#but also unrelated to confessionals

[aquarri]

i really need to start making spread sheets to track confessionals/interviews on my shows, because there is a formula!!!

[elytrafemme]

friendship is cool bc you get to have these funny little guys who make you happy and become a better person or whatever and laugh a lot. but then there’s the horrors (trying to see and message them frequently enough when you know you can’t possibly juggle all of them all at once and never knowing the best answer)

[justchillandshipit]

Allow me to take a moment here. Tim just acknowledged couch theory?

Moving on to Buck and Tommy’s breakup, talk about your approach to it. Why was Tommy sure that Buck would break his heart?

Tommy’s older and Buck is very new to this, and whether Tommy was correct or not, I think what he felt like was exactly what he said: I’m not your last, I’m your first, which is a special thing to be, but as Tommy says, it doesn’t usually end up being the same thing. And I think based on what we know of Buck, he’s maybe not wrong. Buck’s a little impulsive when he’s feeling a certain kind of way. He’s like, move on in, bring your couch. So I just think because Tommy’s a little older and wiser or maybe at some level he feels like he doesn’t deserve Buck, I don’t know. But I think he accurately diagnosed Buck. Buck’s still figuring himself out, and boy, that would be quite risky to move in with that guy as much as you would love to.

---

We have a couch reference.

---

Somewhat unrelated but relevant:

I also think that I have finally caught up on all the articles. In every article, someone says Eddie is straight. I want to say about four articles have a reference or a mention of straight Eddie, and there is one in-canon statement from Eddie. So what do we think about that? I instinctively want to say that to have that many denials is sus, but I also have to acknowledge that the question was asked before the response was offered. I honestly don't know what to believe when it comes to the show's direction. I'm still here though and sticking with my original plan to give them until the end of Seasn 8 to move Eddie out of the closet. I will not accept the demise of this ship a moment sooner. It doesn't help that actors are excellent liars. Oliver always makes me second guess myself. lol For now, I'm still here and still clowning.

Other things to consider in favor of Buddie:

There was one article from TVInsider where the interviewer reminded the reader that Eddie said he wanted a beard. Most of us know the gay coding of that word, and that was promptly followed by the Priest pointing out that Eddie was wearing a mask/disguise. This is all within the same conversation where Eddie assumed the Priest was hitting on him, and he called himself straight.

I'm also low-key wondering about the possible conflict between Eddie and Buck coming up. I need more info on that. What?? These two haven't had beef since Buck sued Bobby in Season 3 and Buck and Eddie argued in the grocery store. We all know how Eddie served c#nt like a professional in that fight. Eddie ended up forgiving Buck soon afterward, but Buck was still apologizing four episodes later. lol

I saw in another post where someone compared the image of Eddie in the confessional with the image of Eddie seeing Buck through the peephole of his door. (Hint, both looked like confessional images.) That has to be deliberate.

Tim's comment above referenced Tommy and a couch in a similar context to Eddie and Buck's conversation when Buck said his last few couches came with girlfriends, and Eddie corrected him to say his girlfriends came with couches.

@stagefoureddiediaz 's color theory is still proving accurate as well.

Updates

Buck looking less than thrilled at seeing Laker tickets. Tommy tells him he can use the gift with Eddie and Buck perking up at the idea, only for Tommy to say nope. Joking. (On a second watch, I think I read too much in to this one, but I'm keeping it on the list as very loose interpretation.)

Oliver admits that Buck looked Eddie up and down when he opened the door and knew something was going on with him, but then the whole sit in silence thing. (I know the breakup was on Buck's mind, but I swear he looked like he was trying not to think about Eddie being half naked beside him.)

Also, Eddie was half naked just sitting beside him. I can't help but think of them sitting there like that. Buck and Eddie are going to the same place, but they are taking totally different paths to get there. At some point, they are going to meet each other face to face and be like, you're here.

(I saw a theory. You always have to take these with a grain of salt, but I can't deny the theory sounds good. there have been a lot of parallels that are relevant for Buck and Eddie with the exception of Eddie's shooting.) I did read one interview, it may have been TVInsider, where the interviewer said they hoped Buck wouldn't be in danger. Oliver hinted that Buck was always putting himself in those situations. I think it might be a hint for what is to come. Also, if Buck is putting himself in dangerous situations again, this might be something that has Eddie angry with Buck. I think there is a lot of room for this theory. We'll have to wait and see on that one.

In a previous interview, Oliver told us there was an upcoming scene where Buck and Eddie sat in silence and that it was a testament to their friendship. In the latest interview in Variety, he talks about the scene again but this time he says "that it speaks volumes about their relationship that they could be going through things and handling it so differently but still be there for each other with little need for words. (This is the same interview where Oliver admits that Buck looked Eddie up and down.) At the end of this question, he reiterates that it speaks volumes that they were in different places and could still be there for each other. He says, "I think it really speaks volumes to the strength of their bond."

[ghulehunknown]

Confessional Smut

Sub!Copia x F!Reader

Day 12 of KINKTOBER is here! 🎃

**WARNING - EXPLICIT, NSFW**

Also available on AO3!

“Cardi Confessions”

Summary: You catch the Cardinal doing a little more than confessing in the Abbey and decide to join him.

CW/Tags: masturbation, mutual masturbation, degradation, subby Copia, roleplay, semi public masturbation

Word Count: 900

Walking along the corridor, you hear some muffled noises coming from the confessional booth in the Abbey. You shuffle your way over, careful not to let your heels click on the stone tiles.

You slip into the opposite side of the booth, and peer through the mesh screen. There you find Cardinal Copia engaging in an act of self-pleasure. His head tilted back, mouth agape, mumbling what almost sounds like your name. “Ah, fuck -!” he mutters.

“Cumming all by yourself, Cardinal? In a confessional?” You tut at him, eyeing him through the screen. “My, the irony.”

He looks up startled, hand on his cock and a look of fear in his eyes. “Sister! Ah - ” He rushes to gather his garments together but to no avail.

You exit and walk around to the other side, then sit down on the bench opposite him. “This is a place of worship,” you say glaring at him, faking a shameful tone.

He purses his lips and pauses, thinking for a moment. He leans forward, placing a hand on your exposed knee, your habit barely covering yourself. “And what if I was confessing my most wicked sins?”

“And what might those sins be?”

“About how I wish to worship every inch of your body?”

“Then I would say I came at the right time - er, sorry,” you reply.

He winces at your pun, but smiles at you all the same.

“Oh my disgusting, perverted Cardinal - whatever shall I do with you?” you ask with a sly smile, cupping his cheek in the palm of your hand.

He blushes, unable to conceal his boner anymore. It’s poking out from the fabric bunched at his thighs. You can see the exposed tip, pink and flushed like his cheeks.

“S-so sorry Sorella,” he stammers, fondling his Grucifix rosary in his gloved fingers nervously.

You lean in and grab his member from between the fabric folds of his red cassock, eliciting a yelp from his lips. “So hard just thinking of me, Cardinal?”

He purses his lips again and nods, eyes closed. “Sì Sorella…the most wicked things.”

You release his cock from your grasp and he exhales, shoulders slumping in relief. “Why don’t you tell me about the compromising positions you were thinking of having me, while you continue what you were doing?”

He pauses for a moment, and eyes you carefully as he begins to stroke himself again. You sigh and lean back on the bench as he spins you a tale of his fantasies. “I was imagining you and me, in my office. I had you bent over my desk…oh Satanas - ” He begins to whimper quietly, closing his eyes as he tightens his grip on himself.

“Lucifer, tell me more,” you whisper as you dip your hand in between your legs, sighing.

“Ahhh, tes-tesoro, how p-pretty you look,” his voice hitches, his mouth opening in an ‘ahh.’ “Uhnnnnmmm,” he mumbles as his eyelids flutter. He leans across the small booth, his free hand reaching towards your breasts.

You place your high-heeled foot on his chest, sliding upwards so the stiletto pokes at his Adam’s apple. “Shhh Cardinal,” you whisper, glancing towards the side of the confessional. “They’ll hear.”

“Maybe I want them to,” he chuckles, glancing down at your heel dangerously close to cutting off his blood supply.

“Mmm, it’s true I did hear you, just innocently m-minding my own business,” you say, circling your clit with your fingertips.

You continue this back and forth banter as if you’d not just been making love in his bedroom yesterday morning. It’s a fun little game you both liked to play, and took turns punishing one another.

Unrelenting in your role this time, he delights in your silly little demeaning words to him, especially when you call him a “pathetic, pathetic little man who is so desperate for pussy he’ll rub himself in the middle of the Abbey.”

“You’re lucky I’m even giving you the privilege of a visual,” you continue through moans as you both continue touching yourselves.

“Ah, sì Sorella - you are qu-quite generous,” he grunts through heady, excited strokes. “Oh Satanas, I’m going to c-cum soon.��� The slap of his skin echoes from inside the confessional, and you’re sure anyone who actually came to speak with him turned right around as soon as they heard.

“Ladies first,” you say, flashing him a warning and rubbing yourself more quickly.

“Mmn, of course mistress.” He slows his own movements and watches you, fixating on your open cunt completely exposed to him.

You moan quietly, feeling your orgasm just around the corner.

“May I help, Sorella?” he asks, watching your wrist twitch wildly as if he’s being hypnotized.

“What good could a deplorable cuck like yourself possibly do for me? Ahh, fuck!” You buck your hips as he watches, practically licking his lips. You can’t help it - you cry out his name as you cum - “Copia!”

Of course this asshole smiles as he pumps his cock faster, not waiting for your breathing to return to normal. His moans grow faster and faster until - he paints the palm of his hand with his seed (and a few splashes get the booth wall).

“Satanas Sorella,” he sighs your name on a exhale contentedly.

You get up to head out of the confessional. “Oh Cardinal,” you say, tutting at him while placing your hand on his shoulder and looking down at his lap. “Soiled your good robes, ah ah. Now everyone will know what you’ve been up to.”

[arkhamjack]

Thank you everyone for the reblogs on my "how some of the fandom sees wolfwood vs how I see him" lol I wanted to continue the conversation bc I am very annoying about this stuff and it grosses me out bc I am sensitive or whatever but um yeah 🤓

It's pretty long so TL;DR stop being weird about Wolfwood thanks 👍

I'll talking about objectification, hypersexualisation, and prejudice so a warning I guess --->

The Gaze has been working overtime on Wolfwood's ass (and tits) and it's making me a little nuts. This is not to say his character cannot be presented in a sexy way, or that he cannot perform sexuality without being problematic, it's just... ask yourself: why.

It can be subconscious, you might not even notice it, but media tropes have a way of worming into people's brains to be regurgitated into fan art, especially if the character presents or is coded marginalised in a way you are not. (I do it too!)

It starts from young. I had an adult call me a "hot head Latina" as a child LMAO (I am not even Latin)

Characters and actors that looked like me were worked into typically these roles - If feminine, desired, sexy but crazy, dangerous. If masculine, similarly sexual, either hot or ugly, suspicious.

I feel silly and attention-seeking for speaking up about this kind of stuff, especially as I feel I'm not in a place to cry 'racism' specifically because I'm more 'ethnic' than POC.

I'm a Balkan mongrel - Greek, bits from Turkey, Albania, and fuck knows what else. I've always kept my head down about people being weird to me but it comes to a point like the point of a classmate comparing my hair to an animal's, where I feel I gotta go "ok yeah lets unpack that."

Now about Wolfwood, he's our classic racially/ethnically ambiguous smoky sexy guy. Particularly in the 98 anime, he's pretty bosomy. He's a struggler - swindling Gunsmoke with his charm and portable confessional. This swindler trope, I've observed, tends to go hand in hand with 'suspicious immigrant out for your money'. Again, maybe I've pulled that out my ass and I'm being oversensitive, but I notice things. Tastes left in my mouth. Anyway. Brings to mind the time some other classmate jokingly called me a 'hustler' for *checks notes* making sure my work is submitted on time.??

Now on the subject of NSFW fanart... oh boy I am so uncomfy writing this... I rarely see him depicted.. receiving. You can place the issues here pretty easily. Give him a break. Please. Also I did note this on my original post and also completely my own opinion but PLEASE that man is not bigger than Vash, and I don't mean like not taller, like, thiccer. Calm the fuck down.

I hate having to write this bc it makes me uncomfy and reflects my own experiences of objectification by other people which sounds all very "oh noo its sooo hard being attractive :'((" but I trust y'all smart enough to see where I'm coming from.

The gaze. Othering. Marginalised masculinity (not to mention my intersecting trans identity thats a whole other unrelated convo). Hypersexualisation. Objectification.

But back to Wolfwood!! - are these tropes perpetuated by the original creator? Personally, I don't think so. (Wolfwood's design is based off a Japanese guy btw - musician Tortoise Matsumoto) The 98 anime? Maybe?? Am I reading too much into it? It's hard not to - naturally I'll latch onto the ambiguous guy and go "alright let's see how they do this" so naturally certain things stand out to me.

But when some of that fanart starts rolling out ... Jesus Christ ... MY EYES

On the flipside, I've seen great fanart out there! And I've seen quite a few Latino headcanons for Wolfwood too!(like I mentioned before I am not Latin, I am also not American in general I am a filthy freak Australian with our own colonial racist histories and intricacies) (There is also Latin diaspora here but I don't wanna speak for anyone aaaah)

I'd like to think most of the fandom is cool about him. But um. Yeah.

I said what I said but if I did say anything out of line I am so sorry and PLEASE let me know - I am using my own experiences as reference and acknowledge the intricacies my own privilege

Yap session over 👍

[egcdeath]

pls expand on reality tv patrick

hi anon! i don’t have any good fully formed thoughts other than that he would be entertaining to watch on some sort of reality tv show. i think a fic with him being on one of those “love” reality tv shows like love island or too hot to handle would be hilarious.

but… i also think it would be so funny if he just so happened to be like a background character in a completely unrelated show. like he somehow ends up in a few episodes of real housewives because he knows some people on the show and ends up confiding to the camera in a confessional that he’s having issues with his gf (reader) and he’s like “if you see this I’M SO SORRY.” and the producers are trying so hard to get him to comment on the actual situation in the show but he just keeps talking about you. cut to the show airing and suddenly your phone is blowing up from your friends and they’re like “isn’t this your man?” and you call him and reconnect. you’re thinking everything is all fine and good… but this stupid scene is going viral on social media and people are talking about how funny and kinda sweet it is. then next thing you know you two are getting an offer from a network to get your own show. and it’s something even more stupid like tennis wives or something along those lines 😭

[mcrconfessionzz]

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽🕯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆INTRO!! ⋆˖⁺‧₊☽🕯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Welcome to the My Chemical Romance confessional account!

Feel free to confess anything MCR related! Theories you have, opinions on songs, dreams perchance? Drop it all here boo

Feel free to ask me to tag/not tag whatever

I’m not gonna put that many rules, just these

- Do not flame me for any opinion put in the ask box, i’m going to answer them rather indiscrimatly, ill only delete an ask if it seems unrelated or genuinely threatening

- Please, at least try to be civil guys

- Have fun :))

Taken anon sign off emojis (Not required at all but very fun!): 🎸🦇

Tags:

Voice of god - Admin (me) saying something

Confessional - A post where someone submits a confession

Not a confessional - Literally anything else

I'll add additional tags as time goes on!

Im gonna try to keep my own thoughts at a minimum, Im not gonna comment on much unless someone in the ask directly invites me to do so🫶🏼

I want this to be a safe space as much as it possibly can be and I also don’t want anyone to feel judged for their confessions.

*Just in case lmfao this account is not religious at all admin is an atheist I just thought the church confessional theme was too apt an opportunity to pass up what with mcr having constant references to catholicism*

dividers from:

@decor-dump

@ianrkives

@metaphysix

@anitalenia

[librarycards]

How’d you discover you were plural? If that’s ok to ask

of course! genuinely, it's less of a discovery that &i is/are plural, and more that plurality is a meaningful conceptual framework to apply to my/our existence.

to dip a bit into coming-out cliché, &i've never felt, like, singular; we've always been iterative. we hardly even share the same body. actually, the iterations we've been are sometimes tied to particular forms of embodimindment, not unrelated to other experiences i've had - disorderly eating/drastic weight changes/puberty/trans medical interventions/elective body modification/lived experiences of trauma. this, like many things, is something for a while we assumed everyone felt (and perhaps everyone would, if we as a society did not tamp down so violently on our inherent systemhood [we're made of systems]).

then, &i learned that not everyone referred to themselves with different pronouns directed toward different iterations, and that this actually offended some trans people &i tried to like, ~build community~ with. people don't like seeing selveshood as periodized, because that disrupts the narrative of linear progress/growing-up we like to ascribe to "being a person."

so we sat with this feeling of having grown sideways or crossways and learned about multiplicity (beyond harmful media/medical discourse) on tumblr. actually, &i think [S]arah learned about it back when she was knee deep in the whole indigo children thing lmao, because there was also soulbonding stuff etc. [don't bother with those types of sites, they're run by new age antisemitic anti-vaxxers, but obviously 9 year old [S]arah didn't know that].

when we began learning about multiplicity on tumblr, we were under the assumption that alters had to be far more clearly defined and transparently mapped than is true, &i think, for most systems. others have commented on the weird proximity to clinical confessional discourse that fixations on system mapping point toward: not because there's an inherent problem with system mapping, but because the idea that everyone/everymany must do this / leave evidence of their collective (and ultimately, legible) existence, is just bullshit, just like the stories we have to tell to receive "gender dysphoria" diagnoses.

i think what really changed our relationship with multiplicity was/is our friendship with @materialisnt. it's difficult to describe the degree to which mix moss have impacted &my life, both through chaim "formal" scholarship (the formal/informal binary is bullshit ofc) and through several years of deep friendship and unwavering solidarity. &i recognize in hindsight that &my longstanding interest in multiplicity - and alterhumanity writ large, because i am not a human and actually don't think any of us are or were? - was really just, you know. being an egg. many such cases. mix. moss's patience with &my questions & collective excitement at my interventions and thoughts gifted us the confidence to, only recently [and partially pursuant to &my dissertation, which includes discussion of alterhuman digital epistemologies and pedagogies] begin identifying with plurality. perhaps even "as", though that preposition has always skeeved &me out when it comes to identity stuff.

ultimately, &my relationship with plurality isn't a concrete object that we eventually dug up and slapped a nametag on. it's a meaningful, collaborative, and community-based signifier that helps us best situate ourselves in conversations about relationships and love and pain and time and all the important parts of. existing, we guess. it's a choice to generate linguistic and spatiotemporal friction be just kinda existing and not being "one human being". it is also something that feels deeply heart-aligned, something that allowed me to let out a breath we'd been holding for a long time, and free up space to think with more creativity and compassion toward those &i value most: that is, those rejected by the existing conditions we call "reality" and "commonsense" and instead think more capaciously, as ourselves, about different ways of being persons and people together.

[thief-of-eggs]

sorry that people are saying things about your fics, but Imma confess something completely unrelated

So sometimes, when I type Hazbin, I end up going 'Hazbing' and Im always cursed to think 'hazbinga' like bazinga I don't even have dyslexia sorry once again for using the asks as a confessional booth

it is what it is 🫡

hazbing sounds like some sort of online shopping site tbh. i dig it ((also this is so funny, i too don’t have dyslexia but sometimes stuff just happens))

[buckgettingstruck]

haha okay maybe I’ll just clarify my ask from earlier because I also agree with your response. I think the disconnect that some people are having is that when the characters are talking, its not very productive. When eddie opened up about chris to bobby/hen/chim, bobbys response was a joke about the mustache, and hen and chim’s response was like oh thats too bad and then eddie gave advice to chim about not missing stuff with jee. Like do they even know about dead wife doppelganger. And when buck opened up to maddie about what he was feeling about tommy she was pretty unsympathetic, and then when josh gave his speech it was completely unrelated to the issue buck was actually having imo. Its like a lot of characters talking at each other instead of with each other. And thats why I actually loved the henthena scene (crazy copaganda plotline aside) because it was actually productive like hen heard athenas issue and gave her good advice that she applied in the episode. And so far the season just seems to be lacking some of those moments, or is not executing them well. But like I said imo when the narrative wants them to be productive they (hopefully) will be, like madney in ep6 or henthena in ep7

i still dont agree w most of this to be honest. like in 805 the three of them were having a convo about missing milestones with their children and brought different perspectives. like what is hen supposed to say to eddie losing his kid when she just got hers back without it rubbing a sore spot? and the maddie conversation was fine to me. she was saying “you’re afraid he’ll hurt you too?” before josh jumped in and made it weird. i do agree bobby wasnt helpful but when does any of bobbys advice actually help eddie 😭 but theyre letting the storyline breathe. not every conversation needs to end with perspective changing advice. people talk so much about storylines feeling rushed that when they arent people dont know what to do with themselves i feel

also i never want them to bring up the doppelgänger ever again if im being honest i do not care i want that storyline to stay in season 7 outside of absolutely necessary referencing like in the confessional scene. like never referencing it again is even too soon for me

[puckpocketed]

Apartment 1, End Times, and Haunted Focaccia <- if nothing else PLEASE ask me about this one

Well now i GOTTA know!!! Please tell me about this it sounds soooo interesting (Tapedsleeves on main)

@jules-in-deep @dwisp thank u for asking too !!! <3 OUGH. OH. OKAY. People who have followed the Deep Cuts of puckpocketed have seen me reference 'The Manifesto' in my drafts - it's unrelated to my hockey essay writing, in the sense that it doesn't mention hockey (yet); but totally related because ALL of my stuff veers sharply into the realm of the confessional/autotheory/memoir, and thus Themes begin to crop up no matter what genre I'm writing for.

Apartment 1 is some memoir stuff I started writing late last year. It's about... a lot of stuff. It's about learning to bake bread. It's about my dead neighbour. It's me grappling with the ethics of writing real people in my life. It's being 25 (now 26) and realising that everyone around you is waiting for the world to end even though YOU thought we were all joking. It's about direct action and coalition-building and communities of care. It's about practical optimism. It's about the one time I threw a dead pigeon into my neighbour Heather's balcony. It's everything. It's my Manifesto <3

(ALSO: There's a BIG chunk of cut content from my last hockey essay that was basically a very very very long tangent about Hauntology insofar as how it relates to ice hockey narratives and players... I cut it because it was gratuitous and indulgent and Not on-topic for the broader thesis of the essay - and because it was already something I was writing about in The Manifesto.)

Read some of it under the cut if you like!! <3 it is very very long and I'm not really looking to get it published, just hoping to get it all out before I am burned by academia!!!

If I was the kind of person capable of committing to journaling in private this is what I might have written that evening:

April 18th. Got first zine interview done. L’s cool. Think I changed his mind about trans stuff. Come home to find neighbour in apt 1 downstairs passed. Police had questions. Her gate’s still open, they left the lights on too.

I’d be someone who keeps a neat record of things, tucked away in routines and discipline. There’s a dream of this timeline where I figure out how to end sentences and truncate my runny egg thoughts (I play-act this fragment of me when writing emails). I am not that person. I journal in winding truths muddled by vision, by the aesthetic canons of the autobiographers I admire — Joan Didion, and, lately, Elvira: Mistress of The Dark — I journal because despite the nightmarescape of being known — published, seen — I want to be read.

The woman in apartment 1 reads like a bit part given to an ageing starlet who still loves acting (I only feel this way because we never spoke). I rarely saw her out of hot pink fast fashion t-shirts. Her lace curtains hung in defiance of the rest of the building's slate grey blinds, never dusted. Her garden was always well mulched and lush with something green, a pollen bomb waiting to go off in my nose and eyes every year come springtime. She watered it ritualistically. We’d catch each other as I left for uni, sometimes, and I’d think: fuck, this is such a waste of water, aren’t you old enough to have lived through the droughts? The holiday season saw a bedecking of her wattles and bottlebrushes and westringias with Christmas ornaments. Baubles, tinsel, lights, plastic cherries of holly. A ceramic nativity scene. Most memorably, something I can only describe as an effigy of Rudolph.

I know she is not a character, and that by writing this I risk crossing some threshold; that hazy shifting boundary between my ethics and whatever lies beyond. I’m not writing this to ask if it’s possible to be haunted by a woman you never met — I already am — I’m asking if it’s polite. 

Poetry, an old but welcome lover, demands of me:

I feel a truth that doesn’t ask the usual kind of knowing. She is a cracked open vein of ore. Her story a conflict mineral. I refuse to mine it.

The messages I sent to friends that day went something like this:

UM. One of my neighbours fucking died The police are here they took details and asked the last time I saw her

Don’t talk to cops is one of the first, most vital things you learn navigating marginalised spaces. An officer was stationed at the security gate, two more hung about in their patrol car. A fluorescent vest drifted in and out of view in the glass sliding door leading off into my neighbour’s house. The one that spoke to me had a notebook out and leaned against her fence. My experiences with the police up until then, summarised:

They showed up when President Obama visited my highschool.

I served them coffee intermittently during my years as a barista. Most recently, a regular group on my opening shifts at the café.

My neighbours across the hall had the police called on them many times. The one time they responded, an officer pushed past me and into my apartment to ask questions. After, the fights got quieter. The wife stayed.

I’d never been rich but I had lived up until then in relative privilege that rendered me invisible and safe from their violence; and I’d never approached homelessness, or looked like the kind of person who makes trouble (any genre of dark skinned); and I’m outwardly queer, but in a way that reads as eccentric rather than threatening and deviant (I want to be a threatening and deviant fag-dyke one day).

So, not talking to cops was a kind of radical praxis I didn’t get to have. I hadn’t earned it by getting arrested at a protest. It was an inheritance left to me by videos of police brutality, and the memorials to my queer elders who died, and scraps of essays written in blog posts and Twitter threads circulating endlessly on progressive clicktivist socials. At least, that was the post-hoc excuse I fabricated. Mostly, I was just reacting.

“Which apartment do you live in?” He was blank, serious. Too many police procedurals primed me for cops who asked permission before starting on the interrogation, the usual: we have some questions for you, if you’d just step aside?

Here was reality: I pointed, unprepared, and said, “That one.” 

And he said, “When was the last time you saw the woman living here?”

I answered, “I don’t remember. Maybe not long after the holidays?” Because who remembers exact dates, keeps track of the comings and goings of their neighbours, besides some shut-in creature LARPing Notes From Underground? 

“Does anyone else live with you?”

“My mother. She won’t be home for another half hour. Her English isn’t good, if you want to talk to her she can come get me.”

“Can we get your details?” And I was seized by the urge to blurt out: some of my friends don’t even know my birthday.

“What’s going on?” I asked instead, “Is that lady okay?”

He shifted, uncomfortable. “She’s passed.”

“Oh.”

The same way a painter may gather visual libraries of light and texture, a musician samplings of treasured beats, everything I witness is forfeit to becoming material; a potential symbol or phrase or reference point. It goes: that primordial instinct to make art, and then the sum of me, and then the world. That’s the two-way mirror lodged behind my eyes.

A guest lecturer, J, confirmed my long-held suspicions that artists are all the same (wretched) animals by relating her own experiences. She, too, felt the friction of being behind the glass, of seeing something upsetting unfold and watching closely from another room inside her. That observation always has to end, and then you are left with the sum, and you think: that would make an excellent… And then you think: how could I have been scraping that for material?

I walked J to her office, was enchanted by her sparkling grace, her warmth, her command of the language that feels ungainly in my mouth (still) 20 years fresh off the plane. My questions for her were short, shy, barely aperitifs, but underneath them was the plea: solidify these boundaries, I am lost. She answered, more or less: there is an ice shard in my heart, too. For her, it was a fact of the human condition that we would always be doing the wrong thing.

Her questions for me were a banquet: why do you want to do it, who does it hurt, and if it does hurt are those hurts large or small? And, as a garnish, she added that: if those hurts are so small then, well… And then she told me about finding a love letter in the leaves of a book and doing the diligence of tracking down names and histories and then, at the end of it all, communing with beloved friends and writing, writing, writing…

Our walk ended outside the building that housed faculty offices (walkable communities are conducive to this). I never answered her, but here’s the morsel I scrounged up after I collected myself at home: thank you, that was so unhelpful, that's what I needed to hear, I didn’t want to hear that, do you think art is bigger than us, I think I understand.

The woman in apartment 1; I never knew her name. The Canberra Times Obituaries are available online, and for this piece I’ve gone to look, in case some bolt of lightning strikes as I skim the names. I like the idea that she was a Val, or Rosie, or Alma (it’s not my place to think this, I think it anyway). Here, I leave my pickaxe at the mouth of the obituaries section — that’s enough digging.

She died, and no one noticed. I didn’t notice. I walked past her arum lilies every day, saw their faces wilt under our Australian sun, thought wouldn’t it be fucked if she was dead in there, and moved on with my life. The police never told me how long, but I can shoot the memory of those lilies back at least a month. Too long. She was off-putting, never friendly, and her garden — a colossal vanity project which guzzled water like the droughts never happened — assaulted me September through to December.

They left her fucking lights on.

The handful of hours before I came home to patrol cars and blue uniforms I was conducting an interview for the very first zine I ever produced. L and I settled at a table inside The Coffee Grounds somewhere between midday and evening. The floor plan was akin to a misshapen tangram, our table sat in an awkward bottleneck between covers and the end of the bar where drinks were dispensed for staff to deliver. I spent the interview conscious of the space we took up, the familiar hiss of the steam wand to my back a shallow comfort.

With his sandy hair buzzed short and wearing big dangly acrylic earrings — lightning bolts an homage to Bowie — L was painfully 19.

We exchanged small talk, pronouns, and areas of study. Then I started, “You’ve seen the news. Hate crimes, suicides, the culture wars online. Transphobia’s this inescapable black hole, right?”

I mistook his anger for righteousness, his energy as something that was directed at change. “Yeah, it’s fucking awful.”

“So I’ve seen all this, and I’ve seen how it’s been affecting my friends, and I have this assignment…”

The assignment: identify a cultural narrative, devise some social campaign to challenge the narrative, then execute and evaluate. And I explained that I was frustrated and hurt and I’d hung up my ambitions for politics when I realised I’d never have the showmanship for it, and so my only recourse was making art. 

“How much do you know about zines?” I asked. And then, explaining, “They’re, like, underground DIY print media.” My answer was a zine made in the traditions of our punk underground forebears, small press community propaganda to combat the grey tide of transphobia-driven pessimism that gripped so many genderqueer youth.

I asked, “What are the joyful aspects of a trans existence that we could point to?” And it was a mistake to assume he’d have something ready, some beautiful quote I could scribble down onto my notes app. People speak in half-sentences, stutters, ums and ahs. And L was a frustrating mix of leftist sentiments and slogans (trans rights are human rights, eat the rich, time’s up) and a fatalistic what-if-there-is-nothing-else doomerism. It was the same story I’d seen etched between the lines of lectures and conversations with friends, black-pilled and devastating: we are trapped in late stage capitalism, climate change is beyond critical mass, electoralism has failed us, we will eke out a life just short of awful and hold each other until the world ends. 

I was a poor interviewer (still am). We drifted off topic, I forgot to take notes intermittently, and — if you don’t know this about trans people yet, you’re in for a surprise — I challenged him on his notions of gender and presentation openly.

“I feel like a man because I can wear earrings, and despite their femininity I’m comfortable in my masculinity,” he said.

“I think my painted nails and earrings are masculine because I wore them,” I said. “Cis men define their own masculinity, cis women do it too; why can’t the rest of us?”

There are too many conceptions of gender and presentation to describe. The idea is that we come together under the trans and queer labels because our solidarity makes us strong, because you can’t build coalitions with sectarianism, and a transphobe doesn’t distinguish between stargender-queergender catgirls and transmedicalist FtMs. There are a few of us who haven’t gotten that message yet. I hope to welcome them back when their rights are under scrutiny, after the world is done with the rest of us.

“What could we be if we divested ourselves from a world that wanted us dead?” Was not a question he could answer, because he didn’t believe that we could. For him existing within the system was a given, and the system would never be for us. Abolition? Divestment? Decommodification? Pipedreams.

I was asking him and asking myself and asking the world; I was my Global Studies class assignment asking us to analyse vaccine distribution and suggest fixes to the worldwide vaccination equity crisis. 

“What makes our lives happy and meaningful not in spite of, but because of our trans identities?” A few answers. I became a better interviewer as the afternoon progressed (do journalists know all the tricks? Is that what they learn in their classes?).

As a barista, I found it easy — to borrow a phrase from Disco Elysium — to can-open people. If it was quiet enough a given customer could stay a while, and I’d chit chat as I cleaned. All you had to do was find a vulnerable notch and dig, and once you were in it was only a matter of twisting until they popped. With the torque of genuine interest and patience, I could get them to admit to almost anything over a coffee. People spill their secrets to me willingly, happily (maybe not their secrets, but definitely their stories). If you get someone alone and let them talk and let them feel that you’re listening, they become endless wells of experience. I’d heard about people’s messy divorces, their mental health struggles, and I’d seen at least two regulars through the entire lifecycle of several romantic entanglements. And I always thought: these are treasures, mine them.

For example: John (who gets a large cappuccino and two sugars, who went on a diet for eight months because his wife did too, who laughs and makes friends with all the new staff no matter how terrible they are), hunts ghosts. The conversation came up over a game I’d played with my friends called Phasmophobia, whose premise was hunting the supernatural in haunted houses. Once in a while, John takes a few days off of his day job at the ATO. He gathers his EMF readers, his lasers, his tripods, his smoke machines, his infrared cameras and night vision goggles; bundles everything into his car and drives to the most haunted locations in the Canberra region.

On the tip of my tongue: “You hunt them, okay, but how do you escape a ghost that won’t leave you alone?”

And I imagined him laughing, imagined him saying, “That’d make my job easier!”

Right now, I could walk into any given café and be somewhat at home. It’s the same anywhere you go: the rumble-purr of coffee grinders and scratchy sharpie orders running up the side of takeaway cups and exchanges of large mocha, have a good one, thank you.

I’d truly loved making coffee, would’ve contented myself serving regulars their sugared lattes and extra-hot flat whites until I dropped, if not for the pressing reality of wage stagnation. And Kate, a university lecturer, who stumbled into my English class in the last year of my pathways course, overqualified and too sincere, who tried earnestly to get 20 or so barely conscious young adults to analyse fairy tales. (“You don’t have to go right away,” she once said, “I could see you spending more time doing coffee, collecting all sorts of stories for your writing, and you’d do well.” Sometimes being told you have a choice is what gets you over the line.)

The day all these things turn strange will arrive soon, I fear (I hadn’t operated a machine in maybe a month by then; my last being a celebrity shift at the place I quit to go to uni). It’ll pass and I won’t know what the knobs and buttons do anymore, won’t be able to read the rhythm of loading shots and pouring and queueing up jugs of milk. My poor interview skills, I think, are because I’m slowly forgetting how to be a barista. One day I’ll look at an espresso machine, the grinder, the scales, the tampers, and the precise sequencing for a dial-in will have faded; the memory like looking through an oily, smudged lens.

I asked L, “What are your hopes for the future? What makes you hopeful? What’s worth fighting for?” The ambitions I had for the zine were furtively held secrets for a while, things I was too embarrassed to say out loud (you can’t just admit you sort of want to save the world). L’s answer made me embarrassed at my past self.

“That’s a really difficult question,” he said. “I guess your zine is aimed at people like me, because I can’t think of anything.”

The zine was aimed at people like him. Loosely. Theoretically. Execution pending. And confronted with the reality of just how deeply troubled my peers could be; it was crushing. And halfway through the interview I thought; what am I doing here? 

And then he said, “I’m not going to be out when I enter the industry. I don’t want anyone to know. I just want to make my art.” And shattering is something glass does, not people, but there I was. It’s a different kind of closet, to go stealth; to fully transition, to pass, and then to carefully erase all traces of who you were before you transitioned and to pretend you’re cis. Trans Joy Matters is the title of the zine, and it fucking does, because when you don’t spread the message that being trans can be an inherently happy and fullfilling experience, you get 19 year olds who break your heart because they’d rather go stealth than possibly have to deal with their identity being public knowledge.

What do you do when you find out your entire social circle and all your peers and even your mentors have given up the fight, have refused to try because the foe seems insurmountable? What do you do when the bastion of like-minded progressives you expected to meet at university are just as disaffected, just as sure that there is nothing after this?

You find yourself drifting, oscillating in and out of the something-more you’d been building since you pulled yourself free of your adolescent fugue and enrolled. You reflect with a growing apprehension that maybe you are the one who is painfully 25 and naive to the end of the world. You consider half-assing this stupid zine project because, even if you succeeded and produced something good, the impact would be so negligible to the grey tide’s advance that you might as well not try. You think, maybe I can crawl into some warm private place and find small joys with loved ones until it’s all over, maybe that’s the best we can do.

And then you come home and the woman in apartment 1 has died, and you blink awake and think, wow, fuck that.

The lights stayed on. Come evening, I’d step out and they’d greet me by giving her lace curtains new faces: eyes and noses and mouths gaping through the flyscreen. The police had used bolt cutters to break the padlock on her gate. It was set down on a fence column and forgotten. One day, I picked up the corpse and turned it over in my hands. There were bite marks where the teeth had sunk in and severed that arterial silver loop. Underneath was a patch of grey concrete where it blocked the bleaching sun, and around it spread a halo of grime.

Three months after the police came knocking, on the 12th of July, I wrote to a friend:

finally sent cleaners to my neighbours place jesus made very uncomfortable eye contact with one of them as i went in through the security door

I watched from my kitchen window while they packed her life away. I was certain these cleaners moonlighted for shadowy service that would, for a price, disappear undesirables. Or garbage collectors, given how they piled her possessions carelessly into the back of their truck. I imagined that somewhere in the detritus there was a box of tinsel and baubles and her Rudolph effigy, crushed under splintered furniture. Everything that wasn’t nailed down — everything but the kitchen sink, everything, and a thousand more clichés of everything — they took. Though they left her garden, her lilies were black bagged for the crime of being potted.

If you ask academics about hauntology you might get a garbled mess of references and a finger pointed at Jacques Derrida and Mark Fisher. The core of it is political according to Derrida, who conceived of a West that would, in the wake of liberal democracy’s triumph over communism, go on to be haunted by the spectre of Marx and the futures that could have been. For Fisher, contemporary music culture’s rolling pastiche of the decades reads as hauntological phenomena; nothing sounds new, all is made in service of referencing something already gone. Fisher diagnoses this as a longing for the future that was promised in these decades that remains unfulfilled (to him it is a false remembrance, one that smooths over the flaws for a mirage of better days). 

The haunting is the essence. We typically think of hauntings as the past coming back to the present, ghosts as temporally bound, but hauntology goes both ways. To say something is hauntological is to say that it is nostalgic for a dead future.

I am haunted by the woman in apartment 1 not because we knew each other, but rather because we didn’t. I am in mourning for the future we can’t have; one where we say hello, and how are you, and I notice she’s missing. Where I realise that industrial agriculture and garment factories take unfathomable amounts of freshwater and turn it undrinkable, and how futile, how unkind it is to condemn any single person for using water to make her garden beautiful. A future where we know each other. Where writing this makes any fucking sense. 

I carried on after she died, cleaving to something new, a hauntological mass, and though I didn’t know it, the force of my yearning for that lost future propelled me. I booked more interviews, more hours-long brunches and video calls and text exchanges. The zine got made. It was good, and the grey tide didn’t stop. But I was okay with that. I had to be.

[later excerpt]

Whoever said guilt is a bad motivator? Incorrect.

It was small as a football, appropriately pigeon-sized. You’ve probably had a close encounter with one before, waddling up to you like nothing would ever touch its pretty grey plumage. As a kid I used to run at them, try to put the fear of God in them. Well, it seemed that day it was my turn. 

The sliding door did nothing for me. Whether the pigeon was between layers of glass and wood and metal or two feet away and rotting made little difference to the lizard hindbrain processes that seized me upon catching sight of its body. I made a guess at the timing, it must’ve dropped onto my balcony and died at some point after I last looked out my bedroom window that morning. Its little feet and wings were tucked, aerodynamic even in death. 

I armed myself with a single thong and crept out onto my balcony like there’d be snipers posted on the roof of my Woollies, ready to gun me down for the thing I was planning to do. I certainly deserved it. With my thong clutched in hand (you know the grip, the one that’s meant for swatting flies), I stretched out and gave the pigeon a nudge. Then another. It rolled away, awkward and slow, over and over on itself. 

It was definitely dead, and there’s no way to say this where I look like the good guy but here goes: I was going to push it into apartment 4’s yard.

It gets worse.

See, it was an irregular shape and my balcony guardrail was not the kind that would permit a clean drop. It got stuck.

Not lodged, per se, just not quite flat enough to fit under the horizontal strip of metal that supported the vertical bars sticking up from it. I rolled it. It rolled back. I rolled it again. It rolled back again. And this time mockingly, like as punishment for the misdeed I was committing, I’d been condemned to a Sisyphean tragedy. Committed was the right word for it, because at this point, I’d sunk at least 3 minutes in and soiled a perfectly good shoe and was definitely going someplace bad when it comes to my turn in the great Beyond. This was the reasoning of a brain in lockdown, of course, and so was the next decision I made.

I wish I could say that what was going through my mind was the notion of fulcrums, leverage, something to do with physics. But no. The demon that gripped me was screaming for blood. PUNT THAT PIGEON. GET IT OFF OUR BALCONY. DO IT. DO IT NOW.

A series of complex scooping manoeuvres. A thump. It was through the bars and in her yard, (aerodynamic even in death!), and my thong would never be the same.

The guilt over this pigeon and for the old woman living downstairs has proven an excellent motivator. It took five years of avoidance before we really spoke. She let me in through her house a year ago when the security door was locked due to a power outage. A few months ago, I gave her something I baked. Last week, I asked her name.

(Heather, if you ever find out it was me, I’m sorry it took so long. I hope you liked the bread.)

[sr-sam-bodypillow]

i have committed a sin again (omg “again”???)

anyways unrelated to said sin, i just had an idea where stan is an amateur ghost hunter who needs them extra money and kaif is a powerful incubus (while we’re on our SR lust demon bullshittery)

i also have maybe two ideas based on that one SR star wars fic on ao3. Might elaborate on a separate ask if you want me to :)

my inbox is basically a confessional at this point be as horny as you want. if you want to tell me that's up to you

and incubus!kaif? oh MY. i have certainly got Ideas for that.

[the following is a small snippet of something i may have started to write after reading you ask]

The man has him pinned against the wall now, his chest firmly pressed against Stan's. He's far too warm for any human, adding credence to his theory that this man's an incubus, but it's not an uncomfortable warmth. It's more akin to the warmth of gentle sunbeams on a cold day, or the comforting feeling of being tucked away under mountains of blankets, something that makes Stan want to pull him in and hold him tight regardless of the consequences.

His hands are firm yet gentle as they roam his body, one slipping beneath his shirt to rest on his back. Stan shivers at the contact, trying his hardest to lean into it without seeming too desperate.

He looks up, the slight height difference between them seeming so much more noticeable, making eye contact with him. There's an odd look in his eyes, a mix between hunger and lust, as he studies Stan. It honestly does feel as if he's undressing him in his head as he licks his lips, revealing razor-sharp canine teeth.

"What's your name, again?" His voice is a smooth, deep drawl, taking his time with each syllable. "I thought you'd told me earlier, but I'm a bit... forgetful, darling." The nickname makes his face heat up in a way that he knows the incubus can sense, judging by the way his lips quirk up in amusement.

The thing is, Stan never shared his name with him. Whatever this is, it's probably a ploy to make him drop his guard- The incubus can surely recognise that he's a hunter of some description. It's not like he hides it. Regardless, Stan can't help but want to go along with this. He knows it's a bad idea, one probably fueled by the incubus' subtle aura of power which is slowly but surely causing pure want to pile up in his gut, clothing feeling too tight for comfort. He knows that if he goes along with this, he'll be destroying any kind of good will or reputation he's managed to build with other hunters and contacts. It's surprising, how much prejudice they hold against people who have had sex with a sex demon and lived to tell the tale, regardless of if it was willing or not.

But looking at his face, with a playful, coy smile handmade to lead people down a path of darkness, Stan can't bring himself to care. Hell, he'd willingly go down that path if it meant that he held him like this for just a moment longer. So, he speaks up.

"Stan." He's only just noticed the complete and utter absence of sound in the room, with the only thing he can hear being his rapid heartbeat and the slow, gentle breathing of the incubus. "M' name's Stan."

"Stan." If he didn't know any better, he'd say that almost sounded like a prayer. The incubus' smile grows, eyes gleaming in the low light. "I like it." He repositions himself, somehow moving even further in, and Stan flushes at the feeling of the man's bulge pressed up against him. He's... well, big would be putting it lightly. The skintight jeans he wears are certainly not helping, but they do make his ass look quite nice.

It's at this precise point that Stan decides that dignity is for pussies, moving his hands around to get a handful of the man's ass. He quirks an eyebrow slightly, grinning wildly, before tilting his head slightly, lips close to his ear.

"I'm Kaif, by the way." The air seems to hum with energy as he says that, lights flickering slightly, something that proves that he's at least a demon. Names have power. And Kaif's seems to have a lot of power behind it, as Stan's never seen the mere uttering of a name have such a notable effect ever before in his life.

He moves his head back, eyes meeting his. Stan can feel his breath on his face as he does, impossibly close to him, yet still not touching. The only warning he gets is Kaif licking his lips again before he smashes his lips against Stan's. He gasps, and Kaif uses this as an opportunity to deepen the kiss, tilting his head slightly. Stan's eyes flutter shut, and it would be a lie to say that he wasn't kissing him back just as passionately.

Kaif tastes strangely sweet, borderline intoxicating, and Stan can't help but want more. Kaif's getting to work at this point, his fingernails having lengthened into black claws as his disguise slowly falls away. With no small amount of expertise, he uses his claws to cut away Stan's shirt, the fabric falling to the wayside and leaving his chest exposed, Kaif's lips still firmly pressed against Stan's. Eventually, he pulls away, with Stan's mouth still hanging open as he pants. Kaif doesn't need to breathe, on account of being a demon, so it's more for Stan's benefit as he gives him a second to recuperate.

His eyes have changed, shifting from a soft blue to a deep, vibrant crimson. His tongue seems considerably longer, ending in a pointed tip, and his teeth have all sharpened as well. He chuckles, and Stan flushes.

Kaif's hands are warm against his exposed skin, pulling him back into his embrace to kiss him more. Stan can feel his pants grow tight as he hardens underneath the incubus, and he knows that there's no way he's going to get out of this in one piece.

But, Stan doesn't care anymore. If he's going to die, then fucking hell.

He might as well die happy.

[mourningliliesmorningglories]

i've read your substack post! i'm truly baffled at how you manage to write like that? it's almost unbearably honest. it's interesting because your writing is also so distinctive and also varied in the context of what you choose to write about. how do you do it?!

anon, firstly a huge thank you for taking time out to read it! it's always so weird to me that people enjoy what i write about (especially when it's unrelated to fandom)!

you ask 'how do you do it?!' and i think of a quote in an article i read in the cut

What compels you, do you think, to write such deeply revealing material? Being a confessional human being for me is like a defense mechanism. If I can tell you the flaw before you see the flaw, then maybe it’s okay.

my writing started as way of being honest. if i could be honest then maybe i didn't have to acknowledge everything that came with it. i lied a lot when i was younger and i tried to remedy that with over honesty.

truly i am person not many people like. i'm tolerated and i struggle deeply with human connection. through writing i can connect with people who can connect with what i say.

you can also check out my substack here!

[perpetualexistence]

Ooo I do love this platonic Heathney going on and the potential for Alejandro and Sierra friendship that I hadn't fully realized until now.

Because both Alejandro and Sierra have got multiple niche talents that come up as a result of the show. With Sierra there's her basket weaving, German slap dancing, and her frightening ability to do research on other people. With Alejandro you've got a fondness for puppetry, interest in dinosaurs, and his ability to play the accordion (I'm convinced this boy had a Weird Al phase or something because there's no way you just magically know how to play an instrument perfectly while using your feet to keep up with the rhythm).

There's also a really solid basis for Sierra having her first healthy friendship with Alejandro. Specifically because she DOESN'T know anything about him. She had no idea he would be on the season, so she never had the time to do her fanatic research. She's got no parasocial attachment to him. So if she does want to help comfort him from being cheated on, she actually has to ask about what he likes. She can't just do it based on information she got through rather concerning means.

Sierra would just accident her way into a friendship just as much as Alejandro would. She does not realize that the way you make friends is by asking what they like rather than researching it. When she asks about what Alejandro likes, Alejandro would probably respond with answers that are standard for him: he's great at soccer, he's well-read, he's-

And Sierra would interrupt him because no no no. She'd not asking about what he can do. She's asking about what he likes. She wants the juicy details that she usually has to spend weeks digging through social media or tracking down other family members to ask. Ooh, better yet, the things she couldn't just research online! So things that are completely unrelated to any accomplishments he has.

That would throw Alejandro off a bit. Especially the fact that she's completely disinterested in his accomplishments. He has a script when it comes to talking about himself, and she's just ripped it to shreds and demanded improv.

(It's going to take him a while to realize that he's valuing himself based on things he can or can't do, and how that's not okay.)

So he would, incredibly reluctantly, but it's for the sake of manipulating her to be sympathetic to him so it's okay for him to say this out loud, admit to the more niche hobbies that he does for fun.

Sierra would definitely latch onto the puppetry as someone with craft skills. She'd want more details. And as he's describing it, and she banters back, he'd find himself matching her energy. It isn't really something he can do with either of his partners because he loves them, but they're both incredibly judgmental. He would not trust them with his more childish hobbies until later in their relationship. But with Sierra, he can.

They'll end up bonding by doing something like making puppets together. Sierra probably insists on making a puppet Noah for him to thrash around and get all his anger out on. And she'd demonstrate exactly what she would do if she were in Alejandro's shoes. If this were visual, I imagine the camera would pan away from what Sierra was doing and focus instead on Alejandro's horrified reaction. Immediately afterwards he uses the confessional.

"Mi cariño, when I eliminate Sierra, you will need to HIDE. Find somewhere she cannot reach you. I will come for you once I've won."

And that's all I've got for their friendship for now. The only other addition is that when Alejandro and Sierra do reconcile, it will involve him doing it through puppets. Because he's going to have to be willing to make himself honest and vulnerable with her if he wants her forgiveness. And be willing to let go of his pride long enough to be a little bit silly.

i don't know if you've done this and I've missed it somehow, but i'm wondering how the rest of the cast outside of team e-scope extended acts towards noah when its revealed by heather and alejandro that noah was lying through his teeth during the cheating arc, especially since you implied that they went out of their way to treat him horribly. are they remorseful at all? do they try and apologize or does secret agent izzy even let them close to him? i really really like how you and perpetualexistence had expanded on that concept by solaiurm

I don't think neither me nor Perp have covered how the rest of the cast reacts to Noah being revealed to not be a cheater, outside of their initial reactions as the peanut gallery in the World Tour finale. So I'm more than happy to throw some ideas at the wall here- hopefully some of them stick!

For starters, it wasn't implied that Noah was treated horribly by the rest of the cast. It was outright stated. That's the bread and butter of his "cheater arc"- being vilified by both the general public at large and by the cast he's forced to cohabitate, despite not actually being a cheater. Which he only makes worse for himself by playing himself up as the villain during his segment on the Aftermath.

.

When Gwen has her initial segment in the canon Aftermath, she's dubbed "the New Heather" and pretty ostracised by the rest of the cast (at least until Trent sits next to her), but she's seemingly quickly forgiven for her own cheating scandal because she shows remorse for her actions/repeatedly tries to apologise to Courtney. In the same vein, Heather's treatment at the hands of the cast in Action and in the beginnings of World Tour is pretty poor. For good reason- she was a mega bitch in Island, and never truly apologised for a lot of her actions.

Why am I bringing this up? Note the difference in the casts' reactions. Gwen is quickly forgiven despite being a 'homewrecker' because she's remorseful and apologetic, whereas Heather is continually vilified because she isn't.

Noah isn't apologetic for 'cheating' on Heather and Alejandro. In fact, he's about as callous and assholish as possible during his Aftermath segment, in an attempt to really paint himself as 'the bad guy'.

Of course he's getting the Heather treatment- but it's worse, because he's stuck in the same hotel as these people, and he doesn't have the excuse of a million dollars to justify being an asshole. So the more proactive of the ex-competitors see Noah as free game to harass as they see fit- after all, he's a cheating scumbag, he deserves it right?

(And some of these guys can be downright vicious when they think it's justified- just look at how Harold was treated in S1E10, just for being an annoying roommate.)

So when it turns out that, oh, he didn't deserve it? That their awful treatment of Noah- the person who complains about anything and everything like it's his career, and yet didn't so much as utter a "Stop." at their harassment- was completely unbased? They're all pretty shook up by the turn of events.

It takes a lot of the ex-contestants a few days to process that they've practically outcast and exiled someone from their group for no real reason, and quite a few of them are angry- at Noah for lying, at Heather and Alejandro for playing along, At Chris and the producers for keeping it all hidden for the sake of drama, but mostly at themselves for jumping on the hate-train so easily. So for a few tense days the hotel is shrouded in this sombre atmosphere, where everyone is too hesitant to address the elephant in the room in fear of either blowing up at Alenoaheather, or Alenoaheather blowing up at them for the mistreatment.

The kinder of them, who perhaps didn't outright harass Noah but did give him the cold shoulder (i.e. DJ, Lindsay, Beth), meekly try to apologise to Noah, but are usually stopped by his partners' protectiveness or Secret Agent Secra before they can.

Geoff, I imagine, would be one of the biggest perpetrators of Noah's bullying; he's already shown a canonical inclination towards Getting A Little Silly Sometimes, plus with his and Bridgette's whole pseudo-cheating drama he'd be far more ruthless towards 'cheaters' than most, even if his dislike of Alejandro initially prompts him to commend Noah's actions. For all of this, however, Geoff is a pretty moral guy- he'd be the first to successfully apologise to Noah, by means of literally shouting across the breakfast hall as soon as he snuck walked in. (Noah's still in the habit of sneaking in and out of meals.)

Noah shrugs it off- he doesn't want to make a huge deal out of the situation, understandably- saying it wasn't a huge deal and that everyone was justified in thinking he was an awful person. That reassures everyone present that Alenoaheather don't hate them, and thus more people scamper to reconcile with them, bridging the metaphysical gap between both groups.

Geoff even ends up offering to throw a 'Noah isn't an awful person' party in his honour. Noah, of course, declines the offer. It doesn't stop Geoff from throwing the party anyway.

And that breaks the tentative ice between the peanut gallery and the throuple.

Similarly, I imagine Leshawna would also be very vocal about her distaste for Noah. She's always disliked him, thanks to his shoddy performance on Island and his sardonic personality, so him also being a two-timer is just the final nail in the coffin for him in Leshawna's eyes. Just like Geoff, though, Leshawna can and does admit when she's in the wrong, and she'd also do her best to make amends once the gap between Noah and the rest of the cast is bridged by Geoff.

Duncan, meanwhile, was team Noah the whole time which gives him major bragging rights. After he apologises to Courtney and Gwen, that is.

To summarise, the cast are kind of pissed about the whole 'lying' thing, but mostly just feel awful about how they treated him. Once things have been given time to settle, the air is eventually cleared and the Total Drama cast go back to their status quo. Something something happy ending?

[cheekbites-moved]

catherine game... 😬

however

oz vessalius’ va plays the bastard in the confessional in it & she p much uses the Exact voice she uses for oz, just with. like. some evil inflections & i do admittedly go incredibly feral over that. the power in just. having audio of oz being evil. also going feral. i like imagining him ripping isla yura/jack to shreds with the power it gives me :)

[soft-fizzy-cake]

I have a playlist on y.outube that’s named ‘listen to this when you’re sad’ n In the playlist is just this one video of a compilation of some Gen’s voice clips n solos n honestly it actually helps a ton !!