#discovered i was a lesbian halfway through writing this and it shows

[mist-girl999]

Also here's all the shitty poetry I wrote this summer

warning I am not a good poet also TW: implied s/a and also just general soulcrushing sadness and angst

Forest Green and Knobby Knees:

You said your walls were forest green

Sertraline tastes sickly sweet going down

Maybe that’s why life lost its color

It never had any to begin with

I’m told im missing the vibrancy

That I’m living among shades of brown

It makes me want to cry sometimes

Even though it’s all i’ve ever known

Eyeliner stamps distract me from it all 

when I remember to use them

I rarely do

I only get to be a woman when it’s convenient

When it’s harmless to everyone else

In my room in the quiet hours

I can wear my ill fitting skirts

Stretch the two tops I own over the body i hate

So I can pretend I’m the hottest girl alive

Sometimes the lie works

Sometimes it didn’t

Mostly it doesn’t

I’m not very good at lying anymore

Yearbook signatures make me feel more real

Promises of friendship

Of love

You’ll never know how much you mean to me

It’s not love

More obsession

Not with you but with the idea of you

A concept of who I want to be 

A caricature to stretch over me

I want to ask you how you do it 

How you be everything I want to be

Dream to be

Knobby knees

Oh god the knobby knees

The hair

The bangs

The eyes

The smile

Deficiency isn’t enough

Dried up succulents 

stalks shattered are the only mark you left on my life

I hope they never die

Even if I do

Vanilla pods were all I sought:

You never understood my greatest wish of all

To smell like vanilla pods in the midnight air

To lay back arched in the sunlight as it leeched into my skin

To be laid bare to the world and seen without the disgust I felt

To find friends amongst the grapevines

To talk to bees

Point at ravens in the trees

You never understood the beauty I craved

But you bought me skirts

And said that was good enough

And now I’m afraid to be me

Even if I bled even if I died:

I met you before I existed

Before I knew something was wrong

And you turned me into something you felt like you could love

I started to believe I could love that too

Still I remained foreign even to myself

The problem was I loved you too much

Yet also not enough

But the problem was that I wasn’t enough for you

Even if I bled

Even if I died

Sacrificed all but the breath in my lungs

It still wasn’t enough

I wasn’t enough

I acknowledge that

I apologize for that

But you left

And now I don’t exist anymore

Maybe I never really did

You made feel feel desired for the first time ever

And then took it all away

And so I scrambled I fell grasping at the open air

And now I’ve hit the bottom of the canyon

Not quite dead

not quite breathing

maybe drowning

My spine shattered against the battered boulders

It’s quiet down here though

It was never quiet with you

Fuck you

I wish you never wanted to fuck me

I wish I didn’t have to keep breaking myself for you

Until I was a handful of shattered glass under your foot

The times I saved you from suicide every night

Matter not now

I tried to forget about them

About you

But I can’t

So fuck you

I can’t save you

And I shouldn’t have had to

I wish you didn’t fuck me

I hate that you wanted to touch me

I’m scared now

That no one will want to touch me

Because you’re the only one who did

And your touch sunk deep

I can still feel it sometimes

Even when I don’t want to

Rarely when I do

I hope you disappear into the back of my mind

Somewhere I don’t venture often

That’s where you belong

Far away from me

I’m happier here

And worse

But better every day I don’t think of you

I wish you didn’t look at me that way

I wish you didn’t speak to me that way

I wish you didn’t hurt me that way

I wish you didn’t paint me that way

I hope you forget about me

I hope I forget about you

But I know I won’t

I still wear the necklace

The star

The branches around my neck

It feels wrong to take it off

And feels wrong to leave it on

So I just try to forget it’s there

Forget how the rope flows arcross the valleys of my sunken collarbones

Forget how you looked at it

At them

At me

Try to forget the pattern

The late nights

The mistakes

The regrets

The firsts

The lasts

You made me into a lady didn’t you

And now I hate her and love her at the same time

Womanhood makes me sick

Because of you

And the way you looked at me

You call me sexy

You call me pretty

You call me kind

I call you worthy of love

You ask if you’re using me

I lie

It feels good to be desired

It doesn’t feel good anymore though

Now it makes me sick

I don’t want to be seen

But I can’t live without the perception of others

All because of you

And your yellow teeth

I miss then

I think more than anything else

Those teeth

With their spots

Brilliant white

My eyes were always drawn to them

But they’re gone now

And so are you

And I think I’m glad

I was your dog

And now

You left me

Bleeding and rabid

Without a bullet in my brain

Fuck you

I wish you would stop looking at me

But I keep seeing you

I keep feeling you

And it makes me sick

Sicker than it should

I can’t tell if I’m angry or honest

You don’t deserve this

You might deserve worse

I’m sorry I wasn’t enough

I’m sorry I was crazy

In my defense I think you might’ve driven me insane

But you’ll never know that

Because I’ll never tell you

I’ll never look at you

Because if I do

 I’ll be right back where I started

A shadow in a dress

Fetishized

Ostracized

And left to sit in the rain

And pretend I’m crying

Because you took that too

I miss when you loved me but I’m happy you don’t anymore

I don’t think I’m strong enough for that anymore

Easier this way:

You were perfect

I was better at lying to myself than you were at lying to me

Your eyes left cuts where I can’t reach them

Can’t bandage them

Can’t heal them

So I pretend they don’t exist

Just like you

It doesn’t work very well

But it was worth a try

I’m not a poet

You made sure I knew that

You made sure I knew that I was supposed to fuck you until you didn’t want to die anymore

But somewhere along the way you got rid of whatever was left of myself

I didn’t need to know these things about myself

I did it think I ever would

But you made sure I won’t forget

So please stay away

I’m too fragile your your voice

Even more for your silence

You took all my love away and I’m glad you did

It’s easier this way

A most familiar feeling:

How long did you love the sex more than me

How long was your favorite part of me the one I hated the most

How have you been

I don’t want to know anymore but

I know I’ll know again someday

You’ll find me

No matter where I hide

Quick to criticize quicker to change me

Quicker yet to leave

I’m glad you’re gone

I can pick up the pieces that are left

Delete what I wrote for you

Forget you ever happened to me

Walk away until I know you’ll never chase me

Hate what you used to love about me

Start to hate everything about you

I’m surprised I didn’t sooner

How was I ever happy when you looked at me

I’ll change my voice

Change my eyes

Sand off my face

And run until my feet fall off

Become so unrecognizable that even I feel foreign to myself

Which admittedly is the most familiar of feelings

If I replace every organ

Claw at my skin

Until I know you’ve never touched it

Will I be ok

Hate me more:

You’d probably hate who I’m becoming now

Which brings me comfort

Every moment that passes

You will hate me more

But I’m just glad

That you don’t love me anymore

Because that felt so much worse

Cleanliness my god:

I wish I could stop writing about you

I wish I could stop thinking of you

You taught me to love things I should hate

And now I feel wrong

I don’t write love poems anymore

I did once

You ignored them

You hated them

You didn’t say it out loud but I could see it in your eyes

You didn’t read them

You suffered through the ones I read to you

I know they weren’t good

But I loved you

That should’ve been good enough

You loved what was under my ill fitting skirts the parts of myself I tried the hardest to hide

Cleanliness is godliness and you had no god

Cleanliness became my god

And you became my satan

I liked it at first

Then you liked it too much

It became all I was good for

All you wanted

It felt good to be desired I guess

But it felt worse to be looked at in that way

Eyes blazing with something that scared me

An emotion that felt foreign to me

That always had

And so I waited

And hid

For it to be over

For you to love me

But instead I held you

Comforted you for hours

So that you could do it again

And again

When I just wanted to be loved

Girlhood sinkhole:

You made me a woman

While I was still trying to just be a girl

And now I don’t know who I am anymore

A familiar feeling

A sinkhole

A place I want to leave

Strawberry nose:

I’m tired of strawberry nose

Doomscroll

Lost submersible

Tired of staring at your eyes praying to see anything but disgust reflected back at me

Tired of being the only person in the world

Who hates me this much

More than I probably deserve

More than I’ve probably earned

Tired of being hard to love

Easy to shove

Bent and broken and caved in

Shattered to pieces and glued back together  again

I should probably go to sleep but I can’t

Tired of being incapable inconsiderate inconsequential

Just really fucking tired

Goodnight I hope

Strawberry nose

Ripped clothes

Bare toes unpainted

But I wish they were

A deep red a pitch black

Something a little more human

I wish I could love in a way that’s acceptable

To you

To me

That feels like it isn’t killing me too

Mending:

Sick of living 

Sick of healing 

Sick of apologizing

Of changing

Of admitting

You’re so pretty i could cry

The kind of beauty that seems unattainable

Foreign even

Otherworldly

How do you do it

I’ll ask myself that question for a very long time

There’s a pile of clothes on my floor that need mending

They have holes and tears that need patches and stitches

I’ll get to them eventually

You ripped my fishnets

I can’t mend those

You ruined me you know

Ruined my clothes

Ruined my body

Ruined my mind

But i’m still here

And i intend to stay that way

Summer after high school:

Screaming 

Crying

Songs about 9/11

Late nights

Regrets

Changes

Summer after high school

Almost lost all my friends

Changing myself everyday

It’s exhausting

Is this what happiness feels like?

Reckless driving

Check engine light

Second job

Nightmares

Death

And after all of it

Rebirth

The drowning man

The big yard sale

Goals ambitions

And bugs

Box hair dye

Wishing I could cry

Early mornings

Take my meds

Hope it gets better again

It’s better without you i think

Learning how to exist alone

Is the hardest thing i’ve done 

Until tomorrow

Then that will change too

No one will hate you more than you already do

Sufjan Stevens

Girls

So many girls

To kiss to be

To love to hold

To run from

To hide

Wondering what a sunburn feels like 

New bedsheets that don’t quite fit right

Dread, love, and fear

New posters, old eyeliner

Scared of flying 

Scared of dying 

Cards on my wall

Wishing me well

Broken CD player

Broken spirit

Is this it?

What stains the heart:

Work shirts

Grease stains

Grease stains the heart too you know

So does blood

And loss

I bought white eyeliner from a vending machine

Used it once

Now it’s in my drawer

Shirtless pictures on a digital camera

Are all  I have left

Therapy appointments and soft blankets keep me going

So do you

More as an act of revenge at this point

Slow revenge

Metamorphosis

Like kafka

I doubt you’ve ever read kafka

Walk in the park play on the swings

I wish I could write horny poetry

Boygenius lyrics:

I feel platonic love in a way that scares me 

I’m nothing without my friends

It scares others too

I think we’re all just a bit scared

Boygenius lyrics

Kissing on stage

Devotion and love

I know i’m broken

But please let me love you

You make me a bit less frightened

You all do

Homoerotic swimsuit shopping 

Loving too much

And sometimes not enough

I know i’m not easy to love

But please let me love you

Hearts in texts and hugs with eyes

I promise i like being touched

I just don’t want to burden you

Road trips and letters sitting on our phones

Panic attacks and loving arms

Even when they’re by your side

Hand tattoos and weed 

I think that’s what my future holds

I hope yours holds all that and oh so much more

You deserve the world 

I’m sorry if I love you too much

It’s just that you stayed

Will you still be here when I'm 27?

Even the little things:

Poetry so bad 

it might as well be a word association game 

Unused mascara

Tight underwear

Nothing fits right and I don’t think it ever will

Water droplets across my skin

The second hour in the shower

Remind me who i’m supposed to be

Dead black rotting skin

As i become more sunken in

I’ve lost everything that brings me joy

Even the little things

It might be different tomorrow 

But tonight

In this moment an hour before the stars

With the wrong clothes

At the wrong time

It’s all gone

I’m sunken in

And i think this is it

No more weird little loves

No more loving till it hurts

Just empty

Poured out over the concrete 

Tricking into the sewer drain

For the long journey home

I’ve scared them all away 

and I don’t think they’re coming back

And for once 

I don’t blame them

I’ve accepted it now

I’d let you touch me:

Broken computer screen

Broken cash machine

Dried up plants i’ve ignored for far too long

I’m sorry you didn’t deserve this

Spider in a jar

Friends from afar

Unloveable self in the mirror

Ruined myself again for you

Trying really hard to make you see

That i’d let you touch me

If you wanted to

But i doubt you do

And I don’t blame you

I don’t want to either

But i’m stuck in this skin

Try as I might

Glimpses of the stars

On the walk from my car

Before I disappear

New septum piercing didn’t stop you from leaving

And I don’t blame you anymore

I’m glad you left

But i would’ve let you touch me

If you wanted to

What’s left of my heart:

You can fuck me till i fall apart 

Rip out what’s left of my heart

Pull my lungs out my ears

And my brain out my nose

You can have anything of me you want my darling

My books

My eyes

My touch

My love

Apologies for the ages

I’ll make you a playlist even if I don’t love you

Not because I don’t want to 

But because I think i lost the strength to love you a long time ago

It’s nothing personal

I’d give everything to be able to love you

To know you

To blush when you look at me

I’ll try my best i’ll buy you flowers

Kiss your face

Stay up late

But I can only pretend for so long 

that this isn’t just because I can’t be left alone

I’d treat you right 

We’d never fight

But I know i’m not enough

And i think that’s ok

Made to love you:

She says she likes her nose

and god I wish I liked mine too

In the exact same way she does

A girl who likes her nose

Panic attacks in my bed sheets

Wishing for a loving embrace

You can use me if you want

Just don’t make me go away

Clenched jaws I never notice until they start to hurt

Can’t seem to let them go

Thought I was getting better

Now I know I was wrong

Weighted blanket isn’t enough

Need your embrace

Anyone’s embrace

Need you to touch me

Need you to want to touch me

Need anyone to want to touch me

Motorcycle rumblings signal my end

And as much of me wants to run

Also wants to embrace it

Made to love you

Made to love anyone

Please look at me with kind eyes

And I will worship the ground you walk upon for as long as you let me

And just a little bit more after that

Stay on the plateau with me:

Everyone else is loved and fucked and touched and desired

Everyone else feels love in their hearts and tears in their eyes

There is an unspoken loneliness in losing your will to cry

To cry to love to hold to cherish

Screams of female rage or heartbroken sobs that shake the earth you walk on are but

A pipe dream

Why oh why would you ever wish to leave this plateau

Sweetness is sickness

And sickness is heartbreak

Heartbreak is loss

And loss is death

So why not skip it all

Watch the sunset from the plateau

Overheat 

All alone

Love yourself like no one can

Stare into the river and wonder what color the rocks at the bottom are

Drive past the bar where you might ruin your life

In a year or two

Do drugs alone in your room and pretend you’re more

More than you ever will be

More than you’ve ever been

Wonder when your friends will stop loving you

If it hasn’t happened already

Write poetry for sad girls who are so much more like you than yourself

Hide in a masquerade

Remember who you were 3 years ago

Then forget everything and everyone you ever where

Almond soap blues

Be too quiet

Make too much noise

Be restless

Be tired

But never forget who you are

Tiptoes and sad girls

Mothers who stare at me

But oh to be loved

To be desired will always be immortality

Oh to be perceived

The girl I want to be:

To see her knees peeking out from under that dress when she crouches

Inspecting bugs under a rock

Sticks and leaves in her hair

Bags full of old melon rinds 

Faded stick and poke tattoos from someone she once knew

This is the girl I want to be

Bewitched eyes

Impressive doc martens collection

Big beetle purse

Frilly socks, can’t read a clock

Because she’s never had to

Old tattered hat, white flower dress

Band aids and perfume

This is the girl I want to be

Cries in secret

Loves in public

Galaxy eyes with the universe inside

Thrifted button downs 

Gray sports bra 

Kills all her plants but loves them so

Pleasure to have in class

Life of the party

Reads alone in the garden 

This is the girl I want to be

But i’m not and I don’t know if i’ll ever be

So i’ll keep dreaming

Keep weeping

Keep praying

Keep waiting

For the girl i’m meant to be

[sapphoshands]

"We broke every rule we established for the trials and the characters broke every rule given to them but its funny that viewers have different interpretations" not cute actually, Jac. Just bad writing that verges on outright racism by killing off the one Asian character and making the Black character over the top malevolent. Oh and putting the sole (white) man in narrative center. Should've known it was too good to be true.

it is of course extremely déclassé to go into the inbox of someone who is loving a thing and tell them why they should not be loving the thing, but you know, i'm so deep in this show, i'm just like *rubs hands* more time to think about my blorbos! so!

i will do you the courtesy of ignoring your bad faith phrasing to engage with your actual points - and of course, we also have to keep in mind that we're just over halfway through the season, so things may come back in ways we can't yet see. that said, i adore the idea that agatha's punishment in this was to be seen by yet another coven as an object of horror and fear, especially after a few moments where she was seen as a real person. i think that's going to play very strongly into the end of the season and i think it's a very smart bit of writing that plays with the expectations of the characters on screen and the audience watching the show. i got a little seduced by some of the alternate trial theories, ngl, but that is one of the joys of episodic television and i am having a blast watching more of this story unravel.

re racism, i as a white woman am certainly not going to tell anyone how they should receive a story like this. but i feel about alice's death much like i feel about the push for no more dead lesbians, which is that if we erase any sort of peril for any given segment of the population, we are no longer telling full stories about them. speaking for myself, i am a advocate for increased representation of all sorts on screen (and behind the camera), and simple math tells us that having more people of colour on screen means more people of colour will die on screen. so i always ask myself whether the death feels racially motivated, and in this case, to me, it doesn't. we've already lost a white woman to the road and it is important for the show to keep the stakes high. to me, alice's story was gorgeously tragic and a really wonderful parallel to agatha's - you really felt alice, having discovered the depth of her connection to her mother, feeling that lack for agatha. but naturally... you may have a different interpretation.

jen, on the other hand - oh my god, jen, i fucking loved her in this episode. and again you can read her as OTT, although in contrast to agatha i think she's really rather restrained! obviously tropes play differently for Black characters than white, but in the context of the show, in the context of the way the rest of the coven has been portrayed, she fit perfectly. i mean, in jen's trial, agatha tried to sacrifice mrs hart, tried to cheat, tried to literally break out, etc, because she was so determined that her quest was the only thing that mattered to her. i frankly don't blame jen for pulling an agatha and deciding to put herself first, and i don't think the show wants us to blame jen either. totally tracked to me. the retainer moment? exceptional. and alice and lilia were right there with her - it's not like she was the only one pushing this agenda, you know? certainly she wasn't singled out by skin colour.

billy, now... i am not gonna lie. i am a little worried that we're gonna turn this into the billy show. and i do mostly trust jac schaeffer and mary livanos and the whole setup of the fucking show that they won't, that this is about women and witchcraft and queerness and all of my favourite things. but it's a marvel property, right? and we always have to have this fucking fear. but this interview, again, actually made me feel a lot better about that:

obviously this sounds like it was really early in the room and things change throughout the course of development, but it is really reassuring to me that in the early stages of breaking agatha's story, billy... wasn't billy. he was, you know, a sexy lamp. someone else could've done his job. so his innate billyness didn't matter. to me, that suggests that the established arc remains agatha's and billy's just there to prop it up. i'm sure that since he became billy in the writing process, he became more important and elements of his story became part of the narrative and so on, but i expect it was a series of discussions on how to fit him into the story rather than how to rewrite the story to suit him.

i'm just as biased in my defence as you are in your annoyance, so you're welcome to dismiss all of this and grump on with your grumpy self. but i think this is a smart, interesting, nuanced show that hasn't spilled all its secrets yet. and i cannot wait for more. is it wednesday yet?

[iiitsnotbase]

Fantasy High and Love

Dimension 20 is no doubt one of the most popular D&D Actual Play shows releasing currently. It has, as of writing this, 14 completed seasons, and the 15th well underway. These seasons range from four-episode side quests, to full seasons, which range from small town mystery in season 1 (Fantasy High), to Regency-Era Romance in season 14 (A Court of Fey and Flowers) to Game Of Thrones inspired Candyland in season 6 (A Crown Of Candy). Dimension 20’s main cast (The Intrepid Heroes) consists of Sibbion Tompson, Lou Willson, Ally Beardsly, Zac Oyama, Emily Axford, and Brian Murphy ‘Murph’, and most games are Dougen Mastered by Brennan Lee Mulligan (Captain K.P Hob, A Court Of Fey and Flowers) or Aabriya Ingar (Antiope Jones, The Seven). Of course, there are always other players who guest star in the seasons and work at Dropout (the company that owns Dimension 20), but these are the main candidates for the show. 

Though the seasons do not always make it so obvious, one key theme underlies in all of them, and that is love. The show says, quite plainly, love is not always romantic. Love can be your friend, sacrificing herself to make sure you survive (Sibbion Tompson as Adaine Abbernant, Fantasy High Sophomore Year), love can be a King screaming at his head guard to “Take my daughters and run!” (Lou Willson as King Amethar Rocks, A Crown Of Candy),  love is saying “I don’t love you anymore,” and putting yourself first (Persephone Valentine as Sam Nightingale, The Seven), and to end with a more traditional sense of love, it is two people renouncing their families for each other, kissing under a raincloud and saying “We have so much to experience together.” (Surena Marie as BINX Choppley to Omar Najam as Andera, A Court Of Fey and Flowers). In this essay, I will specifically discuss Fantasy High and Love, platonic or romantic.

Fantasy High is set in a small town, in a highschool, so romance is bound to appear at some point. It also follows our Intrepid Heros (Kristen, Adaine, Fig, Gorgug, Fabian, and Riz, played by Beardsley, Tompson, Axford, Oyama, Willson, and Murphy respectively) as they learn and grow as people. It follows their mistakes, their feelings, their hearts, and discovering their own sexuality and relationship ideals and goals as they mature. Now, we cannot talk about Fantasy High without talking about religion, specifically the religion of Helio, the Corn god. One of our Heroes, Kristen Applebee’s, was raised in this church as ‘Helio’s Chosen One’,  and thus believed herself to be holy. 

The religion on Helio is quite clearly a commentary on corrupt christianity and religious issues, as Kristen’s parents are homophobic towards her, and there is a secret underground cult the ‘Bad Kids��� (Kristen, Adaine, Fig, Gorgug, Fabian and Riz) discover around halfway through the season. In the first battle, when Kristen literally dies and ascends up to heaven, she meet’s Helio, who is the stereotype of a teenage frat boy. All this to say, Kristen later renounces her faith in her religion and abandon’s her church and family for her new one. The person who helps her discover she is a lesbian (and is her girlfriend as of the end of Fantasy High Sophomore Year/ Dimension 20: LIVE) is Tracker O’Shaunessy. 

Tracker is everything Kristen (at their meeting) is not. She is calm, cool, collected, and has renounced her religion long before the season began, as she has lycanthropy, and is a werewolf, in direct opposition to the Church of Helio, worshiping the Moon Goddess Galacia. The exploration of losing your religion and growing into your ‘true’ self, whether that be a werewolf or anything else, is one of the most realistic I have ever seen, probably due to the fact that the show is written, or improvised, by people who went through it in real life. Tracker and Kristen are not without their flaws, but they have a very open and realistic relationship, including the fact that Kristen keeps telling everyone she is gay when she figures herself out for Season 1. It is interesting as well how a relatively small company can better display a lesbian teenage relationship than most streaming giants, and have more than one in the series. 

Fantasy High: Sophomore Year (FHSY, Dimension 20: Live) brings in a new character in Ayda Augefort, Mistress of the Compass Points Library, Daughter of Arthur Augefort, half Phoenix. Arthur Augefort is the principal of the academy most of The Bad Kids go to (Excluding Tracker, Alewyn, and as of Season 2’s ending, Ragh), and the principal of the academy his daughter's girlfriend, Fig Faeth. Ayda Augefort is explicitly autistic, and in a relationship and thriving in a relationship. Unlike most media, the focus during her and Fig’s relationship is not the fact that Ayda is autistic, it is the fact that she is from an entirely different nation than the rest of them, and sometime’s struggles with social cues, and that’s it. It is unbelievably refreshing to see an autistic character's arc not be entirely on autism, but be on her relationships.

 It is also refreshing to see autism being portrayed as normal (literally Ayda stating “This is normal, this is normal.” as Jawbone O’Shaunessy, Tracker’s Uncle and Adaine’s adoptive Father), and not some big bad monster that is needed to be overcome by the character. She is treated as ordinary, not incapable, not babied, and as an equal by her fellow adventurers. So often in the media, autism is a monster, showing someone incapable and unnerving. Ayda is not.

Ayda is just Ayda, and many people would call her the most capable and logical one in the group.

On the complete other side of the Fantasy High Coin Of Romance, we have Riz Gukgak, a cannoncially aromantic, asesexual charcter. Riz, throughout season 1 of Fantasy high, makes fun of his friends and their general ‘horniness’ as teens. He is left feeling isolated and awkward when the topic of sex comes up, whereas the rest of his friends (with perhaps the exemption of Adaine; Though nothing has been confirmed by Tompson or Mulligan regarding her) embrace their teenage years and the conversations surrounding romance and sex with open arms, though sometimes they take a bit of prying to get open, whereas Riz actively rejects it. 

In fact, Riz rejects it so much it leads to the manifestation of Baron from the Baronise, Romance Partner, when the group’s worst fears manifest. To create Baron Riz did something many young, queer teens do, which is make up a lie of a boy/girlfriend or partner to appear perfect, to appear straight and cis and normal, because to many children, normal does exist, and it does for Riz Gukgak, who aspires to be normal in whatever way he can be, leading to Baron. 

Many people agree that Baron is the one of the most horrific elements across any D20 season, even ranking above the current horror season, as Mulligan describes them as having “A voice colder than the grave,” and the fact it’s mouth “Does not move when he talks.” 

Baron can be read as the metaphor for hiding who you are, that you are scared the real you will be ugly, be unattractive and horrific, backed up by the fact that Baron’s first appearance is in a mirror, they are a literal reflection of Riz’s worst fears. That he is unnatural. 

Terrifying.

That Riz Gukgak, aroace goblin (un)-licensed private investigator that he is, is wrong beyond words, a horror only a few unlucky people would comprehend. 

But how on earth could that be true about anyone? How can anybody, human or otherwise, be so horrible nobody wants to spend time with them? Baron says that “The years will go by, and everyone will find someone who matters more to them than you.” and Riz shuts it down. Riz “Seeks the truth so much (he) cuts his hands on the inside of crystals,” (Mulligan as Barron), and his friends love him, even if he is just “The little shrimp of this party.” (Murphy as Riz). 

As a warning, this next section will discuss heavy topics of abuse, torture, anxiety and neglect.

Romantic love is not the only kind of love out there, and it is not the only kind of love covered in Fantasy High. Another prevalent love is the love between sibling, the love Kristen Applebee’s shows her younger brothers when she drops off gold in the beginning of FHSY, but most prevalent is the now unshakeable love between Adaine and Aelwyn Abbernant, two sisters who were abused beyond belief falling apart and coming back together, but only under the most horrible of circumstances that no person, age not important, should ever have to go through. 

Adaine and Aelwyn, in different ways, were both abused by their parents, in a horrific mixture of neglect of Adaine’s needs and favoritism for Aelwyn. To quote BR Parents, “Usually the favorite is the oldest or the baby,” which is true here. Aelwyn is the elder sister, and Adaine is the younger. 

The abuse suffered is also represented by their types of magic, Aelwyn being an abjuration wizard, and Adaine being a divination wizard, specifically the Elven Oracle. Aelwyn’s abjuration magic is a protective force, a literal shield as she shields herself, her true self, from her parents to avoid disappointing them, she gives herself the protection she cannot offer Adaine. Adaine, on the other hand, is a divination wizard, she can see the future that her parents are going to give her, and know what they are going to say about her. In every way for the first season, they are opposites, a diviner who focuses on the future and an abjurer who focuses on the now, Aelwyn working for the ‘bad’ side throughout all of season one resulting in her kidnap and torture in Fallinel throughout most of season 2, Adaine actively fighting against that side to the best of her ability. The abuse also drove a rift between the two girls, with Adaine saying “I feel unsafe!” to withdraw Aelwyn’s diplomatic immunity when she is arrested. 

Terrifyingly, they have their softest sisterly moments between them when Aelwyn is a, to borrow a term from season 1, Palimpsest of a Person. She has been wiped and superimposed over by her country of birth, leaving nothing but a blank slate of a person, and how sad is it that someone who helped with the palimpsest’s in season 1 has now become a human equivalent of the thing she helped make. After this, they have a scene together where Aelwyn’s magic does what it has never done before, it reaches out and protects Adaine from danger directly, instead of watching her handle it herself. (It is important to note the magic here cannot entirely protect the girls, they are still in Flaniell, the danger is all around them, and there are ore elves working for Fallinel than people working with the bad kids.)

In the finale, their love comes to a head, when they end up in a quiet corner of the forest with their parents, alone, and with no other Bad Kids to help them. The importance of the quote “I don’t love our parents, but I do love you. Do you know that? I hope that you know that.” said by Adaine cannot be overstated, as it is finally offering Aelwyn something she has never had, unconditional love. Up until this point, Aelwyn has always believed she was only loved because she worked for people, loved by her parents because she worked for them, was at Hudol because they told her to be, ‘loved’ by Kalvaxous because she worked for him kidnapping the girls. 

Adaine offers her none of that, Adaine offers her something new, and she is uncomfortable with it. She is unsure whether she deserves love, after all she has done, and, before passing out (not dying) in her sister's arms, gives an affirmative response to “Will you be my big sister? I would really love to have you as a big sister.”. Aelwyn passing out here is another thing that can be read as her truly leaving her old self behind, her Father is dead and her Mother is missing. She is starting to accept she truly can be loved at the end of season 2, and in the “Boys Night” one-shot has even found a group of friends of her own with Zayn Darkshadow and Ragh Backrock. 

Another familial form of love is shown in Tracker and Jawbone O’Shaunessy, two lycanthropes assumed to be disgraced from their family due to their condition. Tracker is first met in The Black Pit, where her Uncle Jawbone is working security. At first, it is not said that the two werewolves are related in any way, but this is later discovered when Tracker comes to Augefort Academy to see “(My) Uncle Jawbone”.  Tracker states, in one of her first scenes, tells Kristen that she has been kicked out of her house by her parents because she doubted her religion, the same way Kristen did. Thus, Uncle Jawbone took her in, and they live together. 

Jawbone is not only shown to have parental affection for Tracker, as at the end of season 2 he asks permission to formally adopt Adaine, and also becomes a Father figure for Fig, Kristen, and Ragh when they all move into Mordred Manor, some at the start, some at the end, of season 2. However, none of this could have happened if Jawbone had not met our Intrepid Heroes themselves, and turned his life around from a drug-dealing werewolf to a licensed guidance counselor. 

Speaking of our intrepid heroes, and to close off the section on Fantasy high, it would be a shame not to discuss the group that the main cast play as a collective, The Bad Kids. If I described the Bad Kids, you would think something was wrong with them. As of the end of season 2, they contain an Arch-Devil of Rebellion, The Prophet of a Forgotten God, The Elven Oracle, a (now) licensed private investigator, A former champion bard who said the quote “Toxic masculinity is dead, I dance now,” and briefly had a fling with The Elven Oracle’s sister, and A half-orc adopted by gnomes. Their names, in order, are Fig Faeth, Kristen Applebee’s, Adaine Abbernant, Riz Gukgak, Fabian Aramais Seacaster, and Gorgug Thistlespring. 

Though their relationship started on rocky territory, with Fabian and Gorgug getting into a fight upon their first meeting, they quickly became friends after being forged in fire in the Clash of The Corn Cuties, and grow close to the point where they cannot live without each other. When Mulligan tries to force Willson (Fabian) to walk away from the group towards the end of Sophomore Year, he actively asks for Adaine, only for Mulligan to cut him off by saying “Sorry, no.” 

In the very first interaction they have all the way back in season 1, upon meeting Adaine for the first time, Fig’s (Axford) first instinct is to lie to protect her from Goldenhoard, and from getting in trouble on the first day. Fig reassures her that she is cool when she starts to have a panic attack, and helps her through many from that day forward. Fabian also instantly knew that Riz was in danger in the beginning of FHSY due to the fact he didn’t pick up his phone on the first ring. 

The girls start living with each other at the beginning of FHSY, moving into Mordred Manor with Tracker, Sandra Lynn (Fig’s Mother), and Jawbone. This shows how, finally, they have accepted each other into their lives and are ready to do anything together. It also gives Adaine the family she deserves. 

In conclusion, Fantasy High and Dimension 20’s portrayal of love is so unbelievably real and genuine, and one of the best ones out there currently. There is no complicated love triangle, there is little dramatics, and everyone is respectful.

[tootalltech]

tbb s3 review

okay. now that i've gotten a full nine hours of sleep and am probably a bit more coherent, i'm going to give a post summarizing all my final thoughts on season 3 of the bad batch. bc while i am annoyed about the way things were handled with tech, there were absolutely parts of the season i enjoyed as well.

i LOVE royce hemlock as an antagonist and i have since he first appeared. this season continued to show just how far he's willing to go and how completely removed from any empathy or compassion he really is- all hidden behind a cold, calm, scientific front. he ties very nicely into the overarching theme of dehumanization in this show, whether with the clones or the force-sensitive kids he captured. all in all, he's very evil and very cool and i didn't dislike anything they did with him. not even his death (bc get fucked poison boy and also he died about the same way tech did which was very much deserved). 10/10 no notes.

on the subject of tech's death though. it was very frustrating to me that they didn't show crosshair finding out. i feel like it's still very unclear when he even did; i was questioning if he knew or not by maybe the 3rd or 4th episode based off the exchange between him and omega about tech having her memorize all the plans. crosshair discovering he's dead could have been a good moment between him and omega, it could have been a good moment where we get to see just how much he misses his brothers and feels bad about everything if he somehow finds out alone while still imprisoned at tantiss, it could have been a good moment between him and HUNTER if it was discovered before they worked things out a bit more and it would have been a bigger catalyst for their fighting in "the return", etc etc etc. i don't think there was any good reason to just have crosshair find out at some point offscreen. that is his brother.

i thought the cameos from characters we've seen in earlier seasons were generally cool. fennec shand showing up pretty much made sense seeing as the batch already kinda knew of her so i thought that one was fun. cad bane seemed a LITTLE unnecessary (like it could've been another bounty hunter and nothing would have changed) but i didn't hate it. ventress was cool i'm glad omega has a new lesbian aunt and i thought it was funny when the batch decided they were gonna try and fight her because that was SO OBVIOUSLY not going to end well for them.

and then doing a separate thing for other clones bc thats really its own category. i loved seeing howzer again i missed howzer <3 rex is always a winner. wolffe's thing was cool although i feel like he's going to die now? like. if anyone ever found out that he just let them go. yk? and then we got to see gregor for like .2 seconds but whatever. in true tbb fashion the only other named reg clones on the batch's side that we met died or were never seen again within 1-2 episodes. which is fine. it is called the bad batch. no matter how much it functions more as a tcw sequel show...

speaking of the tbb/tcw world though. echo. is just. i don't understand why they make the choices they make with him. him helping rex makes sense, but he also has a good dynamic with the bad batch (especially tech honestly) and he's a part of their squad? like. this is really more of a renewed complaint from season 2 because it continued into this season but. why have him join clone force 99 if he's then going to leave again and just kind of exist in the background occasionally halfway through the clone force 99 show? i wish we saw more of him in season 3. especially after they lost tech, i feel like there was a way writing-wise to have him be with them more. if some corny "we need to stick together" shit is what it takes then so be it. BECAUSE THEY DO.

i'll go back to antagonists now. I LOVED THE ENTIRE PLOT LINE WITH RAMPART. for one thing, the beard looked GOOD on him. he was a dramatic bitch the entire time he was with the batch and his dynamic with them was hilarious. like hemlock, he died in a very deserved way, although i did see someone else say that his death didn't really make sense and i'm... inclined to agree. like, nala se isn't ever going to be redeemed in many fans' eyes and i don't think what they did with her in the finale was going to cut it. and rampart. GET OUT OF THERE DUDE. why would he be so interested in that data all of a sudden? especially given that he famously DOES NOT LIKE CLONES. why would he care? i know he wanted to bargain with the empire, but come on, that would never work and was a pretty stupid idea. it really did just seem like a moderately lazy way to try and show nala se doing something good while killing a villain in the process. i have no qualms with rampart dying, but why not have him die as a result of like. refusing to side with the clones or something? that would make more sense than him making a really dumb decision when he's supposed to be a smart guy. he didn't make it to vice admiral on looks alone remember!

and now for the cx-2/tech rant. i might make this into its own post, but for now what i'll say is that it simply would've made so much sense to have that goddamn operative clone be tech. we never saw his body. hemlock literally taunted the batch about this, which is SO something he would do if he HAD TECH. hemlock had a very hard-to-kick habit of doing weird science fuckery which would ABSOLUTELY lead to him trying to make tech into one of his operatives if he had him. we already know that the clones he tried to condition into being his operatives with this deep-cover program did not have to be willing to do it at all, because he tried it with crosshair. and we know that if the conditioning took, the clones would "come out different", so it would make PERFECT sense for tech to BE CX-2 and have no qualms whatsoever about hurting his old squad and a kind of different voice. like, look what happened to crosshair's hand. there are clearly physical side effects, and the process didn't even work on him. there were also tons of similarities between tech and cx-2 in my opinion, and all in all it just would've been a good choice narratively. he even could've stayed dead! like i said. i'll make a separate post.

finally, i feel like i should devote some rambling to tantiss, crosshair, hunter, wrecker, and omega. in the same way that i liked hemlock, i thought most of the choices with tantiss and the connections to omega were very cool this season. i think they handled crosshair coming back decently although it could've been a little more fleshed out. i liked that crosshair immediately became omega's fifth dad. i liked batcher! and omega's doll going to eva! all the force-sensitive kids were really cute and i liked them. emerie karr was like. alright i guess? i didn't find myself ever really caring about her a bunch but her story still made sense. and onto the male clones, i do feel like narratively they haven't really known what to do with wrecker for a while besides have him like. blow things up. which is unfortunate because i really enjoy him. then again it's just also not always an incredibly deep show and they are all clones who don't know how to talk about their feelings which i've been saying for a while now <3. i liked hunter going back to defending crosshair in "infiltration" and wrecker's "just like old times!" callback in the same episode. and i REALLY like omega becoming a rebel pilot, i think that makes a lot of sense for her and it also is, of course, sweet because tech taught her how to fly and all that. and finally, the scene with older hunter and omega itself was nice although i think they could've had crosshair, wrecker, and echo there. we all know hunter is the main dad, but he's not the ONLY one and the others are also very important. but oh well...

in conclusion. i do still absolutely adore this show and all of these characters. season 3 did not give me everything i wanted but it wasn't necessarily bad either. and i have to acknowledge that i am very biased and never going to get over them killing off tech so i mostly just can't think about that and have to live in denial. but anyway. season 3 was a mostly solid end to a show that started off so strongly i made a tumblr for it, and i will always love the bad batch for being my first ever hyperfixation and the show that really got me back into star wars <3

[365days365movies]

February 16, 2021: Carol (2015) (Part 1)

...Harold...

Yeah, I had to do this one. Partially because I knew about this film previously, as it was kind of a smash hit when it came out in theaters. It was about as big of a deal as Blue is the Warmest Color, which...we might get there. But, yeah, Carol was already on my radar when I decided to dip into LGBT cinema.

But also...you can thank my girlfriend again. There she is (as she’s choosing to represent herself through GIF form) below.

We love The Owl House. Anyway, I wasn’t aware of the meme until we were watching a movie, and she just screamed “HAROLD THEY’RE LESBIANS!” And after doing some research on that statement...that’s goddamn hilarious. And it all started with Carol, so the writing’s basically on the wall there.

Here’s what I know. This movie stars Cate Blanchett...OK, that’s it! Shall we find out more firsthand? SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap

In New York City, a man enters a bar and restaurant, where he sees an old acquaintance, Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara), who is having dinner with another woman, Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett). And, uh, lemme just say, we’re jumping off RIGHT away, and my girlfriend immediately starts screaming “HAROLD” at the screen.

Anyway, Jake invites her to a party with mutual friends, and Carol and Therese end their dinner date early. As Therese looks out of the window of a car on the way to the party, she thinks backwards through time, and takes us with her. FLASHBACK

Therese wakes up one morning around Christmastime, only to see her boyfriend, Richard Semco (Jake Lacy), ready to take her to work on a bicycle though Central Park. They talk about going to Paris on vacation, an idea about which Therese seems nonchalant. Therese works at Frankenberg’s, a department store that doesn’t exist. As is typical of the season in NYC, shoppers and their children flood the place. We went there on Christmas of 2019, and I grew up in the area. Trust me when I say Christmas in NYC is FUCKIN’ NUTS.

Therese works at the toy counter, and that’s when Carol arrives to get a doll for her daughter. Unfortunately, they’re out of the doll she’s looking for, so Therese offers a model train set to her instead, and the two hit it off basically immediately. And when I say hit it off, they HIT IT OFF. Like...the chemistry is IMMEDIATE. Maybe that’s Cate Blanchett’s pure charisma, but I’m just saying...they have the fastest chemistry establishment that I’ve seen yet.

But oh no! Carol’s forgotten her gloves! However, it doesn’t seem like much results from that, as the work day is soon over, and Therese and Richard go to a movie and a beer with friends Phil (Nik Pajic) and Danny McElroy (John Magaro). That night, having returned home, Therese looks at Carol’s gloves. Using information obtained during the department store visit, she mails the gloves to Carol, at her gorgeous mansion.

Carol is combing her daughter’s hair, as her husband Harge Aird (Kyle Chandler) arrives home with the mail. Things seem somewhat amiss, as Carol seems extremely unhappy. She later calls her at the department store to thank her for the gloves, and offers to buy her lunch that afternoon. She agrees, and the two head to a nice restaurant.

Over the course of the meal, it’s revealed that Carol and Harge are going through a divorce (yeah, that tracks), and Therese’s conflicted on how she feels about her relationship with Richard. Carol invites her to come over at some point, and she agrees.

Later on, while in traffic in the car of a friend, Abby Gerhard (Sarah Paulson), she seems to acknowledge potential attraction between her and Therese, although it’s not exactly set in stone. She heads to a party that evening. Meanwhile, she visits her friend Danny, an aspiring writer, who inquires about her hobby of photography, and then...kisses her...even though she’s dating a friend. Fuckin’ OH BOY, DANNY.

Harge takes Carol home, and he’s 100% still in love with her, and she’s just not feeling it. This may be related to the fact that she and Abby were also once a couple. Yeah. Harge is aware of this, and they were DEFINITELY a romantic couple in the past, which means...yeah, Carol’s a straight-up lesbian, it would seem. Harge says it “shouldn’t be like this,” and it’s not clear whether that refers to Carol’s attraction to women, or the divorce in general. It is the 1950′s, after all.

OH WAIT. Forgot to mention that, didn’t I? This film takes place in the 1950s, I think? Hasn’t been made super clear as of yet, but the aesthetic is certainly the 1950s, without much doubt. The next day, Carol goes to pick Therese up, and meets Richard. Richard tells Therese he loves her as they depart. Therese doesn’t return the sentiment. FUCKIN’ OOF.

As the two drive through Lincoln Tunnel together, their dialogue is quieted, and we get some interesting close-up shots of their eyes, lips, faces. And it’s definitely meant to suggest something more physical, something without words. In other words...Harold’s wife is starting to get the idea. Harold’s not quite there yet, though.

Carol and Therese go to Carol’s home in New Jersey, where she meets her and 4-year old Harge’s daughter, Rindy, who Carol obviously loves VERY much. That night, Therese plays the piano, and also shares her passion for photography with Carol. Carol shows interest in her hobby, when Harge suddenly shows up to take Lindy unexpectedly for Christmas with his family, away from her.

The argument that this results in quickly envelops Therese, as Harge confronts Carol about her presence there. The ending result, though, is that Carol is forced to let Rindy leave early with Harge. And yeah, it’s sad for her. Harge, on the other hand, is being an absolute dick. The two have a verbal and PHYSICAL argument outside, which Therese partially overhears.

As an apology for bringing Therese into this marital struggle, Carol gives her a ride to the train station, so she can make her way home that night. On the train, Therese cries. Is this because of Harge, because of Carol, because of a struggle with her own feelings? I’m honestly not sure. And it’s a good question.

Carol seems to believe that it’s because of her, though, as she turned her away somewhat abruptly. However, she quickly tries to make up for it by calling and apologizing. Therese says that she has questions for her, and Carol is more than willing to answer them. The next day, Carol goes down to her divorce attorney’s office, only to discover that Harge is trying to take away ALL of Carol’s custody.

And the reason for it? You guessed it! Carol’s a lesbian! Sooooooo, FUCK HARGE!!! With this otion, Carol won’t be able to see Rindy for several months, which hurts her greatly. Again, fuck Harge, he’s a dick who’s taking away Carol’s joy and time with her daughter solely because Carol isn’t attracted to him. GODDAMN, that absolutely sucks.

Meanwhile, Therese’s struggling with her own feelings, some of which may be for Carol, and actually STRIGHT-UP asks Richard his opinions on the origins of homosexuality. He believes that it can’t just happen like heterosexual love, which...I mean, 1950s, what can I tell ya, it wasn’t great. He point-blank asks her if she’s in love with a girl, and she says no, and leaves him in the street in a huff. And real talk, I feel bad...for Richard. Therese, too, but dude is genuinely in head-over-heels with Therese, and is just NOT getting the hint.

Carol and Abby go to have lunch, where Carol breaks the news. They share tenderness, as they have in the past, and Abby’s pretty clearly out of the closet, as much as one can be in the 1950s. Also, quick aside to note that Sarah Paulson rules...and moving on.

Carol then visits Therese, and gives her new camera equipment as a kind gesture. Carol shares with her the news of the struggle with her husband, and says that she’s going on a trip, to get away for a while. She invites Therese to come with her, quite spontaneously, and Therese equally spontaneously says yes! Fuckin OOOOOOOF to Richard, goddamn.

Also, exactly the halfway point! See you in Part 2!

[maggiecheungs]

2020 ~everything~ wrap

i finally have time to do all of the tag games that people have tagged me in over the past month or so! i cannot for the life of me remember who tagged me in which one, so i’m just putting ~everything~ in one huge post. if i tag you anywhere then consider it a standing invitation to do whichever of these you haven’t done :) in fact, this is me issuing a standing invite to any of my followers who wants to do it :) also, thank you all!

Creator Wrap: Favourite Works

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 (or so) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

this collection of philosophy quotes paired with thai bl series, (and its sequel) which is possibly my favourite thing i’ve ever made. for, uh, nerd reasons.

these gifted text post memes i made still make me laugh sometimes

this fic about green from 2gether, which i wrote in the notes app on my phone and published the same day. not my absolute best writing but i am very fond of it <3

i have a bunch fof friend zone dangerous area edits/shitposts which i like, but i’m particularly fond of my fzda as satire headlines (which now has a sequel!)

i also love my crisgood-walmart-lesbian post. i might send it in to gmmtv to try and convince them to do a crisgood-bffs spin-off

+ bonus: since i wrote this list i made this gifset (my first ever!) of jennie panhan in the shipper and i love her too much not to include her on here

+ extra nerdy bonus: this niche meme about Chinese philosophy, which still makes me crack up whenever I think about it

Favourite Creators/Follow Forever

i’ve completely lost track of who’s following who from which blog, so this is just going to be a haphazard, non-exhaustive list of people who i adore/admire/am vaguely intimidated by, mutuality be damned. maybe we talk all the time! maybe we’ve never interacted! maybe i am constantly there in ur tags... lurking... 👀... but if you’re on this list you have made me smile at least once this year and i love you for that alone <3

@wjmild kylie!! you make gifs of arm & tay & lee (separately or in various combinations) & the shipper & and kapook & random fluke pusit cameos & school rangers so i don’t have to <3 ilysm

@janeramida vianey, you have such impeccable taste in general, but your sizzy gifset in particular is so gorgeous it lives in my mind rent free

@applelapis bri, this post was a callout and i want you to know that it haunts me at night as i lie awake staring at the ceiling :((((( i hope you are happy

@gigiesarocha cata, i love it when you show up on my dash bc you have!! such taste!! also, every time you gif gigie i gain five years of life <3 pls continue doing the Good Work

@pvrrish​ eleni, i remeber legit thinking that this was an official poster when i first saw it, it’s so beautiful

@ahysopae​ juliette your khaithird fic is so good and it literally changed the way i think about khai (not an easy feat)

@kurosawadachi angel, whenever i think about grace’s speech i remember your gifset and get literal chills

@doctorbahnjit alexa, you have no right to be as funny as you are. your friend zone edits give me life

@khaotungthanawat sam, you’re probably sick of getting tagged in these lists by random strangers, but i just had to bc your gifsets are Pure Art

@tanwirapong roa, all your gifsets are so ✨iconic✨

faiza @asianmelodrama and rahul @petekaos! yours were the first two thai drama blogs i followed and for ages i lowkey thought of you as my fandom parents.

and some more blogs that make me happy: @curlykytta / @lee-thanat  / @fck-inspector-m / @pangwave / @tichawongtipkanon / @tawanv @kimmonv (violet istg i have spent more time this year trying to figure out how many blogs you have than i have spent admiring your gifsets. & i spend a lot of time admiring your gifsets) / @taytawan / @1akorn and @yihwas (and your radiant lovechild @lakornladies ofc) / @teh-ohaew / @vihokratanas (mel your gifsets are just so gorgeous) / @tootiredtoosadtooangry / @headcompletelyempty / @demiromanticmickey​ / and there are definitely more but my brain is a sieve so apologies if i’ve forgotten anyone!! i love you all!! 

2020 HIGHLIGHTS ✨

rules: list your top 10 shows (bl or not) you watched in 2020 (doesn’t necessarily have to be shows that came out in 2020 though!)

1. 2GETHER & STILL2GETHER

my first thai drama, and even after all the amazing shows i’ve watched this year, it still has a special place in my heart. watching 2gether was the first time i’d ever seen a queer romcom that just... was. for me, by the simple fact of its being, 2gether was revolutionary. and then still2gether came along and took all the best things about the first season and gave us something beautiful and quiet and lovely and just proved to me, once and for all, that queer happiness doesn’t need to justify its own existence. there can be gay cuddles on the beach for no other reason than that we want them. 

2. UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN

i don’t really have the words for this one but. it makes my heart so very soft.

3. FRIEND ZONE 2: DANGEROUS AREA

season one was mindless fun because everyone was an absolute trashfire and it was hella cathartic to watch, but season 2... wow. i love it for so many reasons: it has messy and authentic queer rep; the characterisation is excellent and i somehow care about all of the characters; amazing women taking centre stage(!); a wlw relationship with lesbian, ace and bipolar rep; multiple interesting plotlines; actual character development; arm weerayut as a chaos gremlin... absolutely one of my favourites of 2020.

4. CHERRY MAGIC

i don’t think i need to explain this one, which is fortunate, because i have no idea how exactly i’d describe the happy-warm-fuzzy-queer-seen-loving-affirmed-profound feeling that rises in my chest whenever i think about it. 

5. THE GIFTED: GRADUATION

confession: i liked season 2 more than season 1 (with the exception of the ending, which we don’t talk about). season 1 was enjoyable and interesting, but for me it was season 2 which made me love this series. it did some incredibly interesting and complicated things (even if it didn’t quite nail the landing): it pushed characters to the breaking point and wove so many layers into the story and questioned its own underlying themes. plus, watching it alongside everyone in the fandom made it 200% better. i love all of you and i love this show. egg girl 5eva.

6. THE SHIPPER

i 100% understand why so many people didn’t like this show, or found it problematic, but through some fluke it absolutely worked for me (even the ending). one day i will write an essay explaining my rationale, but for now i’ll just say that it’s one of my favourite shows about adolescence and queerness and identity and compassion and friendship and love that i’ve ever watched. 

7. YYY

this series is absolutely off its rocker, and it somehow managed to be one of the most affirming shows i’ve watched. it shouldn’t have worked by it did, and i love it so much.

8. 3 WILL BE FREE

absolutely iconic. amazing plot, stunning visuals, great characters, canon polyamory, jennie being incredible... what a series.

9. MANNER OF DEATH

i love the fact that this show exists; i love the mix of crime and romance; i love maxtul’s acting; i love the central relationship; i love bun. i know we’re not even halfway through yet, but this show is doing something special and i’m so grateful that i get to watch it unfold in real time. 

10. CHIHAYAFURU (SEASON 3)

odd one out on my list, but I had to include it. chihayafuru is my all-time favourite anime and it finally got a third season, which is somehow even better than the first two. mashima taichi is one of my favourite characters of all time and his storyline hits me on such a profound level. plus, in the years since i first say this show i’ve fallen in love with classical japanese literature (particularly heian poetry) so i had newfound appreciation for the karuta matches (aka i cried every time someone recited one of my favourite poems)

other favourites: together with me, he’s coming to me, sotus and sotus s, my dear loser: edge of 17, why r u, theory of love, wake up chanee!, gameboys, pearl next door, uta koi (anime), three kingdoms (2010), blood and water (netflix). (itsay would almost certainly be on my list if i’d had time to watch it. same with dark blue kiss, which i had to pause so i could do my assignments)

Final Thoughts

well, it’s been... a year (i don’t think anyone needs a reminder of the details) but writing this post has reminded me of all the amazing shows and people I discovered over the course of it.

thank you to everyone for being so lovely and creative and funny and quirky and kind and passionate. you’re all incredibly awesome people and i wish all of you the very best xx

[inclineto]

Books, November - December 2020

The Relentless Moon - Mary Robinette Kowal [I...was not prepared for an eating disorder to drive as much of the plot as it does; maybe you should be]

How to Read Water: Clues and Patterns from Puddles to the Sea - Tristan Gooley

Spoiler Alert - Olivia Dade [This could have gone so wrong; honestly, I expected to ditch it in the first two chapters, because usually I HATE giddy novels about fandom...and yet! it turned out to be wish fulfillment in the best possible way, somehow despite the inclusion of multiple tropes that I also dislike (least spoilery: “I betrayed your trust by not telling you my terrible secret that involves you when I had the opportunity, and now you can never know,” when that will obviously only make the eventual inevitable reveal much worse). Anyway: if you wanted actor RPF/fandom AU for a canon that doesn’t exist, here you go.]

Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait - Bathsheba Demuth

Desire and the Deep Blue Sea - Olivia Dade

The Way Past Winter - Kiran Millwood Hargrave [dnf]

Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism - Seyward Darby

Swordspoint - Ellen Kushner

Jeoffry: The Poet’s Cat: A Biography - Oliver Soden

Gaudy Night - Dorothy L. Sayers *

Yes, I’m Hot in This: The Hilarious Truth About Life in a Hijab - Huda Fahmy [I introduced this artist to a former boss, whose reaction was to immediately purchase and lend me every book she’s published; I’m overdue to mail this one back (and if your thought was “that book exchange sounds backwards,” well, ...yes)]

One by One - Ruth Ware [it’s fine, I didn’t have anywhere to go the next morning, I didn’t mind staying up until 2:30 to finish this, it’s fine]

A Deadly Education - Naomi Novik

Solutions and Other Problems - Allie Brosh

The House of the Four Winds - Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory

There Is No Good Card for This: What To Say and Do When Life Is Scary, Awful, and Unfair to People - Emily McDowell and Kelsey Crowe [self-help is not usually my genre, but given that I’ve written so many condolence cards this year that I’ve run out of condolence card-appropriate stationary - archives love using scenes from Hamlet on their exhibition giveaway cards, and they’re absolutely not okay to use for...really any occasion, but especially death - and am utterly unable to tell whether anything I’m writing is any good, and that my standard How To Be A Better Person manual is an etiquette book from the 1930s, what could it hurt?]

Orlando - Virginia Woolf

Around My French Table: 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours - Dorie Greenspan

Return of the Thief - Megan Whalen Turner

Spectred Isle - KJ Charles [still really fond of this one; still really want the lesbian ghost sequel]

Division Bells - Iona Datt Sharma [there’s one scene that threw me out of the world, and I��d kind of love to see whether it got editorial notes and if so, what...but on the other hand, I wasn’t expecting this to make me cry, and it did]

Serpentine - Philip Pullman, illustrated by Tom Duxbury [the story is slight; what you want to read this for are the illustrations, which are delightful]

The Rakess - Scarlet Peckham

The Midnight Bargain - C. L. Polk

The House of Green Turf - Ellis Peters

Beach Read - Emily Henry

Not the End of the World - Kate Atkinson

World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments - Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Eleventh Hour - Elin Gregory

Ahab’s Rolling Sea: A Natural History of Moby-Dick - Richard J. King [Let’s get this right out there: “Cetology” is my favorite chapter in the entire novel; I think it’s brilliant and fabulously funny and I loathe the lazy “everybody hates ‘Cetology’” trope that shows up everywhere - looking at you, Dave Malloy! - (although my mother tells me that her students did, indeed, universally despise it, which I find incomprehensible), so I’m always a little salty on approaching any Melville criticism: will they disrespect ‘Cetology”??? Sure enough, it’s there, but at least it’s on the way to explaining why you ought to appreciate it.]

Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love - ed. Anne Fadiman [the essay to read is Diana Kappel-Smith on the Peterson Field Guide to Wildflowers of Northeastern and North-Central North America]

Why Birds Sing - Nina Berkhout

Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country - Louise Erdrich

Barn 8 - Deb Olin Unferth

Black Sun - Rebecca Roanhorse

Where the Wild Ladies Are - Aoko Matsuda, translated by Polly Barton * [completely won over by this linked collection of present-day yōkai stories]

Ammonite - Nicola Griffith

Or What You Will - Jo Walton

Vesper Flights - Helen Macdonald

La Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman [I’m fascinated to discover that the sequence I remember from reading this the first time doesn’t start until more than halfway through! He can tell a riveting story, so I wish I trusted Pullman even a tiny bit...but I don’t.]

Written in the Stars - Alexandria Bellefleur

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears) - Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling [some of this would never be funny; it’s possible I’d find parts of it funnier if libertarians didn’t make me so damn angry]

The Glass Magician - Caroline Stevermer

[palmtreepalmtree]

Alright, this one is long overdue for an anonymous friend who really wanted me to review The Healer.  So after a short pause, here is another edition of

The Worst Movie on Netflix Right Now™

Heavy sigh.

Alright.  Let’s talk about this one.  

First off, I have to do some pretty serious content warnings, cause I know some people have been receiving some bad news recently and this review goes someplace you might not expect so, I love you guys, but please be aware that this review deals with: cancer, terminal illness, kids with cancer.  

Now back to the bullshit.

This is basically a movie about a fucking dumbass dude who has trouble making obvious decisions.  

SPOILERS AHEAD (are you new here?)

The main character Alec Bailey, begins the film as a total fuckwit.  He lives in England (somewhere about) and owns a failing electronic handyman business that he calls “The Healer” (in the most pathetic stretch of narrative bullshit, but okay) and is in deep gambling debts to the Russian mob. 

As our story begins, Alec discovers that he has a long lost rich uncle who makes him an offer: the uncle will pay off Alec’s debts if he agrees to live in Nova Scotia for a year.  The uncle will make all the arrangements: plane ticket, work visa, place to live, etc.  All Alec has to do is stay in Nova Scotia for a year.

OH NO!  WHATEVER SHALL I DO?!?  WHAT AM I GOING TO DO IN REMOTE NOVA SCOTIA FOR A YEAR AFTER ALL MY FINANCIAL CONCERNS ARE TAKEN CARE OF?  

HOWEVER WILL I SURVIVE IN SUCH A HORRIBLE PLACE?11?!?

I BETTER THINK IT OVER.

*eyeroll*

He finally makes his decision after getting chased by mobsters trying to collect on his debts.  ...like I said.  He’s a fuckwit.

So he moves into this beautiful house in Nova Scotia.  There’s no internet, which is a legit bummer, but his uncle has arranged a car for him to get to town.  Seems like a pretty good gig.  Even if it is going to be brutally cold come the winter months.  

Well as soon as Alec arrives in town, everyone seems to know and be expecting him.  He puts an ad out for his mechanical engineering services, again, under the name “The Healer.”  Well........... that goes awry in ways you would expect.  Suddenly, people start showing up requesting his physical healing services.

The thing is, the people from town seem to expect him to actually be a healer.  They keep referring to a secret and to him being “the chosen one.”  There’s no explanation for this.

Then there’s like... this whole weird interlude where Alec seems to kill the town priest, played by Jorge Ramirez (can someone please find this dude a good acting gig? my dude has decent comedic timing, he’s better than this shit). And Alec gets arrested.  Even though the priest got up and walked away.  All of this seems like a weird spinning of wheels before the actual plot.  Like why is this happening.  Why?  

Eventualllllllly......... his uncle shows back up and fesses up (in the most elaborate way possible).  People in his family have a gift.  Every other generation, someone is chosen.  And they have the gift of healing.  Based solely on being near to someone who is destined to be saved.

The gift can only be activated around their 30th birthday (if this sounds unnecessarily elaborate, that’s because it is -- and I’m even cutting shit out like the secret basement and portraits on the wall, blahblahblah).  The day after the birthday, the chosen one must decide.  They can choose to accept or decline the gift of healing.  Alec is given until midnight that night to make his decision.  WILL HE BE THE CHOSEN ONE?  WILL HE BE THE HEALER?!?!1?1

I mentioned that Alec is a fuckwit right?  

*Hagrid voice* YOU’RE A FUCKWIT, ALEC!

*squints*

Annnnnnyhow.  Alec goes to the town church where everyone is gathered at midnight (with thank you signs and a big round of applause) and he dashes their hopes.  HE WILL NOT BE THE HEALER, NO!  Even though it comes with no readily apparent downsides or costs.  And he’d be able to relieve the suffering of others with no cost to himself.  No, fuck it.  He’s going to go home.

The town takes it pretty well, all things considered.  The few people who had already been healed by being near him make speeches of gratitude.  They all wish him a happy birthday and tell him he’s welcome to stay.  Like these people are insanely understanding about him declining the gift of healing.  INSANE.

It’s worth noting that we’re about halfway through the movie at this point and we haven’t met one of the main characters of the movie.  

IN COMES ABIGAIL.  Cancer kid extraordinaire.  She is 14 years old.  Her parents have driven 7 hours to see Alec.  Their daughter is dying of terminal cancer, and all they want is for Alec to spend some time with her and give it a shot.  But she’s a pretty self-possessed kid.  She convinces the reluctant Alec to just hangout with her for the weekend to buck up her parents and give her parents some hope.  She doesn’t believe in the healing, so no harm, no foul.

And finally we’ve hit the meat of our story.  Will Alec be able to save Abigail now that he’s declined the gift?  Will he regret it?  WHY DID HE DECLINE THE GIFT!?1?

SPOILERS (really can’t discuss this movie without them)

It turns out, Alec had a brother who died of cancer.  And they were incredibly close.  In Alec’s words, “he was my everything.”  But now he deeply regrets giving up the gift.  Now he’s worried he can’t save Abigail.

You know what, man?  Same.

SO WHY THE FUCK DID YOU TURN DOWN THE GIFT!??!?

Listen.  Listen, listen.  I don’t know a single person who has been touched by cancer who wouldn’t jump at the chance to have a healing gift.  I mean, what the fuck.  Death sucks.  Losing someone you love from any kind of illness sucks.  Especially when it feels even remotely too soon.  And cancer is a particular type of FUCKING BULLSHIT.  It sucks.  

So it’s really fucking hard to understand why this FUCKWIT turns down the gift to begin with.  Death and suffering is not abstract for him when this movie starts!  So why we should feel sorry for his resulting anxiety, now that he has met someone who is directly negatively affected by his fucking BAD DECISION.

Anyhow, the rest of the movie is basically an exercise in how charming Abigail is and how much fun we can have with her before she goes off to die. Which like......... OH-FUCKING-KAY!

It should go without saying that this movie has a happy ending.  The music swells where it should.  The romance is consummated.  Abigail is healed.  All is going to be well with the world.

As a movie, this one has some weird fucking choices.  First, all of the music cues in this movie are just wrong.  “Faith” by George Michael is not a song about believing in something --- unless that something is having sex with someone who hurt you before.  And the lighting in this film is so beautiful all the time, it looks like you’re in a fucking ciallis commercial, even when you’re in the freaking police station, wtf?  

And last, the writing is just weird in places.  Like why have the love interest lie about being a lesbian through 90% of the film?  Why?  It’s not a good joke!  And  It is COMPLETELY fucking baffling to me why the good news of this story is delivered off-screen instead of on-screen.  If Abigail is going to be okay, why couldn’t she come back to Nova Scotia to tell him?  Why couldn’t she deliver that news in person!?  That’s just bad writing.  What the fuck is that?

But whatever.  

On the credit side, I think Oliver Jackson Cohen knows what he’s doing as an actor.  He’s not Oscar-worthy yet, but I believed him.  When he talks about his brother, I felt that.  And that could not have been easy in such a fucking weird script.

But as much as I’d like to end this review right here, there’s more.  Cause...

..........that’s not where the movie ends.  Not entirely.

As the end music plays, the movie is dedicated to Paul Newman who established summer camps for seriously ill kids.  And then we see images and videos of the kids all over the world enjoying activities at these camps.  

And that’s where this critique stops.  Sorta.  Paul Newman was a legitimately good person.  And his legacy of caring for sick kids carries on to this day, as was evident from all the footage.

But here’s the thing: healing as it’s depicted in this movie does not exist.  But easing the suffering of others does.  I wish this movie had been about that.  I wish it had been less focused on miracles and weird family legacies and selfish fuckwits and more about the kind of healing that Paul practiced.  But I guess that movie isn’t as fun, and it isn’t as hopeful and uplifting.

In the non-movie version of this story, Abigail Bryant died in 2014 at the age of 20.  Her obituary still appears online.  And it is still receiving comments and photos from cancer survivors and fighters, many of them who found her through the film.  And they talk about how the movie touched them.

On that level, it doesn’t matter what I say here.  It doesn’t matter that there are weird parts of this script or that healing like this is a fantasy.  This movie does its job.  It touches people.  And if it inspires just a few more people to give money to help relieve suffering, then that’s all that matters.

Ronald McDonald House Charities Cancer Research Institute Hole in the Wall Gang (Paul Newman’s org) Serious Fun Children’s Network (established by Paul Newman)

[liezbethparas]

LIEZBETH B. PARAS  

GRADE 12 HUMSS1

 AMSTERDAM, ONE OF THE MOST TOURISTS SPOT IN NETHERLANDS

             My dream is to travel all over the world but the country that I really want to visit or to travel was Amsterdam in Netherlands, Amsterdam is a beautiful city of the Netherlands and famous for quite some things. Amsterdam's flag represent the three dangers of Old Amsterdam the fire, floods and the Black Death, or that they were meant to ward off these dangers and did you know that the nickname of Amsterdam is Mokum It comes from the Hebrew word of Makan, which means city. Imagine you are in the Amsterdam you can see the wonderful canal system, 17th-century historic buildings, Amsterdam has 165 canals. One of the best things to experience when you're in an unfamiliar environment is friendly people. Fortunately, the Amsterdammers people are open, welcoming and don't hesitate to engage when they pass you on the street, the iconic Anne Frank House, the Red Light District. I do some research about in this place and I can say that there have so many beautiful and amazing structures there. When I am doing my research about this place I read some facts about Amsterdam that in the 13th century, Amsterdam was a small fishing village located behind a dyke/dam which protected them from the water from the Amstel River. At that time, it was located at the Lade of the Amstel. Amsterdam was named Amstelredam, which referred to the dam in the Amstel River.

     If you are a cat lover you can visit their Poezenboot , there is a cat boat. It is an animal shelter where they have more than fifty cats, It is open to the public and entrance free, but donation are welcomed to provide for the cats welfare. Amsterdam has had many canals, which is in total more than 100 kilometers. If you are a coffee lover, Amsterdam have a 200 above coffee shop. There are 1281 bridges in Amsterdam, 80 can be found within the canal ring and the most famous bridge is the Magere Brug or Skinny Bridge. One of the things that I really want to go in the Amsterdam is because you can use their bike to go around this place called Bike City, they have more than 1 million bicycles in Amsterdam, it is brilliant way to explore the key sights of Amsterdam is on a cycling tour. You can see there, their theatres, concert halls and the highest cent ration of museums per square meter of all cities in the world. One of the most popular Amsterdam visiting places for art fanatics is Rijks Museum, this Museum goes back to 1809 when it was built to house the brilliant art and antiques. There is also a huge library with an extensive collection of books and manuscripts. Traditional handicrafts, medieval sculpture, and modern art styles are also on display here. Van Gogh Museum is also one of the best visits in Amsterdam, and when you are looking church in Netherland it is in the Amsterdam’s west church, this became one of the most famous Amsterdam tourist attractions. In Amsterdam There is also a bar in every nook and corner of the Red light area.

   Royal palace of Amsterdam is located in Dam Square, it is one of the most popular places to visit in Amsterdam on every tourist’s list and the palace remains opens to visitors throughout the year who love to look at the Citizen’s Hall at one of the best Amsterdam attractions. Flower market is one of the most highly rated places to visit in Amsterdam locally known as the Bloemen market, don’t forget the tulip. Tulip season runs from the end of March until mid May, but the flowers are usually at their best halfway through April. More than 7 million flower bulbs bloom in spring. Amsterdam also have wide house that has 22 meters wide and you can found at Kloveniersburgwal. If you are thinking that this is all the places that Amsterdam have, you are wrong because there is more. You will discover the best things to do. So if you’re looking for a great vegan breakfast in Amsterdam, or you want to eat a great sandwich with avocado is you find it in the best breakfast of Amsterdam the Benji’s at the Wibautstraat, this is base of what I research so imagine eating their great sandwich with avocado is one of the best experience when you are there. In December, people in Amsterdam go to Christmas Market but not just in Amsterdam but in whole Netherlands, you will find the best Christmas Market there.

           In our imagination journey we continue of the most special and unusual museum in Amsterdam, the Tropen museum they say that this is one of the best museum in Amsterdam that is located in one of the most beautiful building there. Imagine yourself walking along from some beautiful building there and got some pretty places to enjoy a sunset over the Canals, isn’t amazing? I research other museum in of the Amsterdam I saw that there is sex museum or the Venus temple, this is the first and old sex museum in the world, the museum looks at many aspects of sensual love. Amsterdam Beside of the beautiful building and museum, near in Amsterdam had also had the most beautiful and amazing beaches.

           You’ve already read about the coffee shop, tulips, canals, museums and bicycles. There is many places that tourist spot in Amsterdam. I can see it in the picture and I can imagine the beautiful places there. Let’s go about Amsterdam, people of Amsterdam and their cultures. Amsterdam is the capital and most populous city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Amsterdam is located in the North Holland province in the western area of the country

            Amsterdam is an international city with a rich history and a highly diverse population from 180 different backgrounds enjoying a broad range of arts and culture People in Amsterdam didn’t like curtains because they letting people have a look inside and they want people that they are decent person, so instead of curtain they used hanging plants, Artwork and Tradition blinds. They say that if you walk around in Amsterdam you will notice that nobody draws there curtains. People there are very friendly they do welcoming and don't hesitate to engage when they pass you on the street and always ask with genuine curiosity and they are just more practical than other cultures. Amsterdam is packed with art spaces, showcasing everything from contemporary art, performance and photography. The locals show much respect and care for the environment, so visitors of the city will also need to show respect and in no way disturb the natural harmony of this place .You will recognize if the person is from that place of their physical appearance like tall, blonde, blue eyes, freckles, large smile, and athletic. The Dutch are famous for how tolerant they are and the Residents of Amsterdam have always been famous for honesty and sincerity. A large part of their history involves welcoming foreigners to the country and allowing them to continue living lives as they chose. People in Amsterdam are so social in fact they organize themselves so that they can fit everyone on their activities for the week. Amsterdam’s culture and social life is so varied and extensive.  There are more than a thousand houseboats, many of which you can stay instead of a typical hotel that located  along the canals and Amstel river. An interesting aspect if Amsterdam is that the city actually lies below the sea level, but has managed to stay above the water and its iconic canal system and wooden poles as the support.

Before I research about this place I really thought that this is just a small place but after I research more in this place I can say that this place will worth your money. If you just read all I write here you cannot wonder why many people wants go to Amsterdam and I hope you enjoy reading this about Amsterdam. Amsterdam has a reputation for being a fun city especially when you already been there, I want you to be one of many persons who wants to visit the most beautiful place, Amsterdam city. Amsterdam is also well-known for its open mind towards equality of the gay, lesbian and transgender communities. This place is also has a long running reputation as a cycle friendly city and they fully adapted around two wheeled transportation. This is a beautiful city and they also have free Wi-Fi throughout the property. If you’re looking for more places that you money will be worth it I recommend Amsterdam. This is not just a small city but there is so many tourist spot, I do mention a lot of places, building , canal and others but that’s not all. The city of the Amsterdam is filled with amazing things to do but not everyone gets to experience that and I hope that we will.

  REFERENCES:

https://www.greenandturquoise.com/ten-fun-facts-about-amsterdam-did-you-know/

https://www.fluentin3months.com/amsterdam/

https://www.visitingthedutchcountryside.com/noord-holland/facts-about-amsterdam/

https://traveltriangle.com/blog/places-to-visit-in-amsterdam                                      @queenlupitajones

[this-is-a-podcast-fanblog]

A Summary of TAZ Balance written by someone who has never listened to it*.

*full disclosure: I listened to the first episode and a half months ago, so I’m not going into this totally blind. 

My TMA summary post blew up, so I figured, let’s make another and ruin a different fandom. 

TAZ Balance is a show about Dungeons and Dragons. Listening to the first episode made me feel a lot better about the fact that I know totally nothing about Dungeons and Dragons, because if four straight white guys can know nothing about DnD and make it into one of the most famous fiction podcasts, there is hope for me. Are they all straight? They have straight energy. I apologize sincerely if I misidentified one of them. They’re all brothers except one of them is their dad. They make a lot of other shows together too. I wonder if they ever get sick of each other. And they met Lin-Manuel Miranda at a dinner party once, which started their now-iconic friendship, and is why they have a line in Hamilton. 

(By the way, I love Hamilton. Used to write fanfiction for it. You can still find it on my AO3, but it is dated, and thus is both badly written and quite problematic at times.) 

Let’s forget that my Hamilton phase ever happened and talk about TAZ Balance. 

The brothers and their dad each play a different character, except for Griffin, the DM. Griffin McElroy is the physical embodiment of those bougie steel-decor coffee shops with undrinkable coffee, the ones frequented by vegans, grad students, blonde church mommies, and guys in polo shirts who call themselves entrepenuers even though they live in their mom’s basement. I’m aware that I’ve misspelled entrepeneuer and I don’t care because the American economy is a scourge upon the Earth. Each of the other three plays a character who represents a different subclass of being gay. 

Justin as Taako Taaco from TV, who represents twinks. 

Travis as Magnus Burnside, a play on the word sideburns, who represents bears. 

Clint as Merle Highchurch, who represents what happens when otters go through a midlife crisis, grow a beard, and start practicing a religion.

It’s a good show for gay rep. Taako is gay. I myself am gay. Taako’s boyfriend is Death, but the badassery of his being Death is balanced out by him having the name Kravitz, a decidedly not badass name. There are no lesbians in this show because the show started releasing in 2014, before lesbianism had been discovered. There is a trans girl, though, and her name is Lup; she’s Taako’s sister and he affectionately calls her Lup De Loop. I think they used to be performers, like a twin dance act, but they gave that up. 

The plot of the show is like the plot of any Dungeons and Dragons campaign: the boys are going after magical items and they need to use them to stop the apocalypse. The first magical item is some kind of torch owned by Barry Bluejeans, who is a twunk that starts dating Lup at some point. He, like literally every other character, is played by Griffin. The second item is the Umbrastaff. It’s a magical umbrella that has a wand inside. Sort of like Hagrid’s umbrella. Exactly like Hagrid’s umbrella. I call bullshit. 

As with all DnD campaigns, the players have to enter dungeons, except after the first 10 episodes or so Griffin said fuck normal dungeons and started throwing in weird challenges instead. For example, the characters have to go in a race at one point, at one point they have to go shopping at Fantasy Costco, and then they have to be on a game show at another. I would say this is a rip-off of Voltron, because as we all know, I used to like Voltron, except Voltron actually came out after this show. So in an unlikely twist of events, this show is not like Voltron: Voltron is like this show. The meta is imploding my brain. 

There are a few other characters: Angus, a scrawny peasant lad, Somebody With A  Stupid Elven Name, a combination of everything you hated about the elves in Lord of the Rings, and Julia, Magnus’s dead girlfriend. Magnus used to live on a farm but then his town was burned to the ground and now he is a Tragic Hero haunted by the girlfriend he loved. 

Some other details: 

Clint is insanely good at rolling D20s

Travis is insanely bad at rolling anything higher than a D6

Griffin gets annoyed when his campaign is hijacked by people making dick jokes

Taako is extremely horny 

Goblins are called Gerblins. It is never explained why. 

They go to space at one point in a rocketship that looks like the Umbrastaff, so I’m assuming the Umbrastaff turns into a rocketship

This show is so fucking long and I have zero idea how anyone has the time to listen to it all the way 

Sound effects aren’t added until halfway through. This confuses everyone but is also never commented on. 

I’m probably never going to have the time to finish this show, but there’s my summary. Hope you enjoyed it. Now go read my Penumbra fics or I’ll cry. 

If you like these summary posts, send me a suggestion for what show you want to see next.

[thebarefootking]

The Rocket Ship

It's a well-observed fact that the strange ones tend to find one another.

We all have heard of cliques in high school (or even earlier) that, over the course of life, individually discover themselves (and often, then, each other) to be queer, neurodivergent, or some other kind of not-normative. Many of us belonged to them.

This is the story of my friend KV and how we fell into mutual weirdness.

KV and I met for the first time in daycare, just before I aged out at ten years old. They were half a year younger than me, and a grade lower in school. (They, like myself at the time, were not out as nonbinary; I didn't know anyone who used singular they pronouns or who was out as nonbinary, or even what that meant, until I was well into adulthood.)

We were fast friends, possibly because neither of us had bonded particularly well with any of the other kids at daycare. Maybe one or two would acknowledge and chat with us at breakfast, but most of our recreation time was spent just the two of us, playing imaginative games among the playground equipment.

The next year, I aged out of the daycare, and KV aged up into the same middle school I attended. I frequently made time to visit their locker between classes, and we grew closer.

One catalyst for this closeness was a number of musicals we performed in together. The first was a local production of Children of Eden which had open casting for children, and which was being directed by a mutual friend of our families. Both of us were accepted into the production.

As the children's cast for this play was only needed for two scenes or so, there was plenty of time to screw around doing whatever we wanted to do (so long as we were quiet about it). There, one of our playground games solidified into a full-on roleplay of sorts, an unending game in which the two of us took the parts of anthropomorphic cat people sent by a rocket ship from the planet Meowmix in the Eukanuba galaxy, in order to complete a long-term recon mission.

It suited our (to this day undiagnosed, but very much present) autistic traits. What autistic person hasn't at least once felt like a different species, trying to learn the culture and habits of Earth's dominant lifeform? We simply made a canon of it, and developed that canon everywhere.

We even had a secret substitution code, full of words that meant other things. "I'm going to buy a pineapple," they would say, before slipping off to use the restroom.

"I'll keep an eye out for sprinkles," I'd reply, and begin to covertly sweep the area for cops/untrustworthy adults/mall security… for some reason. 

It was the sort of game that could truly be an artificial context for anything else.

Mostly, though, it tended to be an artificial context for our profound isolation and loneliness, even if we never dared break character long enough to say so to one another. If our alien characters talked about being misunderstood and missing home, it meant we never had to admit to being estranged from our cohort. I, for my part, didn't even admit to myself what emotions we were loading off onto our game.

Besides, our 'Cat-Human' counterparts had something we did not, when it came to that topic: hope of a return to 'normalcy'.

I could write for hours about our game, and all the fun and weird things we got up to. (For a while, our thing was giving individual nickels [which we called 'engravings of Thomas Jefferson'] to random mall-goers, just for the thrill of human interaction, and to see how they would react. Once, one dude gave us an 'engraving of George Washington' in return, for a profit of 20 cents!)

Instead, though, I'll tell you about the ostensible end of the game.

It was another play we were in together, some two years after the first. Both of us had tried out for middle school 'children's' roles in the high school's yearly musical, and gotten our parts. Mine was a major speaking role; theirs was a chorus part. Even so, I still had few enough scenes that we had time to play in between.

Things went pear-shaped, though, in a way I didn't expect. On the first night of the show, KV was dealing with unexpected and intense stage-fright. I walked onto the backstage floor from the back entrance, and half a dozen other kid actors were surrounding them, trying to talk them down from what I now know was either a panic attack or an autistic meltdown. (Maybe both! Hell knows I sometimes can't tell the difference in my own.)

I told all the other actors to back off and give them some space, and then I moved in to check on them. They were speaking rapidly and almost incoherently about there being too many humans in the audience, and how they weren't ready to be seen. They were talking to me as if still in the game.

And I, twelve-year-old that I was, and in an empathic panic on their account, didn't understand.

I didn't know that they were communicating their emotions about the impending performance in the only way they knew how (that being, through the game we had both used for so long to frame our emotions). I thought they were confusing the game with reality. I thought that they were legitimately convinced they were a humanoid cat alien and that the Earthling audience was dangerous.

And with about twenty seconds to go before our scene, I was pissed. They picked now to play a stupid game?

I snapped on them. "It's not real, KV. You're not a freaking cat person. You're a human, and you already committed to doing this show. No one here is dangerous. There's just you, and you've done plays with a way bigger audience than this, before."

I didn't stop to think that this role was much more intricate than most they had performed before. Or that it was much closer to home, with their father leading the pit orchestra below, and likely with their entire extended family watching. Or any of the other reasons they might have had on this particular night that I couldn't know about. It didn't even occur that I was taking away their last support in the face of sheer panic.

In my opinion at the time, they were just being childish. And I let them know it, as viciously as I could manage in fifteen seconds. Then I pushed them into the lineup, went to my own spot, and seethed.

Really, I thought, how dare they try to use our game as a way to avoid responsibility?

We didn't talk much for a while after that.

Thankfully, it was a short while, and -- somehow; I have no idea how -- we eventually came up with a new game. Somehow -- I have no idea how -- we fell into a solid friendship again, if a slightly more formal one.

After all, we had to hold the fort; both of us were the topic of bitter rumours, usually about our sexualities and what we did with them. (Oddly, despite us both being rumoured to be lesbians, no one ever rumoured that we were together. I suspected it was because of the class year difference, but it's more likely because we each had closer friends that filled the rumour role better.)

At any rate, things moved along, all the way past my graduation from high school. Even then, I frequented the school football games, just to hang around the band, in which they played the saxophone. (This irritated KV’s father, the band director, to no end! haha)

And one night, at a house party one of our mutual friends was hosting, they verbally pulled me aside. We moved to an out-of-the-way porch swing in a darkened corner of the yard. For a while, we just played catch-up; there had been something of a lull in our friendship, just on account of scheduling. And then,

"There’s something I wanted to tell you. I'm a lesbian."

We were both silent for a moment.

"I know," I eventually admitted. Because I did; there had been too many hints for too long. Even beyond just rumour.

This, in retrospect, was a fucking shitty way to respond, but they took it in stride. After another silence, they prodded me further. "And what do you think about that?"

"I think it's a sin. But I still care about you, and this doesn't change my opinion of you."

Again, a shitty thing to say.

"Well," they said. "It's just... how I am."

I really can't overstate how unfailingly kind and polite they were to me, when I very much did not deserve it. Maybe they were trying to salvage the friendship. I don't know for sure. For my part, I just assumed that being gay meant you weren't trying hard enough. After all, I was attracted to girls, too, and I wasn't gay. Right?

Not that I said that to them. We didn't really hang out much after that, and they soon moved away for college.

College, and then the subsequent year and a half spent living away from my family, had an enormous impact on my views toward many things, but sexuality in particular. Eventually, I was able to apologise, some time after I got kicked out of my parents' house for coming out as bisexual. (Surprise!) We discovered at that point that we had both drifted away from Christianity in favor of eclectic paganism.

We've been oddly in step, that way.

When I told them recently that I was nonbinary, they told me that they were as well. Later, when they came to town, we got Mexican food and had a long talk, during which we discovered that we are both neurodivergent, and in some extremely similar ways… which caused us both to drop out of college.

We each finally got a cat, which we'd both been wanting for years.

Halfway through lunch, KV said one of the most weirdly intimate things I've ever had said to me: "If there was anyone on Earth I was drift-compatible with, it'd be you."

It was blown away for a second or so; that's like admitting to a form of soulmatedom. But then… I got it, y'know?

Because, honestly, there's no one I've been more understood by than them, even if we sometimes had to create a new language to make it happen.

I wish I got to see them more frequently. I feel like I can appreciate them now in a way I didn't know how to before. I haven't been the best friend to them; in fact, I've been downright abhorrent at times. But I think I can make it up, now.

[animentality]

I dont know who fucking recommended me Dante and Aristotle Discover the Secrets of the Universe but I started reading it today and I'm halfway through it

And I fucking love it.

It's rapid fire chapters with no unnecessary details.

Love it. Can't stand books with excessive details of the sky or the air molecules or the damn dirt. Nothing against that style of writing, it's just not my type.

The characters' thought processes are short and sweet and to the point. Perfect for my linear attention span.

The writing style is very much like a poem in that every chapter has a clear theme, a beginning, and an ending. It also syntactically reads like a poem since the simple way sentences are written forces a person's brain to stop and consider what's been said, like taking a breath.

It's honestly just a perfect book for me.

Not only is it about two Mexican boys falling in love, and I'm a sucker for gay/lesbian stories, especially ones including people of color, but it's just written in a way that really attempts to parse out meaning in the universe.

There's a simple beauty to the themes of the book, but it's also about a person's place in the universe.

How a teenager might make sense of himself.

It's just written so beautifully and to my exact requirements for what books I can get through.

So whoever recommended me this book on Anon.

Thank you.

You understood my request for books to read swimmingly, better than anyone else so far.

The Luck in the Shadows book was charming but...too slow and not my type of fantasy at all. I couldnt get through the excessive details but respect the author for writing bisexual characters without having it define them or be the only part of their arcs.

I just personally was not a fan of the fantasy world she was attempting to show me.

But the Dante and Aristotle book...I'm not even finished with it and I'm already in love with this very simple love story.

It's beautiful.

It kind of makes me feel like doukyuusei did, and that's high praise because I adored doukyuusei.

Just wonderful.

Tumblr FINALLY gives me something other than a headache.

[odaatlover]

Author Q&A

Q: What’s your sexual orientation? 

A: I identify as gay. 

Q: Which country are you from? 

A: The United States - more specifically the southeast. 

Q: Sometimes the level of detail and realism in the fic amazes me to no end. So I was wondering if you had taken inspiration on personal experiences or some real life people to write any scenes or describe some details? 

A: Thank you! I have taken a few things from my own life – most of it being the more sexual stuff – but for the most part I’m just putting myself into the mindset of these characters and just writing as if I am them. I’m a very empathetic person, and it’s incredibly easy for me to put myself into ‘other people’s shoes’, so to speak. So because of that, I am able to write as if I am actually Nicole, or Waverly, or whoever is speaking in the moment. I do it for every single character in my story. It’s kind of fun, because it’s almost like acting! I will say that the only character I feel that’s a little different in my story than in the show is Dolls. I think in the show he’s a little more “to the point”, but in my story he’s a bit more easy going and laid back. That wasn’t a conscious decision, it just sort of happened that way. But I feel like if he wasn’t an agent that was trained to eradicate paranormal forces, he would be more laid back like that anyways, so it works out! 

Q: Last movie you watched? 

A: The Miseducation of Cameron Post, and it was VERY good. Chloë Grace Moretz’s acting in the film is incredible. It’s very realistic and eye-opening, and I definitely recommend buying/renting it and supporting the queer woman who wrote and directed it! 

Q: What do you usually use to write your fanfictions? 

A: I use Word on my laptop, and when I’m out and get a sudden burst of inspiration I’ll pull up the Notes app on my phone and start writing. The Notes app is great because it’s linked to my laptop as well, so when I get home I can just pull up the app on my computer and everything is there from my phone, so I just copy and paste it into my Word document! Technology is great. 

Q: What does a typical day look like for you? 

A: I wake up, take my wife to work, go to my job where I teach some kids how to play percussion instruments, come home to do something creative (writing, creating music, playing an instrument, etc.), pick my wife up from work, do something with her – usually either watching TV or playing a board game, go to sleep. 

Q: What’s your favorite thing to write? 

A: Most of the time, smut. Which is why there’s so much of it in my story! But I also really enjoy writing the humorous stuff as well. 

Q: Favorite WayHaught kiss? 

A: Their first one…it was a really good first kiss 😏 

Q: Do you already have in mind other fics for the future? 

A: Actually, I’m in the process of writing one right now! It’s a WayHaught high school alternate universe story in which Waverly is a cheerleader and Nicole is a basketball player who transfers to Purgatory High in the middle of sophomore year (10th grade). The story focuses on Waverly and Nicole figuring out who they are as young adults, discovering their sexuality, and exploring their bodies – as teenagers do. The goal is to make it as true as possible to being a teenager in 2019, for all of the teens out there that are stuck in high school and need something to relate to. I feel like a lot of the high school fics are a bit outdated, or don’t “go there” enough to touch on the “uncomfortable” or “taboo” topics. And you better believe that this fic will! I’m getting close to halfway through with it – about 10 chapters so far – and have been working on it for the past month. I will begin posting that when I’ve completed it, so be on the lookout! If you’re interested in helping me out with some plotline ideas for it, you can fill out this survey here… https://www.opinionstage.com/odaatlover/wayhaught-high-school-fanfiction-topics-calling-all-teens-or-anyone-interested-in-providing-ideas 

Q: What’s your favorite holiday? 

A: Pride! …does that even count as a holiday? If not, then I’ll say Christmas. 

Q: What’s your favorite kind of date night? 

A: Something where we can converse pretty easily. Maybe dinner or walking around somewhere. 

Q: Do you brainstorm chapters before you write them? 

A: Sometimes I’ll have a layout. For example, this is the exact brainstorming layout I have written out in my notes app for the next chapter… 

Chapter 55 – (title?) 

- Dolls asks Nicole for advice on a date he has planned 

- Nedley asks Nicole to go “undercover” to find out what’s going on with Chrissy in her life 

- Waverly surprises Nicole with a romantic homemade dinner. They talk about their day, Waverly asks Nicole some questions about her past. 

There’s a little sneak peek for you guys 😉 But other than that, all of the dialogue just kind of flows naturally. There have been a couple of chapters where I didn’t have a layout at all and just let the words flow out of my brain, but most of the time I have an idea of the main plots of the chapter. 

Q: Waverly or Nicole? 

A: I relate more to Nicole, but I find Waverly to be more attractive. 

Q: Do you have any siblings? 

A: I have a sister who is 3 ½ years older than I am. 

Q: What color are your eyes? 

A: Blue. And they’re very sensitive to sunlight. I spend most of my life squinting. 

Q: Do you ever get writer’s block? 

A: Yes! Quite often, actually. Which is why your survey answers in regard to “The Grind” have been so helpful! Also, those who comment on my fic with ideas of things they want to see help too. Any time I get writer’s block, I’ll either read some fics to draw inspiration from, or I’ll just start writing something that’s completely different, just to get the creative juices flowing. Often when I have writer’s block and aren’t sure where to take the story, I’ll just do a random smutty chapter for the week. Hope you all are okay with that 😉 If you haven’t filled it out yet, you can find that survey here… https://www.opinionstage.com/odaatlover/the-grind-reader-survey 

Q: Lipstick or chapstick? 

A: If you’re asking which type of lesbian I am, chapstick. If you’re asking which one I prefer on my lips…chapstick. 

Q: Favorite concert you’ve ever been to? 

A: Blue Man Group! Although, I will say that I went to Taylor Swift’s Reputation tour back in August with my wife who is obsessed with her, and although I’m not crazy about her music, I’ll admit that the girl can perform. I thought I was going to hate it, but I actually really enjoyed it. 

Q: Is there a specific place that you write? 

A: Most of the time I just write at my house - either at the table or sometimes on the couch in my living room, but occasionally I like to go to the Barnes & Noble at the mall close to us and write there. My wife and I will go together and we’ll just sit at the same table – me writing and her reading a book – while we occasionally steal glances at each other and kick each other’s feet. It’s pretty great. 

Q: What superpower would you choose and why? 

A: Shapeshifting, because I genuinely want to know what it’s like to walk through life as other people, more specifically as a man 🤔 

Q: Windows or Mac? 

A: Mac. I have nothing against Windows, but everything I use is Apple and I’m used to it. 

Q: What’s a fun fact about you? 

A: I’m deaf in my right ear and wear a hearing aid, due to having had a lot of ear infections as a kid. Bonus round: I started wearing glasses at age of 2, but stopped needing them at 16 because my eye doctor said that my glasses corrected my vision and I didn’t need to wear them anymore, so now I’m glasses-free! 🤓 (<-- not me) 

Q: Favorite lesbian YouTuber? 

A: Rose and Rosie! They’re hilarious, and honestly remind me of my wife and myself. 

Q: Describe yourself in three words. 

A: Where’s my wallet? (Always using it, always losing it…) 

Q: What was the #1 song on the radio the day you were born? 

A: *searches song* Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-a-Lot 😂 Classic. 

Q: What languages do you speak? 

A: English and some Spanish. I can understand Spanish better than I can properly speak it. My wife is fluent in both, but her first language is Spanish, so I’m exposed to it often.

Q: Are you a DomKat fan? 

A: I love them! I genuinely enjoy watching their interviews, including the ones with them as individuals (Just Dom or just Kat). I also enjoy listening to the podcasts they’ve been featured in, more specifically Tales Of The Black Badge. I don’t ship them as a couple like a lot of people think they secretly are, but I love their friendship. You can tell they genuinely enjoy each other’s company, which in turn shows through their WayHaught scenes on screen. I love both of them, but I’m a bigger fan of Dominique. She’s just so adorable! 

Q: Do you have any celebrity crushes? 

A: Dominique Provost-Chalkley 😍 But also, Emma Watson. 

Q: What is your favorite season of Wynonna Earp? 

A: I think season 2 is my favorite. I loved season 3, but I liked season 2 better. And season 1 was inevitably them trying to figure things out since they didn’t have any fans yet. 

Q: What’s your least favorite thing about Wynonna Earp? 

A: The violence. They’ve toned it down a bit, which is good, but it was a little too much in the first season, which made it kind of difficult for me to watch. I’m not a huge fan of violence 🙅🏻 

Q: Do you have any other lesbian ships that you like? 

A: Well, I’ve watched the supercuts of pretty much EVERY lesbian ship out there, but I am a big Hollstein (Laura and Carmilla) fan. Spashley (Spencer and Ashley) was the first teen lesbian ship I was exposed to, so that will obviously always hold a special place in my heart. I loved Sanvers (Alex and Maggie), but since it ended I kind of lost interest in that ship. Big Calzona (Callie and Arizona) fan, and am super sad they’re no longer on the show. And I’m currently getting hooked on Avalance (Ava and Sara) now that we’ve just finished season 3 of Legends of Tomorrow. Basically, I’m very gay… 

Q: Do you have any fanfic recommendations? 

A: “From Afar” – Avrilsky. I know it’s popular, but I really enjoyed that one. Also, “How do I wrap my heart up for Christmas” by breezered is short, but sweet. 

Someone asked for me to tell my coming out story, and I’m going to make a separate post about that one tomorrow where I’ll share my story. So if you’re the person who asked me that, don’t worry, your question was not ignored and I will answer it! 

Thank you to all who sent me questions! ❤️

[cbk1000]

Jenn Recommends: Historical Fiction II

Welcome to another blog post in which I tell you what to read, and you just sit and passively do it because I have excellent taste in literature and also I’m kind of a bully. Check this tag for more recommendations.

Today we revisit historical fiction, because it’s one of my favourite genres and I have lots of suggestions, all of which you should definitely take to heart. My first list of historical fiction recs (which can be found here if you’re curious) was all gay, all the time; this list is slightly more heterosexual, although not much, because here be lesbians.

If You Like: Dickensian lesbians (and really, who doesn’t?)

Read: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

I’m going to lift the summary from Goodreads, because it’s faster, and I’m lazy:  Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home. One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum. With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways...But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.

This novel really hearkens back to ye old days of sensation fiction when literary thrillers were a bit slower, a little more cumbersome; they wanted more patience from the reader, who watches all the little threads get teased out bit by excruciating bit. There’s a sinister undercurrent you feel pulling at you till about the halfway point of the novel, when everything is suddenly upended and you sit up in bed screaming, “BRUH!!” because your stupid ass did NOT SEE THAT COMING EVEN A LITTLE BIT.

Waters is really good at this; her evocation of Victorian England is excellent, and transports you in a way that only the best historical fiction can manage. The narrative unfolds slowly in the first half, building upon itself with a sense of heightening doom that a faster pace could never achieve. As the reader, you’re in on the con (or are you?), and you know what’s going to happen, how it’s all going to end, where the burgeoning relationship between the two girls is painfully trundling along to--except you don’t. Waters pulls the rug out from under your feet, and she doesn’t just do it once, which is why I’m reluctant to say too much about the plot. AND--she does it all in really lovely prose that’s reminiscent of the time period she’s working in; I never really felt a modern hand guiding me. I could have been reading any piece of 19th century literature; the seams between the 21st century and the 19th are never visible, never jarring. If you, like me, are a slut for ornate Gothic literature, and/or you want your historical lesbians and you want them now, give this a try.

If You Like: Watching an oblivious pre-WWI Edwardian society hurtling to its inevitable doom through the eyes of a fucked-up family whose matriarch loses herself in the magic of her own fairytales instead of actually paying attention to the flesh and blood children they are based upon

Read: The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt  

From Goodreads:  When Olive Wellwood’s oldest son discovers a runaway named Philip sketching in the basement of the new Victoria and Albert Museum—a talented working-class boy who could be a character out of one of Olive’s magical tales—she takes him into the storybook world of her family and friends. But the joyful bacchanals Olive hosts at her rambling country house—and the separate, private books she writes for each of her seven children—conceal more treachery and darkness than Philip has ever imagined. As these lives—of adults and children alike—unfold, lies are revealed, hearts are broken, and the damaging truth about the Wellwoods slowly emerges. But their personal struggles, their hidden desires, will soon be eclipsed by far greater forces, as the tides turn across Europe and a golden era comes to an end.

It actually took me about a month or so to read this book--not because I kept putting it down and then begrudgingly picking it back up again, but rather because I purposefully wanted to draw it out. The language, the atmosphere--it was all just something I needed to savour. This is a slow, thoughtful book that focuses rather minutely on the dramas of one family and the people who become entangled with it; it will not be for everyone (which is a caveat attached to every book, but I feel this one in particular requires the warning). This is a book about the creative process and the myriad escape hatches it offers us from the real world, sometimes to our own detriment. It is a book about WWI even though the actual war inhabits only the last quarter of the book. It is a book about the options of women in a time when society was still debating whether or not they should be considered full-fledged people. 

This is one of those books that sort of just crawled inside me and stayed; I didn’t want to leave it. I think part of my reluctance came in not wanting to reach the end, knowing WWI was bearing down on these characters, knowing many of them wouldn’t make it, because that’s what the war did to an entire generation: it erased it. I knew it was going to erase whole swathes of the story I had spent hours devoting myself to. I knew for so many of the characters there wasn’t going to be a tidy ending, and there wasn’t; they just stopped, abruptly. You follow generations of the family and in the end feel cheated, not through any failing of the author, but through the cruel and arbitrary machinations of history and the things it has perpetuated against the human race through our own blind stupidity (I’m still upset about WWI, ok??? please don’t touch me).

There was magic in this book, in Olive’s fairytales, in the puppet shows of a family friend: but it’s magic that the matriarch in particular is using to encapsulate herself. It’s not a childlike reverence for things we forget about as we age; it’s a hiding. It’s a sort of disappearance into ourselves and our storytelling because we can’t bring ourselves to look at the material world in all its varying shades of shit and wonder.

Anyway, I had feelings, ok?

If You Like: Italian people, anatomically impressive statues, and erotic descriptions of marble (seriously, I think my dude Michelangelo might have put his penis in a block or two of it)

Read: The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone 

This is a biographical novel of Michelangelo which begins when he is thirteen and still in the very beginning throes of his artistic talents. Stone apparently read through Michelangelo’s entire personal correspondence (and patiently waited years for it all to be translated) and also moved to Italy to write this, so that’s dedication, and the least you can do to repay it is sit through the sometimes vaguely uncomfortable descriptions of Michelangelo’s artwork and his sexual tension with it.

While this doesn’t have the literary merits of the previous recommendations, it’s meticulous historical fiction; Stone painstakingly recreated Michelangelo and his work. It’s an interesting peek into a niche section of art history and also covers part of the turbulent Renaissance period and the powerful politics at play which snare the hapless Michelangelo when all he wants to do is sculpt (and probably wank to) realistic marble people, goddammit. It’s entirely believable as a biography (though it is, in fact, fiction).

Bonus: Michelangelo’s poetry, which was not a thing I even knew about prior to reading this book.

[goblin-phannie]

spoilers alert for orange is the new black but it’s been years since the final season dropped so

okay i have made a discovery and it is that oitnb is the most emotionally tolling show to try and rewatch. i have discovered this while watching it with my s/o who has never seen it before and would like to note my personal experience so far (we’re about halfway through s4):

straight up wanting to cry every time poussey is on screen

saying “oh my god i love this character” any time literally anyone appears on screen, no matter how insane they initially appear. except for, yknow, the obvious exceptions. rip v

speaking of exceptions from piscatella’s first appearance i literally want to die or run away that man has such a terrifying energy. his first interaction with red? straight up villain energy

literally all the fucking foreshadowing about poussey’s future. her and brook both desperately needing companionship and love and then. fuck. i’m still not over this tbh

the way the show starts out like oo quirky lesbians in prison! controversy! and becomes deeply connected to real world issues like transphobia, racism, class inequality, and immigration and it’s handled so elegantly that your connection to the characters reinforces how important all those issues are

the way it’s actually structured overall as a tragedy. the odds of an inmate’s story ending well is practically 50/50. look at piper and alex, for just one example. the highlight of the entire show is the end of season 3 when everyone swims in the lake and it is literally all downhill from there for them ALL. the quality remains insanely high, obviously. but. like damn

and finally having to resist the urge to point out moments of foreshadowing or super smart writing to s/o because all the twists are also SO GOOD that knowing them beforehand would ruin the experience. “is there a riot at some point?” “uh, at some point, yeah....!” “why?” “hm....”

[branlovestowrite]

Killian? Is that you?

I got inspired to write this little one shot this morning, just in time for Thanksgiving. With all the angsty Knightrook stuff out there, I wanted to add some fluff to the mix.

Inspired by this post from @thesschesthair​

Summary: Henry and his wife Jacinda move to Seattle and discover that their neighbor looks just like Henry’s stepfather. No magic AU.

“Are you sure about this?” Henry asked as he walked around the apartment. It wasn’t much. Of course, he and Jacinda had stayed in smaller places than this, but, with the baby on the way, he couldn’t help the thought that this would quickly become very cramped.

“You having second thoughts?” Jay asked. He couldn’t help the smile pulling at the corners of his mouth as he looked upon his wife. How had this goddess agreed to marry him?

“I’ll gladly go anywhere as long as I am with you. I just don’t know if it’s a good idea for us to be so close to your stepmother and stepsisters.”

“Victoria and Ivy won’t be a problem. And Ana and I have always got along well. It will be nice to be close to her again. She’s so excited to be an aunt.”

“I know, and I’m glad you’ll get to spend some time with her again. I guess I’m just nervous. This is a big leap of faith for us.”

“I know. It’s a lot. Starting the food truck with Sabine. Moving to a new city. You finally making time to write your novel. It’s all big leap of faith. But, no risk, no reward, right? And we have been saving up for this for two years. We can make this work.”

“You sound more optimistic than usual. I guess having breakfast with Sabine infused you with confidence.”

She smiled. “Something like that.” She stepped closer and took his hands in her own. “I know the baby throws a wrench in all our plans, but it’s not like it’s insurmountable. We can do this.”

“The baby is what makes me so nervous. Is it really a good idea for me to spend so much time focusing on my writing? Maybe I should try to find a steadier job.”

“You make good money driving for Swyft, as you’ve told me many times. Stop doubting yourself, Henry Mills. I’m supposed to be the one with insecurities that you help me overcome.”

“I love you,” Henry whispered as he pulled his wife in for a kiss.

Jacinda pulled back and smiled momentarily before turning her head abruptly to look at the intruder who’d suddenly stepped through the open door of their new apartment.

“Helloooooo,” the newcomer said. She was a teenager with wavy blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. Despite her innocuous appearance, Henry couldn’t help but feel like there was something off about her.

“Hi there,” Jacinda responded in a wary tone.

“Are you the new tenants?” She had some kind of British accent, though he couldn’t quite place the region.

“We are.” He stepped forward and extended his hand. “Henry Mills, and this is my wife, Jacinda.”

“Alice Rogers,” She replied, capturing his hand in a firm shake. With her free hand she reached into the pocket of her oversized jacket and pulled out a jar of something that looked like jam, but in a bright orange color. She handed it to Henry. “Here’s a little welcome to the neighborhood gift. It’s marmalade. I make it with my Papa. He and I live across the hall.”

“Thank you,” Jay said as she took the jar from Henry. “Is your Papa around? I’d like to start meeting our neighbors.”

“He’s at work. He’s a cop. Well, detective, actually. He just got promoted. I’ll bring him by later.” Alice turned and walked off without waiting for a response.

“Well… she’s… peculiar.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Jacinda replied.

“I’m sure she’s harmless. She’s just a quirky teenager. It wasn’t that long ago that you and I were teens. You know how hard you try at that age to establish your identity.”

“You sure you’re not a psychologist?”

“Just an observer of people. That’s what makes for a good author, right?”

Jay smiled and give him a quick peck on the lips before walking into the bedroom to talk about furniture placement.

It was a week after they moved in before Henry actually met Detective Rogers. Apparently his cases kept him working odd hours. Then, one Saturday morning, returning home after a grocery run, Henry saw the door to Alice’s apartment open and her Papa step out. Only, it wasn’t her Papa. It was Henry’s stepfather.

“Killian?” Henry asked as he stared at the man. It didn’t make any sense. Killian was supposed to be in Storybrooke with Henry’s mom, Emma, helping raise his stepsister, Hope. What was he doing in Seattle, leaving Alice’s apartment?

The man didn’t appear to have heard him. He extended his hand. “You must be Henry. Alice told me about you. I’m Joel Rogers. Welcome to the building.”

He was stunned. The likeness was uncanny. Their voices even sounded the same. It was as if they were twins. Rogers cleared his throat, and Henry noticed the outstretched hand. He took it and gave a nervous shake. “I’m sorry. I’m just a little confused. Do you have a brother? A twin named Killian?”

“That’s an odd question. I guess it’s altogether possible, but the only family I know of is my Alice. I’m an orphan.” Rogers laughed nervously. “Why? Have you met him?”

Henry had a strong urge to pull out his phone and face time with Killian at that very moment, but he ignored it. He needed to talk to Killian first. What were the odds of finding his stepdad’s doppelganger on the other side of the country? “Um, you look like someone I know is all. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. I’d better get inside. I need to put the milk away.”

“Indeed. Don’t want it to spoil. Well, I’m sure I will see you around Henry. Have a good day.”

“You too.”

After he put the groceries away, he checked on Jacinda. She was still sleeping. She’d been having bad heartburn from the pregnancy, and it was disrupting her sleep. Deciding to let her rest some more, he closed the door to their bedroom and settled on the couch. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed his mom.

“Henry,” she answered warmly. “It’s nice to hear from you. How’s Jacinda?”

“She’s doing OK. Just a lot of heartburn at night.”

“Poor thing. I had heartburn with Hope. Maybe it’s a sign that your baby is a girl.”

“Yeah, maybe. Hey, is Killian around?”

“Yeah, he’s making lunch for Hope. Hang on a minute.” Henry heard her walk into the kitchen and hand the phone to her husband.

“Hello lad,” Killian said as he took the phone. “Everything alright?”

“Oh yeah, everything is going well. Better than I could have hoped. But something weird just happened. Do you know if you have a twin brother?”

Killian chuckled, and it sounded so much like Rogers. “I don’t believe I do. The only brother I know of is Liam. Why?”

“Because I just met my neighbor, and he looks and sounds just like you.”

“Bloody hell. Did you get a picture?”

“No. I didn’t want to freak him out. I wanted to talk with you first. And anyway, he’s a cop so he probably wouldn’t appreciate me taking random pictures of him.”

“Probably not. How strange. I’ll call Liam and ask him, but he probably won’t be of much use. You know I was five before Liam learned of my existence.”

“Okay, thanks. Let me know what he says.”

“I will, lad. Talk soon.”

Liam had no idea why there was a Killian lookalike in Seattle. The mystery continued to grow. Unfortunately, Henry hardly ever saw Detective Rogers. One day, when he should have been working on his book, it all got to be too much to ignore. He dug out a photo album his grandma made for his graduation. It was a scrapbook, with the pages meticulously laid out and the photos glued in place. He found the picture he was looking for and removed the page from the protective sleeve. There was a little guilt as he ripped the photo away, tearing the page and a few accompanying stickers, but he shrugged it off. His grandma would forgive him.

He stepped out of the apartment and made the short walk across the hall, knocking on Rogers’ door. Alice answered.

“Hello Henry. How can I help you?”

“Alice… shouldn’t you be in school?”

“Today’s a teacher planning day. Whatcha got there?” Before he could react, she snatched the photo from his grasp and stared at it closely. “What’s this? Why do you have a picture of my papa? And who’s that woman in the wedding dress?”

“That woman is my mom. Well, one of them, anyway… that’s not important. What is important is that the groom is not your papa. It’s my stepdad.”

“So… you have two moms and one of them is married to a man who looks exactly like my papa? That seems strange.”

“You’re telling me. I’ve been wondering about it for over a week. I asked Killian, that’s my stepdad, Killian Jones, and he had no clue. And your dad mentioned to me that he’s an orphan.”

“He is. Well, I guess that makes you my cousin, in a way. Welcome to the family!” She reached out and wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug.

“Whoa, whoa,” Henry said as he extracted himself from her grasp. “Two things. One, I don’t think it works that way. And two, I’m not sure I want to be seen hugging my underage teen neighbor in the hall. People like to talk.”

“I’m a lesbian. Everyone here knows that. And even if they don’t, let them talk. People always talk because they need something to occupy their minds. Anyway, grab your keys. Let’s go.”

“Go? Where?”

“Down to the station to find papa and show him this.” She still held tightly to the photograph. She was already halfway down the hall before she turned around. “Come on, cousin Henry.”

Henry grabbed his keys and locked his apartment door before following her down the stairs.

They walked into the station. Alice acted like she owned the place, but her pass did not extend to Henry. Every officer gave him a wary look. She led him to an empty desk with a nameplate reading ‘Joel E. Rogers.’

“Your dad’s middle initial is E?”

“Standards for Edward.”

“Did people call him the Jolly Roger when he was a kid?”

The desk sergeant overheard him and laughed loudly. “We still do!”

“Oi!” Alice yelled. “I thought you called him Eagle Scout now.”

“He can have two nicknames,” the sergeant yelled back.

“Come now, Marley,” Rogers said as he walked out of a conference room. “I have three nicknames. Don’t forget about Captain Hook.” He held up his left hand, which was gloved and looked stiff. Henry realized for the first time that it was a prosthetic.

“Now that there’s a chance you could make Captain one day, I’d rather not call you that one,” Marley replied. The phone rang before he could say more, and he answered it. Rogers walked to his desk.

“Hello my little love.” He pulled Alice in for a brief hug. “Henry, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Um… “ Henry began, but Alice jumped in.

“We came to show you this, Papa.” She held out the photo. Rogers took it in his good hand and stared at it for a moment.

“That’s me, but I don’t recall this moment. I’ve never been married.”

“That’s not you. That’s my stepdad. His name’s Killian Jones. He lives in Maine with my mom and stepsister.”

“Bloody hell…”

“That’s what he said when I told him. His mother died when he was young and he was abandoned by his father. He never knew anything about having a twin.”

“So, you think this man could be my long-lost twin brother?”

“What other explanation could there be?”

“I don’t know…” he wiped his face with his hand. “Bloody hell.”

“Henry,” Alice said, “give me your phone. Unlock it first.” Henry’s eyes never left Rogers as he handed his phone to Alice. “Come with me, boys.” She led them into the same conference room Rogers had just emerged from. Fortunately, it was empty. Once they were all in, Alice opened the FaceTime app and tapped the icon to call Killian.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Henry asked.

“Why delay? I always find it’s better to rip the bandage off in situations like this.”

Killian answered after a moment. “You’re not Henry.”

“Nope. My name’s Alice. But don’t worry, Henry’s here and he’s fine.” She motioned to Henry and he stepped behind her, waving over his shoulder.

“Henry, what’s going on? Everything okay with Jacinda?”

“Yeah,” Henry said, taking the phone from Alice. “Just needed to show you something.” He walked over to Rogers and stood next to him, angling the phone to get the other man in the frame. “Killian, I believe this man may be your twin separated at birth. Meet Joel Rogers.” He handed the phone to Rogers and stepped back.

“Bloody hell…” Killian said.

“You’re telling me, mate,” Rogers replied. “Apologies for the shock. My Alice can be a bit too direct at times.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not in the room, Papa.”

Rogers smiled at his daughter. Henry heard Killian chuckle, and knew he was smiling too.

“I have a daughter as well. She can be quite the handful.”

“Just wait until she’s a teenager.”

Henry hustled around the apartment, preparing the small space for Thanksgiving dinner. Fortunately, Sabine had offered to cook. The food truck she ran with Jacinda was parked downstairs, the two friends using the commercial grade equipment to prepare the meal. Henry was tasked with rearranging furniture while they cooked. His mom, Killian, and Hope would be arriving at any minute, and Rogers and Alice would be joining later, along with Sabine’s mother. Once he was satisfied with the arrangement of seats, he returned to his phone, compiling the perfect playlist for the day.

Rogers and Killian had taken to speaking almost daily, but today would be their first face-to-face meeting. Their bond became very strong, very fast. Henry could see they were both happy to have another family connection.

Alice became a regular at Henry and Jacinda’s apartment. With her dad working such odd hours, Jay had insisted that Alice have dinner with them more frequently. She was indeed quirky, but she had a kind heart. She’d already offered to babysit once Lucy was born. Henry wasn’t sure Jay would let anyone near Lucy for the first few months, but his mother assured him that she would relent eventually, and then they’d be glad to have a teenage relative across the hall to help give them a break.

Henry reflected on the last few months in Seattle. The food truck was doing well, and he’d made significant progress on his book. And to top it all off he had discovered a long-lost Uncle and cousin. For Henry Mills, who prided himself on his family, two new additions were more than welcome. He definitely had a lot to be thankful for this year.