#discovering his work has brought me so much joy in this shitty year

[brotheralyosha]

John le Carré, who forged thrillers from equal parts of adventure, moral courage and literary flair, has died aged 89.

Le Carré explored the gap between the west’s high-flown rhetoric of freedom and the gritty reality of defending it, in novels such as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Night Manager, which gained him critical acclaim and made him a bestseller around the world.

On Sunday, his family confirmed he had died of pneumonia at the Royal Cornwall Hospital on Saturday night. “We all deeply grieve his passing,” they wrote in a statement.

His longtime agent Jonny Geller described him as “an undisputed giant of English literature. He defined the cold war era and fearlessly spoke truth to power in the decades that followed … I have lost a mentor, an inspiration and most importantly, a friend. We will not see his like again.”

His peers lined up to pay tribute. Stephen King wrote: “This terrible year has claimed a literary giant and a humanitarian spirit.” Robert Harris said the news had left him “very distressed… one of the great postwar British novelists, and an unforgettable, unique character.” Adrian McKinty described Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as “quite simply the greatest spy novel ever written”, while bestselling crime author Richard Osman called him “the finest, wisest storyteller we had. What an extraordinary career.”

Born as David Cornwell in 1931, Le Carré began working for the secret services while studying German in Switzerland at the end of the 1940s. After teaching at Eton he joined the British Foreign Service as an intelligence officer, recruiting, running and looking after spies behind the Iron Curtain from a back office at the MI5 building on London’s Curzon Street. Inspired by his MI5 colleague, the novelist John Bingham, he began publishing thrillers under the pseudonym of John le Carré – despite his publisher’s advice that he opt for two Anglo-Saxon monosyllables such as “Chunk-Smith”.

A spy modelled on Bingham, who was “breathtakingly ordinary … short, fat, and of a quiet disposition”, outwits an East German agent in Le Carré’s 1961 debut, Call for the Dead, the first appearance of his most enduring character, George Smiley. A second novel, 1962’s A Murder of Quality, saw Smiley investigating a killing at a public school and was reviewed positively. (“Very complex, superior whodunnit,” was the Observer’s conclusion.) But a year later, when his third thriller was published, Le Carré’s career surged to a whole new level.

Smiley is only a minor figure in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, but this story of a mission to confront East German intelligence is filled with his world-weary cynicism. According to Alec Leamas, the fiftysomething agent who is sent to East Berlin, spies are just “a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors, too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives”. Graham Greene hailed it as “the best spy story I have ever read.”

According to Le Carré, the novel’s runaway success left him at first astonished and then conflicted. His manuscript had been approved by the secret service because it was “sheer fiction from start to finish”, he explained in 2013, and so couldn’t possibly represent a breach in security. “This was not, however, the view taken by the world’s press, which with one voice decided that the book was not merely authentic but some kind of revelatory Message From The Other Side, leaving me with nothing to do but sit tight and watch, in a kind of frozen awe, as it climbed the bestseller list and stuck there, while pundit after pundit heralded it as the real thing.”

Smiley moved centre stage in three novels Le Carré published in the 1970s, charting the contest between the portly British agent and his Soviet nemesis, Karla. In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, he unmasks a mole in the highest echelons of the British secret service, while in The Honourable Schoolboy he goes after a money laundering operation in Asia, before piecing together Karla’s Swiss connections in Smiley’s People. The world of “ferrets” and “lamplighters”, “wranglers” and “pavement artists” was so convincingly drawn that his former colleagues at MI5 and MI6 began to adopt Le Carré’s invented jargon as their own.

As the cold war came to a close, friends would stop him in the street and ask: “Whatever are you going to write now?” But Le Carré’s concerns were always broader than the confrontation between east and west, and he had little patience for the idea that the fall of the Berlin Wall signalled any kind of end either for history or the espionage that greased its mechanisms. He tackled the arms trade in 1993 with The Night Manager, big pharma in 2001 with The Constant Gardener and the war on terror in 2004 with Absolute Friends.

Meanwhile, a steady stream of his creations made their way from page to screen. Actors including Richard Burton, Alec Guinness, Ralph Fiennes and Gary Oldman relished the subtleties of his characterisation even as audiences applauded the deftness of his plotting.

Le Carré returned to Smiley for the last time in 2017, closing the circle of his career in A Legacy of Spies, which revisits the botched operation at the heart of the novel that made his name. Writing in the Guardian, John Banville hailed his ingenuity and skill, declaring that “not since The Spy has Le Carré exercised his gift as a storyteller so powerfully and to such thrilling effect”.

After decades of being painted as a shadowy, mysterious figure, mainly for his uninterest in publicity or joining the festival circuit, Le Carré surprised the world in 2016 by releasing a memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel. Detailing his fractured relationship with an abusive, conman father and a lonely upbringing after his mother abandoned him aged five, Le Carré detailed the strange life of a spy-turned-author, being asked to lunches by Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch. Having spent four decades living in Cornwall, married twice and raising a son, Nicholas, who would write novels himself under the name Nick Harkaway, Le Carré conceeded: “I have been neither a model husband nor a model father, and am not interested in appearing that way.”

The consistent love of his life was writing, “scribbling away like a man in hiding at a poky desk”.

“Out of the secret world I once knew I have tried to make a theatre for the larger worlds we inhabit,” he wrote. “First comes the imagining, then the search for reality. Then back to the imagining, and to the desk where I’m sitting now.”

[writerofcreativity]

I created this a two months ago. A Jujutsu Kaisen fanfic and my first one. I went over this and I think it's okay. Will people care to read this? I don't know. I just post this.

All Jujutsu Kaisen characters belongs to Gege Akutami.

I will be having a crossover with my characters from another project.

Right now, this doesn't contain any spoilers.

3 2 1

Itadori Yuji found himself being surrounded by dead corpses of Curses and humans. Screams can be heard echoing throughout the crackling flames. "What the hell is going on?" He asked himself, wanting to help those in need but his body stood. As if his feet are rooted to the ground.

He felt a hand pulling at his pants. It made him looked down and his eyes widened in shock. The deceased are pulling him down.

"Please help us."

"It hurts."

"Kill me."

Yuji can not help but scream "this has to be a nightmare!" He shouted.

"Wake up."

The teenager shuts his eyes, hoping that this will end.

"Wake up, Brat!"

***

Yuji got kicked in the face and it made him jumped out of bed. "Was that just a dream?" He can feel himself sweating and his heart pounding. To be honest he felt relieved, it means that it was not real and those corpses are still alive.

"We have a problem on our hands." Yuji hears Sukuna talking to him and looks at his hands to look for the mouth, but he did not see any.

"Over here." Sukuna spoke.

Yuji got startled to see Sukuna standing in front of him "you bastard, you brought me to your Domain Expansion again? You want to settle the score? I can give it to you and make you cry!" He yelled.

Sukuna sighed "look around you, ya moron." He said.

Yuji was not going to fall for it but he still look and see that they are inside his room. "Either you're trying to trick me or I can do the Domain Expansion too." He said and feels excited to pull that off.

"As if I would do that. My Domain is much better than this pathetic excuse for a room. Also you can't do that." Sukuna shot down those two ideas "like I said, we have a problem on our hands." He repeated, as much as he hates it.

Yuji still remains on guard "you mean I have a damn problem now that you're out." He said.

"True. I would've been so happy to get out of your body but reality just wants to bite me in the ass. I will get to the point already, my powers are gone meaning I am powerless." Sukuna spoke in a serious tone of voice.

***

After being told that he is powerless, Yuji immediately went to find his friends and his teacher but Satoru is no where to be found, no surprises there.

"This has to be some kind of illusion." Megumi spoke.

"But he's really there. This time in person without Itadori being possessed." Nobara said.

The two first years were really surprised when Yuji called them over, and they saw Sukuna. They thought he was not real but it is revealed that he is physically there.

"Why is that bastard here? I thought that he needed a vessel to be here since his real body is just a corpse buried somewhere." Nobara looks at Yuji.

"I don't even know myself but the good news that he is powerless." He said.

"How can we believe Sukuna? He isn't an honest person, like all Curses. Most likely he is lying right now and strike at the perfect moment." Megumi is still on gaurd and is ready to summon his Shikigami if Sukuna makes a move.

"I would had killed the Brat the moment I manifested. I would had killed the two of you as well, if you were boring and the girl wasn't my type." Sukuna said "I discovered that my Curse energy is not what it used to be." He added.

Nobara puts her hands on her hips "would that mean Itadori have your Curse energy?" She questioned, sounded a bit curious at the idea.

"Oh! Then that means I am the new king!" Yuji spoke, brightens up.

"I wouldn't blame you, considering you ate my fingers." Sukuna muttered.

Megumi looked at his friends "we have to at least talk about this to Gojo sensei." He said.

"Talk about what with me?"

Speaking of the Devil, Satoru is now standing with his students and Sukuna. His students were startled by that sudden appearance.

"Gojo Sensei, where had you been?" Megumi asked.

"I was getting things ready. It was really hard to make that kind of arrangement with those shitty Elders." He answered, waved his hand up and down "you wanted to talk about Sukuna being out with me?" He already have his eyes on the King of Curses.

Megumi nodded "we initially thought that this isn't impossible for Sukuna to be out. Itadori have his body that is his to control and Sukuna is here in the flesh. He's not an illusion." He told him.

Satoru smiled "that is interesting. That means we don't have to kill Yuji but there is a little Curse energy that can be detected inside Sukuna." He spoke.

"Then we can get rid of him right? Clearly he's not a threat and is much more easier to kill." Nobara spoke.

"Nope. As much as we want to, we can't do that now. Sukuna still have fingers that are not eaten by Yuji yet and the deal was to let him eat all those fingers before we can kill him and Sukuna. However, this changes things." Satoru looking at both Yuji and Sukuna.

Yuji looked at Sukuna, particularly his hands. He has ten fingers on him "are you sure you're not playing with us, saying that you have no powers?" He questioned.

"You're still alive, aren't you? It's bad enough that I'm weaker than before, even without my remaining fingers but now my appearance matches yours for being too God damn long inside you." Sukuna muttered.

Yuji questions himself if he looks hideous, but since it was Sukuna, he just ignored it.

A loud clap is heard that filled the room. Satoru was the one who clapped his hands that loudly. "Alright everyone! We need to pack up for our trip! Two pairs of clothing and other important items!" He said loudly.

"Where are we going?" Megumi asked.

"It's a field trip and it'll be fun!" Satoru answered.

Yuji and Nobara now wearing faces of joy "what kind of trip will it be?" Nobara looked at Yuji "I don't know but I hope it's fine like Sensei says it will!" Yuji looked back at her. The two of them are very excited.

"Ah, Sukuna, you'll be going too." Satoru said to him.

"Hmph. It's not as if I have anything better to do now." Truth to be told, he can not help but feel excited. He had been absent for over millions of years. The world is now evolved, better or worse. He questioned if he caught Yuji's childlike curiosity while being trapped in there.

***

Satoru had taken his students to the airport without any problems at all, although there were a few Curses but those can be handle by others who will not have any difficulty. He did not say he was only bringing his first year students, so he brought the second year students as well.

"Gojo. This trip better not be a waste of our time." Maki looked at him.

"This trip will be worth it." He grinned.

"Even if this trip won't have Curses for us to exorcise, it would be good to unwind a bit." Panda spoke, grateful that the principal allows him to go.

"Tuna tuna." Toge muttered, agreeing with him.

"Brother!"

Yuji immediately heard Aoi's voice calling to him but before he can escape, he got pulled into a hug by him.

"I knew it you would be on this trip too!" Aoi laughed, squeezing the poor boy.

"Muscle head is here too." Nobara muttered.

"Yeah." Megumi agreed.

"I thought you would stay behind, Maki."

The older Zenin daughter noticed her younger twin sister who is standing with her classmates. "And what? Miss out on all the fun?" Maki retorted.

"Gojo. What is the meaning of bringing Ryomen Sukuna with us?" Questioned Yoshinobu.

"Sukuna isn't much of a threat anymore. Just like with Yuji Itadori, I'm keeping an eye on him." He smiled.

Yoshinobu scoffed "you are being too careless, even if Sukuna poses no threat." He muttered.

Others were surprised to see him joining the trip. They thought he would stay in the school. Perhaps it was because of Sukuna's appearance, or it could be Satoru.

Most students from both schools questions why they are all here together. Satoru was the only who is speaking, not letting the Kyoto school's principal speak. "Think of it as a collaboration. We worked well together when fighting against Curses and all of us had so much fun when we were playing baseball. So, I want us all to enjoy our trip." Satoru said.

"Where will we be going?" Asked Noritoshi.

"To Atela." Satoru answered.

"Eh?"

***

"You looked happier than normal, is this a special occasion?" Jogo saw how happy Mahito is.

The young Cursed Spirit chuckled "I had only thought that Japan only have Jujutsu Sorcerers but I found out there are more interesting people outside of Japan." He smiled.

"Cursed Spirits are everywhere. They are not restricted but that includes those of different races." Suguru spoke.

"That is why I want us all to go to Atela!" Mahito shouted.

"Why go to that place?" Jogo asked. He do not have any knowledge about that area.

"Because they have interesting people who I had heard about. I just it'll be fun." Mahito answered.

"I don't really care about those Sorcerers. We will kill them anyway." Choso quietly spoke.

"Si ti yrassecen rof su ot og?" Hanami asked, speaking backwards.

"Yes. Besides, I think we will meet new friends." Mahito said.

[daddysfangirls-marvel]

Polyamorous: Nicknames

Steve Rogers x reader x Bucky Barnes, Stucky x reader

warning: 

The First kiss |  The first touch | Moving In | The day they left for war | Found you | The day Stark found out | Big Change | The Train | The Plane | Alone | Unfortunate sequences of events | I know her | The Resturant part 1 | The Resturant part 2 | It’s me | You can keep her | He’s okay with that | Mama loves me | Kissing Captain | Kissing Winter | Healing | Hurt | We’ll Wait | Memories | Prude | Whore | Put in her place | The day Stark Jr. Found out | Now you know |  Nursing | Like a Virgin | Morning After | The Catacombs | Off with her head | Grieving the Insane | Let me make it up to you | Punishment | Spiderling pt1 | Spiderling pt2 | Twentieth-century love | The new we can imagine | Connection | Please, marry me | Walk me | Stand with me | Final touches | I Do | Honeymoon | A moment of Paradise | Pictures from Paradise | The Fever | The bad days | Let’s talk about it | Practice makes perfect pt1 | Practice makes perfect pt2 | Seed | Unknown Stolen | unfulfilled Duties | Talking Emotion | Next Step | Holy Shit!! | First steps to hope | She’s Awake | Nicknames

"Hello, Sleeping Beauty" (Y/n) said. For the past week the young girl had been gathering up her strength, and quite quickly too. She was no longer malnourished or dehydrated and all her medical exam had turned out good she was eating solid foot now. They discovered that she didn't have a name but she was identified by a number 285214, although no one called her that and came up with nicknames. Seeing as Bruce and (Y/n) came in the most they came up with the nicknames such as Little Miss, Little Flower, Sleeping Beauty, Pretty Penny, Little Lady, and Mini. They could never agree of decided on just one. Bruce assisted (Y/n) with her medical stuff and they took turns bringing up different meals breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack.

Although others did try to visit her it didn't really work as she didn't give much of a reaction to them just Bruce and (Y/n). And you can't really interrogate someone who didn't talking. But Bruce and (y/n) could make her smile.  "This morning we have for you strawberry pancakes, eggs, and bacon. Stevie made the pancakes cutting up strawberries and but into the batter and Bucky Bear made the eggs and bacon." she said placing the tray in front of her she saw her raising an eyebrow. " My husbands giant teddy bears they are. My big old cinnamon rolls, really" she giggled a bit.  She motioned to the plate in front of her " oh no, I already ate. I had to wake up early for work so I ate then. This is for you. Eat up" (Y/n) rambled on about different things each of the avengers, Tony's parties, her last shopping trip, she talked about just about everything while she ate and listen patiently. She enjoyed (y/n)'s stories they were crazy with bizarre endings to each of them. She looked up when she realized (Y/n) has stopped rambling and now was silently looking at her with just straight up adoration. She looked at her with a look of confusion but she just smiled  "Ya know Hydra had me once.... they wiped my memory , changed me, and used me as a weapon. But then they got bored of me I was no longer of you and sold me of to the strange woman who was just as bad as them.  She didn't take my memories she tortured me, made me hurt others... but that woman took care of me pampered me, loved me then threw me to the dogs then she'd come pick me up and love me some more. A shitty cycle is what it was." Even now the thought of Her brought unwanted feelings she couldn't even say her name.  "But then the Avenger found me and they took me in and they took care of me and they showed me what real love was and how wrong she was and that I could be so much more than what she made me. I am, I'm a nurse now. I help people I heal them. … I've been here for four years, I have a super family, and two amazing husbands. Hydra doesn't control me anymore. I'm part of this beautiful family and I'd like you to be a part of it too."  (Y/n) reached forward still smiling and gave her hand a gentle squeezes she stood up and gave her a gentle forehead kiss. Gathering her plate she moved to leave the room.  "18" (Y/n) stopped as a new voice spoke. It was a bit rough and raw like they hadn't used it in months and quiet like they weren't really trying to be heard and might have actually been trying to whisper. (Y/n) turned around slowly and looked at her. "18?" she nods and points to herself "18" "You're a big girl aren't you". (Y/n) didn't bother telling the girl she already knew her age, reading it in her file. This was a special moment the girl's first word in a very long time, the first words for anyone outside of Hydra to hear.  "well, Little Miss 18, how about after lunch I come back and we do some online shopping. Can't stay in hospital gowns forever." blowing her a kiss she left the room all giddy.  - "GUESS WHAT! GUESS WHAT, GUESS WHAT, GUESS WHAT!!" (Y/n) shouted as she barged into Steve's office interrupting Steve and Bucky who were making out on the couch. She didn't even bother joining them out the couch popping a squat right in front of them on the floor. She looked like a child sitting in front of their parents waiting for something amazing.  "I was going to guess chicken butt but I don't think that's the right answer" Bucky said as he smiled down at her. "What is it, sweetheart?" Steve asked much more patient and kind  "18" she said as if it was the most amazingly and exciting thing in the world she bouncing on her knees as she waited to tell them more. Steve waved nod telling her to go on. " Her first words. I was leaving the room and she stopped me she said 18. That's her age she told me her age. Do you know what this means?" "That she's 18" Bucky said she ignored his comment and climbed on to Steve's lap.  "It means she getting comfortable with me. She's starting to trust me sooner or later we'll be having full sentences and then she'll be talking freely and she'll trust all of us and then she'll be one of us joining our family"  "That's good. But speaking of family you haven't got that blood test done yet have you talked to Bruce about it" Bruce had already taken DNA samples from her he just never opened the results leaving everything a mystery for everyone including himself.  "No, why does it matter? She's is ours either way." "... you're right. I talked to Tony we can move her in with us next week." Steve said as he gave her a gentle kiss on the nose.  "That's good. I was going to take a tablet with me later and do some online shopping with. We should by stuff for her room you know run up Tony's bills" " He's a billionaire I don't think he'll notice" Bucky laughed as he set and example by buying a set of new knifes online from his phone to prove his point.  "Do you think she will like living with us?" (Y/n) asked her excitement and joy slipping away revealing some anxiety.  "Honest answer, nope" Bucky said starting with the brutal truth " She's still recovering. Don't let this one word fool you she'll still be with drawn she still won't completely trust us and I wouldn't be surprised if the girl was looking for a way to escape right now. She left Hydra what nearly two weeks ago she isn't better she just see that you aren't that big of a threat. She isn't settle, better, or recovering yet. She's simply observing.... (Y/n) how long did it take you to completely trust me and Steve?" "... little over a month." "How long did it take you to get comfortable with all the others?" "Six months" "How long did it take you to get over Katlen Vladimir, Mama?" "Bucky!" "answer the question" Steve could feel (Y/n) tense up and slowly curl herself into his lap. He didn't know where this conversation was heading but he didn't like it. "Over a year" "year and a half to be exact. And that was with our help that was with our memories constantly resurfacing everyday.  She doesn't have memories outside of Hydra it's going to be harder and take longer for her to feel safe with us." Bucky didn't mean to scare or upset her he just didn't want her to get her hopes up thinking everything was going to be okay when okay was a long ways down the road. " I love you and I don't mean to upset you" Bucky said and he took (Y/n) from Steve's lap and into his. "it took Steve a couple of years to get here and honestly I didn't make it this far until you came along. It's going to take time with her too. I'm not say don't try I'm saying be cautious." "she needs our help" (Y/n) said  "But, does she want it?" - She was sitting alone scrolling aimlessly on the tablet. (Y/n) came in and gave her the tablet showed her how to use it then left apologizing saying she had a meeting to attend. (y/n) was a kind woman and was always willing to keep her company she liked her very much. She didn't know why but she felt very connected to this woman and wanted to spend more time with her. She felt safe and at home with this woman and she didn't know why.  "Hey, Hey" Bruce knocked on the door gently getting her attention as he slowly entered " I see (Y/n) stopped by and gave you the tablet. How has shopping been?"  She gave him the tablet showing him her cart so far she only had six things. "You know all this is going to be charged to Tony Stark and he's a billionaire. You can go a bit crazier with the spending he won't notice." she giggled a bit as he smiled. "Have you thought about picking a bedspread or something else from your room?" she looked up at him confused " Did she not tell you? Next week you'll be moving in with (Y/n) and her husbands. That's the main reason she gave you the tablet so you could buy things for your new room silly."  "BRUCE!!!"  (Y/n) shouted as she walked in and heard him talking to her "It was suppose to be a surprise. How dare you ruin my surprise." stomping over towards Bruce she flicked his forehead then continued to scold him for ruining her surprise which she hadn't even started fully planning for. Bruce just shrunk into himself and tried to hide his smile because honestly (Y/n) wasn't scared her angry was just cute. This little lady was doing horrible opening smiling and laughing.  "You shush Missy. And you Mister go stand in the corner that's your punishment." "But I have to work-" "I don't care two minutes in the corner. NOW"  with a pout the famous Doctor Bruce banner with seven PhD's and the beholder of the Hulk slugged over and shuffled his way into the corner in like a child. " Now you. The surprise is already ruined how about we looked at the things you've already bought and add to that." "Moving?" (Y/n) was a bit giddy hearing her speak again but she held her composure and remained ya know an adult, even though on the inside she was so excited and wanted to jump up and down.  "Yes, you can't stay in this room forever. It's a hospital room. All white. It smells like medicine." she made a face of disgust " You'll have your own room on my husbands and I's floor. You'll be able to decorate it as you please. It'd be yours" "Until?" "Until you don't want to live with us anymore. You're always welcomed with us."

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[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Spain to Eurovision with whole lotta fun

Dare I say Operación Triunfo is a little bit of... a Choice?

I mean, you got yourself a format that a bunch of young-aged/teen/late-teen aged droolies follow for the drama more than the music, at least that’s what I suppose it is because it’s one of those singing reality shows where you’re oh so very welcome to follow the lives of all the 20-somethings that were unfortunate to sign the contract of the show, not being able to read all the fine-prints in the contract and later regretting not doing so because things like Eurovision. In Israel. But more on that later.

But this is Espain, and this is the sad state of television that is today - if they like your shitty talent show with 24/7 followship of the contestants, and if they watch that, and if they eat that with a spoonful, chances are you’re going to prolong its post-mortem revival state in order to maaaaaybe attract a new audience and acquire a new shippable couple people will vote “a Eurovisión”. Even if your last couple sucked. And even managed to break up unceremoniously sometime before the 2019 show’s Eurovision final <3 god bless them for finally breaking the chain and breaking the hearts of thousands who were ‘dying’ for the ship. It was never EVER meant to last.

So is it a no surprise that Operación went thriving for another year? Certaintly at least it’s no joy to bear with another amount of subpar desperates from every other corner of Spain, but only because Spain deserves a better NF format. I mean, with these other NF formats we can at least have a variety of artists with their own (or composed by others) songs, and it doesn’t matter an inch whether the public’s big fave gets rigged out to me - as long as it’s just a NF I can get easily over with, it’s all fine to me! And of course OT is also fine for me, it’s just that people are begging for it to get axed for some reason. Maybe because of all the ships?

I don’t want to put too much more thought of what happened in the reality show other than the Eurovision Gala, BUT I seemed to notice something rather crazy. You see, at first we had Natalia (or was it Alba Reche or Sabela even?) heavily speculated as the winner pre-show, but in the end the OT glory was all handed to some Dutch-born boy of Nigerian origin named... Famous. Not shitting you, it is his name. But what’s the saddest part about this? Famous CLEARLY wanted it all to himself just because of Eurovision being included in the contract. Yet his only victory in life is being the best among the rest of these stars that were watched over 24/7. Unfortunately, Mr. Oberogo couldn’t make this out to be in his favour in the Eurovision-special gala, to which the “triunfitos” can attend if they have songs chosen for them in the lineup, and yes he was admitted, but then he was given a SUCH DISAPPOINTING SONG EHMERGERD!!!!!!!! :’(

(lol calm yer ladyhormones, “No puedo mas” wasn’t THAT bad, it’s just that given Famous did songs like “Nobody but You” (yes THAT one) on the show, you’d expect something contemporary soulful, not just blatant radio filler that could have easily been an EYD reject?)

So how did it all happen that the girls were rooted for to win OT, but in the end the one that wanted Eurovision the most won? And how come the one that wanted the Eurovision the most was given a song that paled in comparison to that one song that was performed by someone who was blatantly against going to ESC because “nuuuuu Israel stop hurting Palestine” and that one being favoured to win? AND HOW COME ONE OF THE BIGGEST SHOW’S VILLAINS GOT HANDED ABSOLUTE SLAYAGE OF THE SONGS?? Honestly it’s for the best if Spain is just there to subdue everyone’s expectations, just like they did when choosing Manel (be it because of a corrupt juror or whatever). They did it every single turn of the time this year during OT’s run.

And of course I’ll forever love them for that, as the end result was AN ABSOLUTE FUCKING FIESTA BANGER. Courtesy of Miki (Núñez).

Ngl, the first thing I went in for about “La venda” before listening to it was through this first impression tweet on Miki’s ‘eliminated’ song from the selection, “El equilibrio”:

BITCH HOW WAS SHE NOT READY TO SEE THAT COMING AT HER.

Granted, the sudden start of happy sounds rushing right at me was a little startling, but I was able to cope with it and jam to the song in the end.

I completely adore this one, it’s so powerfully joyful with all its instruments and the Spanish language, the interesting turn of events in lyrics, the incredibly easy probability to sing along to this (LO QUE EEEEERE! LO QUE ERE ERE E!), the authenticity, the cultural roots (tbqh Eurovision countries should be welcome to embrace their culture rather than stray further away from it! also this is why more native languages other than English are encouraged)... mmm-mmm.

And like I said, for some reason Miki was seen as a grand villain to the show, and even if I didn’t follow OT all that much, I was constantly questioning why, and after seeing him eliminated I only wanted to know if people in Espain were rejoicing about it. The against-agenda turned up onto him again when he happened to have the most songs in the internet selection bunch handed to him (THREE!!! Two solo tracks and a duet.), but nothing there was to worry, as instead other favourites were discovered, therefore Miki ended up in the dust for a while. Up until something happened that got him a big surge of votes at the end. Go figure.

Despite all this, I think it’s the right direction for Spain songwise! Me gusta mucho, and not only personally, but also objectively, honestly. Miki’s got a right enough good song for the nation and provided the revamp doesn’t make it crash and burn (yes, the good friend of a Eurovision song - the revamp! It’s happening), it’s safe to say that Spain can stand a chance. Not win, for now, but stand a chance. Yes.

Before I repeat myself some more I’d probably have to add this part for no reason as it came from my Twitter review for “La venda” this time, as I heard songs 1 day before the NF as when I expected the NF to go on Saturday but it was on a Sunday:

BITCH HOW WAS I WRONG. Well mostly thanks to the fact the fanwank-ess of OT ESC Gala actively asked to direct her votes to Miki’s song (Monika Marija teas amirite), but still, WRONG!

Now that I finally composed my thoughts I guess, let’s all go and read the below verdict I’m putting this up for:

Approval factor: I’m giving this a big fat SÍ!

Follow-up factor: Of course I like it way better than “Tu canciYAWN”, there’s no doubt in it :) and after Almaia’s romance advertisement they’re doing a great job by coming back to their great Spanish roots of music, honestly. And it’s better that way than forcing a ship onto a Eurovision 2018 ship, so yeah

Big 5 factor: As of this time Spain lowkey fizzled out with everyone now that a big wave of other faves arised, BUT I don’t think that Spain’s drowning in misery this year, not at all! With right kind of energy of the staging and uplift Spain can totally woo them televoters this time around, making them “lo que ere” their worries away to the sunset. And this is a positive thing - as if juries decide to drown this sometimes and televoters don’t, it will still soar somewhere up high enough in top 15.

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

Now, I don’t quite think this year’s OT was quite as memetic as I expected, but we still have had some pre-NF gems, just like this:

• “THEN POLKA”. That one moment was also brought up to her on her OT Eurovision Gala postcard.

• and this one contestant’s gloriously accidental butt-shot

Though we did have a handful of these kind of moments on the Gala itself (and surrounding it), such as:

• NF’s biggest favourite to win songwise not even trying. Yes, there are those NF winners which underperform but only because they don’t seem to know better, but did you know that there are THOSE like María Villar who decide against it? Basically, she was one of those opposing against the situation in Israel with Palestine, so out of protest towards all this, she voluntarily went against doing Eurovision in a nation like this by encouraging her fans to vote for Miki the night before and sacrificing any slightest grains of trying with her performance - by barely dancing on stage and not outselling anything vocally. And it worked to some extent, as she came SECOND only, and shortly after Miki won, she spoke out loud that she was satisfied to not have become the victor (I mean she just thanked everyone for not voting her to ESC lol). But you know what, for situations like these I really do love ESC NFs - where everything predictable is upturned by some sort of events like these. I mean, I like "Muérdeme", it’s catchy, Latino-appealing enough (for those whores thirsty for Luis Fonsi and similar fucks who sing in Spanish on English songs these days), has a cool breakdown and what not, but it would just probably bring back another disappointing result from Eurovision much to fans’ dismay, especially if the Tel Aviv (oh wait sorry... for Maria’s case this would have probably been Limassol or Vienna) edition was to bring many bops for this time around that are BIGGER and BETTER than this one. It’s just happening that it’s unfortunate to be Spain...

• Yet again, putting Famous up on here, but of course he was disappointed to not get that win. I know I’m not the right person to judge considering I’m WHOLE THREE DAYS YOUNGER than him, but I’d still tell him he only had RTVE to blame for giving him THAT in the end and putting him through online voting rounds... and speaking of:

• Like I mentioned before several times, there was an online voting round for to pick-pocket the songs that sounded the best out of the demo-ic snippets of a minute or less. Its top 3 was of course dominated by ladies and their own bangers/just likeable enough songs, with poor Famous being 4th in it (and the top 3 is a must on there to be automatically admitted to the show without any higher-ups shuffling the other competitors ‘round later on and toying with their fates). I liked the complete final cut of the Gala for the most part, but boy did they miss out some, like this male laidback-acoustic pop bop “Sale”, courtesy of Damion Frost. I can at least forgive the loss of “El equilibrio”, but this? Nah siree. And yeah I know this whole shtick is a tire, but I like some of it, and I saw a worse track from the same shtick collection qualifying through higher-ups and that’s NOT boding well with me.

(yes of course Manel happened but still)

• Miki joining the glorious wall of epic NF victory reactions with his O face of total cartooney awkwardness <3

• and Eleni Foureira being able to rock a trashbag as a dress during her guest performance of both “Fuego” and her ‘new’ ‘smash’ hit in partially more Spanish than “Fuego” was - “Tómame”. Granted the juxtapose transition was a little too jarring, but hey - 2 songs for a price of 1. Go get them Spanish audience people acknowledging your pop art Elli <3 (also her chitchat with the ESC Gala host about what do you need to do good in Eurovision <3)

At this point I’m too not fucked to remember more of them but I’m really sure I missed a lot of the OT lulziness that happened before the Gala, during and after it (such as Natalia (who also sang one song in the NF with Miki himself) not wanting ESC but still trying better than Maria). I don’t want to be reminded of them, as my review’s as long as it is. But I’m sure someone else remembers, so I’ll let them judge.

[aesthetemyg]

Hope Angel

Genre : Angst, fluff and fantasy

Gender : Gender-neutral 

words count : 23K rip

Inspiration : Daydream By Jhope

Summary : Every night you enter a dream reality which you call “Hope World”, you are joined by a man who has been your protector since you were a little. the world “earth” is a cruel place but when you enter your dream dimension everything becomes easier and brighter but what will you do when you learn that it is falling apart?

Authors note : I love Jhope’s new mixtape so much I decided to write this in honor of our lil sunshine. please appreciate him because he worked so hard on this. I hope you like this story I worked hard on it :)

Dreaming is a series of fictional imagines, thoughts and reality that everyone experiences during sleep. Dreaming can be an outlet for hardships it can also encourage creativity. Many ideas have been fabricated by the reality of dreams. Although we have all experienced dreaming, it is an unexplainable phenomenon. Not even the most adept scientists cannot explain why we dream and how.

Most people conclude dreaming as just a thing people experience in their everyday life but not to you. Dreaming to you is not fiction but it is a reality. Each night you fall asleep to a reality that no one could even imagine. You call this dream dimension, ‘Hope World’.

You tried to explain your experience to other people but they dismissed it. They believed you were crazy, you consistently got told it was because you had a vivid imagination or it was a form of lucid dreaming. You knew this wasn’t lucid dreaming.

Lucid dreaming is a term used to describe someone having the ability to control their dream. To be able to lucid dream you need to be aware you are dreaming and after you have achieved this you can control what happens in your dreams reality. However, this doesn’t describe your experience; although you were aware you were in a dream you could not predict nor change the future of this ‘dream’.

You were desperate for more answers, you tried most of your life researching the possibilities or reasons for your dreams but overall none of it was helpful. The only person who understood what you were trying to explain was Hoseok.

Hoseok was the man who has guided you throughout your life almost like a guardian angel. It sounds bizarre to say your best friend is someone who lives within your dreams. The truth is, he was the only person you trusted. He was the only person in this entire universe that brought you happiness and joy.

You lived in a dark world; poverty, war, violence and many other horrid things you are witness too but when you enter Hope World everything seemed more hopeful (hence the name). Everything was more colourful and happy but when you lived in the real world; everything is dull and dark. It used to pain you to face the harsh truth that Earth was the reality and not Hope World. You are surrounded by so much hatred and pain that when you meet with Hoseok every night, everything becomes easier to bare.

As you came home from your low paying office job and walked into your low budget apartment, you sighed. Nothing in your life ever went the way you hoped. As a child, your mother died young which lead your father to become an abusing alcoholic. At school, you were brutally bullied and now as a twenty-four-year-old, you worked at a shitty job because you couldn’t afford to go to a decent college.

The only joy in life is your dreams, Hoseok was the guide to your happiness. As your sloppy night continued, it was finally the time you have been looking forward to. Bedtime.

As you slipped into your warm cosy pyjamas and got snuggling in your worn down mattress it was finally time to close your eyes and sink into the alternative world.

Your nose twitched as you could smell the lovely smell of honey. You open your eyes and see lime green walls surrounding you. As you sit up you witnessed the most beautiful creature you have ever seen. Hoseok. He was sitting beside you with his head in his hands.

He looked up and noticed your staring, his smile was sweet but something seemed out of the ordinary, something didn’t seem right with him. “Hoseok?” You ask, he looked dissociated as he looked towards the distance his eyes looked emotionless.

“Y/N, I have something to show you” he sighs, he still didn’t look at you; worry was taken over your body. Normally… he would greet you with a warming hug.

“Is it something bad?” You asked. You were in desperate need of an answer but instead, he stood up from the comforting white bedding. He reaches his hand out; a simple gesture but seemed so uncanny. Although this was a regular gesture between the both of you, this time, in particular, you felt uncertain. Your thoughts continued to be negative until you looked at Hoseok and saw his desperation; all negative thoughts were put at ease. You connected your hand with him and you felt his warmth against yours.

He drags you out of the single bed and drags to outside the door which leads you to an knowing long hall. A hall which seemed endless with doors after doors. Above the various colourful doors there was a ripped piece of paper with writing on it, you smile remembering all the adventures you experienced. When you were younger you and Hoseok would try and explore each room. Every room would have a different theme.

As you pass the continuous doors you begin to read the names. ‘2D origami’, a room filled with origami and everything is 2D except us. ‘Undersea swim’ a dimension filled fish and multi-coloured water. Passing these doors and remembering all the wonderful adventures brings me so much joy and happiness. Suddenly.. you began to notice you were passing doors that didn’t have writing above it.

“Hobie we have never gone this far before” you state anxiously, Hoseok always warned you to never go far down the hall because it was dangerous.

“Do you trust me?” Hoseok asked he looked at you with hopeful eyes. You were taken back by his statement but as you looked at him right at that moment and saw his beauty; the away his skin sparkled; the way his features were so perfect and pure and the way his eyes were glistening as his eyebrows were crossed; that’s when you knew your answer.

“Yes” You nod and he gave you a smile in response before turning his head back to the direction that you were heading. you kept running for what seemed like centuries, as you continued to run passing door after door you discovered something. The walls started to decay and it was becoming dark and gloomy. You looked to Hoseok for reassurance but he continued to run resulting in your view only being his brown hair. You looked on the other side of your shoulder only to reveal a darkness following you. The floor and walls were falling apart and all the brightness and colours were melting.

“Hoseok! the walls!” You cried out but he wasn’t paying attention. He grabbed your hand tighter and started to run with more speed. Your legs couldn’t take it anymore; they weren’t as fast as Hoseok’s. It began to become too much for you as you began to stumble. Hoseok looked behind him to see why you were pulling at him only to notice your struggling. He looked at you with concerned; before you could even process what he was doing you were clinging to his back for dear life. You could feel his heavy breathing against your body.

“Y/n, you need to stay calm, if you become panicked you will wake up” he explained, which only panicked you more. Before you knew it your world started to go blurry, you started to hear cars and people talking. You knew that you were gaining consciousness. You took a deep breath and sunk deeper into Hoseok back. As you calmed down your breathing your vision started to clear and you couldn’t hear the outside world anymore. “Good y/n, stay with me for a little longer” Hoseok’s encouraging words motivated you.

He stopped suddenly. You look around at your surroundings. There was a red door in your front vision, you look behind you only to witness a white void of emptiness; your world was gone. The only thing that kept you afloat was a little section of the floor Hoseok was stood on.

“Is this the end of the corridor?” You asked. You began to feel fear flow throughout your body. You weren’t sure if you were ready to take this step. You knew nothing of what could be beyond this door or what the purpose of all this was.

“Yes it is,” he said calmly. You held closer to Hoseok back feeling comfort radiating from him.

“Why are we here?” You asked. you were confused why he didn’t warn you. You were wondering why his character changed so drastically, what happened while you were away?

“I heard bad news y/n” he sighed, you saw a tear run down his cheek. Without absorbing your action; you wiped the glistening tear away from his soft delicate skin.

“Bad news?” You asked curiously. Your anxiety started to worsen.

“Let me explain when we enter” he sighs, you begin to feel horror towards what could be waiting for you behind this door. He slowly reaches for the doorknob as he twists the golden knob and creeks open the door your jaw drops.

“It is beautiful” you exclaim, your eyes are met with what seemed to be space; the stars were so bright. It was the most beautiful scene you have ever laid your eyes on.

Hoseok took a deep breath and took a step outside into the entrance. You both started to float into the void, although you were fearful you felt a sense of safety being with Hoseok. You continue to float until you reached a white bed. You began to feel curious about why you are met with a bed.

He placed you on the comfortable surface and he situated himself beside you. He looked sad and hurt, you hadn’t witnessed him this way before. You hugged your knees to your chest waiting for him to speak.

“I made this place for you y/n, I pretended I was oblivious to it all but I’m the reason you are here. I’m what people call an angel. For years my people and I have been warriors for your world and we were the creators of life. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned. We created something so advanced; it was our proudest work, humans. They were us without wings and we were so fascinated by them. What we didn’t anticipate is for them to gain so much power and intelligence. You see.. angels are made with love and kindness, ever part of our souls is pure. We couldn’t even imagine creating something that would become evil. We gave humans everything: we gave them our love and gave them privileges we have never given to another creation,” he sighs.

“They took advantage of our kindness and filled it with evil. Most of my friends and family were cut from their wings and the war against angels and humans began. We weren’t born to fight so you could guess they defeated us, only 7 remained. We became the seven angels of the earth but the humans name us the seven deadly sins,”

“We watched them, we watched them lie and kill. We watched them build their islands and fight against each other but we still forgave them. We believed they had to have some pureness in the world. Each time we tried to see the good we would always be greatly disappointed until I met someone”

“I travelled down to earth to say my last goodbye, my fellow angels and i finally decided there was no hope in this world. Until I saw you, you were laughing playing with something so simple which was a stick. When I heard your laugh it was the most beautiful music to my ears” he chuckled to himself, you felt a tear run down your cheek hearing his engaging story.

“You had a magical glow of purity and it was so powerful. I knew from that day my destiny changed, my destiny was to protect you. Protect you from all bad, all evil and self-doubt.”

“So I created ‘Hope World’ a dream reality where we could spend every night. The problem was the more you were here the more I fell in love with you. I feel in love with your positive thinking, I fell in love with your beauty, I fell in love with everything about you. I fell for you y/n and it hurts so much” he started to cry, you pulled him into your chest and hugged him tightly. You cried together until he pulled away from your grasp.

“They found me, the angels found me and they revealed to me that the humans have found out about my connection to you. They will kill you if we stick together so I need to leave, Y/N,” he said and held your hands tightly against his grasp, you looked at him in despair. This was too much to take in, you couldn’t believe you were in this situation.

“H-hoseok, you cant leave me,” you said tears flooding down your eyes. He lifted his hand and wiped the tears from cheeks.

“Don’t worry my love, will meet again, please trust me” hoseok smiled, but his smile was filled with sadness.

“Please, I love you too, please you cant leave now” you plead with his hand against your cheek. He leaned his forehead against yours and you could feel his breath against your skin.

“Look after yourself okay? Quit your job, go back to college and become something. You need to live a long hopeful life. Promise me” he whispered.

“I cant-“

“Please promise me,” he said needy and afraid. You were scared, he admitted he loved you and now he is telling you he is leaving?

“I promise” you give in. Your sight becomes blurry and you begin to feel the world slip away from you. “No! No! Please, i want to stay longer!” You scream feeling yourself fade away.

“Keep your promise and we will see each other again I promise” he shouts but you can no longer see a sight of him. Before you can shout back you wake up on your mattresses filled with sweat and tears.

_______________ 

Do you want a prologue? let me know

I appreciate you all dearly, thank you for reading 

[xflower-childx]

You can’t have the Rainbow without the Rain

It's funny because when I share the adventures from this past week everyone assumes I'm in such a bad headspace and that I'm so torn down by it, when honestly I feel such a weight lifted. Yes it's been stressful, and I've had a few breakdowns but honestly... I'm happy and God I've felt so much more free this week and I can breathe. L brought me more stress than comfort. I was always on edge and feared my words, actions, and future when it came to living with her. I always felt this form of spite from her, but after talking with my boss she thinks it came from jealousy, which makes me laugh because I can't see why someone could be jealous of me. I mean... I'm an incredibly broke bitch just trying to get through life. Thinking on it more though I can see it in a way, from messages I've gotten from her to her all around attitude. She never left the house for her, she only left for her parents, the grocery store, or a fucked up ex or two she never cut off. She only ever moped around, rarely did her stay at home job, and took all of her dad's money. She never cared about herself and was more negative than I was in Middle school. Which says A LOT. I would always invite her out on my hikes, runs to town, or even outings with friends and she would say no with some negative comment about herself or say 'Daddy needs me to go run to this, this and that store and mom needs her Taco Bell and I just hurt so bad and my head is pounding and I feel like ass'. I would ask why her father couldn't do his own errands (which honestly... he NEVER did but also he's working to provide for him, his wife and their 35 year old CHILD after triple bypass surgery) and she would make some comment about how they won't always be around and she has to help them, but honestly... If she ran errands for them she could buy for herself as well.

I hate to sit here and speak so negatively of her but I know she did the same while kicking me out. Two wrongs don't make a right of course but... I dunno M&M has agreed that she lost her fucking mind this past week especially and it probably was part of changing up her meds which of course she has a million medications so it wouldn't surprise me. I had suggested she goes to a therapist which she nearly did but always blamed it on the VA and them not calling her or something along those lines. There was always an excuse though. For everything.

I remember having so many talks with her about trying to do better and actually care about herself and her future. She would make these baby steps forward and be so close to doing something good for herself but then she would have a night terror, headache, bad thought or text from her toxic boy toy and then it would be ten steps backwards straight to crying in bed. It was such heavy negative energy my empathetic ass was draining close to empty all the time. I would encourage us to eat something good, healthy, and filling and even make it but then she would order Papa John's with 'Daddys' money.

I know I have a bad habit of wanting to 'Fix' people but I just don't like seeing the people I care about hurting. I hate knowing that they can do such simple small things things to help make a big impact in their life and mental health but just won't do it and say they can't. I am always happy to help encourage them and I'm all about being the hype girl for my tribe. I'm all for bringing out the best in them and watching them succeed and sharing how proud I am of them. It brings me such Joy because seeing them being proud of themselves is the greatest. I feel it for them... And when L felt it for herself It made me the happiest because I also felt all her self hate. I remember my first months there confusing her self hatred for my own. It was this odd feeling because I felt like I had moved past that point within myself. The point of literally hating every aspect of myself from looks to personality. It didn't make sense because I do see the beauty in myself at this point and I see the good I bring. So for me to have mistaken the opposite of everything I had worked so hard to improve for my own it had really brought me down and confused me. Of course I took myself to the mountains at that point and did some reflection and worked on figuring out where my head was and why it was diving into such a dark place again. It worked and I realized I didn't have these issues of self loathing with myself, it was me sucking in all of L's negativity and taking it as my own. This also started to happen more and more. Thankfully I had figured it out and worked on blocking it out by creating a force field around myself so it wouldn't be so bad. This ended up creating a lot of trips to the mountains and staying in my room more than being social with her which I never want for my living arrangement.

I love NC, I'm incredibly happy with the place I am at with myself and how I've fought to get where I am. I know I have more growing to do, and more to learn but ultimately I'm happy and I don't really care to allow any negativity to ruin that. I know that when L first told me to leave she wanted me to fight back and beg to stay but I'm sick of begging for basic love and care from people, so I accepted it because I didn't deserve the way she handled everything and I knew I needed to get out of a toxic situation for my own health.

So where does that leave me now? Well currently I’m stalling on writing a letter to L to maybe help band aid some of the crazy drama as I can’t leave the friendship we had be completely destroyed. I’m with M&M and I have been slowly moving stuff downtown to my new place with a really cool new roommate who is the complete opposite of L which truly excites me, shes super low maintenance and the house is close if not over 100 years old. Its also painted rainbow colors and in the heart of downtown. I see a new chapter and I’m so open and ready for it. I see new friends and new experiences, Maybe even some traveling? I do have my mind still set on going to Asheville but I’m not rushing that just yet. Ideally by the end of the year, but January is only just coming to a close so we still have some time there. Also I”m still so open to anywhere else time takes me. Asheville is just a place to help me remember not to stay in WS,

I also wouldn’t mind opening up the dating door more. It’s been open of course but I also know this move could make meeting people easier in a sense. There is a guy who I’ve discovered having quite a bit in common with and we have enjoyed talking to each other and when we finally met up things went pretty well, a little awkward because that’s just how I am, but well... Until L showed up and wouldn’t shut up and then also the whole kicking out happened and my communication with everyone kinda fell to even more shitty than it typically is.

I just know that I do kinda want someone, someone to do something but also nothing with, someone to cheer each other on, and travel about. I want a person but I also want a person that wants me. I am perfectly content in my own space and prefer it most of the time, but I do want to share existence with someone and I don’t close anyone off, and maybe my friend D isn’t that person (Even though we share a lot of the same goals, music, and views) but the thought excites me again, being wanted and cared for, especially being that I kinda know how to be wanted and cared for in a sense.

Before I wrap this up though I wanted to share final thoughts with an R update for myself. I sort of feel hypocritical with the way I speak of L and her relationship with Florida dude. Granted he is far more toxic than I feel R could ever be in my case but I put that on us having a genuine relationship at one point. I did reach out when I had hit a wall this week and no, I don’t regret it, I just needed a friend, someone who I felt didn’t think I was terrible and could provide a song or two to help pull me out of wanting to just throw in the towel and leave the state. Did he provide that? Eh, not really. I feel if he wanted to be there for me more he would have been. I gave conversation and he didn’t really give back, which is fine of course as he is perfectly allowed to not be in my life if he doesn’t care to be. I honestly felt the same when Lil pup was super sick. He could have been there, but he chose not to be.

I know that I always had this silly little thought that maybe someday it would be us but with each failed text conversation I see that image break and break along with every realization of his lack of want to keep me in his life in anyway. Of course its my own silly stupidity to think that we could ever be endgame or friends or even acquaintances, but its always so hard to let go of something you cherish so much. I know that people leave your life and you just have to let them, but maybe its that I always wanted someone to want me in this way so its hard to let go, which is almost funny because he never even had this kind of want for me. I don’t really want to let go but I know I have to for someone to want me in the way I want to be wanted and needed. I also know that I do think about him, our time and stupid ‘what ifs’ more than I should because again, I see no future there when the other half of this duo doesn’t either.

These thoughts will fade with time of course and when someone truly steps up to love me the way I deserve, to travel, cook, and do everything and nothing with me. To see how rare I am and appreciate having me around the way he didn’t. This person will fight to be in my life the way I fought for someone who doesn’t want me in there’s, except I will accept their love and make sure they know I want it so they won’t have to fight so hard.

I know I miss him, or more of who we were when we were on top of the world in the boring state of Florida. I don’t really remember that all anymore though and I will continue to remember less and less of the good, which sucks because it appears only the bad will continue to remain sadly with no good left in its wake. I tried. I really did. I had hoped we could see and be on top of the world at some point but I know that’s another silly thought. If I have learned anything from all the drama this past week it’s that you can’t make people care if they don’t want to.You’ll just hurt yourself trying. I’m just exhausted at this point.

So I hope he is happy. I really do. I hope he’s happy where he is at physically and mentally. I hope he is finally a lot more comfortable in his own skin, which I know everyday is different and I don’t think he will ever be perfectly happy within himself in that way but I hope he has more good days than bad. I hope he finally allows himself to love again, and I hope she is nice, pretty, and is good. No more fake toxic bitches, but he has a taste so... Who knows. Either way, I hope he will finally love himself enough to share his love, because I know he has fantastic love to give.

Two days later and this is finally written, at least most of it. I need to get more writing out but I better write L that letter before I talk myself out of it. I’m kind of over being the good adult here but thankfully her drama is over... For now at least. I’m scared to see what shit she will say back after. Also bitch took my avocado container and ice pack >.>

Alright but here we go 2020. The year of growing in the kitchen, traveling not just the US but also internationally, moving out of WS, learning to rock climb, maybe finding some love? No rush with that as it shouldn’t be, but I’m very open to it :)   BUT it’s the year of good. I’m still happy, positive, and here. It’ll be a good year!

[the-hollow-crow]

Like footprints on the shore

Eruri week day 1. Prompt: reincarnation au.

This is my very first aot/eruri fanfic, hope you guys like it! (Keep in mind that English isn’t my first language. Also, I don’t know how to add a “Read more” link, I’m sorry >.>)

After many turns and hills, a car stopped in front of a two-floored villa on the top of a hillock near the sea. While the first floor was occupied by a small family, the second, made up of two different apartments, was still vacant. Or better, it wasn’t going to be anymore. A jet black haired man jumped off the vehicle taking his sunglasses off. It was a pretty hot summer day, and the sun was shining high in the sky, not a cloud to be seen, as if the weather reflected his mood: he had been waiting for that moment for years. After his loving mother Kuchel had moved to another country because of work, he had been living in a hovel with his cold and ruthless uncle, Kenny, until he left him too, but now, it was time for him to leave those times behind. Just like in his past life. Everything seemed to be the same, besides the era, the environment and people. Especially people: he still had to meet all of his old friends. He had always waited, hoping to see them again someday, but that day didn’t seem to come… or did it? Do they still remember me like I do? was the question that kept popping up in his mind every now and then. Even if some of his memories were fading away, most of them were still vivid. However, he was afraid of losing the most important one. He knew that one day, he was going to forget him, and he couldn’t do nothing about it. He just had to accept it. Before going upstairs, he greeted the family, which was having lunch in the garden right outside the house. The only man of the group, father of two young twin girls, stood up, walked towards him and shook his hand. “It’s been a long time, Levi. Do you-” Levi’s eyes widened. “Mike? That Mike? Is that Nanaba?” the shorter man moved to his side so he could see the blond woman, who waved at him with a gentle smile. “Yup. And those two little “brats” are our daughters, Lily and Rose. When you called for more info about the house, I immediately recognized your voice, and there aren’t many Levi’s around. So, do you need some help to move your stuff upstairs?” “Y-yes…” Hope filled Levi’s heart. “Maybe he remembers too” he thought. The men took all the bags and boxes out form the car and brought them in front of Levi’s new house and in the process Levi kept smiling inside, overjoyed by the thought of his past-life lover. “And… we’re done. Here’s the key. I gotta go back to eat, unless I want Nanaba to kill me. Just tell me if you need something else, okay?” “Sure, thanks a lot.” Levi opened the door after two clicks. The house wasn’t too big nor too small: on the right side there was a cozy living room with a small TV in front of a red sofa, and another door, which led to the smaller of the two bedrooms. On the left there was a table with four chairs, right in front of the kitchen. Lastly, two doors in the middle led to the bathroom and to the main bedroom. Before taking everything out of the luggage, Levi headed towards the kitchen to make some tea in order to regain some energy after the long trip. Not a spot could be seen on the furniture: how could Mike forget about Levi’s obsession? While his hands were busy placing stuff on shelves, his head was still in the clouds. “I can’t wait any longer. Where are you?”

“Hey, Mike.” “Yes, my dear?” “Does he know it yet?” “No, I first want him to settle in then I… Wait, maybe I don’t even need to tell him, he’ll discover it by himself.” “I can already see him crying… poor guy, he must have missed him a lot…”

A ray of sunshine hit Levi’s tired eyes. Surprisingly, he had slept a little bit more than usual. The day before had been pretty tiring and he really needed some rest. After getting up from the bed making sure not to mess it up, he went outside to take a breath of fresh sea breeze. Waves could be heard crashing against cliffs, the wind was blowing gently trough trees’ crowns and Levi’s hair, messing up his dark locks. The scenery reminded him of the first time he and his remaining comrades saw the ocean for the first time in their life and how empty he felt without his commander by his side. Even if he was living a new life, he was still “enjoying” the view alone. Sighing, Levi stepped back into the house to have breakfast. He filled a bowl with hot tea and waited for it to cool down a bit, staring at it blankly while stirring the drink with a spoon. His mind couldn’t help but think of the past: the day he joined the survey corps, or when he became captain, the moment he saw the person he cared the most about coming back from a battle without an arm and all the times he had spent with him like… like… Levi closed his eyes and furrowed his brows. Something prevented him from recalling what were the only happy memories of that nightmare of a life. He took a sip from the bowl. “I’m just tired. All I need is some tea and I’ll feel better.” Unfortunately, as days went by, remembering was getting harder and harder and Levi would usually pace around the house trying not to forget what had made him smile in the darkest times. Warm, desperate tears came down his eyes when he couldn’t recall his first kiss. He slammed a fist onto the table, acknowledging there was no way to stop what had started. Although, he decided to write down everything he could remember, so that it wouldn’t be lost forever.

A knock on the door brought Levi back to reality. It was Mike. “Hey Levi, Nanaba and I are going out with the kids and I don’t know what time we’re coming back, so I wanted to tell you that someone’s gonna come next-door soon. Please, give him a warm welcome, don’t make him feel uncomfortable and be nice. He’s a friend of mine and he rented the house for two weeks. I’m sure you two will get along.” “Alright, thanks for telling me.” Levi looked at his “pajama”, which only consisted of a pair of boxer shorts. It was 11pm and he was about to go to bed. “I’ll get ready in no time. See you later.” Levi spent the next thirty minutes dressing up and wondering who could it be, when a honk told him he was about to discover it. With a white, tight shirt and black pants, Levi left his house and went downstairs to meet the new guy. His car, a convertible, looked pretty expensive and the trunk and the backseats were full of suitcases. The door opened, revealing a tall and muscular blonde man with a roman nose and kind blue eyes. “Hi! Is this Mike Zacharia’s house? I’m Er-” Levi felt his heart stop. He walked slowly towards the man, looking at him right in the eyes. “-win Smith.” the shorter man completed the sentence. Silence was surrounding them, when the other broke it, stuttering some confused words before pronouncing four letters that meant the world for him. “Levi? I- You- I…” Levi stopped him again, pulling him by the shirt collar and kissing him with a fiery passion that had to wait other thirty three years to burn again. Erwin caressed Levi’s face with one hand and held him close with the other, happy to feel him between his arms again . Tears of joy fell down their cheeks. Neither of the two wanted to pull away, they felt like they could have stayed like that forever. The kiss broke only when both of them were gasping for air, hugging each other tightly. Erwin’s warm embrace made Levi smile like nothing else would. “I missed you, old man.” Levi was the first one to speak. “Where have you been all this time?” he asked with his head turned up to face the blonde. Unlike the kiss, their eye contact never broke “I should ask you that too. Well, I-” “Hey, stories can wait. I think we should bring all of your fancy suitcases upstairs first.” Erwin crossed his arms and faked a grumpy pout “Let me talk for once!”

“Wow, that was a lot of stuff you’ve brought with you. And you’re only gonna stay for… two weeks?” Levi’s voice tone dropped a little towards the end. “Yeah, at least that’s what I’ve planned…” Erwin knew he wouldn’t have let him leave so easily. “I think I can stay a little more. I gotta ask my boss first.” Levi sighed. “I see…You’ve never had free time, not even in this life. Ever thought of giving yourself a break?” Erwin chuckled at his words, the same words he had heard when he was a commander. They hadn’t changed a little. Levi had never stopped worrying about him and he had always put work before all else. They were sitting on the roof, above a wide terrace that linked their houses. All the lights were turned off and the only light source were the moon and the stars. Crickets were chirping in the background and some bats could be seen flying around, as if they were dancing to that fast-peaced melody. “…My parents are still alive and my current job is less stressing and tiring than being a commander. I also get paid a lot more than in my past life.” “Well, your life hasn’t been as shitty as mine. I used to be a bartender in a club, but, needless to say, moving here meant leaving my job. I still didn’t get to meet my father, my mother and uncle don’t remember anything and it took me over thirty years to meet you guys. But now…” Levi stopped for a second, tangled his hand in Erwin’s and rested his head on Erwin’s shoulder. “My wish has been granted. I’m back with you. You have no idea how much I’ve been waiting for this moment.” Levi leaned in to kiss him again briefly. “After you died, I thought I would never see you again, but I was wrong. Oh, now that I think about it, the last time we were together on a roof was when you died…” “Hey! Way to kill the mood man!” Erwin protested at Levi’statement laughing. Their hands were trapped one into the other and an hour had passed before the two climbed off the roof. “I guess it’s time to hit the hay…” Levi was about to enter his house when Erwin’s insecure voice stopped him. “Uhm…wanna join me? Just for tonight…” the shorty put on a sad look on his face. “Just for tonight? Aw, that’s too bad.” Levi walked in Erwin’s temporary house and took a quick look: it was a little bigger than his, but the arrangement of the furniture and the rooms was pretty much the same. He had checked out almost every room when he got in front of the door of the main bedroom and stopped for a second, before turning the handle: he knew what was going to happen once he had stepped in there and the thought of it made his heart beat faster than usual. As soon as the door opened, a king sized bed in the middle of the room welcomed him and his dirty thoughts. It was only a matter of seconds before they would have had “fun”. “Oh Levi, you forgot you pajama. Go back and-” Erwin, who had stopped by the kitchen to drink, entered the room, only to find out that his boyfriend was already in bed, apparently naked, wanting for him. “Don’t you want to put some clothes on? It’s pretty chilly tonight.” Levi rolled his eyes and invited Erwin to bed patting a hand on the mattress. “That’s why I need you next to me now. Hurry up and get your ass here.” “You know I don’t take orders from a subordinate.” Erwin started undressing slowly, knowing that Levi would have enjoyed the “show”. A shirt was thrown on the floor next to another one, followed by pants and underwear. Levi couldn’t help but staring while his cheeks and ears turned bright red. “Hey, my head is up here.” Erwin joked, lifting the shorty’s head with a finger. As soon as the blonde got under the covers, Levi climbed on the top of him and hugged him, covering his chest with light kisses. In the meanwhile, a hand was running up and down his back, making him slightly shiver. Catching him off guard, Erwin lifted Levi, who found himself with his back and hands pinned to the bed. He tried to break free from his grip, failing miserably. “You should also know that I hate insubordination.” “So what? Am I going to get punished or something?” Levi smirked, taunting the other man, who kissed him sinking his teeth into his neck, making him groan and arch his back. “I'll… take that as a yes… Ah!” The hands that were once around his wrists were now travelling around him, carefully following every curve. He could feel them brushing against his sensitive chest, waist and southernmost parts, sending him chills down his spine. Moans escaped Levi’s mouth as Erwin’s was working its way down his body. It had been way too much time since the last time they felt like this and the wait had only made everything better. Each time their bodies clashed against each other reminded them offer their old but still unbreakable bond, which had made them meet again in another life. Despite the pain, Levi managed to keep his legs tight around Erwin’s waist, wanting to feel the man deep inside him until his legs begged to stop. Not a word needed to be exchanged.

A clock ticked twelve times when Erwin opened his eyes and saw Levi, sleeping next to him with his hair all over his eye. He looked so relaxed that waking him up would have been a crime, Erwin thought. He had never seen him sleeping more than three hours and now. He could see his chest, still a little “dirty”, moving slowly along his breath. Erwin smiled at the peaceful view and decided to stay with him, playing with his sweaty locks between his fingers. “Ugh… stop it.” Levi slowly turned his back to him. “Morinin’ love. Did you sleep well?” Erwin hugged him from behind, kissing the back of his neck. “Don’t call me like that… What time is it?” “Midday.” The shorter man stood up yawning and rubbed his eyes before absorbing the answer. “Really? Well, I shouldn’t be surprised after what happened last night.” He looked down only to see his body covered in love bites and opalescence. “We really do need to take a bath, don’t we?” Erwin nodded in agreement and followed his lover to the bathroom. Levi stopped him in front of the door “Wait here, we gotta be ready for lunch in time. We’re eating at Mike’s.” “In the meanwhile, I’m going to make up the bed.” “Why do you even bother if we’re gonna mess it up anyway?”

A few minutes later, they were sitting at Mike’s table, together with the rest of the family. It seemed like none of them had heard anything. “They might be pretending… whatever” Levi thought while watching the twins eating. Suddenly, Rose, who was sitting next to him, stared at him right in the eyes with a devilish look on her face, then she got close to Levi’s ears and whispered something: “You guys had fun tonight?” “What?” the girl laughed “Don’t play dumb with me. I have my father’s nose and I noticed you smell different than usual. You smell like Erwin.” “I just had a shower, how-” “Are you underestimating our noses or what? Don’t worry, my dad has told me about you guys. He has always heard everything everytime.” The lunch proceeded smoothly, without any extra inappropriate comment, and the couple spent the whole afternoon with their friends. When they got back to their apartments, the sun was starting to set. Erwin got in his bathers and filled a bag with money, a book, and a towel. “You going to the beach?” “Me? We both are! C'mon, get ready and let’s go. You need to tan a bit, you look really pale. How long have you been living here?” “About two months. And… yeah, I’ve always stayed at home. I don’t like crowded places and the beaches here are usually full of people, especially brats. Also, how do you expect me to come with you with these bite marks all over my back and chest?” In the end, Erwin forced him to wear a t-shirt and go with him. Levi placed the towel on the sand so they could sit down without getting dirty. The sun was turning flame red in the rainbow colored sky. Before going back home, they went for a long walk along the shore, walking hand in hand as their footsteps were being erased by the waves. It was pretty quiet there, and Levi could enjoy the walk listening to the sound of waves instead of babies’ screaming. All of a sudden, Erwin bent over to pick a little stick up and write something on the sand: Erwin+Levi. “Tadaa!” Levi covered his face with a hand and chuckled “God, you’re so embarrassing. Hand me the stick.” He added a heart under the two names. “Now that’s cheesy.”

Erwin opened the fridge looking for something to eat: there was only some fruit, water and other drinks. Disappointed, he looked in Levi’s fridge. “What the hell are you doing with your face in my fridge?” Levi’s voice made him flinch and hit the head against the appliance. “There’s nothing in there, I’m going to the supermarket tomorrow. Go dress up, I’ll wait you in my car.” “Where are we going?” “To a restaurant, unless you don’t wanna starve.” With that being said, Levi left him alone. Erwin, once he heard Levi going down the stairs, took a look around the house. “Even in this life he’s a clean-freak… What’s that?” as soon as he entered the smaller bedroom, which seemed to be Levi’s, a bright green diary caught his eye. He repeated in his mind not to open it many times before curiosity took over him.

«I was born in the underground. My mother worked in a whorehouse and died because of her job and my uncle was an infamous killer. I had two friends, Isabel and Furlan, who both died after we joined the survey corps. I blamed Erwin, who eventually became my commander and lover, for that, and when I was about to kill him, he stopped my blade and gave me a reason to live: fighting for humanity, for my friends and, of course, for him. I wanted to help him follow his dream and ended up falling in love with him.»

«We first kissed…» The sentence was incomplete.

«I used to wear a black jacket, usually worn by someone else.» “By me, how can he not…”an unwanted thought appeared in his mind. Erwin kept reading.

«I used to go for a ride in the wood with my black horse.» “I would usually have dinner with Erwin, so that I could talk to him as lover, not a subordinate.»

«I loved him then. I love him still. Always have. Always will. That’s what really matters.»

“Oi! What is taking you so long?” the shorty shouted after waiting over ten minutes. “I was trying to take a shit, but it just won’t come out.” Erwin quoted him. While he bursted out a hearty laugh, Levi smiled, not really understanding what he thought being an inside joke. The town center wasn’t that far. The restaurant wasn’t full yet, but many people were already walking in the streets, under the yellow lights that brightened up the dark town, alone in the middle of a hill. Erwin and Levi took a sit in what was the only good restaurant. “You come here often?” Erwin asked the other man, skimming the menu. “”Not really, only when Mike and Nanaba do. I know what to order, how ‘bout you?” “I don’t. Give me a sec… Yeah, now I do. You know I’m paying, right?” “Yeah, and it would be useless if I tried to stop you.” “He still remembers this” “Just order whatever you want.” “Have you even read the prices?!” “Yep.” “Alright…” The food arrived in no time. Since the town was near the sea, the main ingredient was seafood. A delicious smell made their stomachs grumble in hunger: it was coming from a stew with mussels and a plate of pasta with clams and gurnar*. “Wow, fis is theliffious!” Erwin tried to say while chewing pasta. “How’s yours?” “Pretty good, first time I eat it.” Everything seems to go well, when Erwin unconsciously started staring at his almost empty plate, thinking of the diary. Part of him wanted to know whether his assumptions were right or wrong, while the other didn’t. “Is something bothering you?” Levi asked concerned. “No, nothing. I was only thinking of what to do after we’re done eating.” That answer didn’t satisfy him “Are you sure?” “Yeah, don’t worry.” “Why don’t we go on that cliff? There’s a gorgeous view up there.” Levi pointed at some stairs that led to a promontory on the sea.

“Hey, I can see my house from here.” “How-? Oh, right, you left the light on. You know you’re gonna pay another kind of bill, right?” Levi jokingly mocked Erwin and then winked at him. The two of them were sitting close to each other on a bench, fighting the cool night breeze. Levi shivered and put himself under Erwin’s arm, when the blonde moved it away from him. “Put it back here!” “Wait…” Erwin unravelled his white scarf and tied it around Levi’s neck like his old cravat. “There you go. Take it, I don’t really need it.” Because of the resemblance between the scarf and the cravat cut out from his mother’s old dress, Levi’s eyes teared up. “I…love it. It smells like you.” He leaned in to kiss him on the lips as a “thank you”. […] “I’ve had the time of my life with you, both last night and today.” Levi cuddle up next to Erwin with his head in the notch of the neck “Goodnight, my love.” “Goodnight, Levi.”

A week and a half had passed by, and the two lovers had never stopped enjoying each other’s presence, forgetting what was going to happen to their memory. They both decided to have fun and live it up as long and as much as they could, going out every now and then, pleasing the other, or just staying together, feeling their soulmate around them.

Eventually, one of them had to suffer. It was Erwin’s second last day of vacation. The night before, Levi had had a strong headache and preferred to sleep in his own bed. Now, he was sitting right outside his door, reading one of Erwin’s magazines. “Morning Levi! Felling better?” “Yes, don’t worry. Oh, by the way, I have something for you.” Levi took something from his wardrobe and handed it to Erwin. It was his scarf. “You gave it to me some days ago and I forgot to give it back to you, I’m sorry, Mr. Smith.” Erwin felt his world crumbling around him, but managed to smile. “You can have it, you look pretty good in it.” “Thanks, I love it.” The answer was the same, the feelings weren’t.

Note: *these are typical Italian dishes

[chroniclesofawkwardness]

Minutes

I’ve seen the musical Rent at least three times. One of the songs, probably Seasons of Love, has a line that asks how years are measured. The answer they came up with is 525,600 minutes. The time constraint got me thinking this Pride month about how many of those I spend on my phone. I remember having so many minutes as part of my cell phone plan, but the unlimited ones didn’t start after 9 P.M. Imagine that. Measuring how you use your phone based on how many minutes you spent talking to someone else rather than how many gigabytes of data you used all by yourself. 

As I write, I’m attempting a digital detox by giving myself only so many minutes to look at my phone each day. I didn’t even take it with me to work yesterday, but I couldn’t shake an anxious feeling I did bring along. It was as if a part of me was missing. You’d have thought I was in mourning. I feel something similar if I’m unlucky enough to forget my watch. I’ll stare down expectantly at the obvious tan lines on my wrist seeking validation that time is indeed passing, but not counting how many of the 525,600 minutes I had left in 2019 and beyond. If I’ve worn my watch but forgotten my phone, the left front pocket of my jeans feels as empty as my wrist without its timepiece. Maybe my soul already was empty. The two questions that consistently emerge are how did I get to this point, and how can I reclaim my minutes instead of just watching them pass?

There are unexpected moments that pique my attention. The first times I heard the phrase: the modern Stone Age family, and the piano outro on In The Meantime by 90s alternative rock outfit Spacehog come to mind. Neither of them made much sense.

In an ode to another of my vices, I recently watched a video in which the author stated that by living for the weekend, your average 22-year-old in the United States has a life expectancy of approximately eleven years if you consider hours spent working a 9-5 job, sleeping, and medical conditions brought on by age that cause one’s quality of life to deteriorate. I’m sure there were even more factors, but if I tell you everything, I’d pretty much rip away the joy of self-discovery.

I wish that my journey toward self-discovery could fill me with the childlike enthusiasm of the athletes of the Special Olympics I saw in action this morning. Not that I wish I had Down’s Syndrome like many of them, but I couldn’t help noticing how those athletes who live with it always seemed to be in IDGAF (I Don’t Give a Fuck) mode. I was envious.

Learning to live with envy isn’t easy without another emotion or activity to balance it out. I won’t go as far as saying I want an extra chromosome or advocating for a specifically-targeted line of 24 and Me DNA tests. Still, I could learn something from the athletes of the Special Olympics. They have every reason to be pissed about the shitty hand life and dealt them on the surface, and the minutes stolen from them due to circumstances beyond their control. If nothing else, watching the athletes compete made me think twice about giving away my minutes so easily to activities designed to take my minutes away. 

A few days ago, I watched part of a video presentation in which the speaker said something simple, yet potentially very powerful depending on how I chose to react to it. He admitted to having heard the phrase somewhere else, but I’ll give him credit for it because I don’t know the source. The simple phrase was: “Create more than you consume.” I started ruminating on those words the moment I heard them, and have yet to continue watching the presentation. Why? It speaks to the struggle I’ve had when it comes to seeking validation. It flies in the face of the notion that the things you own end up owning you. It was the rarest of phrases that I could fundamentally relate to rather than just powering through to the next page, segment, or some other demarcation only to feel an ever-fleeting sense of accomplishment. After I heard this, something clicked. I understood that if I wanted to achieve anything worthwhile, I should stop giving myself away so easily when various opportunities present themselves.

I don’t want to break the rest of my life down into fifteen-minute increments, but I would like to relearn how to stay focused beyond the commercial breaks between major events.

When it comes to creative endeavors in which I engage to repurpose my time, I often think of two things I’ve attributed to Charles Bukowski. I’ll give him credit for saying that he tried to write two hundred shitty words a day and that he’d get letters from strangers who told him that Notes from a Dirty Old Man turned them on. Would I like an occasional letter from a stranger confessing that my writing made a bit more blood flow to their private parts? Sure, why not?

My lost minutes are like the Lost Boys in Peter Pan’s Neverland. Lost Boys had fallen out of their prams, and if they weren’t claimed within seven days, they’d be sent to Neverland, where their captain was the boy who wouldn’t grow up. My lost minutes can’t figure out who their captain is. The top contenders are anger, regret, pornography, irrelevant video clips, swirling thoughts, and superficial conversations. Oh, and the newly discovered (by me at least) assertion by Peter Pan that there were no lost girls. Girls were far too clever to fall out of their prams. Who knows why the author was already putting women on a pedestal before they were strong enough to stand on it. Maybe their baby legs couldn’t support the weight of the expectations they were already feeling.

If I believed that there were no lost girls, I might as well go all the way and start shouting from the hills that a certain shampoo really can bring a woman to orgasm, or that an electric toothbrush does remove 47% more plaque than manuals. Below the gum line even. Won’t somebody think of the goddamn gum line? All I had to do was watch thirty-second ads for each product at least one hundred times (thereby throwing more of my nonrenewable minutes in the trash) before I truly believed the messages they were pushing. After all, what're thirty seconds? Whatever stupid show I was watching or game I was playing would be right back, so why should I care?

If I shouldn’t care, why would I be angry? Because the doctor messed up either during or immediately after my birth? Should I be pissed that he was allowed to go on practicing medicine unimpeded, yet his mistake condemned me to a life of not exactly wanting to identify as a person with a disability, but also not wanting to milk my disability for unreasonable accommodation or financial gain? I have to laugh when I see those ads from lawyers trying to drum up clients on TV:

Was your child born with Cerebral Palsy?

Did you or a loved one serve in the Navy or work in a shipyard thereby risking exposure to asbestos?

Are you sick of no one letting you and your wheelbarrow ride the elevator in privacy due to your severe Orchitis?

What’s the point of surrendering my minutes to an emotion rooted deeply in my past when I have to live in the present? My clock has never stopped running from the moment I was born?

Long summer days remind me of the brief period that I felt close to my dad. I was fourteen going on fifteen in the summer of 1996. That’s when I began working on the service project requirement to attain the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest rank in the Boy Scouts of America (fuck yeah). My project was to repaint the bleaches at Spartan Municipal Stadium, which almost every Scioto County schoolkid knows was the site of the first night game in the history of the National Football League.

Dad would wake my ass up at 6:30 A.M., and we’d go to the New Boston Wal-Mart to buy paint, trays, and rollers. In small glory-days-are-gone areas like Scioto County, Ohio, Wal-Mart(’s) had become the place to see and be seen. You could find almost everything American consumerist culture said you needed, and catch up with friends from school, church, or around the corner all under one roof. 

If you were having a bad day, pushing your cart past the checkout aisles only pretending to look for the shortest line could make you feel better about yourself almost immediately. You were bound to see people of all shapes and sizes in various states of undress. It was an honest-to-God spectator sport, worthy of competing against the very Spartans whose stadium we were painting. The only real difference (other than the circumference of their waists) between those Spartans and the modern incarnation being that those modern warriors were people who’d largely given up on life, but still needed to sustain themselves before thinking of a way, creative or otherwise, to check out permanently. The fact that even this microcosm of modern life in my hometown was deserted when dad and I came in search of supplies should say something. The prevailing sentiment was that trips to cookie-cutter chain stores like Wally World were all small towns like mine had to look forward to.  

As if attaining the rank of Eagle Scout would be my ticket out of that hilly hell hole. When’s the last time you heard someplace described by three straight words beginning with h? Supposedly, only two percent of the boys who join the scouts ever make it to the rank of Eagle. As if I too would grow up to be a United States senator, like John Glenn, or have a generation of kids grow up believing that the answers to life’s biggest questions could be found in my movies, like Steven Spielberg.

I may have believed some of the stories I heard about what other Eagle Scouts had done with their lives since reaching the top of the scouting mountain, but I wanted to get in and out of Wal-Mart on those summer mornings before people who were easy subjects for my dry, often callous sense of humor showed up. The biggest reason I loved pointing out the differences between us was that deep down, I knew there weren’t any. 

If dad and I were lucky, we’d make it to the stadium before the heat of the season sucked up the breeze so typical of its early mornings, and left behind temperatures that only seemed to move in one direction. We hardly even talked. We just painted. A father and son who had both suffered loss at an early age, yet not dwelling on anything for once in their lives, just focusing on the task at hand. Not even a traveling band from Cleveland could interrupt us. We’d been instructed not to let anyone who wasn’t helping with the project inside the stadium gates. I’ll remember that summer painting with my dad for the rest of my life. Why should I still be angry at him for not being like the dads I saw on TV? Why should I regret that not a word has passed between us in almost five years? That summer was better than nothing. It gave me more time than a lot of boys got to spend with their dads, however unavailable they may have been. How many minutes have passed between now and then? How many have those have I already lost to useless anger and regret?

Porn’s been a hell of a time thief too. But is it guilty of stealing my time if I was a willing participant? In Q, I wrote at greater length about my addiction and struggling to overcome it than I will here. For now, I’m mainly concerned about the theft of time. I began my meteoric descent into the pornscape at about the same time as my rise through the ranks of scouting. If John and Steven could have only seen what was just the beginning of my life out of uniform. What started as a curiosity ballooned into a serious problem because, for years for the average 22-year-old living for the weekend, I didn’t ownership of the why behind it. I thought watching short spurts (which reflected more on me than them) of acrobatics executed by male and female performers with both surgical enhancements and natural gifts could permanently take the place of genuine intimacy forged with a real partner.

What started as a weekend thing with the sound off and the blinds closed became more and more of a wide-open, sound-no-higher-than-twelve (I had to show some restraint for Christ’s sake), IDGAF, who-would-notice-me-anyway thing. I can’t tell you how many hours I wasted on porn rather than creating or consuming something of real value to the person I could become. Porn was a nasty reminder of what they always say about potential: It just means you haven’t done it yet. I knew that those who acted in and sent it out into the world didn’t give a damn about me, but the real tragedy was that I didn’t give a damn about myself. I often wonder who I’d be, and what I would have accomplished by now if I’d stopped my recidivistic porn use a long time ago, but that’s in the past, and time waits for no man as it marches on. I have a much better idea now of who I was and who I want to be.

At least that’s what I tell myself until a clip of a video I watched one Monday morning, or Wednesday night (what’s the difference) flashes through my dreams. I don’t care as much about the actresses’ measurements or what she was doing in the clip as much as I do being able to see her face, but having no idea what her name is. You’re nobody if nobody’s watching. 

The intellectual part of me takes over. I become obsessed with finding her name, or at least what she calls herself in front of the camera. Intellectual curiosity, or so I say, leads me back down a rabbit hole I’d fought for so long to climb out of. Urges win the minutes. My streak ends quickly and has to start all over again, way back at zero.

At least I found out her name’s Britney. With one t and an e.

If I ever woke up feeling less hardcore, or less like dwelling on some perceived slight from my past, no matter how recent or distant, I’d tap the thumbnail of a popular site for posting video clips that came pre-installed on my phone. If it was already there before I even bought the damn thing, that means it was supposed to be, and I was supposed to use it. Besides, its a library of largely short clips that only take five, seven or ten minutes to watch. I need this information if I’m going to be able to seamlessly work references from an episode of an animated show that originally aired twenty-five years ago into current conversation. I need to be able to quickly recall the hardest college football hits of all time if I’m going to have a shot at being accepted during Monday morning water cooler talk with no one in particular during the season. I need to know why women reject men or the benefits of making a schedule and sticking to it. It’s okay. Britney doesn’t even have to know. 

They’re just minutes. I’m still young. My hair hasn’t even started to go gray. There’s still time. There will always be. Time’s my friend. Blah Blah Blah.

At the end of the day, all of my excuses were lies. Whether they stemmed from negative emotions like anger or regret, or destructive behaviors like watching porn or too many other, non-explicit videos. It didn’t matter. It still doesn’t. I spent too long avoiding resistance. I’d talk about putting in the work, but at the core of my being, I wasn’t into it. I’d have much rather had someone tell me what to do with my minutes instead of holding myself accountable for how I chose to use them. I was the greatest thief of my own creative space, not a video clip, or a performer with fake tits or a nine-inch cock. 

Me. 

I can’t get the lost minutes back, but I can turn my back on Neverland, and ask myself “What if I could,” instead of saying, “This is why I can’t.”

525,600 minutes? How about the rest of a lifetime? Not given away, but carefully measured. One second at a time. I’ll take that any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

[dukeofriven]

Frisk on the Road to Damascus: A Pseudo-Essay on Converting to Undertale

So 664 days after it was released, and 382 days after I purchased it, I finally, finally, finally beat Undertale.

And... I loved it. Controversial opinion: it’s really good.

But it took me a while to love it. Let me explain, because I’m sure y’all are super interested in me doing so.

I had about five false starts playing Undertale, and all five of those false starts was how fucking irritating I found the sound of Flowey and Toriel’s dialogue. I have a hypersensitivity to sound, especially frequencies, and the sound of Flowey and Toriel’s dialogue is... not pleasant, especially at first aural blush. I got used to it when it when I finally powered through it, but if there were any major changes I would make to Undertale it would be better sound controls - being able to cut the audio down on the dialogue by even 25% would make a big difference to it on an accessibility ability level* ** It was Undertale that first ‘inspired’ me to get Tumblr Saviour - first because I didn’t want to be spoiled by a game I heard was good and wanted to play relatively unspoiled, and later because  I didn’t want to be reminded of the game I was having so much trouble with.

What was it that made me pick up Undertale long enough to get through it? As usual, it was podcasts (there’s a small paper to be written on how podcasts got me interested in pro wrestling, but that’s a whole other story.) The superlatively good Let Me Tell You About Homestuck podcast relaunched a little over a year back (shoutout to excellent co-hosts @yuri-librarian and @betgirl ), and when I found out I dived back in, and in the process rediscovered my love of Homestuck. Homestuck and I had a falling out during the gigapause and Homosuck - at the time it felt like the webcomic’s author was pissed at his own comic and actively self-sabotaging it, and even though I caught up with the comic before the ending I was still disgruntled with it and not willing to engage with it much.

But listening to LMTYAH re-ignited fandom joy within me - a euphoric Road-To-Damascus re-conversion I can only describe as ‘George Bailey coming back to existence at the end of It’s A Wonderful Life.' I gleefully snatched-up the pesterlogs and clutched them to my chest. I waved cheerfully at [S] Descend and [S] Cascade. “Merry Christmas you old mspaintadventures!” I shouted at the top of my lungs as I pelted through the snow to hug my beloved Beta Kid family again.***

You can’t discuss Homestuck anymore without discussing Undertale, which was so clearly fed by Homestuck, which was in turn fed by Undertale, because media is an incestuous slurry. Part of the issues with coming back to the Homestuck dialectic table is that you can’t ignore that big ol’ bowl of Undertale sitting between the roasted trans-media experiments and the mashed potatoes. If, every time that bowl gets passed around, you put your hands over your ears and and scram ‘LA LA LA LA LA I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT’ then the other guests are going to look at you funny and your nearest neighbour is going to conclude that they’d rather sit through that pompous lecture by the vegan on the other side of them after all.

It’s not a great dining experience, is what I am trying to explain with this increasingly overcooked analogy. I wanted to eat with the rest of the guests - I wanted to watch @revolutionaryduelist’s video on Undertale themes and Homesick themes. I want to suck it up, be an adult, and eat like a goddamn grown-up.

So I grit my teeth, grabbed the bowl, and started shovelling large spoonfuls down my throat. I think this is how grown-ups eat right?

I didn’t like the taste at first. What brought me to Undertax more than anything was the idea of the pacifist run. The games that have this as a legit option are few and far between, and some of them (e.g. Dishonoured) get downright nasty about it. Undertake wasn’t nasty about being helpful, but it didn’t make it easy, either.

Some of you may  feel the need to note that ‘the pacifist route isn’t supposed to be easy,’ to which my response would be ‘shove it up your bum you git-gud wankeroos.’ There are two types of ‘hard’ in video games - one of challenge, and one of ability. The excellent puzzle game The Witness doesn’t greatly challenge ability (for sighted people, at least) - by and large almost all of its puzzles just involve drawing a line. The Witness is hard because the puzzle are so tortuously, mind-bindingly challenging. By contrast, a platform like VVVVVV doesn’t preset much mental challenge - it barely has anything like a puzzle that I can remember, but in terms of ability it requires lightening-fast reflexes and great timing (Somehow I beat that game -I still don’t know how).

Undertale is not a hard-challenge game, it is a hard-ability game, and I flat-out suck at its bullet hell mechanics. All my frustrations with the game were met at the bullet board - if I could make one other major change to the game it would be slightly improving the speed of the heart cursor. Time and time again I violently cursed because I had just missed getting out of the way of something with a cursor I found sluggish and unresponsive, as though my keyboard was laggy. A poor skill level coupled with what felt like hardware problems made for an increasingly difficult experience, one in which I felt like the game was almost taunting me: “oh, you want to be a good person, huh? Too bad - you lack the skills to be a good person. You’re not going to get through this without resorting to killing, you intrinsically violent, terrible person."

Staying alive through the confrontation with Undyne drained me, and by the time I was on my second iteration of Mettaton being a shitheel I just felt burned-out. The story still felt pretty flat, and wasn’t really drawing me in. The hardest decision I had had to make was at the very beginning of the game - Toriel’s home, and Toriel herself, were so lovely and sweet that I still resented the game for making me have to break her heart. I didn’t want to leave her house, I just wanted to stay and live a nice life with her in the Underground. But no - the game wanted me to have  heroic destiny and shit so fine, guess i’ll go back to the surface I don’t have much interest in seeing. Since leaving Toriel’s house all I had wanted to do was return to that tranquility and warmth, and instead I just got more monsters trying to kill me. The stuff with Papyrus had been very funny, but the game still wasn’t sinking its claws into me - it was a quirky but light RPG, funny, but not funny or deep enough for me to understand why a big bowl of it was sitting at the Homestuck dialectic table other that Toby Fox had worked on both things - which seemed like a weak reason to include it. (Remember the Homestuck dialectic table? That didn’t stop being a thing or anything)

So I walked away again and did other things over several weeks, possibly months. I finally came to terms with the fact that my vision is permanently damaged and got myself a Kindle so I could read again. I read a book on the Apollo programme and took another crack at Bleak House. I watched an episode or two of Lucha Underground, got caught up on The Adventure Zone, and went through every post ever posted on @revolutionaryduelist’s Tumblr. I fantasized about buying a new computer. I told myself to watch the Little Witch Academia TV series and forgot every single time - and so on.

And then I watched Car Boys.

Car Boys is one hell of a ride, no pun intended, a strange mishmash of video game fault testing and emergent meta narrative that ends up surprisingly emotional and affecting - and as the credits rolled I made the always unwise decision to wander down into the Youtube comments, where I discovered the fun ‘Car Boys is just like Homestuck’ argument which, natch, led me back to thinking about Homesick and Video Games - and, ultimately, Undertale.

“Fine,” I told myself, “I guess I’ll beat it, at least to finally have one thing in my over-glutted Steam Library I have actually seen-through to completion.”

So last night I booted up my Steam, made the conscious decision to stop trying to get my just-bought 360 controller to work with Sonic Adventures DX via wine (it keeps crashing), and booted up Undertale.

For a while it was just fine again. I don’t like Alphys, even after beating the game: she reminds me of a lot of shitty people I’ve known in my life, and the story uses her lack of self-confidence as sort of a moé defence - ah, look at how cute she is, isn’t that adorable, she feels bad about what she’s done - without ever actually examining that behaviour in any critical detail. Alphys being an adorkable anime fan and her relationship with Undyne are all great character traits - but it doesn’t make her a good person, and the game never truly calls her to the mat in much the same way that it sort of glosses over Asgore having condoned the murder of six other humans (but he comes into the story so late I find him less of a character and more of a symbol.) Alphys gets a whole ‘trip to the dump/romance role-play’ subplot after being revealed to have deliberately ordered a bunch of monsters to at least make a pretence of killing you in order to make herself look like a hero - and that's before you get to go into her basement and learn the really shitty shit she did with dying monsters' souls. I mean Jesus Christ Alphys how come nobody calls you on this!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I helped Mettaton’s ratings, left him to be patched upped by Alphys, and made my way to the castle walls - and the writing started to get really good. I loved meeting with Sans and his talk about the true nature of EXP and LOVE, loved walking into the throne room for the first time, loved the moment when I realized Toriel was the Queen-in-Exile - coming upon the New House was genuinely moving… but then I reached Ashore, and it wouldn’t let me TALK to him, and I didn’t like having to fight him after a full pacifist run, and also he was really hard.

So I swallowed my pride a little and googled vague hints for ways to make the fight easier. I learned that yeah, I absolutely had to fight him, and then I went and ground Cloud Glasses back and forth to the Temmie Store to unlock the Temmie Armor and earn the cash to stock-up on my beloved Bisicles. So equipped, I went and fought Asgore for the final time, thus beating this game that everyone raved about for reasons I could not understand.

Then the game ended and suddenly started to get really, really, really good. Much like Homestuck in Act 6, Undertale’s starts pushing the boundaries of games themselves, using save files against you and deliberately crashing the game. Omega Flowey is a goddamn nightmare, a visual headache who rails against you and the concept of friendship, and while he was a frustrating fight for the first time I felt like this was less a reflection of my shitty skills and more a deliberate choice of the part of the game to show what monstrous power he wielded.

As I was sent back into the world, I was eager to go find Undyne. I had to look-up where she lived because I had totally forgotten that her house existed - in fact, I had forgotten Papyrus had ever said anything about meeting up at Undyne’s house, so I never befriended her in my original run. The moment Undertale moved from a game I was starting to enjoy to one I knew I loved was the moment Papyrus leapt out Undyne’s window - late in the process to fall in love with a game? Perhaps, but so it was.

Missing Undone the first time through felt so narratively satisfying to me that it wasn’t until writing this that it occurred to me that it was something that didn’t have to have been missed - the run-in with Undone hardly ends on a high-note: after a miserable shield-fight and a whole lot of fleeing you give her a cup of water and she slinks-off into the night. It wasn’t something that exactly screamed ‘She’s Ready For A Friendship Lesson.’ I kept expecting her to show back up somewhere in New Home Castle for Round 2: Redemption Boogaloo, but it never happened. Then Sans got Anubis on my ass, the King of All Monsters got murdered by a flower and my game crashed on purpose - sort of forgot about her no-show appearance.

So there we were: breaking windows, sipping tea, making the worst goddamn spaghetti it’s ever been my misfortune to make**** and having a wonderful time. Other than my general misgivings about Alphys being let-off way too lightly by the narrative*****, after that first reset Undertale was practically a perfect game for me. The ending made me feel mushy and sappy, the epilogue where you get to pace around and talk to just about everyone felt so unbelievably RIGHT - if you want to head out and make one last personal connection with everyone you’ve ever met, you can pretty-much do that. Ben Croshaw wrote quite elegantly that Undertale represents “the triumph of kindness, reminding people of who they were before tragedy twisted them.”****** That kindness is what makes the game so compelling - what makes reading-up on the Genocide route feel so legitimately horrific and transgressive. It’s going to stick in the back of my mind every time I am needlessly rude to someone, overly sarcastic, or just my usual ‘less kind than I wish I was’ self. Homestuck wallets just went on sale today and I immediately bought one and then felt bad for all the Tumblr posts I saw for worthy causes - I SHOULD GIVE UP ALL MY WORLDLY POSSESSIONS TO THE POOR AND GO PREACH THE GOSPEL OF ACTING WITH MERCY as Undertale teaches.

It’s the kindness that will stick with me - and dear God, reading about the Genocide routes makes me nauseated. I’m the guy who claims that this time his Mass Effect play through will be Renegade and then goes 100% paragon again except for being rude to Anderson (because screw that dill weed - oh, geeze, I have failed Undertale again.)

Anyways, long, convoluted, not-very-coherent opinion: Undertale is a good game. Sorry it took me so long to learn that.

*but if we’re going to talk about accessibility in video games we’ll be here all year: an especially big fuck you to all those games who don’t let you change the font size for all of us with really poor eyesight (which is to say essentially all games).

** And what is it with games being embarrassed to have their text dialogue scroll past without some kind of irritating sounds? Undertale at least uses the noise as a form of expanding character identity, but the world is littered with sprite JRPGs who think dialogue is best accompanied by a garbled, repeating beep.

*** Re-experiencing the comic multiple times gave me so many more insights I never used to have. Revisiting Act Six and Homosuck, especially through @betgirl‘s eyes, I found so much to love. Which there is some serious problems in it (The Dancestors and Abuser Gamzee), there’s so much more joy, depth, and thought then I remember. I don’t know if, at the time, with the broken pacing, it was possible to see the shape of the narrative arc that Andrew Hussie was trying to tell - the deconstruction of the nature of storytelling, video games, and the ‘Problem of Mario.’ It’s really good, you guys, and you do yourself a disservice if you have never read it.

**** Undyne is right, by the way: homemade pasta is unquestionably the best and super easy; its only major flaw is that it’s just time-consuming, especially if you’ve got to hand-crank an antique pasta machine to roll it out. KitchenAid sells a pasta roller attachment for their mixer for an amount that justifies a class uprising all on its own.

***** I’m not some weirdo going ALPHYS MUST BE PUNISHED but Alphys should really, you know, actually apologize for the shit she pulled. Yeah, she says ‘I got scared of my amagalgamtions and cowardly didn’t tell their families about it,’ but not being honest about it is the most insignificant issue here. Much more pressing and things like Experimenting On A Human Soul, Actually Making the Amalgams In The First Place, Setting Up A Bunch Of Death Traps So She Could Insert Herself Into Your Life As A Hero. I can forgive Alphys - I think she is a genuinely good person who made misguided and out-right foolish mistakes and should never have had the job she had (I hear Toriel fires her in one ending which fuck yeah Toriel, only one with sense.) Undertake doesn’t need to re-write a damn thing about Alphys - I would just like one more scene in which Alphys admits culpability for the original problem rather than just an aspect of the fallout.

****** And it should be stressed: Alphys deserves kindness (and a good therapist). I don’t want a kangaroo court or anything like that - my issue is with the narrative, not Alphys personally.

Asgore, though… dude kinda murdered six children? Do people talk about that, because they ought to.

[ninequestions9]

David, 25, Actor

What is the biggest frustration you’re facing now?

Finding motivation to pursue the goals that I have decided are important to me. It is very difficult for me to sort of break out of established cycles in my life and take a chance and do something new that I know is important to me. It’s hard due to a mixture of anxiety and fear of failure. If you never try anything new then you can’t fail. I tend to just delay and pretend I’m waiting for an optimal time or specific circumstances, but there’s no such thing.

2. What trait do you wish you most had?

I mean my first instinct is to say teleportation, which is telling I think because commuting sucks. Can you imagine never having to commute ever again? Like you just apparate. That would be so good!

    But work ethic; the ability to just feel good about a job well done even if I didn’t want to do it. Right now I don’t really get that. I don’t get a feeling of satisfaction just from doing something work-wise. Cleaning, you know, that kind of thing. It just doesn’t make me feel good to get it done. So it’s so hard to motivate myself to do it.

3. What are 3 characteristics you look for in a friend?

Emotional availability; meaning someone who is capable of being open and available emotionally, like being present and being able to make commitments. Just general nerdiness. Being able to keep up in conversation about various passions. I guess a good listener is a more specific thing there because even if someone doesn’t share all the interests that I have, being able to be a good active listener is all that it really takes. On the flip side of that, passionate. Someone has to be passionate about at least one thing. I tend to perceive someone as boring if they don’t have at least one thing that they can just be like “Let me tell you about sock repair!” Otherwise I just feel like I never stop talking if someone doesn’t have the ability of matching my intensity on a number of issues.

4. What makes you feel brave?

Dating and/or social situations like parties. I’m quite introverted and I have some social anxiety at times, but it is something that I have worked at and have ways of overcoming due to my acting training in some respects and the friends I’ve made and the support I’ve received from them. Going out and having a good time and meeting strangers and finding common ground, making new friends.

5. What makes you feel vulnerable?

Just recently I had a sort of a break through and discovered how much emotion I tend to withhold from others, no matter how close they are to me. Which is part of growing up male. Every male is encouraged to not show emotion and not to be vulnerable and to deal with it yourself specifically. Maybe admit to yourself that you’re vulnerable and hurting, but don’t tell anybody else until after you’ve already solved it. Just recently I’ve gotten a little bit better at revealing when I’m feeling overwhelmed or stressed or anxious and in the moment; like revealing that and letting someone else help me manage those emotions.

    Emily, who is my partner right now, helped me a lot just by being observant and not letting me get away with just saying “Everything’s fine,” and withdrawing and just bearing all that by myself, which has been very healthy. Just healthier in general for both of us just because when someone is that close to you they can tell when you’re undergoing stress like that. There’s no use pretending otherwise with them; you’re not going to fool them so you might as well communicate about it and share it with each other.

6. What was your proudest moment?

It’s tough to pin down for me because I’m pretty prideful in general. Not in the Seven Deadly Sins kind of way, but I’m not afraid to admit when I’m proud of an accomplishment I’ve made or a skill that I’ve cultivated. I guess the thing that I feel the most proud of is admitting that I was poly[amorous]. That’s one of my most recent huge scheme of change in life. Just this shift that I made. That was something that I was denying myself, but once I saw it, it felt like it had always been right and I had been lying to myself and hurting people around me because I was lying to myself. Denying others and myself a chance to have a true open relationship was because of that. Making that realization and communicating with my girlfriend at the time about it and eventually freeing us from the unhealthy cycle we were trapped in: Me realizing I had feelings for other people and then thinking it meant I didn’t care for her and breaking up and then realizing that other people are shitty sometimes and getting back together with her. Just not healthy. Just coming to that realization has brought me a lot of joy and has opened up a lot of opportunities to stop hating myself for those specific reasons.

7. Who is your role model / hero and why?

I remember being asked this question as a child for a school project and I couldn’t think of anyone then so I just put Shaquille O’Neal. I just panicked and was like “Ahh I don’t know.” There are worse role models, but like I didn’t have any reasons to back it up.

    I don’t think I have ever really compared myself to other people in that way. Which is probably just a luxury of being a white cis male. Growing up, there was not as much pressure for me to match other people’s aesthetics or ideals. I could just have my own thing. My instinct now is to say….like no real humans. I think Steven Universe, from the popular Cartoon Network series “Steven Universe,” is a great example of a character who breaks down the toxic aspects of masculinity without sacrificing the positive attributes and being emotionally available. Even though he’s like 12, that’s definitely something that I love about myself and strive to be more and more everyday. Emotionally open and accepting and conscious of other people’s emotions. You don’t have to sacrifice any traditionally masculine virtues that you have as well. Yeah I feel comfortable saying Steven Universe.

8. What is one life lesson you’d like to pass down to future generations?

There is no such thing as a mono-culture. Always keep in mind that just because people share attributes does not mean they share culture or share opinions. No such thing as a mono-culture. Every American is different and believes different things or has the potential to believe different things. Everything I ever think about comes back to Dungeons and Dragons. It’s a miracle I didn’t mention it until now. The analog I always use is in classic fantasy, it’s all mono-cultures. Elves always live in forests and they always are elitist and proud and beautiful. Dwarves always live in mountains and are greedy and isolationist. Hobbits are portly and cook all the time and don’t like traveling. Mono-cultures. The only people who don’t have mono-cultures sort of are the humans. We apply these same sort of prejudices to real life. We believe that people that look similar or believe the same thing are these mono-cultures and we are constantly simplifying things in our minds by taking these short cuts.

    But really there’s no such thing! Every person might grow up in the same environment, but just have so many subtle differences in their upbringing or experiences that can lead to vastly different opinions. My parents grew up in the same place that I grew up and I grew up with my parents, but I don’t share a lot of their values or their beliefs.

9. What is your opinion of Jesus?

Jesus the man seemed pretty cool. I’m and atheist. I don’t believe that Jesus was anymore than a man. I don’t believe that he had any idea of what a big deal he was going to be so far down the road. I think he was a Jewish philosopher who sought to bring people closer together and clear up some of the discrepancies in the Old Testament and make people feel loved and supported and help people to love and support each other. Obviously, things got a little out of hand and they killed him. It makes a lot of sense that that story has survived throughout so many years because that is just the human condition right there. I don’t dislike him.

    To sort of get into a broader discussion, Christianity is not great at being fallible or admitting that their fallible. They have the whole like the pope is infallible rule, which tends to not be healthy. To admit that Christ might have been fallible and the people around him might have been fallible as well and to also admit that that does not invalidate his message or the things he did. This is something that happened thousands of years ago and has been translated into different languages hundreds of times. Taking these ancient texts as gospel is not necessary to finding meaning from them and to let them affect your life and better yourself.

[selenelavellan]

Howz about... more of that au where Selene can turn into a smol dragon and Glory and Squish kidnapped her? And Dirthamen is now Freaking Out and Selene is Very Done with being kidnapped. That au is fantastic.

The Rescue

Dragon Selene AU

(previously the Elvhenans-not-so-shitty-anymore-AU because that was just a mouthful)

Part One

Part Two

Everyone that features here and isn’t Selene belongs to @feynites

It has been a week since Selene wentmissing.

A week, since Deceit dragged thebookstore owner into the dungeons and searched them for informationon her whereabouts.

A week, since Dirthamen discovered Glory wasstill around.

Each day drags on, as even his mostskilled spies are unable to find so much as a hint of her. Nightafter night, Fear scours the dreaming for her, and each morning theyreturn empty handed.

This is his fault, of course.

If he had been more forceful whenasking her not to go, if he had insisted that she be accompanied bysomeone, if he had given her more incentive to stay, instead. Nodoubt she has been taken because of their closeness. He has nothidden her well enough, he has been too open with his affections, andSelene is paying the cost.

It is unfair.

…It was unfair what they did toGlory, as well. He has learned that, over the years. He has softened,he has learned from his daughter, from Selene, of kindness andempathy and moral boundaries. He has learned that his brother wascruel, and that it was a moral lacking of Falon'dins, and notDirthamen’s, that caused it.

Even if that is not always something hetruly believes.

It does not bode well for Selene, ifshe is with Glory. There have been no ransoms, no lists of demandssent to him, or his people. Nothing he could agree to give up inexchange for her safe return.

Which leads him to infer that they donot intend to offer her safe return.

It is a miserable feeling. He hasbecome unaccustomed to sleeping alone, after so many centuries ofsharing his bed. And so, he has been avoiding sleep until his bodydemands it of him. He is fatiguing himself, trying to find her,trying to keep his territories under control with the rising tide ofrebellion already rocking against his shores. Stretching himselffarther than he should, than he is able to in his current state.

His body has become less solid, he isaware. His mind less focused as his thoughts wander to where shouldcould be, what she could be doing, whether she is all right. Deceithas taken over for much of his duties, although they are not in amuch better state themselves.

He longs for her in a way he has notfelt in memory. It is not in a way he enjoys. The way it sits on hischest and weighs heavy in his mind is far too unpleasant for him tofind any joy. A sensation he once thrived on, become his slowundoing.

On the fifth day, his daughter comes tovisit.

It is good to see her again, her visitsfew and far between these days. He tries to pull himself together, tomake himself presentable and unoffensive for her to speak with. Buthis neck is too long, his wings spread too far behind him, and he cannot seem to force his bones to remain entirely solid when he issitting.

“There has truly been no clue to herwhereabouts?” Mana'din asks. His daughter. One of the few people heknows he can trust, still.

“I have found one lead, but it is notone I have had success in tracking.” he admits.

She gestures silently for him tocontinue, head tilting slightly in concern.

“I believe she was taken by Glory.”he admits. Not information he has shared, of course. After theirdisappearance had lead to his own brothers demise, open knowledge ofthem would likely lead to a hunt that the empire can not afford tospare at this time.

His daughter freezes. “Glory isdead.”

“That is what I thought as well,”he agrees “Or run back to the dreaming, or someplace outside of ourreach. But when I dug through the memories of the last person knownto see her, they revealed that they had been blackmailed andthreatened by an all too familiar face. I would not mistake theirsfor another.”

Mana'din leans back in the chaircontemplatively. Lets out a heavy sigh. “That is…troubling.”

Dirthamen nods. “Any assistance youcould lend to the search would be appreciated. I know your resourcesare still growing, but perhaps your people will have information minedo not.”

“Of course,” She agrees, standingto take her leave. “I…will go and see what I can find.”

Dirthamen thanks her, offering a hugbefore she strides back out towards the paths to her own lands.

It is another two days before one ofhis people finds the location of Glory’s bunker, and Dirthamen leavesto reclaim whatever is left of Selene.

–

Selene listens attentively, curled upwhile Glory tells her of their past. Forced into a body, intoservitude, into Falon'dins hold. It is a tragic tale, and Seleneknows if they had approached her before she had met Dirthamen, shewould have offered her services to their cause entirely.

But she could not betray him now.

“He is a monster.” Gloryinsists. “Like his brother.”

“He is not,” Selene argues,shifting back into her natural form to make a stronger argument.Snorts and whines just aren’t quite cutting it, in her dragon shape.“Dirthamen has his flaws, of course he does. He is not always kind,and his understanding of other people is still growing. But he ismaking an effort to be better, to be better, to understand.Monsters don’t care about the people they hurt. He does.”

“We’re still talking about the sameperson, yeah?” Squish snorts from the same corner. “Because Iworked for him for a long time, and I can tell you firsthand heabsolutely does not care about the people who get hurt, nearly somuch as he is intrigued by their pain.”

“You have also been away for a longtime,” Selene says. “He has changed, is changing. I havenever been held against my will, I have watched him change and learnand become kinder over the years!”

Glory rolls their eyes.

Selene huffs, frustrated that her pleasseem to be falling on ears of those that have already condemned him.“I’m not under any kind of thrall! I just love him, he is a goodman!”

“Love can be its own thrall,”Squish mutters from where she is still propped against the wall.

Selene lets out a loud noise offrustration, angrily pulling on the pile of clothes Squish hadbrought in from earlier. “What would it take to convince you thatI’m telling the truth?”

Before they can answer, the door toGlory’s office slams open and Mana'din strides in.

She pauses as she takes in the scene;Squish, relaxed against a wall, Glory, sitting comfortably back intheir chair, and Selene still pulling the robe around her otherwisestill naked and freshly shifted form.

Mana'din gestures angrily to Selene“THIS was your brilliant plan?”

Selene blinks, having never seen herlose her cool like this, and takes a slow step out of the pathbetween Mana'din and Glory.

“It worked.” They respondflippantly.

“Do you have any idea what sort ofdistress you have caused? How much development you may have undone?”

“She needed help.”

“They were happy! Do you know howlong it has been since my father has been happy?”

“Then I am glad to have taken it fromhim.”

Mana'din seems to sigh then, beforeturning to Selene “What do you want to do?”

Selene blinks, and pulls the tiestogether on the robe “I want to go back, of course.”

She nods, and turns to Glory “Thenyou will send her back.”

“The hell I will!”

“This is not a discussion, it is anorder.”

Glory rises from their chair, fuming asthey step towards Mana'din before the torches flicker and the bunkershakes.

“Oh no.” Whisper Mana'din andSelene as they exchange a knowing look.

The bunker shakes again, and a fewvoices can be heard screaming before being abruptly silenced, as itthe room rattles around them once more.

Like footsteps.

Glory’s hand reaches for the sword ontheir hip, as they and Squish stride into the hall, weapons ready.Selene follows, staring down the hall as a dripping mass of blackenedooze slams guards and soldiers violently into the walls. Great wingswith dark, glistening feathers sprout from several sides of it, toolarge to fit into such a cramped hallway, but moving and flickingangrily all the same.

Glory charges towards the creature, andSelenes legs take off like a shot behind them.

“No!” She screams,loudly enough to startle Glory, allowing Dirthamen’s outstretched,dripping hand to knock them off balance as they let out a cry ofpain. Selene grabs the wrist as it raises for a second blow, holdingon as tight as she can while it tries to shake her off. “It’s me!”She cries, arms tightening their hold as she slips on the substance,legs dangling in the air “Dirthamen! Vhenan, it’s me!”

Cold air continues to spread throughthe narrow passage, enveloping them all as mana pokes and prods ather, and a second hand extends beneath her, gently cupping at herlegs.

“Selene?” Grumbles the mass, liquidsliding like oil off the sleek surface of a familiar mask, emergingfrom the front of the being curiously.

“Yes!” She cries “Yes, it’sme, it’s Selene. I’m here, I’m ok, it’s alright!”

Carefully, she is settled back onto theground. She keeps her eyes focused on him, on trying to help himshift into a more manageable form while the sludge slumps off of hisform and vanishes between the cracks in the floor.

“Selene,” he mumbles wrappinghimself around her entirely. “Selene, Selene. Ithought you were dead.”

“I’malright Vhenan, it’s ok. I’m right here with you,” she soothes,whispering reassuring words to him while he shrinks back to hisaverage elf size in her arms, wings still wrapped around her as hismask clatters to the floor and his face buries itself in the crook ofher neck.

Gloryregains their footing behind her, sword raised and still ready tostrike. Mana'din places her hand on their arm, and shakes her head.They hesitate, staring at the pair for a moment, caught between apiece of the vengeance they’ve been seeking for so long, and theterrifying knowledge that Selene may have been telling the truth.

Dirthamenstop most set of eyes glance up at Glory, and from where they standthey are hit with a thick wave of remorse, and guilt, directed tothem. An apology?

Glory’sfist tightens around the hilt of their sword, but before they cantake another step, Dirthamen and Selene are gone. Vanished, in a rushof magic and feathers, leaving behind only the trail of woundedsoldiers that had been unfortunate enough to get into the Evanuris’spath.

Theywill have to relocate, Glory thinks with a lead feeling in the pit oftheir stomach. And then devise a new plan of attack.

Noreason this should have been a total loss, after all.

[thats-not-buddies]

Your Work is Derivative [February 2017]

Books

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet So. This book. It's one of those odd ones that I picked up by chance before the flood of recommendations came in. I saw it in someone's instagram post the day after I borrowed it. I believe it was in my unnecessary library haul last month. "A Long Way" (or "Planet" or "ALWTASAP" or "LWSAP" or "Small Angry Planet", I have no idea how to abbreviate it) is an adventure story by Becky Chambers set in space, very much like Firefly except less with less gore and more diversity.

I do mean diversity of all kinds. It is heavily implied although not outright stated that only one of the humanoid cast of characters is actually white, and beyond that, a lot of them aren't even vaguely human. Unlike Sci-Fi shows that are limited by having human actors, a good number of the crew on the Wayfarer aren't even humanoid. Additional to that, multiple sexualities are featured as well as genuinely different cultures, as alien as they might be (pun intended). The review on the front of my copy stated "a joy to read and joyously written" and I have to agree. There's plenty of action and drama in this story, and it's riveting, but at no point are you overwhelmed by the tension or angry at the characters. It works, and the people (whether they're 'people' or not) are good, kind and you love to get to know them, even if you don't love them all. I have successfully given almost nothing about the plot away, but the title gives you a good clue. It is a long (long long long) way, to a small angry planet. Becky Chambers' biography states that she is the child of two very smart cookies, and that is evident in her writing, that even the fake things sound true and scientific. I adored it and almost want to pick it up and read it again. I can't, however, as my dad took it as soon as I finished it.

Audiobooks

The Art of Asking

I've reviewed the Art of Asking in my Goodreads and I don't think I have much more to say. While I've previously read the book and loved it, this time around I listened to the audiobook, which I remember being up for some awards. It was an excellently crafted audiobook, and I don't think that's something you can say often. Amanda Palmer reads it, as you might expect, and she intersperses the narrative with ukulele themes and the occasional full-length track to help provide context to a story. These are not always her songs though, but sometimes those of other artist friends. I noticed some critics called her work contradictory, and yes, if you were trying to read The Art of Asking as a guide to getting everything you've ever wanted, you're not going to be successful. Life is contradictory. What worked for her in some instances didn't work in others, but the point is that she tried, and she wants you to try too. My favourite section of the book was about crowdfunding and the most obvious but truly important lesson to be taken from that is

you can't crowdfund without a crowd

. Lots of people seem to think asking the internet for help is like getting free money. It's not, because at its core, you aren't asking the internet. You're asking your audience. These are your friends, family, fans, people you have already had to work for years with which to build relationships. It's a lesson worth keeping in mind. Another key factor was the difference between asking and begging. When you ask for something, you approach it with the attitude that the other person can say no, and that's okay. You're begging when you manipulate or demand that the other person help, or act out when they decline. Begging is an act of desperation, and that is sometimes and sadly required, but asking is an act of collaboration and optimism. Too many times I've seen people asking for things, only to get angry when they aren't immediately granted their wishes. At that point, it stops being asking. This book, or audiobook, makes you think about things, and I highly recommend it. 

You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) Felicia Day's book has made me remember mortifying facts about my life on the internet that I wish had never existed. It's great. As she talks about her WoW addiction, her forum poetry about games from her youth, and the awkward meet ups with teens from her community, I began to recall the cringe-worthy moments of my past that I had firmly hidden away. No, I will not tell you about them. I think what I like best about Felicia is that she didn't suddenly skyrocket to anything. She didn't become an overnight cult hit and she didn't even figure out what she was doing straight away. She studied the violin and math at college, before going on to become a struggling actor, and then a web creator. I love that, because it's non-linear, and the best stories of success don't follow a straight line. Also, she procrastinates like crazy and I identify with that. I wrote this on February 6th, I'm sharing it on March 1st.

Online Wonders

Check Please.

Has anyone NOT discovered Ngozi's Check Please yet? It's a comic found on tumblr, about college hockey players, who are smart, funny, loud feminists. And some of them are gay. It took me a long time to get around to checking it out, so long in fact that I missed the SECOND Kickstarter for the series by about two months. I'm still upset about this fact because I could have gotten myself a Samwell jersey (and to support the series, I am so excited to support art where I can this year). Check Please has one main star, and he has my heart, little Bits, Eric (Bitty) Bittle. He's a sweet Southern boy who bakes, and plays hockey and eventually comes to live in the Haus with his team. I was stupid for a long time and didn't get around to throwing myself head first into this series and now I'm so glad I have. I have read everything released up to this point and I got so excited I even ordered the two sketch zines, which arrived yesterday, Huddle Vol 1 & 2. They're so beautiful. I'm also now supporting the creator Patreon, and I've been lucky enough to have their livestreams coincide with my free time on several occasions. Gosh I love the series. Not just for Bitty and his pining and baking and beautiful happy relationships, but for the supporting characters who are all interesting enough to be the leads in their own stories. There's Ransom and Holster, two best friends who unless you ship them, show that two straight guys don't have to be awkward about loving one another and showing affection. There's Lardo, the team's manager, a tiny lady who is more of a boss than the rest of the team put together AND she's an artist, and the last character I want to mention today is Shitty. That's right. Shitty. Shitty Knight is a moustachioed lothario, except he's not. He's the one you ask when it comes to law, feminism and kegsters, and people come out to him a lot. It's a thing. He's just that safe and weird and great. But not as great as Bitty. I love Bitty. And Jack. I've somehow avoided mentioning Jack but I've rambled enough. For now. You should check out Check Please, the patreon, and Ngozi.

Unnecessary Library Haul

I borrowed and promptly returned the soundtrack to the Pokemon movie after two days. What a past blast and so on. This soundtrack was so very nineties, with N*Sync, Britney, Christina, and even Aaron Carter. It was a hoot. I was surprised that there were songs I haven't heard since I last had a copy of the soundtrack (on CASETTE) and yet I had their lyrics memorised. Vacations where I wanna be, party on the beach where the fun is free... ohhh come on try to catch me, ohhh catch me if you can, ohhh catch meeee, if you can! Have some fun with the funk, turn up the bass and pop the trunk! - I swear Aaron Carter did not have a licence back when he was singing about the sound system in his car. 

Games

Fantasy Life (3DS)

After getting way into Stardew Valley again, I, in turn, got WAY into Fantasy Life once more. Fantasy Life is a 3DS game by the people who brought you the Professor Layton puzzle series. This is like that in almost no ways, except for the quirky characters you come across. Fantasy Life is a life simulation game (spoiler) that allows you to take on multiple 'lives' within your game. These are essentially skillsets. You can, for example, start a Life as a woodcutter, chopping down trees and... chopping down more trees, and then decide to use that wood by starting another Life (like changing your hat, really) as a Carpenter. There are three types of Lives in the game, combat lives (mercenary, hunter, paladin, etc.), gatherer lives (woodcutter, miner, angler), and artisan lives (carpenter, blacksmith, cook, alchemist). These lives all have different goals and skills and getting all the achievements can be so consuming that you forget to follow the main storyline, which is cute, wordy, and run by a talking butterfly. It's a great game, and if you'd like a better overview of it, my favourite review that got me into the game in the first place is Mischa Crossing's Rave video on youtube. [Picture below from mischacrossing.com]

Poochy and Yoshi’s Woolly World As a present to myself I recently pre-ordered Poochy and Yoshi's Woolly World. The original WiiU game, just titled Yoshi's Woolly World, is such a sweet game. It's a Yoshi platform game but made of yarn. One of the main things I look for in games are bright happy colours, and this delivers, as does the new version for 3DS. There isn't a big change between the platforms, in fact they are basically the same game, except the new version has more integration with amiibos (my set came with Poochy and pink yarn Yoshi, they're so cute!), and more Poochy. I'm not a big fan of the weird dog with a tongue enlargement, but I like that the game is now portable so I can play a level whenever I feel like it. Probably still going to play in the same room as my WiiU though. Whatever. There's a whole convenience thing at play here. I've been playing the game for two days now and it's as cute as I thought. By using the poochy yarn amiibo you can complete gold rush runs and specific poochy levels. You can also access new designs (wool patterns) for it and save it to your amiibo so that you can play with, for example, bumble bee poochy.

[serenitydiviness]

An Awkward Situation- Part 26

Man oh man. It’s been a while since I’ve updated this, lowkey I lost motivation for this and recently I got a beautiful lengthy comment on this on AO3 and that seemed to give me the push I needed. 

so this chapter is an important filler that dicusses the past of one Aaron Jose Balboa the Fourth. 

A03/ffnet

Part 26

Adrien was pacing. He tried not to but he couldn’t help it. He felt his heart rushing as he waited for the door to signal the true identity of his lady.

Maria broke his pacing by forcing him to sit down.

“Breakfast.” She ordered gently.

He looked up at her slightly worried. She looked every bit as tired as she sounded.

“You too.” He said quietly.

“I will.” She nodded.

Maria served him and then sat down herself. He stared at his food completely mystified by the fact that the eggs and ham were mixed together but it wasn’t an omelet. He watched his food intently before picking at it. Why does the food always feel a little spicy? He wondered.

“Yo, Adrien.” He heard Arty call.

“Hmm?” He replied looking up from his meal.

“Some girl named Marinette is here to work on a math project with you.” He said.

Adrien’s heart dropped for a second nodding dumbly. “I’ll go greet her.” He said getting up out of his seat.

He practically ran, hitting a few things on the way, before getting to the elevator. Somehow, the world was both confusing and made a perfect amount of sense in that moment. When he got off the elevator, he saw her, standing there looking nervous. And before he could think, he was hugging her.

“Adrien?” She asked in that quiet musical voice of hers.

“It’s you. It’s always been you.” He whispered, so full of joy. It had been the first time in days since he’d felt truly happy.

“Kitty?” she whispered, sounding shocked.

“Yeah, my lady?” He smiled hugging her close and nuzzling her for her warmth.

“It’s you.” She said.

“It always has been.” He replied.

***   Marinette could hardly breathe at the realization of her who partner was but at the same time it was the most wonderful thing in the world. She hugged him back hard, letting herself melt into his hold.

“It’s you.” He whispered over and over like a mantra.

“It’s you.” She said pulling back softly. She looked up at him and gasped at what she was. He was tired and sad but his eyes seemed to shine brighter than she had seen in ages. “Kitty, is everything okay?”

 “It will be.” He smiled tiredly.

She moved a hand to his cheek. “Of course, it will.” She promised.

He moved his hand over hers and moved it away so that he could kiss it gently. Marinette blushed heavily at the action, feeling like her heart would burst at any given second.

“I know, my lady.” He whispered against her skin.

She swooned. It was too hard not to. It wasn’t every day you found out your crime fighting partner was also the prince charming of your dreams. And seeing those two personalities mesh was enough to drive anyone crazy. Especially her.

***

Adrien smiled as he brought her up, holding her by the waist as they walked careful for her not to nearly faint, again. He was rather curious as to what prompted that but decided not to ask. “Maria’s family isn’t too bad. I can really only speak with her and two of her brothers. I don’t know English or Spanish.” He laughed.

“I know English.” She smiled, his heart practically jumped and he was about ready to kiss her, in all honesty.

“That’s great.” He replied with a nodded as they came to the door.

He opened the door glad to see that everyone else was occupied with their own business, save for Maria who had a grin on her face.

“Marinette is here for um math.” He smiled.

“Remember, improper fractions are when the bigger one is top.” Arty called.

Maria burst out laughing, leaving Adrien confused.

Aaron on the other hand seemed mortified. “Go do work on the roof!” He insisted shooing them away.

***  

Aaron smiled as he got to the roof watching as the two teens babbled excitedly. It was nostalgic in a sad kind of way. Once he had been in their position, standing on top of the world with everything he could dream off, and so much more. They seemed so engrossed in their conversations, laughing happily, and seeming so carefree. It was a really bitter thought when the reality of it all hit. They were teenagers, just as he had once been, and yet they now took the weight of their world on their shoulders.  

“Hey.” He called.

Both of them turned to him.

“Hi…” the girl smiled nervously.

“No need to be shy, my name is Aaron Jose Balboa the fourth, and I used to be El Gato Negro.”

The girl relaxed a bit. “I’m Marinette Dupain-Cheng.” She said.

“It’s an honor to meet you.” He smiled. “Why don’t you two sit. We have a lot to talk about.”

The two teens sat down in front of him.

“Um… I have a question but I’m not sure if it’s too much.” Marinette said quietly. She reminded him of Maria at that age, awkward with a great hidden fierceness.

“Ask away.” He said with a nod.

“What… um. Why is the previous Ladybug not allowed near the Miraculous?”

Aaron sighed. “I’ll be right back to answer your question. I just need some alcohol.” He said seriously.

“You don’t have to answer.” She said quietly.

“Yes I do. It’s gonna help you understand the situation a whole lot better.” He said getting up.

***

Marinette looked at Tikki. “I’m guessing it was bad.” She asked.

Tikki nodded looking as Aaron walked away. “It’s not something any of us like to remember.” She mumbled nuzzling close Marinette.

“I’m sorry.” Marinette said cradling the Kwami close. Marinette regretted asking that question the moment she saw the way Tikki seemed to be on the verge of tears, how Plagg seemed to get so angry, and how Aaron seemed so sad, as if a part of him was lost. Her curiosity had gotten the better of her.

“Don’t be sorry.” The tiny black kwami said. “It was unfortunately, unavoidable.”

Marinette shrunk.

Her negative thoughts were quickly pulled by a comforting hug from Adrien. A wave of guilt washed over her in that moment. She was the one who should have been comforting him. He was the one who had to fight his father, after all. She moved a hand away from Tikki to hold Adrien close. It felt so strange to have the power of all the good luck in the world and somehow be so powerless to those who mattered to her.

*****

Adrien hugged Marinette close and took a deep breath. Hugging her had been selfish on his part. Lately he had been desperate for physical contact because that seemed to be the only thing that calmed him down. Marinette responded and he was grateful for it. Everything was too much for him. He didn’t know if he could handle much more.

His thoughts were stopped by the return of Aaron who came with a bottle and glass in hand. He sat up a bit straighter, hugging Marinette close.

“Let’s talk about Joseph Noriega.” Aaron said pouring himself a drink. “The previous Ladybug, or as Los Angeles knew him, La Mariquita. Oh man where do I begin? Let’s see… Oh right. I was fourteen when I took on the Miraculous and this time I was discovering things about myself that I didn’t want to admit where there. Joseph and I were best friends, and I was pretty much in love with the guy. Tikki and Plagg have a thing where they choose people who are practically born to be together forever.”

***

“No we don’t!” Plagg protested.

Aaron wanted to laugh. He took a drink and continued with his tale. “We didn’t know that the other had become a superhero and we worked side by side and it was amazing. As El Gato Negro, I was free. I could flirt with another boy easily and I didn’t have to be afraid of being called some slur.”

“You could be who you really were.” Adrien said softly.

“Yeah.” Aaron nodded. “Six months into, we found out who the other was and it was scary but it was also when we had our first kiss. We were … I was his secret and he was mine. I thought his family wouldn’t accept me and I knew my parents weren’t… they weren’t accepting of it. The only reason I felt safe at home was because Maria had becoming a huge gay rights activist. I never knew what triggered it but having someone who thought I wasn’t unnatural at home made a big difference, it made it easier to fight for what was right.”

“Your sister sounds like she’s your best friend.”  Marinette smiled.

“Maria is my best friend.” Aaron smiled. “But yeah. It went on that way until we defeated El Zorro. Who is the fox miraculous.”

“Wait what? How did—.” Marinette began.

“Each Kwami is capable of being used for good or evil. Corrupted ones can create Akumas. Ones who are free of corruption can cleanse them. The fox miraculous could create akumas in a similar manner to the pied piper. They would play a beat that would cause someone to go into a trance.” He explained.

“Wait really?” Adrien looked surprised.

“Yeah… the girl behind it she had a crush on me and once akumatized my father. She wanted to hurt our family, and she almost did but we managed.” Aaron said. “Joseph became different after that last battle. He realized he liked the power… he was corrupting himself. He hired gang members to attack schools, provoked others to fight each other, got people to start racial wars, hell he paid off corrupt cops. Eventually… I had to fight him and I found out that he had been out to his family for a while and he had a serious boyfriend. It was a shitty moment.”

“He lost his way…” Tikki whispered. Aaron held out a hand to the small kwami so that she could cry.

“He became corrupted and I had to stop him.  We managed to do it and wiped his memory of it all… but it became too much. I went off the furthest college I could and he lived his life never really paying for his wrong doings.” Aaron said sadly.

“What happened to you after?” Adrien asked.

“I got wild. I partied hard, did drugs, anything that would black out the memories. I almost overdosed.” Aaron admitted quietly. “My dad came to get me and I admitted the stuff about my sexuality… It was the first time in a year that someone had hugged me because they loved me.”

“Oh Aaron… I’m so sorry I made you relive that.” Marinette said.

“It’s fine.” Aaron smiled. “it’s the first time I’ve told this story to kids your age. My brothers don’t even know about the overdosing.”

“Will you tell them?” Adrien asked.

“One day.” He nodded. “But you know what, we got something more important to do.”

“We know.” The teens nodded.

****

Plagg nuzzled up to Aaron and cursed himself quietly. He hadn’t known that one of his kittens had been so hurt and he hadn’t been there to help him.

“So what you guys are dealing with are the worst kind of Akuma.” Aaron said, petting Plagg gently.

“What do you mean?” He heard the bug girl ask.

“It means, Gabriel Agreste is completely conscious but his body is out of his control and whoever did this, knew him personally.” Aaron said. “So here’s the plan…”

�˟��\�

Hope you enjoyed! I promise next chapter will end the Akumatization of gabriel agreste!

[thebluesideofthemoon]

The Wall #41: NORM OF THE NORTH

Happy new year, everyone! I sure hope you all had a really great and safe New Year's party, and I for one welcome our new year with open arms! Things can only go up from here, folks. But I'll save all of the formalities for later because there's movies to review! Ahhh yes, it's January and, for me, that only means one thing: IT'S CATCH-UP MONTH (Not "ketchup", you freak, "CATCH UP")! That is correct, for the entirety of January all I'm going to do is catch up on 2016 movies that I missed and talk about them here. Now, I have talked about a few of these before, but not on The Wall, so just for the sake of making it official I'm going to be covering them here, so you can expect to see me re-review Zootopia, Batman v Superman, The Jungle Book, Ratchet & Clank, and The Witch pretty soon, as well as other movies that I saw but never got a chance to talk about. Also, because it's January, AKA the month of supreme shit, let's talk about one of the shittiest movies of 2016: Norm of the North. Yeah, I've already talked about this movie in detail, so I'll try to keep this one short. This is the first actual 2016 movie that I watched and... man, that is not a movie you want to open up the year with, to put it mildly. So why did Hell freeze over to give us this turd? Let's find out.

This movie is a literal piece of excrement. Norm of the North is simply foul.

In this movie a talking polar bear, voiced by Rob Schnider, goes on a big, wild adventure to the foreign land of New York City in order to stop this corrupt environmentally-unfriendly asshat named Mr. Greene (Geddit?!), voiced by Ken Jeong who wants to build condos on the arctic because… I have no freaking idea WHY he wants to do it! He just wants to do it because “hurr dee durr, dis iz a green movie and zave the envairomen”. He also has to rescue his grandfather whom he thought was dead, but was actually kidnapped by Greene. There’s also this “subplot” about this marketing lady voiced by Heather Graham who is trying to get a recommendation from Greene so that her daughter can go to his own alma mater because all other schools are not intellectually challenging. If this description of the movie sounds like a mess it’s because this movie is a fucking mess.

There is so much wrong with this movie, but the worst thing about it is the plot. As I made clear from this description, this movie has a plot that feels like a bunch of stories that were mashed together in the script just to make the movie meet the standard running time to actually be a movie. I mean, the movie starts talking about Norm and his poor hunting skills and how he’ll become a better hunter, but then it switches to this plot about trying to save the Arctic and keep people from living here, which is also one of the stupidest ways to cram in an environmental message because it makes no sense! Even the movie acknowledges that living in the arctic is a stupid idea! This gets even worse when it turns out that Greene’s plan to make condos in the arctic was doomed to fail anyway just because his popularity was down the tubes, but Norm actually HELPS Greene get more popular in a stunt where Greene attempts to SHOOT NORM IN PUBLIC (and keep in mind that everyone in New York thinks- for whatever reason- that Norm is just a dude in a polar bear costume), WHERE EVERYBODY RECORDS WHAT HE DOES, YET BECAUSE NORM SOMEHOW STOPS HIM GREENE BECOMES MORE POPULAR AND PEOPLE WANT TO BUY HOMES FROM HIM?! Why no, this doesn’t make a lick of goddamn sense, thanks for asking!

To say that the people behind this movie didn’t think the plot through would give them the credit to think that there was a shred of thought put into it in the first place. No, this plot was shat out and stitched together Frankenstein-style just to make this movie meet the standard running length of a movie. This wouldn’t piss me off so much if it wasn’t for the fact that ALL THE PLOTS ARE ABSOLUTELY POINTLESS. The plot involving this mom and her kid? You can cut it out and not miss a thing. Norm’s grandfather? It’s not even brought in until halfway through the movie, and even then it doesn’t feel like it adds anything so you may as well just chuck that out the window. Hell, the plot about Norm trying to save the arctic is only complicated by the fact that Norm actually decided to go to New York to become Greene’s marketing tool to sell the arctic to the population of New York.

In other words, this is a movie whose conflict COULD HAVE BEEN RESOLVED EASILY IF NORM LITERALLY DID NOTHING!

As if that’s the only thing wrong with the movie. Sure the plot sounds insane but it’s held together by the power of incredibly tired clichés. They even have the obligatory subplot of giving Norm a half-assed love interest and they don’t even do this RIGHT- Norm’s love interest is in the movie for less than SEVEN MINUTES, most of which are spent at the very beginning of the movie, and then at the very end where, FOR NO REASON, now she’s the mom to Norm’s children. All this for one character who is a complete buffoon, and someone who we know absolutely nothing about save for her name, and that Norm likes her a lot because he, of course, has to act like a tongue-tied idiot. This movie also holds one of all-time least favorite clichés- the one where the kid wants their parent(s)’ attention by quitting their job simply because they work too hard. That cliché can go dive into a volcano and die of a slow, painful, boiling incineration as it carcass erodes into nothingness for being one of the most godawful clichés to EVER exits, AND THIS MOVIE DOES IT BECAUSE IT WAS MADE BY SATAN HIMSELF!

And this movie also features song and dance numbers because why the hell not? One of the songs featured is “Shut Up and Dance” by the band Walk the Moon. A song about ROMANCE featured in a sequence that has nothing but dancing. So the people who worked on this movie couldn’t even be bothered to have listened to a three minute song to understand its context- who am I kidding? No they couldn’t. It’s only in there so they could have a song to sell on the shitty soundtrack that nobody’s buying.

Oh, and this is just a minor nitpick, but the animation sucks hard. All the characters move like they’re made out of rubber and have no weight to them, almost everyone does the same over-the-top wild gestures that were clearly only done because “kids love crazy shit”, and not because it’s an actual performance by a character or anything. The worst offender of this is Greene himself who is always moving in really annoying ways. The man movies like a noodle, and it’s so not fun to watch. This movie just doesn’t have the budget- and for sure not the talent- to do a wild-energy cartoon because its elements don’t allow them to. Comparing this to something like Storks, that has very fluid animation and knew how to keeps its timing varied up to keep the movie’s energy from becoming stale or irritating. Also, it had a far more appealing art style, unlike in Norm where everyone looks like a cheap chew toy you’d buy for your dog.

This movie is filled with so many problems that I didn’t even get to talk about another infuriating aspect about it- the Lemmings. These guys are by far the most blatant example of ripping off that I’ve seen in quite some time as they are an obvious cash-in on the Minions, except with less personality, the Lemmings only have four different designs total, and they can literally do anything regardless of how little sense it makes. At some point Heather Graham’s character remarks that these Lemmings are both “cute and marketable” without a hint of irony. In some ways I’ve got to give some respect to this movie for having the balls to be this openly blatant about its shittiness and borderline plagiarism, but if the movie wasn’t so infuriating to watch I would be saying this as a reason to see it, but it’s soooo not worth it! It really says a lot that the fact that this movie has a twerking polar bear in it is the LEAST of this movie’s problems.

Sadly, the only positive- and this is a big stretch- that I can say about this movie is that at least the voice actors are trying even though they have absolutely no funny material to work with, and it’s pretty clear that they were given absolutely no direction aside from “Ken Jeong just scream all your lines” or “Schnider just be yourself but with a slightly higher inflection in your voice”. This movie was absolutely miserable to sit through. It’s a big slog, the plot is beyond insulting, the message is completely worthless, the movie is just a big eyesore, and the saddest thing of all is that it’s not even a shocking level of bad to be memorable, aside from the fact that those who (unfortunately) DO see it only discover how awful it truly is.

(1,370 words. Music: Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex- Arctic Antics).

I fucking hate this movie. It's easily the second worst animated movie I've seen this decade, one of the worst movies ever, period, and the fact that it was going to be released as a straight-to-DVD but was pushed to go to the big screen just as a glorified advertisement for the DVD really does make my blood boil. But at least nobody in their right mind would ever defend this abomination. It really says something when not even a little kid can get a shred of joy out of watching this.

If not for things like Yoga Hosers and Foodfight!, then this movie would have been an easy 0, but make no mistake, Norm of the North is one of the most wretched animated movies ever made.

Well, that's one movie down... and I've got a bajillion more to go. Joy. I'll see you all next time.

[apostateangela]

Resigned!

I’ve resigned.

Yep, it’s official.

And I feel WEIRD.

And by weird I mean otherworldly, strange, not of this place.

I feel a bit off.

Oh, who am I kidding, I feel a whole lot of offness.

I have been a Mormon all my life and now I’m not.

The resignation was easier than I thought it would be.

You might be asking yourself, what is she talking about?

Don’t you just stop going to church and believing in it all?

The short answer is that while it is fairly easy to just stop going, stop participating in the organization itself, you haven’t actually left the church.

You are STILL officially a member, you are just considered inactive.

This means you are on an list that labels you as ‘inactive’. The list’s purpose is as a reference for local members and leadership to use to try and get you to come back into active status.

And oh boy do they try!!!

Visits and emails and text messages galore; harassment glazed in a smile and godly intentions.

They enlist a righteous army, including your family, in this task.

They work hard to bring you back.

And all of it invades your privacy and communicates that you are not capable of handling your own spiritual salvation.

Actually leaving the church, getting your records removed, takes nothing short of legal action.

It’s not as bad as Scientology but the parallels are definitely there.

Leaving the Mormon church has been historically an erroneous and painful process, taking such a long time that most don’t want to even attempt it.

I never thought I would do it. I thought I would be content to just step away,

I was wrong, again.

I finally decided I wanted to resign my membership, about mid March. (When I said there was a lot going on in my last post, this was one of the things I was talking about.)

But before I get to the specifics that brought me to this decision I want to share with everyone the magic I discovered while researching the best way to leave the church.

First google hit is QuitMormon.

https://quitmormon.com/

From their website:

What is QuitMormon?

Resigning from the Mormon church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints) can be a tedious and painful process. If you've decided that you no longer want to be a member of the church, resigning on your own can result in unwanted contact from church leaders and multiple requests before your resignation is finally processed. Our free service lets you avoid this process and provides privacy.

Here’s the story:

Once upon a time a young man went through the invasive horror that is leaving the Mormon church at the age of fifteen when his parents filled out their resignation petition. The experience left such a mark on this man that when he grew up and became an attorney in 2009 he decided he would help Mormons wishing to formally leave the church by filing their paperwork free of charge and streamlining the process – hoping to make their experience easier than his had been and using the law to protect their privacy and prevent harassment.

HE IS SUCCESSFUL!

HE IS A NON-DENOMINATIONAL SAINT!

A SAINT OF THE WORLD.

Start to finish my resignation took one month and four days--with zero contact from anyone in the church.

It almost seemed too easy; which contributes to some of the weirdness I’ve been feeling since.

Historically, resignations took up to two years, filled with invasive actions, to complete.

Quit Mormon makes the decision to resign--have your name removed from the records of church membership--about your feelings and not the fear of harassment and/or disappointment.

The events and thought processes that led me to considering resignation may not seem at first relevant--I have been an adamant apostate braggart just by having this blog--but my reasons hold some potential for empathy.

My list of reasons not to resign included: concern for the feelings of others, a metaphorical chain around my leg, and revenge. Maybe you care about some of these too.

When you grow up in a culture that builds community through religion you make a lot of friends. These people may even be okay human beings. But they have been programmed the same way you have been, and you will probably lose them after you leave the church as they scramble for mental and spiritual purchase on how to keep you from being lost for eternity.

The deeper side of this ties into my last post, my family.

My parents are temple workers, temple mormons. My siblings are both in the church, even though one is a drug addict. My youngest brother is in church leadership and very devout.

My niece and nephews, his children, fully ingrained into church doctrine and behaviors.

Because their lives and thoughts and hearts are so wrapped around eternal families, and as I am an immediate member of that family, it will devastate them. I held back, so as to not be the cause of that devastation.

The second reason, my metaphorical chain, was that of the difficulty in acting against God as well as the severing of my security line. I’ve kept it all on the backburner to be a desperate back door rescue possibility if I fuck my life up so much that I can’t recover on my own. The church takes care of its members, especially the inactive ones because they think the kindness will make you want to go back.

I’ve continued to have a foot in that door because I didn’t believe I could make it on my own.

I didn’t think I could survive without that God and His servants.

I had never done it before.

And there was plenty of evidence, words people had written and said that proved I could not.

Finally, revenge.

Yep, the most un-christlike reason yet.

By resigning from the church my ordinances would be dissolved.

My eternal sealing to my ex-husband was still intact and tied him to me as I mentioned before.

What I’ve failed to mention is that he married a friend of mine from the small Utah town we lived and raised our kids in, three days after our divorce was final.

A woman who I’d even worked with in a children’s church organization.

A woman who had issues with her own husband while I had issues with mine.

We had tried to help each other in our similar misery.

(side note: I used to think I was the stupidest woman in the world, but I was wrong, it’s her).

Anyway, he can’t be sealed to her in the temple unless I either die or give him written permission.

I was never going to do that.

Not because I want to be tied to him after death, but because of a petty attempt at having something I could take from him as he took so much from me.

It was an opportunity for revenge.

A culmination of events made none of these reasons matter.

First, this blog itself has helped me clarify and solidify how I feel about the church, my past, and my escape from both.

Second, I have been delving into other cult type stories of survivors; from scientology to other more violent organizations and can see the amplified benefits of being out.

Another reason is that my parents and children that are still in the church have been very harsh and indifferent to my new self and my feelings. They have said careless, hurtful things that communicate their lack of concern or any meager possibility of acceptance.

I came to a place where I was asking myself, “Why am I worried about hurting them when they have zero concern about my feelings or getting to know the real me?”

The truth is that I did not leave the church to hurt them--not even a little bit.

I did it so that still being under the oppressive shadow of the church would stop hurting me.

More than anything I want to be seen for myself, and accepted for that person--instead of hiding behind a bunch of rules and dogma.

The final push came from being in a situation where a woman a decade and a half older than I am made me tea and told me a story of how she had been a part of and left The Way cult.

As she described to me her experiences, as well as her separation from her family for a period of time as she left christianity completely, it struck a chord in me.

The parallels were undeniable.

I heard my own voice inside my head and heart say with perfect clarity and resonance,

“This is what you want Angela!

You must leave the church officially.

It’s time!”

And as it is rare that my own voice speaks louder than the other voices of my past,

I knew I had better listen and act.

That night I discovered QuitMormon and filled out my resignation paperwork.

As I did so a calmness settled into my heart. All the anxiety and worry over my family as well as my future dissipated. I felt peace.

It is now final.

I have resigned.

I am no longer Mormon!

I have done it.

And in doing so, I am resigned.

I’m resigned to living in a world without easy supernatural answers.

A world where morality is up to humankind and not godkind.

A world where natural consequences rule more than metaphysical reasoning;

maybe everything doesn’t happen for a deeper long term reason

but rather because sometimes people are just shitty or that is just how the path goes.

A world where death contains a depth of devastation because no one knows if that is just the end or if there is actually something after.

A world without rose coloring or neatly tied packaging.

A messy, chaotic world filled with pleasure, joy, pain, and sorrow.

I am resigned to feeling it all as honestly as possible.

I am resigned to be myself, no matter the cost.

In fact,

in spite of the cost,

because I am worth it.

-Angela