 - 26 (FINAL) | Mob Psycho 100 II OVA | Cop Craft 11 - 12 (FINAL) | Dr Stone 11 | Ahiru no Sora 1 | Shinchou Yuusha 1

New anime of the season, here we go!

Rokuhoudou 1 (REWATCH)

I’m doing a new project where I rewatch some of my favourites to test their integrity in that regard. Here’s the first show - Rokuhoudou. So what I remember about Rokuhoudou is that it’s very simple – the guys make food and help people, occasionally there’s cats – and that was enough to help me through a mental rough patch I was going through at the original time of airing.

Being sick and watching with a cinnamon roll really brings home the idea of Rokuhoudou as “comfort food for the eyes”…No, it’s not what you think. I’m eating a cinnamon roll.

I always assumed the title was translated to “Four-Coloured Daily Life at Rokuhoudou”, because that would be the best translation if the title was fully in kanji. It’s not though, so the hiragana-rendered parts could mean anything.

Rokuhoudou almost gives you this sensation of being spirited away by good food (and Good Boys).

Sui sometimes reminds me of Kunikida (BSD)…must be the glasses.

Gure’s such a tease, LOL.

Tokitaka’s so refined, yet also has the heart and patience to help old people, plant things and make pottery. I love him~!

“You don’t need to show appreciation with bodily functions!”

I only just noticed it…but Gure has a nice eye colour.

Oh…I just realised this since I now know Tokitaka grows the veg and herbs out back, but Tokitaka must’ve grown them.

Hmm…I was wondering why you’d need a spoon for chazuke, but then I realised it’s because of the soup…D’oh.

I wonder if Tokitaka also made the chopstick holders…

Update: The ikura reminds me of Hinamatsuri…

Rokuhoudou 2 (REWATCH)

(Sorry, I had a note, but I didn’t write it down fast enough so I don’t have any for this ep…)

Rokuhoudou 3 (REWATCH)

Tokitaka has a flower in his hair (during the pottery wheel scene)…cute~!

Rokuhoudou 4 (REWATCH)

“You need to chill out.” – More like “you need to calm down”, amirite??? (LOL)

Look at how badass my bois are!

Now that I’ve been seriously working on my customer service skills, I sort of get the ethic behind the Rokuhoudou workers in general.

Rokuhoudou 5 (REWATCH)

Oyaji ga Susumeru Café Iko! – “The Old Guy Recommends Cafes to Go To!”, literally speaking. However, it’s quite slang and seems to be hinting at the positive connotations of an oyaji (fondness, the sort you’d have for your dad), so I approve of the chosen translation “Daddy-o’s Café Go!”.

Oh yeah…this is the weird delusion from Isago, isn’t it? I still rmembr writing a blog post about it!

Why does Tokitaka look so evil in this one scene (where he’s helping Tsubaki), anyway?

Rokuhoudou 6 (REWATCH)

(no notes, sorry!)

Rokuhoudou 7 (REWATCH)

(no notes, sorry!)

Rokuhoudou 8 (REWATCH)

I love how Gure gets all fired up just to pedal a duck boat.

Is it just me, or does young!Gure look like he was designed by Rihito Takarai (creator of Ten Count)…?

I can’t believe this…my stomach grumbled in the middle of an espresso episode…

“Who else could it be for?” – The dog?...I’m kidding, man…don’t get so angry at me, dog lovers.

I think this might be the 2nd time I thought the kid was called “you” (2nd person pronoun), but his nam is “You” (given name).

Oh! I don’t think I noticed this special ED the first time around.

Update: Gure is a happy drunk, LOL. Also, Gure is half-Italian, with his father being Japanese. (see ep. 1 of original watch-through for corresponding notes)

Rokuhoudou 9 (REWATCH)

Is the land of love France or Italy…?

Shinchosha is real…in fact, they’re the ones who publish Rokuhoudou’s manga!

Oh, seriously, I ship it now! Isago x Hayashi, that is…and Sui x kittens.

Update: Somehow I only just ralised it…but the titular “Mont Blanc Boy” is Tsunozaki, even though technically the only boys we see in this episode are young! Kyousui and Yakyou.

Rokuhoudou 10 (REWATCH)

The Napolitan episode…this is where Astral’s post comes from.

I get the feeling this segment’s title is a shoutout to “You Don’t Know Gunma Yet”, which is in…Kurage Bunch, also by Shinchosha, if I’m remembering correctly.

Gure and Tsubaki are like children sometimes, I swear…

Kuromitsu = brown sugar. (It means “black sweetness”, literally translating and it used to confuse me so much that I want to mention it here.)

VAINO computer, eh?

Tokyo NX, LOL. (Parody of Tokyo MX, which has a lot of anime.)

Short-haired Tokitaka!

I think Koto(ko…?)’s words, in particular, were one of the best monologues in this series when it comes to relaxing by realising I wasn’t alone in my doubts of the world. “Can I make it to my dreams?” I was asking the first time I saw this and even though I haven’t achieved the dreams of past me, I just had to adjust my expectations, make some new dreams and keep on going.

Rokuhoudou 11 (REWATCH)

Good heck, Gendo-I mean, Kyousui. (re: finger tenting)

Also, there is one univeral truth about this show: don’t watch it on an empty stomach…I had to go get some food a few eps. back in this rewatch because my stomach grumbled…

When I thought of “something rich”, I thought of a pudding too. Maybe my memory is better than I thought, huh?

I thought there was something dirty on my screen…turns out it was just Gure’s beauty spot.

Rokuhoudou 12 (FINAL, REWATCH)

“I’ll wake you up, then.”

I learnt this from the manga, but Itou is the old tea vendor.

Gin-chan reminds me of the inventor Logicalist from Hina Logi.

Karamimochi. By the way, from earlier in the ep…ankoro mochi.

Neneko was meant to be into kimonos, wasn’t she…?

Nion (sic) camera, LOL.

Okay, that’s the end of my first rewatch. It’s a keeper!

Fruits Basket 25 (FINAL)

Shihan = shisho = instructor.

Notice the Jizo, protector of children.

“…didn’t have to block…”

LOL, Tohru’s shocked face going from Kyo to Yuki.

Ooh, Makoto Takei and Machi Kuragi…

Isuzu!!!

Okay, that’s the end of that. See you next time!

Demon Slayer 25

So the other butterfly mansion girls (aside from Aoi, Shinobu and Kanao) are called Naho, Kiyo and Sumi, huh?

Tanjiro is seemingly a freakin’ masochist right now to those girls…

Ooh, there’s a butterfly in a chrysalis on the title card!

It seems, based on the kanji for Tsuguko, the word literally means “inheritor”, “successor” or “one who makes [another person’s role flourish by being in it]”…Like a Legacy Character from TV Tropes. Also, “Tsuyuri” literally means “chestnut flowers fall”, if I understand the characters right.

Kanao does the Naruto run. She wants to see them aliens too!

“Putting in effort isn’t my thing.” – Now there’s a sentence after my own heart!

Why does Kanao not talk???

Kanao’s coin says “front” and “back” instad of heads and tails.

Hmm, hmm…very heterosexual reading of Kanao here. It almost makes me lose hope in the “gay Shinobu” department (not that I’m angry about that).

This guy with the hat…I swear he looks like a jellyfish…

Why do all the swordsmiths wear that mask???

There’s one thing I realised this episode…anime humour means I expect exaggerated reactions to a lot of things, such as Inosuke chipping his swords like that.

I remember being a bit annoying about the interchangeability between the translation of honoo as “fire” and “flame” when I was a Boueibu rookie...*sighs happily* good times.

Okayyyyyy…Tanjiro’s gone cuckoo…

Nezuko, Inosuke and Zenitsu, huh? There’s a combo I’ve never seen!

Mob Psycho 100 OVA

Isekai hot springs, LOL.

I think I can see Saitama’s bald head, LOL.

I think there might be CGI on this hot springs establishment…

This is Reigen, king of bulls*%$, everyone!

Nanbanzuke.

“[P]air of plumbers”, eh…?

Ooh, 8-bit graphics! Remember season 2’s early scenes? That 8-bit one was good.

Dude, Reigen…just leave the train already…then you’ll get out.

LOL, “Mobpis”...Mobpis 100, maybe?

Strangely, Teru looks vaguely hot in one frame of one scene where he has his eyes closed.

Why do I get the feeling the capybaras on TV will be relevant later…?

Now, this parallel world brings a new meaning to “Infinity Train”!

Nice callback to the opening words of s1 and 2.

…and randomly, Dimple can be seen in the red waves.

It seems Dimple likes sprouting legs these days.

Cop Craft 11

Tourte’s career…almost sounds like Trump’s…

“No one treats me like an alien.”

Don’t bring a sword to a gun fight, Tilarna…

The name “transitional crises” is perfect for this episode…geesh. Just like episode 1, there’s a cliffhanger.

Dr Stone 11

Notice the focus on E=mc2 when Senku talks about passing on knowledge.

Ahh, science…the cliché says it’s for loners, but truth be told, science works in tag teams just like anything else. (Yes, even IT, if you look at it a certain way – such as how creating your code builds upon the people who built that code and the people who made the programs you code in.

Why do all the villagers have platform shoes anyway???

Demon Slayer 26 (FINAL)

Is that woman (not the Biwa player, the other one)…Muzan?! Update: Yes.

Genya…he got so tall in 2 years(ish)…poor Tanjiro. He’s fated to kill Kibutsuji, but he’s also fated to be short.

Does every girl in this series have to fall in love with Tanjiro?!?! (or be implied to be shippable with him, even Nezuko???) I obviously don’t like that kind of direction, as you can see.

Ah, Kanao speaks…for once.

I guess Nezuko has a really loud heart voice, to contrast Kanao’s tiny heart voice, so to speak.

How does Inosuke eat anything through the boar head if he’s taking it off all the time now to do things with his mouth???

Darn that ninja Giyu, leaving as soon as he feels sentimental. (LOL)

*starts yelling at top of lungs* MU-GEN TRAIN! (roughly to the tune of TM Network’s Love Train, which I heard about a few months before this)

I just realised Tanjiro’s probably never seen a train, considering the only transport he’s ever known is maybe a carriage/cart…or maybe just his legs.

As Zenitsu’s struggling to keep up with the train, I almost expect the Harry Potter theme to play and a flying car to appear in the distance…okay, I’m kidding about the car, but I did wish for a second the Harry Potter song would play. Nur-nurr-nur-nurrrrrr-nur-nurrrrrr-nurr…(or something)

Cop Craft 12 (FINAL)

“…taking the lead in the mayoral lead.” – That sounds redundant.

Hey! It’s that one Demon Slayer joke again! (i.e. Kei used his head.)

Dead Randall: too much for TV.

I still can’t believe they properly managed to incorporate the porn case into the finale…

I watched Hellsing today and all this “Sir Matoba” this and “Sir Matoba” that made me wonder…why is Integra a “Sir” as well…?

Zelada does look like Alucard in some senses…hmm.

I think the large bruise over Kei’s eye disappeared in one of the scenes…Now it’s just under his eye.

Wait, Tilarna has a sibling??? Wuh???

I like how they transitioned into the OP, but man…talk about a fast ending. That’s a Hellsing kinda ending fo’ sure. Oh well, see you next time.

Ahiru no Sora 1

New season, new faces, new series. Let’s get into it.

Man, this sparrow freaks me out…

Lyrics from the outset. This must be something special to warrant such a thing.

I always thought Kuzuryuu (“nine-headed dragon”, literally translating) was a cool surname to have! Or just a place name, in this case.

LOL, his name is Momohara (peach field).

The arcade machine says “fist” in the back.

Uh-oh…nothing ever goes right when a boy tries peeping into the girl’s locker room…

*sigh* The male gaze…geesh.

“What are you doing?!” (Nani yatterun da?!) doesn’t translate to “This isn’t the circus!”.

Oh right…Momo = 100, chi = 1000, haru = spring, aki = autumn.

Hey, Chiaki actually got Sora’s name right for once…

Basically everything I know about basketball is from Kuroko no Basuke, so…uh…Sora’s reminding me of Kuroko right now.

Shinchou Yuusha 1

I just call this “TUEEE” instead…don’t mind me. Obviously, my target here is Ume…y’know that, right?

Most of these gods and goddesses look suckish, but I wouldn’t mind an anime about the one with the long hair and Monkey King headband.

Ristarte’s already a bundle of fun…although her leg jiggling’s a bit annoying…

(mocking) There must be a downside to this, right, Listarte…?

Can we not with boob storage??? I bet no matter how big a woman’s knockers are, you can’t store anything between ‘em in real life! (I think we’d need an anime Mythbusters for something like that…make it happen, someone!)

YesyesyesyesYES! OOH, Ristarte, you sure know how to pick ‘em! The fact he’s over 180 cm in height is…well, it’s bad for trying to kiss him, but otherwise it’s just a cherry on the cake of smokin’ HOT!

“[F]ish story”??? You mean “fishy”, right? (Oh well, seems like synonyms work too…)

I…don’t quite get this song…but I think I saw a hot guy (might’ve been a woman, but I’d like it to be a man since there are already so many women in the OP as is) about halfway through the OP. It’s a real 2 for 1 bargain here, people. Update: Argh…that’s a woman after all…

Argh! *is suddenly sabotaged by one Ariadoa* If you’ve read the Spellbook, you’ll know one of my aliases is “Aria Noyed”. It just happens to be the same as an anime and manga already, but now I have it ruining my fun here too…

LOL, did you hear that “ba-bing!” acquistion sound when Rista produced the money?

To be honest, I think regular Seiya (with the purple-highlighted armour as you see here) looks pretty hot anyway (plus Ume’s voice, which I came for), so I think I have a lock-in for the season right here.

The sakuga in this show is way too good (according to all the cubes of soil I keep seeing)!

This ED is a pretty cool bop, yo.

[the-lady-writes-what]

I have spent the last three fucking days on TikTok because some girl can’t understand hyperbole. I made a little video pointing out that there are a lot of white writers talking about chakras. That’s it. There’s only so much nuance you can cram into that length of time. 

But this woman. Oh my GOD, this woman. 

It has been three days of her accusing me of being racist...against other white people. First, she tried to claim that I was racist because she said that I think Hinduism is tied to Indians. I’m not an authority on the matter, but I never stated that Hinduism is tied to race. There are a lot of people who aren’t Indian who “convert” (that word is sometimes sketchy when talking about Hinduism, some parts of it are only by initiation, and I think some aren’t, but I’l find that out on my own). Then, she tried to say I was racist...against white people. It was a very surreal situation to be a white person being accused of being racist against white people while trying to defend the study of chakras and other Hindu traditions from the over-arching theme of writers who didn’t study so much as eastern philosophy and write about chakras in the Western view and separate from its culture context.

I have to get up for work before 10 AM and then come home to do last minute homework before midnight, and I just wasted several hours of my life doing research to defend myself against a person who uses chakras and inner rainbow interchangeably, even though that chakra is a culturally specific word. For most of the back and forth, I have never felt more gaslighting and emotional abuse. And yes, I'm using that term correctly because she made me feel like if I just say I'm racist she’ll go away and leave me alone. Forget the Spanish Inquisition, make her the torture because I am not well. It has been almost none stop with abuse and gaslighting that I’m so emotionally drained that I don’t know if I’ll even walk into work in the morning. Holy shit. 

And all of this was because she thought I was “hating” white people for sharing their spirituality. Sharing their spirituality wasn’t my fucking issue. My issue was the whitewashed version of chakras they peddled to other white people who don’t practice Hinduism. In the new age and witchcraft community, cultural appropriation is an important topic. I don’t smudge, I don’t make Voodoo dolls, I don’t use Qabala or call Lilith a goddess. My head is throbbing and I have to go to work tomorrow and deal with awful customers. I wanted to do homework when I got home, but this bitch came after me because I don’t think its okay to buy and sell chakras when they don’t even teach it right. I have found good sources on what chakras are and they don’t have any of the correspondences associated with the Western perception of chakras. 

When she started mentioning inner rainbow, which she never divulged what it was only to check out her website, I wrote sarcastically “I’m more than gay enough that I don’t need a rainbow.” I mean, it’s kinda true. I don’t know what to call myself, I like girls. But instead of treating this like a metaphor or as sarcasm, she took it literally. Then, used it to call me a lesbian like it was a slur and after I already stated that I was ace with a romantic (not sexual) attraction to women and men. I made the previous statement as a joke, sort of, which I apologize if anyone is insulted by it. I don’t know what the fuck I am anymore, so maybe I could be an ace lesbian. What I really don’t get why she had to spin it into something that sounded homophobic after going after me for being racist against my own race and justifying cultural appropriation. 

Some highlights include: “you can’t culturally appropriate spiritual journeys” and “your racist for blaming all of white people for the bad behavior of a small group.” I have never had such a painful experience, and it’s lasted for three days. I wanted to get homework done on Saturday so I could post content on Sunday, but I’m spiritually, emotionally, and physically beaten down all because someone didn’t like it when I said some white authors in the new age community shouldn’t be writing about chakras separated from its religious and cultural context. I said nothing about white writers who do their work and write about the topic. Hyperbole: “What is it with white people in the new age community” What it actually means: “There is a problem with a lack of diversity when it comes to people writing about chakras.” 

I don’t know why I keep social media. Fuck people 

[lifeonashelf]

CIGARETTES AFTER SEX

Perhaps fittingly, the band Cigarettes After Sex was recommended to me by a woman I have been simultaneously naked with.

If she’s reading this, I want to assure her that she won’t be identified here (no need to drag her name through the mud; I figure anyone who’s been simultaneously naked with me has already suffered enough). Fortunately, she wasn’t naked when she suggested I should give Cigarettes After Sex a listen—if someone’s thinking about bands to recommend to you while you’re simultaneously naked with them, you’re clearly doing something wrong. Plus, had she been naked at the time, it’s highly unlikely I would have even registered her advocacy of Cigarettes After Sex—I very much enjoy seeing her naked, so contemplating any matters unrelated to her proximate nakedness is generally unfeasible under those circumstances. She told me to check out the band roughly an hour before any mutual nudity transpired, and I duly noted her endorsement because at that point I wasn’t even aware that mutual nudity was pending—if I had known that, I would have definitely been raptly musing on how super-awesome it was that we were both going to be naked in a hour instead of raptly musing on what this band she was telling me about called Cigarettes After Sex might sound like.

And maybe you’re now thinking, “dude, you had your arm around this girl on the couch in your apartment and she started talking to you about a band called Cigarettes After Sex… how could you not know simultaneous nakedness was imminent?” Which is, you know, a fair question. So I guess I should clarify that me and this woman have been friends for many years, but we’ve only taken our clothes off in the same locality on a handful of occasions—in other words, when we see each other, it isn’t necessarily a given that we’re going to see each other’s genitals at some point in the evening. It’s actually sort of ironic that this particular girl would be the one to tell me about Cigarettes After Sex, because I would very likely see her naked more frequently if I didn’t smoke cigarettes; she’s inherently grossed out by the habit, so whenever we hang out I have to be mindful that if I light up around her, the chances of any subsequent synchronized nudity taking place become greatly diminished.  

Anyway, since everyone who knows anything at all about me knows I love music, people are always recommending bands to me. Truthfully, I rarely actually investigate those bands. This is mostly because I’m always worried I’ll think their music is terrible and end up trapped in an awkward situation when the person inevitably asks for my feedback later, at which point I will either have to: a) lie, or b) inform them I think the band they told me is awesome sucks. Neither of those scenarios especially appeals to me, so I usually just play things safe and say, “I haven’t had a chance to check them out yet” a few times until the person forgets they ever recommended a band to me at all. It’s not a perfect solution, but I am not a perfect man (as anybody who has ever been simultaneously naked with me can readily attest to).

Despite my typical methodology, I decided maybe I should go ahead and listen to this specific recommendation, both because Cigarettes After Sex is a decisively superb name for a band, and because the suggestions of the girl who told me about them have been mostly on point in the past—for instance, she was the first person to play me the Metric song “Patriarch On A Vespa”, which was the song that made me realize Metric is fucking rad. Even though Radiohead is her absolute favorite band of all time and I think almost everything Radiohead has recorded in the last 17 years is ostentatious dogshit, generally she has excellent taste (despite her choosing to engage in contemporaneous nakedness with me on occasion).

So I did indeed make it a point to seek out Cigarettes After Sex. And, hey, as it turns out: Cigarettes After Sex is really, really, really good. Their music is totally sensual, too, so once I heard them I inevitably ended up reckoning they would have supplied a perfect soundtrack while me and the girl who mentioned them to me were in the process of becoming simultaneously naked that night (at the time, we were instead listening to a record by an outfit called Pity Sex, which—looking back—is probably not the band I would have chosen if had known we were soon to begin subtracting clothes from each other, regardless of their moniker being decidedly appropriate under the circumstances).

Rest assured, even if you’re not in the altogether with someone while you listen to Cigarettes After Sex, they still sound marvelous (I’m the only naked person in my apartment at the moment, and I’m enjoying their self-titled debut just fine). Most of their songs are virtually interchangeable—imagine Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” played at a half-speed on a broken turntable with Hope Sandoval from Mazzy Star handling the vocal duties and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what every track on Cigarettes After Sex sounds like. Notwithstanding, the band’s single-leitmotif approach doesn’t bother me too much because they do the one thing they do extremely well. And the voice driving these wistful canticles is unequivocally superb—so exquisitely feminine and amatory, in fact, that I was frankly amazed to learn the tunes were all written, produced, and performed by a singer named Greg Gonzalez, who ostensibly has a penis.

Though the lyrics are predominantly focused on various erotic entanglements, the downcast aura which permeates this slow-burning cycle seems to infer that sex inevitably leads to catastrophe (this is another thing that anybody who has ever been simultaneously naked with me can readily attest to). Gonzalez’s tales are raptly fixated on the grey shades in the pupils of starry-eyed lovers, reveling in the duskiest corners of carnal partnerships, where ardor has as much potential to cause pain as pleasure and sending roses and sending dick-picks are weighed as equally romantic gestures. His pensive poetry is infused with a compelling and refreshingly candid duality, vacillating between tenderness and vulgarity with an almost-schizophrenic abandon. It’s certainly jarring the first time you hear a phrase like “show me your tits” or “sucking cock” in songs this gorgeous, yet Gonzalez isn’t merely being crass—he’s just a songwriter honest enough to acknowledge that sometimes sweethearts make gentle velvety love and sometimes they fuck each other’s brains out. He peers his lens into the windows of bridal suites with perfumed silk sheets and filthy 20-buck-a-night motel rooms with paper-thin walls, and evidently feels equally at home in both. Though each track here qualifies as a beautiful love song, the overall dictum of Cigarettes After Sex seems to be that lust has a regal beauty of its own.

Don’t be misled, though. The somber ambiance that permeates the record suggests that the beating heart of this lush and alluring song-cycle is a fragmented one. The disc’s magnificent opener “K.” plays thing fairly straight, bursting with meditations about kissing until dawn and bodies blissfully intertwined in afterglow as they wait for sleep to come. But this candlelit exuberance only lasts about five minutes; the title of the next song—“Each Time You Fall In Love”—is also its first line, and the second line is, “it’s clearly not enough.” Even on a cut called “Sweet”—in which Gonzalez makes the truly awh-worthy declaration that when his girl sends him dirty videos, her smile and her eyes are the parts of her body he focuses on most—the sweetness culminates with him vowing, “I would gladly break my heart for you.”

It’s maybe a bit incongruous that music this melancholy will undoubtedly fuel countless make-out sessions—hell, at this very minute, there are probably multitudes of people getting undressed in tandem while Cigarettes After Sex softly plays on the stereo in the background (and good for them; they’re certainly having a better night than I am). But whether you’re fervidly caressing someone’s anatomy or simply sitting at your laptop drinking iced tea in your underwear at three in the morning, I’m here to tell you that Cigarettes After Sex is a wonderful record which I have absolutely nothing bad to say about. And now that I’ve acquainted myself with the band, I can categorically state that finding out about them was easily the second-best thing that happened to me the night I found out about them.

Which reminds me, it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen my friend who I sometimes experience concomitant nudity with. I should shoot her a text tomorrow and see if she feels like coming over to listen to records sometime soon.

Hey, I was only suggesting I should invite her over so she can recommend some more bands to me since I like this one so much… Why, what did you think I was talking about?

 July 16, 2018

[ecotone99]

[SP] When you Know he's not Serious (the Psychic Wars)

We'd already started to fight. Last time it went down I got into an argument with a beer pong table in Polish. Devil Springs Vodka.

It was surprising to some people that I was fairly familiar with some of the Russian Gangs- for an American anyways. I didn't know who I'd marry into, Vegas odds had them bouncing before the contract closed. They weren't exactly Space Nerds. And like I said, we fight. We're competitive in the most fucked up ways because we can't really communicate. I move arms, they move coke, I harass the English, they harass the English. It's all very complicated.

Either way, I was having my fun with my dear sweet Canadian relatives (mostly presumed dead by now according to all), by being loudly engaged (to the psychic community). They really did have horrid habits, as a culture. Like inviting themselves to your wedding (wonder of wonders I did *not* get married to him). I had about twenty years of horror and mistreatment to extract from them from far, far away in the lovely Virginia. They'd tried to ride my coattails into England and the Upper Class.

And I was very quietly making time with Domhnal. He was a twitchy guy, with his hat set wrong and no sense of humor. But he could find a story in the dark, and had extremely good taste in jewelry, jobs, and vices. And I needed the work and the armor. Most of my Army contacts were dead or we were politely pretending we'd never met. The only one I missed was Jed, and he'd tried to do me more than once or twice. Rumor had him drowning while he tried to swim to Canada to off the evil Canucks once and for all. I had nothing to do with that watery epitaph.

So I hid under his quirky charm, his odd habits, and his rakish demeanor, and healed. I'd starting charting out Quantum Theory on the far wall again, but he didn't mind, just asked the occasional question, clever, but not intelligent. It happens. And it helps. It lets me think outside and gives me someone normalish to sound some of the weirder parts of Plank's Constant off of. It does funny things during Quantum Travel, they were having a hell of a time getting it to create a consistent pattern so they could use it for messaging. You could bolster it with story tropes, and anchor with consensual reality, but that seemed like a hell of a lot of risk for a message. I mean, we had email.

There was no way they were going to jump the deformities that would arise if they moved beyond the planned Space Station with a Heisenburg Drive. Still, the excitement was driving funding, and giving us something to think about besides carnage and mass burials. Disappearances and threats. Danger that you could feel on your skin. Dove ran his hand up the back of my neck and I leaned back. I spaced out sometimes, thinking and processing, but I was staring at a massive series of concept diagrams strung together with the cliched threads and pushpins, so I never looked that abnormal. Just exhausted. He wrapped his arms around me and I could cry.

I love sleeping alone. I use the whole bed. But I'm little, and I get cold easy. He made a great heat sink. I was staring at the upper left section of my main diagram and he made a small inquiring noise that you only make when you're completely comfortable around a person you care for. Or if you're a whore. I had to remind myself sometimes.

"Canadians were traders before we got them into the Program." Domhnal laughed softly and I smiled. They'd never thank us for it. There was a ridiculous amount of in fighting as people all over the world made a power grab. The BRIC countries were emerging just as the Papacy changed hands, and it was too much of a strain on the world, with the amount of civil unrest in the Middle East. The whole thing went.

"Now they know when we fight, even against each other, it's to learn," I pulled away and traced the storylines with one finger, illustrating as I spoke. It's the reason I used diagrams. A picture might be worth a thousand words, a diagram was worth even more. I was able to speak to people, and in moments when I might otherwise not, because I used charts. It was unprecedented for a woman, the closest we had was Angela Merkel's democratic rule of Germany, and she tended to use body language. Not that I didn't, in between shoving my soap box behind the pulpit. I just note when I'm that different. There was a lot of identity theft during the Psychic Wars. (Seriously, you hadn't thought of that?)

"But this whole bit-" I gestured against my notes on Canadian Quantum Theory, which involved a LOT on consensual reality and far less on cost benefit analyses on sink holes at formulae crossovers (except to note them as attack points) "- is mucking up the works. They're slowing down the ability to create a Heisenberg drive, and Lord knows we don't need anyone screwing with that right now, but they're causing more casualties than they're saving by turning data waystations into launching points."

Dove made a non-committal grunt. His Da was Air Force, mind was Army, so we rarely agreed, but he understood basic combat theories. One of the reasons military brats never get along in school. I smiled at him and he pulled me back in.

"What's America's stance on that?" He asked.

"America doesn't have one," I replied succinctly, "They don't see the problems in terms of social implications, even with physical manifestations, or fiscal ones. Which is weird for us, but not so weird. Getting John to Jericho has always been a bitch for us."

Dom nodded, and I sighed. I'd mixed metaphors, as I often do when speaking about my own country. I didn't want people to be able to explain what I'd just said, they tended to spend days whittling down a negative mould to cast it in before sending out some fairly nasty rumours. I was independent for a reason, I didn't have to agree with my country, and I was more powerful than the vast majority of her men. It was a strangely tenuous position, socially. It's why I focused on England, they found that sort of thing so normal it was referred to as entertainment.

To set his understanding I wrote 'English Interchange' on a slip of paper and pushpinned it into the wall on the right side of the main storyline nexus, past all of the agreement and so on. He frowned, but I don't think he realized he was doing it. Technically the British weren't sovereign to Canadians, their country was, but they were technically all citizens under a monarchy. Functionally they had a 52 country empire and they were more than just its flagship. They knew trouble when they saw it. I had to get the rest of the package and get it to the Nobles.

They might seem like a satellite power to most of the world, but they functioned socially, in a remarkably similar manner to the Upper Class in any large alliance or empire. Someday they'd get around to noticing that we had 52 countries as well and listen a little more. Until then well, we were Americans, we'd hold and just keep sending. It wasn't as though we couldn't take care of ourselves, we just hated when we got hit with the spray from other people's chamberpots.

I sighed, memories flashing along the crosspoints of the threads connecting the pushpins on the wall. It was the downside to remembering things socially, and thinking of them in terms of stories, and public opinion. You remembered. Screaming fury as I laid out marks past the line of bodies that would become my family. Singing pride as I finally marked the man who had been shutting down Army girls through the books we read for 16 years, a whole generation lost. Regret, loss, betrayal, pain.

Pain. I stretched my hand back over my shoulder and rubbed Dove's neck. He didn't think about things the way I did- his body asked a question and mine apparently gave him a definitive answer. He just held me as I pieced it all together so that it could be memorized and recited, in empath, an almost untrackable communication. Humming softly, he rocked me back and forth as I prepped everything a committed it for recall.

📷

Previously in the Psychic Wars...

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[dinoalexander]

The Semi Quotable 2017 Part 5

“applebee’s is literally begging to give away their food.” – Christine Teigen

“In the car w/husband, I offered $20 and a blowjob immediately if he could guess the official title. He did not win.” – @SteelyDanRather on the title announcement for Solo: A Star Wars Story

“280 tweets look like serial killer manifestos” – Scott Aukerman

“Dick Versace had two goals in 1989: guide the Pacers to the playoffs and beat Ricky Steamboat as many times as possible.” – Super 70’s Sports

“It’s D-Day and (Robert) Mueller secured the beaches before noon. Run Nazis.” – Mark Frost on the indictment of Michael Flynn

“The Rebellion is reborn today. The war is just beginning. And I will not be the last Jedi.” – Luke Skywalker

"The answer is either ass, boobs, or dick." -Jordan

"For the sake of salvaging whats left of the positions dignity for President of the United States...can someone in his staff please for the love of God delete Trumps twitter account? Its now gone from one of the most prestigious positions to "worlds most cringe worthy Twitter handle" in less than 6 months." -Steve

"Plague!!!!!!" -Block

"Donald Trump deals in bullshit the way a bovine fertilizer salesman deals in...well, bullshit." -C

"Sometimes you're the Galactic Empire, sometimes you're the Rebel Alliance." -Heather

"Leave it to us to make 'The Little Mermaid' SUPER awkward." -Q

"Ted Cruz...trippin'?" -Molly B

""Live your life in such a way that Donald Trump tweets mean things about you" -David K

"I remember reading so many posts immediately after the election from people who were absolutely terrified of what was going to happen once Trump was sworn in and Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. As evidenced by the fiasco that's unfolding with the health care bill, it should be clear that you folks had nothing to worry about. Even if they had some sort of nefarious purpose they were trying to carry out in their agenda, it seems as though these guys couldn't find their ass with both hands and a GPS." -Tim

“Well then get your shit together, get it all together and put it in a back pack, all your shit, so it's together. And if you gotta take it some where, take it somewhere, you know, take it to the shit store and sell it, or put it in the shit museum. I don't care what you do, you just gotta get it together. Get. Your shit. Together.” -Morty Smith (Justin Roiland)

"Alright, I'm now willing to admit there is a downside to everyone wearing yoga pants in public: I can't tell which of the adults milling about at the gym are here for adult gymnastics and which are just waiting to pick up their kids." -Pam

“Byron Allen’s got me all confused.” -me whenever “Happy” plays on the radio.

"A teacher in the school is selling Girl Scout cookies. The teacher got my order. In related news, someone's daughter is going to Camp Sugarbush this summer. Also in related news, after I eat these cookies, my nickname will be Sugarbush." -Klauss

“Like THAT’s safe!” -Michael, on Quisla’s... erm, safe.

"I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that people die of natural causes." -Rammson

"Donald Trump doesn't understand climate change because he lives in perpetual shade." -Laura

"A close friend referred to this before and after as Exponential Degredation. He said it and he's not taking it back." -The Perfesser

"This would be the equivalent of opening up a Cracker Jack box looking for the prize and seeing it in the bottom ox a box filled with sludge. There's some cool things but do you really want to go through the sludge?" -Gordon, on "Hip Hop Squares"

"You're not minimalist. You're broke." -some guy

"Okay, so we have watermelons.... why aren't there earthmelons or airmelons or firemelons? What happened to the rest of the elemelons?" -Emily Ann

“Thanks for making me confused about my sexuality, Adam Driver. You talented douche.” -Laura

"Unicorn Frappuccinos are what happens when you try and make too much of a good thing for profit. Its the answer to a question nobody asked. It's a Bar Rescue gone horribly wrong." -C

"(As Craig Ferguson) Now he used to be a wrestler and now he's going into politics. Now the two are highly different of course. One involves people with larger than life personalities who make grandiose claims and attack their opponents constantly and the other involves spandex tights." -Brian

"Dang it, PWC! Where were you in November? We could have had Emma Stone as President!" -Clint

“Feelings are real, but they are not reality.” -Dan Harmon

"It's like you've inherited a baby alligator. He was cute for awhile and now he's a big alligator who's threatening to destroy everything but still hangs around you and calls you daddy." -Gordon

"If one of those interchangeable Kardashian chicks dressed as a stewardess interrupted Sean Spicer's press conference by handing him a Pepsi, we as a nation could begin the healing process." -Kevin

"Opened Emma's recital costume and IT WAS COVERED IN GLITTER AND NOW I AM COVERED IN GLITTER AND EVERYTHING I OWN IS COVERED IN GLITTER OMG WHYYYYYYYYYYYY" -Molly B

"It's not terrible, but you can see terrible from where we're standing." -Q

"WHERE ARE MY PANTS!!!" -Michael

"Ladies and gentlemen, my sister, the one-woman Greek chorus." -C

"I have designated February 14 as 'Catch Pokémon, Not Feelings Day'." -J-Ho Boy-Type

"Because that's what ABC thought. This party needs more Lucy Hale." -C

"If I were Samsung I would make my keynote address one sentence. "Samsung galaxy S8… This one won't light itself on fire"." -Brian

"We are not going to let another demon monster take hold and grown and run wild. We are going to nip this problem in the bud. WE ARE GOING TO KILL HITLER AS A BABY!" -Q

"To quote the great Panamanian philosopher Roberto Durán, 'No más'." -C

"I broke my banana." -Q, re: an actual banana.

"Los Angeles has two football teams, two baseball teams, two basketball teams, and two hockey teams, but no curling teams?" -Kevin

"I have to wait for the Luther breakdown to finish!" -C

“Ugh. I really wish I had something cool to say.” -Johnny Yong Bosch

"Less Donald Trump! More techno music!" -bus random to a Bop It!

"Someone told me that being verified on Twitter “really doesn’t do anything” but that person is 1) wrong and 2) head of a social media dept." -Cory

"How did you know Carolina was going to beat Duke?" -Q

"Quisla... its U.N. motherfucking C. They handle shit. Consider this shit handled." -C

"my most-recent counseling appointment had me reaching the following conclusion: i fully acknowledge that i am a jackass, and my attempts at keeping myself from being a jackass has stifled what people like in me as a consequence of not wanting others to think badly of me. so what am i to do? just be a jackass and shoulder the consequences no matter when and where it happens? not entirely -- if i am to have my moments of jackassery, i will make better efforts to steer those spells towards being a jackass for the right reasons. sometimes it takes a jackass christian speaking up when someone claims to be a christian but whose words and actions are far from the basic command of 'love one another.' sometimes fighting for the weak and powerless means being a jackass towards the mighty and powerful. sometimes only an absolute jackass would punch a nazi in the face. i'm josh eldridge. i am a jackass. i hope this admission doesn't effect our friendship." -Josh

“Kylo Ren is like a sullen, resentful jungle gym.” -Laura

"I'm going to make a screwdriver because it's cold as shit outside." -Shelly

“I’m Regis Philbin! Welcome to night 24 of Who Wants To Get Impregnated?” -Jordan

"I just can't girl right." -Shannon

"Our long national pasttime is over." -Jessica, on overlong baseball games

"You may have a problem if the Target cashier recognizes you, knows you by name, and asks if everything was good because you didn't come in on your 'normal' day. Yay! I'm a regular!" -Aryn

"I read my bed all the time! It's a Serta!" -Kitty Carrion

"Does Baby Jojo need a binky?" -C

"I sense a great migraine in the Force...as if millions of white people were trying to get woke at the same time." -Laura

"Well the inauguration is over, finally after two years we can all get back to normal and... *boots up facebook* ...and I'm going to stay off Facebook until January of 2021, cheers 🙂" -Brian

"What fruit is the state of Georgia famous for? ... Todd Chrisley." -C, at quiz night

"So, apparently as an instructor, referring to the start of a new semester as "hazing" is frowned upon." -Heather

“2017 in a nutshell: You see “Mario Batalli :(“ as a Facebook status and you say to yourself, “Dead or pervert?”” -Adam

"Fun fact: staying sane is hard." -Jordan

"If I performed my job with the same razor-sharp precision with which meteorologists perform theirs:

Boss: Is this the data you promised me three weeks ago? Because it looks like completely wrong information.

Me: Yeah, but, as you can see, I've color-coded it in lovely hues of blue, purple and pink where I thought it would make it look nice.

Boss: Yep. Looks great! Keep up the good work.

I am clearly in the wrong profession." -Molly B

"😂😂😂 if I was meant to behave, I wouldn't have been born so good at misbehaving 😛" -Emily Ann

"Seen on a group page tonight:

Everything Kirk Cameron touches turns to patriarchy." -Shrub

"In other news, 30 oz of ribeye can be converted to 0 if you just believe in yourself." -Justin S

"Bacteria gets me so hard." -Jordan

"Oh REALLY..." -Q, reaching for Jordan's pants

"Who here loves animals but hates that Sarah Maclachlan commercial?" -Sweet Tea Shakespeare guy

“Hey... I run them miles. I’m slow as fuck, but I run them miles.” -C

"Trying to stay positive in a world full of assholes is like trying to shovel hot jello from a wheel barrow using a pitch fork with only one prong!" -Sheila

"If there's one thing I learned in college, it's: never underestimate the power of an icy, cold shower beer. Thanks guys!" -Dahlia

"No, no, no. I can't have penises all over my car tonight. Tomorrow night, maybe, but no penises tonight." -Nicole W

"Maybe for Lent Trump should just give up." -George Takei

"She wanted someone to take the pickle, so I did." -C

"Too... many... JOKES!" -Brian

"Saw the Barca result. Ah, so that is why folks riot." -Steve P

“I can’t have weird Chico. I live with him.” -Q

"Yay sports! Spoooooooorts!" -Milana Vayntrub

"You're at a bar. Playing bar trivia. Against an IQA ranked quizzer and his sister who would also be IQA ranked if she made the trip to Raleigh with me that morning. We are naturally expressive people within our family. That comes from being the children of Carlos and Olivia Alexander. We laugh together, we love together, we cook, fight, and emote together. And when we win, we emote like hell. If you don't like it when we win, next time bring smarter friends. Until then, get the fuck over it." -the son of Carlos & Olivia Alexander.

"This is my face when I find out some epically old karma has been served." -Shannon

Okay, one more oughta do it.

[neo-losangeles]

(In)visibility in New Black Portraiture: Aria Dean and Hamishi Farah in Dialogue

20170317153341-wptir-25 In March 2016, Los Angeles-based artist and writer Aria Dean penned an essay entitled “Closing the Loop” for The New Inquiry about the white monopolization of feminist selfie art. I remember reading the essay and feeling its urgency and necessity at a time when the spotlight on selfie art and culture was (and still is) dominated by white cis-hetero young women. When I think of the canon of feminist art and the “trailblazers” that paved the way for subsequent generations of women artists, I see a very similar process of erasure repeating itself.  

Women artists of color from the 1970s were sidelined by white feminism, or what is now known as the Feminist Avant-garde in art history, which is gently nestled under the more general but equally white-dominant umbrella of the women’s liberation movement. Ana Mendieta’s dissatisfaction with the movement, with groups like New York’s white-centric A.I.R. collective, is well documented. As is the exclusion of black artists such as Dindga McCannon, Pat Davis, and Carol Blank from the “official” canon of Feminist Art in America from the 70s. These artists made  independent efforts to be visible with the formation of the Where We At (WWA) organization following their 1971 exhibition “Where We At” Black Women Artists: 1971.

What fundamentally separates these groups today remains the same: artists of color have a shared activist focus on intersectional issues while white artists largely continue to prioritize their own privileged ones. There is no room for the “other” in history books and the heavy baggage that the “other” carries makes it difficult for marginalized artists to find the right language to speak it in. In the history of art and otherwise all the words belong to White Supremacy: all the pages of history have been written for and in favor of it. Finding one’s non-white place within this history becomes a dexterous task that often entails feelings of complicity or guilt. When the extant systems for visibility are moderated, co-opted, and monetized by White Supremacy, it’s no surprise that the terrain is difficult to navigate.

Aria Dean and Hamishi Farah, White ppl think I'm radical, Installation View at Arcadia Missa, London Courtesy the Artists & Arcadia Missa. Photo: Tim Bowditch

It is in this vein that Aria Dean and Melbourne-based artist Hamishi Farah have worked somewhat allusively in a prefatory effort that seems to propose a definition for New Black Portraiture in art following Dean’s 2016 posture. Their two-person exhibition, White ppl think I’m radical at London’s Arcadia Missa (through April 29) presents an inclusive, more collective idea of self-portraiture. One where the black artist is simultaneously present and absent from the picture, where the self is at once he, she, and they—an outlook that contradicts western philosophy’s emphasis on the ideologically capitalist individual.

I spoke with Dean and Farah on the occasion of the exhibition regarding the complicated nature of black portraiture today. In both the show and conversation, the two artists pass on proposing any explicit manifestos, instead choosing to work within a cogitative grey area that isn’t as totalizing or burdensome. They give themselves the necessary space to move boundlessly between the intersections and problematics of image and representation.

In the exhibition Dean presents two self-produced photographs: one of herself and the other of a woman named Aallyah Wright with whom she collaborated to make Wata, a video of the Yazoo River in Mississippi, where Dean’s grandfather was from and where Wright currently resides. Dean found, contacted, and commissioned Wright via Facebook to create the video, saying of Wright, “She and I are interchangeable, you can’t see our faces.” She describes them as “blurred out in a way that is a shout out to police footage or CCTV-type surveillance, which perhaps [also] makes us interchangeable with the larger ecosystem of images of black femmes.”

Aria Dean & Aallyah Wright, Wata (Yazoo, MS). Courtesy the Artists & Arcadia Missa. Photo: Tim Bowditch

Dean has a specific interest in “the problems and violences” of portraiture. It is the first time she has ever shown an image of a human body. She is largely against representation in her work, preferring abstraction if she senses her art will be evaluated by placing her identity on a binary or spectrum. “I wanted to do violence to portraiture here, in a rather timid way,” she says, “I guess I’m often trying to find that sweet spot between refusal of the figurative image and an artistic program of representation à la Kerry James Marshall or Mickalene Thomas.” Dean views the video “as a portrait of Aallyah,” but playfully asks: “Can seeing through someone’s eyes become a portrait of them...or myself?”

Situated next to Farah’s self-portraits in the exhibition, a coded visual language begins to emerge with both artists presenting themselves by proxy. None of Farah’s paintings include physical or literal representations of him. In terms of portraiture Farah likes to think about “double consciousness, the white gaze and [Frantz] Fanon’s ontology of blackness.” He doesn’t consider the theories themselves, but “the lived experiences of them.”

He explains:

I approach it this way because my experience of myself in art is very much through how I am seen [by white people]. Even an understanding of my own blackness very much came about through its forced opposition to whiteness. In terms of the portraits, you could think of it as a reclamation [of] my inner ontological life through a black gaze—that is, one that is aware of how it is viewed by whiteness. I think this is very reductive and annoys white people—as it should. I believe white ontological life is entirely rooted in or based on anti-blackness so perhaps I am also contesting Fanon’s own euro-centrism.

Hamishi Farah, Photographer. Courtesy the Artists & Arcadia Missa. Photo: Tim Bowditch

Farah describes a painting he made of a widely circulated photo of Kanye West’s first public appearance after being hospitalized, where he is walking out of Trump Tower after meeting with the then President-elect. The artist differentiates it from his other works:

I am always hesitant to represent black people...I identify a lot with Kanye, especially in his problem-ness and the way he wields it, but also in his misery in white spaces and obsessiveness. I think a lot of black men do. I can’t think of many black men whose audience has such an ubiquitous and violent understanding of the intricacies and contradictions of public black masculinity. His representation might be able to stand in for that alone, and perhaps contextualize some of the other self-portraits.

Both artists expressed difficulty in choosing how to represent themselves while maintaining a certain secrecy about the work in an effort to protect it and themselves. There is an inherent relationship between representation and secrecy when there are so many contradictions and violence in black portraiture. When presenting yourself from a marginalized position, there can be a lot of power in remaining invisible in public. If you make yourself visible, you risk giving yourself away to more violence, exploitation, and nonconsensual erasure, the Arcadia Missa collaboration seems to say. Finding a healthy balance is hard. Marginalized groups have been violated on so many levels and yet often still need to pander to a white market in order to speak to other marginalized groups and survive.

Hamishi Farah, George. Courtesy the Artist & Arcadia Missa. Photo: Tim Bowditch

“The remaining invisible thing is such a conundrum,” says Farah. He continues:

Western art is like a history of blowing off black art as white genius. This makes it interesting to think about why so many black artists gravitate towards performance and music. Sometimes all we have is to use that hypervisibility. A lot of the black artists I know are so much more visible than they get paid for. Same goes with viral blackness. Last year I made a painting of this person, Aallyah, who punched this white girl [who had called her the n-word], hoping that when it sells I can send her a stack or two—kind of as a “blacceleration” or “reparative blackitalism,” trying to use the violent gaze to make sure niggas get paid.

Dean also grapples with the tensions between the power of invisibility and the simultaneous importance of proliferation. She paraphrases New York-based artist and critic Lorraine O’Grady from a conversation she organized between O’Grady and New York-based artist and writer Juliana Huxtable last year:

When your subject matter is so big and cumbersome as blackness then you may feel compelled to attack it from all sides. Black artists have to have the tightest fucking program of attack: writing, performing, making objects, music, etc. I think this is part of why David Hammons is so fucking cool, because somehow he sort of doesn’t give into the compulsion to arrive with a thesis, you know? Like he keeps the mystery.

Lorraine and Juliana both felt like the body was really important because we can’t do away with aberrant bodies before they’ve been come to terms with. They talked about the funny timeline where various western philosophical and theoretical trends arrive to conveniently do away with “the body” or “the author” at moments when marginalized people are making themselves heard more loudly. Which I agree with but I think I’m really preoccupied with the ontology of blackness when it comes to representation—it’s so messy. Blackness doesn’t precede the image really and that seems like a really difficult thing to grapple with when you’re working with images, or yourself as image in performance.

Aria Dean and Hamishi Farah, White ppl think I'm radical, Installation View at Arcadia Missa, London Courtesy the Artists & Arcadia Missa. Photo: Tim Bowditch

Dean laughs and continues:

I think it is important to represent yourself, but my big thing is that politics of representation and theories of representation that were devised, let's say circa 1970, just don’t work when your image can be ripped and bounced across the internet. It stresses me out so much. Because like—and this is what I was whining about in that selfie article—I really don't care very much about selfie artists. A lot of the theories of the body and the image that artists reference just don’t fit; it’s all wonky. And my whole thing is that critically looking at the (non) ontology of blackness, black theory, black art, black everything can teach us so much about confronting a body and a life that is so so entangled with images.

Farah adds:

I think it is important to note something about the politicization of aesthetics and that aesthetics in “the commons” are traditionally an anti-black battleground or colonial frontier. What happens when pro-blackness is subsumed into an aesthetic turnstile? I think the black NFL players who won the Superbowl understand this and I support their boycott [of visiting the White House]. I think black critics of Obama also understand this. This is part of the difficulty of even participating in an art dialogue, whether it be institutional spaces or not. I just got the news that I’m now represented by two amazing galleries, I love the people who run them and this is definitely about my survival. But it’s hard to be happy about it until I actually do something with that survival and those resources. I see contributing to “art” (in opposition to using art and its culture, agency, and resources as a tool) as being a snitch.

White ppl think I’m radical continues at Arcadia Missa, London, through April 29.

—Audrey L. Phillips

Audrey Phillips is a Toronto-based writer. She is a regular contributor to AQNB.

(Image at top: Aria Dean & Aallyah Wright, Wata Proxy (Yazoo, MS). Courtesy the Artists & Arcadia Missa. Photo: Tim Bowditch)