#for real parents will rip their child away from a rainbow picture on the wall and then plop them down in front of youtube 'kids'

[aalt-ctrl-del]

Banning books that "young childun" might not be "ready for" is in some description, the same as erasing those children experiences, who come from nonconforming family dynamics, or broken household - just as an example.

Cause the thing about books... it's not going to just hop into your kids backpack. They have to look for it and be curious. If you're kid is curious and you can't deal with that or don't want to have that conversation, why did you have a child? They're not a cutesy lil accessory to dress up and carry around. Without your consent, that child is going to grow, and hopefully they will be very inquisitive. It is so important to have an inquisitive child.

And really not discussing children born with the sole purpose of living a parents failed fantasy. The sentiment is cute, but the kid still ain't you. But Im not telling parents how to raise kids.

Im saying kids need a book that has been fitted to guide them through a turbulent world - which if a parent wishes to, they can begin to work with that curious child. And predominately discussing parents who seek to educate and raise their child right, with a diverse understanding and strong critical thinking skills. Not the parents who want to put their kid in a bubble and fabricate a fantasy world. But the parents that want to "bubble" their child want to control what content is available to all parents, and want to control other peoples upbringing - solely through erasure.

For an analogy - People who want to drown proof their child, will introduce their baby to water. A baby. Not a toddler, a baby. But a parent cannot always control what intrigues their baby, the baby will try to wander and explore, and in some instances fences have failed. If it exists, your child will find it. Books, people, dangerous situations you couldn't foresee (NOT DRAG SHOWS FOR FUKS SAKE). The kindest thing a parent can do for their child is prepare them for encounters - no matter how ugly or frightening.

And if a family with two dads is frightening, and you're mission is to make your kids friend Jake look like a monster because he has two dads. What the fuck is your deal?

Nobody complains when Tod has a mom and a dad, or just a mom, or is being raised by an uncle. No one calls CPS if the grandparents have legally appointed custody of their grandkid. No one freaks out in these family dynamics.

But suddenly its toxic if a kid has two moms, and one of them is butch or something. No one is contaminating your pure, bubble child. You are. By teaching them that there is only one sort of family that is right in our world, and erasing the family styles others might have when they can't conform to your immaculate fantasies.

[imperiuswrecked]

                               ATLANTEAN PANTHEON

Long before Atlantis sank into the sea it was Golden City and an Empire that stretched across the world. This is the History of Atlantis, before and after, the Cataclysm which sank it beneath the waves.

Namor Week - Day 3 - Mythology

This is a worldbuilding fic and a it is canon and headcanon based. This lists out all the known details of the History of Marvel's Atlantis, and includes Neptune & Cleito, as well as their children who are all original characters of mine. I tired to use as much known lore as possible when writing this. 

Atlantean Pantheon

Neptune - God of the Sea, God of Waters, Lord of Horses, Father Ocean, Old Man of the Sea, Lord of all Things Below, King of the Deep

Neptune has blue skin and white hair with black eyes that cover his sclera and irises, he has gills on his neck and pointed ears. He wears a white toga and a golden circlet on his brow. He wields Neptune's trident. He is solidly built in form and his cape is a fish net. His white hair is a tangled mess and he has a long white beard.

He is as terrifying as the sea and just as unpredictable. He rules over all the oceans and sea life that inhabit it. He derives strength from prayers sent to him by the Atlantean people as well as humans who know of him, often in modern times Sea Faring people such as human fishermen and sailors also send him prayers.

Neptune is closely tied to the physical world, especially that of the sea. The oceans being hurt, harms him and over the centuries with constant pollution he has a shadow of his former strength. Which is why he does not often appear to help Atlanteans, often needing to conserve his strength lest he fades away into the awning black Ether of the Forgotten Realm where Chaos resides.

Cleito - Mother of All Things, Goddess of Fertility & Childbirth, Lady of Undying Things, Embodiment of Illusions, Maker of Dreams, Mistress of the Shroud, Keeper of the Nexus Fragment, Moon Mother, Queen of the Golden City

Cleito has golden skin and amber eyes, her hair is tree branches that grow pretty flower blossoms, all of different types. Depending on her mood the flowers are either in full bloom or decaying. She has pointed ears and her fingernails are like black claws, she has fangs.

She is wrapped in her black Shroud which is dotted with different colored gems, which are the souls of dead Atlanteans of the past waiting for her to pluck them from the shroud and send them into their next reincarnation cycle. The Shroud looks like the night sky and the gems are like Stars.

She is the Weaver of Dreams and Illusions and gives hope to her children. Often appearing in the visage of the Moon she watches over her descendants and those who pray to her. Her place of power is the Golden City which was once the capital of the Empire of Atlantis, however it now resides decaying beneath the waves in a forgotten place. Cleito often sleeps in her palace tomb to conserve her energy since she lost much power during the Cataclysm when she used her abilities to change her children’s people into permanent water breathers. It is guarded by her father Evenor who is a sea dragon spirit. She awakens very rarely before returning to her healing sleep.

Unlike Neptune, Cleito is not closely tied to reality of the world but rather to an embodiment of ideas and dreams, she works her magic and powers through the Nether Realms.

She is the Keeper of the Nexus Fragment; Long ago the Nexus connected all realities but it was fragmented due to a power struggle for control of it, its pieces fell into different realities. Some were absorbed by the souls of people and they became Nexus beings, able to use the power of the Nexus to alter realities or create pathways between worlds. Other fragments became glowing orbs of light which were collected by beings of power to protect them or lay in long forgotten places, waiting to be found. Only beings of divine power (or touched/blessed by a divine power) can contain a Nexus without injury and only they can pass a fragment onto others.

Evenor - Sea Dragon Spirit, With a face like a seahorse and a body of a long snake like dragon he most closely resembles dragon figures of the Eastern surface world. His scales are grey and white and he has a mustache like white hair from his nostrils as well as ridges down his back and long sharp white claws on his hands and feet. His eyes swirl like an ocean whirlpool, to look in them is to be lost. He travels between the spirit world and the real world.

He dedicates his time to protecting his daughter Cleito. He can turn corporal in his dragon form if he desires. He has untold strength and abilities as he is very mysterious and keeps his secrets close. Atlanteans pray to Evenor for protection against bad spirits.

History of Atlantis before the Cataclysm

Neptune was the sea, formed within its roiling waters he manifested physical form, with hair and beard as white as sea foam, skin as blue as the water, and eyes as dark as the black depths beneath the waves. He carries with him, his magical Trident which controls the waters. He has complete mastery over the oceans and all those who dwell within it. His favor is as fickle as the sea, his personality is as ever changing as the ocean. He grants favors to those he sees fit to receive them.

Cleito was born of her father and her human mother, spirit and reality came together in her form and she walked between both worlds as a child before choosing to dwell in the spirit world of her father, she learned all there was to know of places outside of reality. She is the pure embodiment of Illusions and is a being of great power. While Neptune may be more well known Cleito dwells in the worlds behind worlds and watches over her people, only stepping in in dire circumstances.

While Neptune ruled the Seas, she was Queen of the Golden City which was once the hub and center of the Empire of Atlantis.

Neptune and Cleito had children, five sets of twins, who became the Ten Kings and Queens of the Atlantean Empire. To celebrate their children the God & Goddess gave them land to care for, it’s people looked to them not only as their deities but also their rulers.

The Ten, as they would later be remembered, were; Vyncia & Kysine, Ozak & Otia, Sevgi & Rejuat, Teinbo & Zarusal, Mverix & Narxis. They would go on to have children of their own who were part water breathers, and part air breathers. With one human parent any descendant of Neptune and Cleito’s blood were blessed with abilities.  The Atlantean Empire and most especially the Golden City thrived with technology and innovation, peace and prosperity, and all the knowledge they could record for future generations. The most advanced of their time they were a powerful nation. Much of the knowledge is lost after the Great Cataclysm.

Vyncia & Kysine - Daughters, Twins, Goddesses of Fresh Waters

African Models should be pictured for these characters

Vyncia - Goddess of Surging Waters, Lady of Streams & Rivers

Kysine - Goddess of Tranquil Waters, Lady of the Lake

Ozak & Otia - Twins - Brother & Sister

East Asian models should be pictured for these characters

Ozak - God of Deep Waters, Drowning, Death

Otia - Goddess of Tide Pools, Tides, & Unexpected Fortune

Sevgi & Rejuat - Twins - Sister & Brother

Caucasian/Nordic/Irish/Scottish models should be pictured for these characters

Sevgi - Goddess of Dew & Mist, Marsh Maiden

Rejuat - God of Bogs & Marshes, Trickster

Teinbo & Zarusal - Twins - Brother & Sister

Middle Eastern/Indian models should be pictured for these models

Teinbo - God of Hot Springs & Healing, Wisdom

Zarusal - Goddess of Rain, Rainbows, & Rainstorms, Monsoon Bringer

Mverix & Narxis - Sons, Brothers - Twins, Gods of Salt Water

Pacific Islander/Native models should be pictured for these characters

Mverix - God of Sea Storms, Sea Foam & Sea Farers

Narxis - God of Sea Creatures, Sea Life & Plants

History of Atlantis during & after the Cataclysm

Set the Evil Serpent God, and his devoted followers, The Lemurians, waged war on the Atlantean Empire, Neptune & Cleito in order to gain control of the Nexus Fragment. Cleito lead many of the fights and was badly injured due to Set’s trickery however during an earth shattering battle with the Gods, Neptune was imprisoned in a wall of everlasting fire and forced to watch as Set attempted to rip the Nexus Fragment from Cleito’s heart, their Ten Children came from all over the Empire to fight Set and they sacrificed their lives to save their mother. Set enraged at their daring and attempts to defeat him, orders his people to slay the remaining descendants of the Ten. The Lemurians follow Set’s orders with Suma-Ket and Artys-Gran leading them. Killing all direct blood descendants and using their blood to fuel Set with more dark power.

Neptune and Cleito attempt to regain their strength however Neptune, upon learning his children are dead, snaps and gathers every reserve of water, every drop that he could command and begins to drown the world. Gaia the Earth Goddess, upset from all the turmoil awakens and causes huge earthquakes to break Atlantis’s Golden CIty away from the mainland separating it from the rest of the Empire. Neptune drowns much of the Earth and the entire nation of Lemuria, his fury is uncontainable and his tidal wave sweeps towards Atlantis.

Cleito seeing last of her children’s descendants in danger, (many of them demi-gods/goddesses due to them having one human parent) uses a huge quantity of her reserve magic to give them aid and protect them from the destruction; Cleito sinks the now isolated Island of Atlantis beneath the waves. Only those with the capabilities to breath beneath the water survived, they would go on to evolve and become better adapted to their new underwater home. Thus they are now only known as Atlanteans, the last people splinter over time and make their homes all over the oceans.

Set engaged Cleito and Neptune in battle for the last time. All the death of the descendants of Neptune fuels the blood magic that gives Set even more strength and he begins to overpower Neptune and Cleito. Seeing that Set was not satisfied with all the death and that he still wished to carve out Cleito’s heart and gain control of the Nexus Fragment, convinces Cleito to use the last remaining power within her and she banished Set and his highest ranking followers, Suma-Ket & Artys-Gran into the Ether. The underwater portal to their prison was sealed with a door that could only be opened by one who has the Royal Blood of Neptune. Cleito, exhausted beyond all measure, succumbs to a deep healing sleep, and her father Evenor takes her below the seas to her sunken temple, its whereabouts now lost to time, to be protected forever more. Neptune recedes beneath the waves to rejuvenate and neither are seen for centuries before they are awakened by their youngest descendant, Namor the First of Atlantis.

Those Lemurians who followed Set and were left behind used dark magic to transform themselves into water breathers in order to search for a way to bring their master back to them, they spend several thousands of years combing the ocean floor for the location of the Blood Gate, and Cleito, so they may gain the Nexus Fragment and find a means to bring Set back to Earth. Since the great Cataclysm the Atlanteans and Lemurians have been at war. While Lemuria languished in dreams of the past, Atlantis looked towards the future and the preservation of their people.

[getnight]

So, hi, here is the part of my big fic about sons of Mike&Rachel and Harvey&Donna. It's just a little piece. Actually, Chris and Tyler (their sons) are my Original characters, but... I like them) And, yeah, we haven't Marvey at Canon, so i did their children in love. They are cute, I think🌚 Soooo... Maybe you'll be interested. Yeah.

Christopher caught up with Tyler in a few seconds, yanking off his hood and grabbing him lightly by the neck with his forearm. The boy flinched, leaned back and tried to pull his arm away, and when he failed, he tried to fall with his attacker to the side of the road. At that moment, Chris let go.

— Hey, Tyle, take it easy. This is me, — He steadied Tyler from falling and stood beside him, brushing him off.

— You... why did you do that? — Tyler frowned, pulling the headphones out of his ears and pinching a lollipop to his cheek.

— Why are you so cute? You're a formidable genius, but you love lollipops and you frown like you're five instead of fifteen.

— I'm not cute, keep your high energy endorphins with yourself, — Tyler pulled up his hood, turned around, and was about to continue walking when Chris literally dived in front of him, blocking the way.

They faced each other. Chris was literally a centimeter taller, but he had rather broad shoulders, which made him look much bigger than Tyler.

— Hey,— Christopher whispered.

— What? — Tyler replied.

Chris smiled fondly as he pulled back his hood.

— That's better. I love your hair, — he hesitated for a second, then gently took Tyler's hand, the other gently pulling the candy out of Ross' mouth and tugging at his wrist, pulling him into a soft, chaste kiss that Tyler happily responded to. Christopher's other hand went to the back of the boy's head, and he felt long fingers on his waist. When they finally parted, Chris said:

— Good morning, Tyle, — and he smiled sincerely, expecting something like that in return: "Don't call me that”.

— Good morning, Topha, — and the kind of smile that only Tyler Harvey Ross could give. Sincere and pure. The one that no one but those closest to her had ever seen. The one that opened the veil of a brilliant, sullen guy.

The nickname "Topha" seemed strange to Chris. It was indeed a derivative of his name, Christopher, but how Tyler came up with it... no one ever found out. Parents said that as a child, baby Ross could not pronounce Chris ' full name and called him "Topha". And so it turned out. Since then, Tyler only calls his boyfriend that when no one is looking.

Tyler pulled the hood up again. His clothes were no different from what he always wore. Black ripped jeans, a huge black hoodie, and... something had changed that day.

— I'm not going to ask about the paint stain, or what wall you painted on the way here, but do I really see your badge? — Chris stared at the rainbow-colored iron circle attached to the left side of Tyler's chest.

— Exactly one year, three hundred and sixty five days, eight thousand seven hundred and sixty-six hours, five million two hundred and fifty-six thousand minutes ago, I first realized that I was in love with you, — Tyler said calmly.

Christopher choked and blushed. No, no, no, no. Damn, why is he so bad with emotions?

— I'm sorry, I… — Specter whispered, and suddenly felt a warm hand on his cheek.

Tyler looked at him, not affectionately, not solicitously, just calmly.

— It's all right. I know we'll be working on your emotional range, — he said.

— God, — Chris suddenly smiled, — How do you do that? How can you so easily talk about your feelings and understand them, but absolutely not be able to communicate with people? — he abruptly hoisted the thin Tyler onto his shoulder, running ahead of him down the road.

At first there were attempts to resist and shouts that they would be seen, but then the guy just hung on Chris ' back.

— You took my lollipop, by the way, — he mumbled.

— Is that the only thing that bothers you? Christopher laughed.

— No, the fact that you laugh for some reason means that you experience joy, happiness, euphoria, fun or…

The schoolhouse loomed up ahead, and Chris lowered his boyfriend to the ground.

— Here, just shut up, highactivity sociopath, — he said, handing Tyler a lollipop he'd taken from his backpack. Yes, he always had such a supply. It was the most important thing in his things. What Chris checked every day before he left for school. Ever since he had the pocket money. That is, from the age of nine.

Tyler's face lit up with a childlike smile, and he took the candy, opened it, put it in his mouth, and said through it:

— You can't blame my love of Sherlock.

— I'm not blameing.

Tyler's entire room was covered with posters, quote sheets, DVD boxes taped to tape, and other decorations. By the way, the love of watching movies on DVD was instilled in Tyler by Chris ' father.

Christopher never disapproved of posters and things like that, no. Conversely. He thought it was extremely cute. In his room, despite the fact that he had both favorite movies and favorite bands, there was not a single poster. Somehow, he had never been attracted to such a way of designing a room.

A couple in love walked towards the school, holding hands. Tyler, who was always more open with Chris, chatted about how he'd tried to curl his hair again over the weekend, which he did often, and he liked it. Chris, always a sociable bully-athlete in front of everyone and a little modest, relaxed and allowing himself to revel in his mind, not strength, and the mind of the person he talks to, in front of Tyler, listened carefully to his boyfriend, once saying that he wanted to make Tyler's curls himself one day.

Closer to the school, they uncoupled their hands. At school, they are just childhood best friends, close brothers. There may be rumors that will quickly reach the teachers, and from them to the parents. Both Chris and Tyler agreed to hide it from the families at all costs. They didn't know what the reaction and consequences would be, so the longer their relationship was kept secret, the better.

— I have literature, — Tyler said, pulling his hood up again and searching for something in his backpack.

— Math, — Chris said.

— Here. I drew it yesterday. Will you watch it? Tyler waved his hand, closed his backpack, and walked away, putting in his headphones.

Christopher hated painting, drawing, and galleries. But there was one exception. The exception who bore the name was Tyler Harvey Ross. His boyfriend was an incredible artist, he drew a lot of different sketches, gradually a whole pile formed in his desk drawer. These drawings were never shown to anyone other than Chris. Moreover, Specter suspected that even he did not know all of Tyler's works.

— Chris! — a voice called out.

Christopher turned.

— Let's go to class, buddy — said the guy who flew up.

— Where are you going in such a hurry, Jim? Christopher chuckled.

Jim was one of the guys on the football team.

Jim ruffled Chris ' red hair.

— Come on.

They entered the classroom,where there were already quite a few people. Christopher walked past a girl who was eating grapes and brazenly stole one of the berries.

—Thank you, — he chuckled.

The girl said nothing. Everyone is used to it. Chris Specter is a real badass.

The teacher appeared and the bell rang.

When everyone had calmed down, and the rowdy teammates and friends were deep in math, a topic that he and Tyler had gone through with Uncle Mike a year ago, Chris pulled out a drawing, unfolding it.

It was their portrait. Him and Tyler. Just a sketch, not even painted, but Christopher just couldn't look away. The two of them were standing on the pavement of New York City, high-rise buildings behind them, and a car was driving in the foreground. Chris was hanging up the Topha Coffee sign on the stairs. The building he hung it on says "Open," and there are all kinds of cakes and other desserts in the windows. Inside, there are a couple of tables and a counter. On the sides of the picture are depicted tree branches with birds. Tylee himself was standing a little apart from his boyfriend, his index finger outstretched, apparently instructing him on how to hang up the sign. Tyler's self-portrait was perfect. It was the coal-black hair with the little curls, the ice-blue eyes (the eyes of both of them were the only color spots in the drawing), the thick eyebrows, the lean body hidden under a large apron that Chris found charming, wide nose and sharp cheekbones.

Christopher seemed to be busy with the sign, and Tyler was busy with putting it up, but their eyes were only on each other. And there was life in those eyes, real life. Frozen, yes. But it's real. Perhaps such a picture was their dream. Chris wanted to move to New York, and Tyler wanted to open his own cozy little coffee shop with his paintings hanging on the walls.

A couple of times Specter asked his boyfriend if his genius mind would not be bored in such a routine. Tiley just smiled and shook his head. Then Chris realized that the teenager himself did not know. He wants a simple quiet happiness, but at the same time not to lose his mind and genius. He's afraid of society, shuns it, finds it boring and disturbing, but he wants to see people smile when they drink his freshly made coffee or try a piece of that apple pie that Edith Ross, Tyler's great-grandmother, then Uncle Mike, and now Tyler himself, baked. He rushes around, not knowing where to put himself and what to do.

Maybe they should just finish school first and enjoy their youth. And then… Then they will definitely come up with how it will be. They will tell their parents about their relationship, go to university, and who knows what will happen next. We'll see. That was Chris ' opinion.

The bell rang in the hallway, dismissing all the students for recess. Christopher carefully folded the drawing and put it in his pocket. They'll meet at dinner, they always do. And this day will be no exception.

That's what Christopher thought as he walked out of the math room with his friends in his arms. But perhaps this day will be something that will soon change their entire lives and views on her, their family and each other.

[bibliothesoph]

Neverland, Canon Balls and Clouds (part 4)

Baz wasn't really sure what to expect of Neverland, but when it comes into view, his breath is knocked right out of him. It's a gorgeous island with mountains and waterfalls and lagoons. There's a rainbow running across the skyline because, he supposes, why shouldn't there be a fucking rainbow in paradise?

Simon stops him on a cloud, giving him a moment to let it all sink in. Including the whole standing on a fucking cloud bit, too, because that is certainly a strange sensation.

"I can't believe you get to live here," Baz says, breathless.

Simon grins at him again and puts his hands on his hips. "I know, right?"

Simon starts pointing out the different important places that they can see from up so high. He shows Baz where the mermaid lagoon is, where the native tribe live, where the fairies (who aren't Penelope) live and where he lives. Baz takes out his mobile to snap a picture of it and he can feel Simon's eyes on him and the device but he doesn't say anything about it. Baz feels a bit bad for asking him when he was born because that was obviously a sore subject, though Baz can't imagine why, so he decides not to press him. If Simon wants to know how phones work, Baz is more than happy to explain.

He's about to ask Simon to get a picture of him when something rips through the cloud next to them with a terrifying whoosh. Baz gasps and sees a hole torn straight through the cloud.

"What the fuck was that?"

Simon grits his teeth and points down below where there seems to be a massive pirate ship anchored in the harbor. "That's the Humdrum's ship."

Simon's getting his blade out while Baz tries to figure that out.

"Wait, he's a pirate?"

Simon looks at him like he's an extra special idiot. "Yeah, didn't you know that?"

Baz rolls his eyes. "Yeah, well, I thought it might've been added in for the drama of it. I didn't know that pirates were a real thing! You've been fighting an adult who's launching cannon balls at you? You're seventeen!"

"And?"

Baz wants to shake him and make him understand how fucking weird that is. "And you're seventeen! You're a child. And he's a grown-up with scary weapons."

Simon shrugs and flashes him a grin. "Wanna go on an adventure?"

A minute later, Baz realizes that he does not want to go on this particular adventure. Simon weaves him through the sky as cannon balls keep coming up to try and intercept them. He's cool about it, but Baz is freaking the fuck out. In his head he always thought the adventures were more along the lines of finding buried treasure or something. It made sense for stories because having a seventeen year old kid fighting and repeatedly beating an old pirate sounds awesome, but he didn't really think that would be the reality of the situation. And Simon doesn't seem to care much about it. In fact, given the smile on his face, he looks like he's enjoying it. Baz wishes that he could enjoy it, too, but he can't because he's still to focused on the fact that there is a middle-aged man shooting fucking painful balls at a kid.

He's a little too wrapped up in his thoughts of this to notice a tree branch coming right for him as Simon takes him down towards the ground, so Baz ends up losing his concentration and hurdling towards a collection of very sharp looking rocks on the ground below. He screams and closes his eyes, bracing for impact, when he feels the falling stop. He peeks an eye open and sees that Simon has caught him right in the nick of time, holding Baz in his arms like Baz is his bride.

Simon lands on the rocks and sets Baz down on the ground. His heart is beating wildly in his chest.

"T––thanks," Baz says.

Simon smiles at him. "Yeah, no problem. Did you have fun?"

Baz glares at him. "What, with the cannon balls? No, Simon. I did not have fun."

"You get used to it."

"I don't think I want to get used to that."

Simon shrugs and puts his blade away (wherever it goes). He has a dagger, too, that's clipped into a little leather belt around his waist, but Baz has always heard that he prefers the magical blade.

"How does your sword work? Do you have magical powers or something?"

Simon is walking somewhere so Baz makes an effort to keep close to him just in case any more tree branches feel like presenting themselves.

"I can fly, can't I?"

Baz rolls his eyes. They're going deeper into the forest. Baz wonders if he should be scared.

"No, I don't have like magic or anything. The sword thing was a total accident. Saved someone's life, that someone turned out to be a wizard, so now I can summon this blade whenever I want. Pretty wicked, yeah?"

"Do you normally just randomly save lives? Or is that something you have to schedule in weeks in advance?"

Simon chuckles. "I don't schedule anything ever, so it just kinda happens. Don't know if you've heard, but I'm kind of a hero."

"To some."

Simon stops walking and turns around. "What? Who am I not a hero to?"

"Parents, mostly."

Simon rolls his eyes and carries on walking again. "The parents can piss off. Why don't they like me?"

"Because you're not––" Baz stops himself. "Because they don't think you're real. And your whole thing is avoiding responsibility and growing up and––"

"I'm not avoiding anything," Simon snaps, turning again.

Baz can feel his heart beating into his throat. He never really thought of Simon as having so many random triggers. First the age thing and now this? Baz wonders what kinds of things go on in his head.

"I know. I'm just telling you what they think."

"Well. They're wrong."

"I agree. I happen to think that you represent something positive. Innocence and child-like wonder. Though, considering the whole pirate thing, I might have to rethink the innocence bit."

Simon laughs again and gestures to a large tree. He looks very pleased about it, but Baz has no idea what he's on about.

"It's...a tree?"

Simon's grin falls. Baz instantly hates himself.

"It's my house, you prick."

Baz nods, mostly to himself, and follows Simon again as he approaches the tree. "Right. So you just...live in a tree. Right."

Simon pushes one of the tree knobs and there's a whirring noise as a door opens in the trunk of it. "I live under the tree. This is just my secret entrance."

Simon enters the tree and is suddenly gone from view. Baz starts to panic a bit before he peers down and sees a slide that goes deep under the earth. He gets down and lets the slide take him to wherever Simon went off to. He registers that a slide is incredibly impractical (he also wonders how you exit the house thing) but he lets himself enjoy the twisting ride down the slide. He lands on a carpet on a solid floor with a soft thud.

He's surprised to see that the space is neat and tidy and that it's actually quite large. Simon's bed is in the middle of the room and the blanket is some kind of dark fur that Baz doesn't recognize. There's a big couch sitting across from a stone fireplace. And there are bookshelves lining the walls which are presumably Penny's, and then there's a little doorway that leads to a smaller area that has another fire place and a table and a chair. In all this, Baz can't seem to find Simon.

"Yeah, just the Humdrum being his usual pissy self," he hears Simon say. He finds a staircase hidden in the corner of the room and walks up it to find Simon sitting in a big, comfy chair talking to Penelope. He grins at Baz when he enters.

"Hey. You hungry or anything? Or I could make some tea?"

Baz shakes his head. "I'm fine, thanks. I––your house is actually very nice. For being underground and all."

Penny frowns at him. "What's wrong with being underground?"

Baz's eyes widen. "Er, nothing. It was supposed to be a joke. It really is a lovely home."

"She's just being difficult," Simon says. "She's jealous."

"I am not jealous!" she argues.

Baz wants to ask why she would be jealous but he doesn't. But he can't ignore that feeling in his stomach that comes whenever he looks at Simon. He'd ignored it at first when he thought it was a dream, but now he's feeling it and allowing himself to think about it. He wonders if part of the reason he always loved the Simon Snow stories was because he had a crush on him. He had kissed Simon in dreams before, but he also had no idea what he looked like. His mind always just put some random attractive guy's face on him. And his personality was nothing like what Baz had expected. So, if he did have a crush on Simon Snow from the stories, it certainly meant nothing now. Because Simon, the real one, was so different. He's kinder, funnier, a bit of a mess but in an endearing sort of way, and devilishly handsome. In Baz's head he'd always been some kind of noble hero with a posh accent and a strong jaw that goes around saving damsels all the time.

But Simon is...well, he is just a boy. A very attractive boy, but just a boy. He isn't some god among men. He's a boy who'd escaped to a magical world in an attempt to run away from his problems and the issue of growing up. And Baz understands that. And he is incredibly jealous.

"Should I show you around? Is there anything you wanna see?"

Baz thinks about it for a moment. "Um, the mermaids, perhaps? It'd be cool to get some photos."

"You're taking photos?"

Baz nods.

"Okay, well, obviously don't like go and print them and sell 'em to the paper or whatever. But yeah, sounds good."

[noro124]

hey everyone it’s my frog collection + other cool things i had on the shelf at the time! i have 57 frogs (counting the packaged ones as one unit), which is 45 more than the last time i took a picture of my frog collection. enjoy!  

under here i will tell you where i got each frog & why i grouped them like that! the groups can also be read in the captions. all pics try to go from left to right, from the back row to the front. 

i. frogs that are big

Summer relaxin’ - my dad got him for me at a yard sale a few years ago. 

HAPPY FROG - my dad also got him for me at a yard sale, but closer to 6 months ago. He’s hanging over my bed right now on my Wall Of Stuff.

Paper frog - my sister ripped him off the bulletin board at the Starbucks where she works to give him to me

White frog - picked him up at TJ Max when my mom took me dress shopping.

Dark green frog - i don’t know...i think from a yard sale? he’s hollow & i keep a semicircle paperweight in the hole in his stomach.

ii. 8 frogs that will break if you drop them & 3 that won’t

Yoga frog - my dad got him for me, maybe from Goodwill? 

Ol Chumbo - got him at the flea market for $8. He is solid iron.

Just Eat What Bugs You!! - got him from a thrift store in a small town in Colorado. he’s got beans in him! if you shake him he rattles

Blue glass - he’s a candle holder! I got him from an antique store in Tennessee & then saw another one of him at the flea market years later. 

Bronze goofball - crooked eyes. very endearing. also very heavy. got him in a shop that sold lots of bronze things outside the Louvre. 

Gold - a gift from my boyfriend!!!

Sassy Frog - i think my dad gave her to me? or maybe i bought her at the antique store. 

Little brown frog - more fragile than he looks, missing his front right leg so i got him discounted from the antique store near school. 

Glass frog king! - got him in prague! he was overpriced, but worth it

Teeny glass frog - also got him in prague for $3! 

Another glass frog - got in the same store that I got tiny frog in.

iii. frogs that are minerals

Chunky brown frog - got him at the antique store near school. i think my boyfriend bought him for me on one of our first dates! 

Black frog - $35 but worth every cent. smooth, elegant, made in Japan. gotten from the antique store near school.

Flat brown frog - got him from the flea market. 

Malachite frog - bought him online from Bekkathyst! Expensive, but I took advantage of a sale.

Rose quartz frog - got from a really cool mineral shop in Prague! I did a project on that shop, about redesigning the storefront.

Pink frog - got from a yard sale a long time ago, only recently rediscovered in my room & added to the collection.

Little frog on a leaf - got from a gift shop at the end of a long 14k altitude hike in Colorado.

Frogs 8-12 were all given to me by my boyfriend after he came back from NY. They’re a big family!!! 

   13. Tiny frog bead - got from the flea market! 

iv. frogs that are squishy

Mint green frog loaf - picked this up from a recent con!! my boyfriend paid for half of it because he said this was something i needed to have, & he was right! 

Webkinz frog - my dad got him for me at a yard sale because he liked the mischievous look in his eyes. 

Little frog orb - part of a set of 3 round squishy things my boyfriend’s parents gave me for easter. 

TY Beanie Baby Frog - a beanie baby original my sister got from a yard sale. he might be worth a lot of money since he’s an original. i’m looking into it. 

Dark blue sand frog - I’ve had this since I was a child. he’s got stitches in his armpit because he used to have a big hole that let all the sand out.

Stripey sand frog - got her at a yard sale when i was maybe 9 so the dark blue frog could have a friend! 

Green and orange beanie frog - picked this up from a “Night Market” in Vienna. having seen real night markets in Taiwan, I was kind of disappointed, but the frog was a good purchase.

Green beanie frog - got in belfast from a cool museum. has a pink twin owned by one of my friends. all frogs have sweet dreams

v. frogs that are toys

Skeleton frog - one of my roommates got him for me from a halloween store.

Glowing frog - he changes rainbow colors! my sister gave him to me for my 20th birthday last year.

Slime frog - my boyfriend got him for me as a Welcome Back present after i returned from Prague! he’s nasty. he’s full of yellow goo & he has a cap on the bottom of his body that you can undo to take out the goo. it takes hours to put the goo back in. 

Keychain frog - also a flashlight that croaks when you turn him on! I saw him in Milan & had to have him. 

Lime green frog - my dad gave me 3 frog bath toys for Christmas. I have one in my collection (this one), one at his house, & one at my mom’s house.

Blue frog whistle - I think one of my friends gave this to me but I’m not sure.

Wooden frog - bought him from a nice lady at the night market in Taiwan in 2017.

Wooden frog 2 - he rolls! picked him up for $4 in one of the Golden Lane shops in Prague Castle. 

Frog rubber band - got him as a reward for being good at the dentist in like 2007. 

vi. frogs i have not unwrapped

 boblende fro - a frog bath bomb with a toy frog inside that i got from a weird store called Flying Tiger in prague. i don’t want to open him because he’ll be crumbly & i like the packaging a lot, & also i don’t want to use him yet.

Grow Frogs - another gift from my boyfriend’s parents for easter. I haven’t used them yet because I’m lazy & I don’t know if they’d crumble & I don’t know where I’d put them if they were unwrapped.

Frog King stickers - got these in northern ireland as well! i haven’t used any yet because they have layers & the things I’d put them on (my phone case, sketchbook, my laptop) move around a lot & the stickers would get destroyed really fast. 

vii. frogs with jobs

Candle holder - one of my friends gave it to me for my birthday.

Green frog - got him from the local crafts store my roommate used to work at. He can hold onto the outside of cups or flowerpots or my finger! 

Frog thimble - a different roommate gave him to me after he got back from his trip to Spain. 

Frog clip - one of my friends gave it to me for no reason! really nice of her!!!

Mosaic frog - the roommate that went to Spain got this for me there too! he doesn’t have a job, he just doesn’t fit into any of the other categories.

Keroppi pin - got this for 50 cents in Taiwan & then lost it for a year.

Tiny rubber frog - given to me by one of my roommates for Christmas. he got it in Florida. he doesn’t have a job either.

Milan eraser - picked this up in a stationary store in prague called McPen.

viii. miscellaneous items on the frog display shelf

Fat cat with big poofy cheeks - i went to the flea market with my dad & saw this funny man.

 Round unicorn & pink fish - the other 2 round things that came with the frog my boyfriend’s parents gave me for easter this year.

Crab ornament - given to me alongside the tiny rubber frog. he’s missing a leg and is EXTREMELY fragile - pieces of his shell fall off all the time.

Red wooden painted egg - got from an easter market in Prague.

Eggplant container - I keep souvenir pressed pennies in here. 

Stone egg with stand - I got this for my dad from an antique store, but my dad said I could keep it.

Golden pig - gotten somewhere in Prague. I was gonna give it to one of my roommates, but my mom said “You should keep it for good luck, it’s the year of the pig!” & so I did.

Snake carving - my grandma used to give me little carvings made of the same material all the time before she died. I don’t know where I got this.

Little glass crab - a gift alongside the crab ornament & tiny rubber frog!

White rock - looks very pretty in the right light. got it from a mineral store in Cesky Krumlov.

Smooth rock - smokey quartz I think? got it from the same mineral store. 

Carnelian scarab - got this from a really cool mineral store outside the Louvre. I could have spent all day in here - they sold really expensive frogs too. I had my eye on one made from turquoise, but it was 160 euros. Maybe next time. 

Labrodorite heart - my boyfriend paid for half of it when he came to visit me in Prague! it’s very blue & very gorgeous. 

Labrodorite chunk - my boyfriend got this for me at a hippie music festival!

Chunk of limestone - got this in northern ireland where there was a cool bridge near an old limestone quarry. I thought this rock looked cool, like mochi. You can’t tell from the picture quality.

Glass lizard - part of the gift with the crab ornament & the other things.

Turtle - got him from the flea market. not sure what he’s made of, but he’s handcrafted!

Shiny turtle - this was on the ground at the flea market. it probably had fallen off a display & cost money, but i put it in my pocket. please don’t arrest me

Stone turtle - got this guy from an aquarium that’s 2 hours away from home! we went as a group over spring break to the beach, but half of us immediately went home & half of us went to the aquarium. i got to touch a shark there. 

& that’s all, folks! thanks for reading my frog lore! 

[dexthehunter]

Resurrection

Being a Guardian isn’t just about the violence. If you’re one of the good ones, you learn that early on. It took me awhile.

           Our gift is called the Light. And that is what we need to be. Not only do we push back the Darkness, but we must also guide the way.

           It started out as Kaileia’s idea. Going to the city orphanages, shelters, and slums, and doing all we could for the civilians that resided there. All the children whose parents didn’t make it to the city walls, the new arrivals who found themselves alone and homeless, the drunks that drank to forget the darkness rather than face it. All lost souls that could use a guiding Light.

           Every year for the Festival of the Lost, myself and the rest of Fireteam Sigma, as well as anyone else who cared to join, found ourselves at one of the (too) many orphanages dispersed within the city walls. It was symbolic, for those of us that were incapable of death to play role model to the children whose parents weren’t as lucky. Whether we played games, told stories, did the occasional arts and crafts, or showed off the Light in a child-friendly manner, we knew we made their lives a little brighter.

           Many of these same children, when they came of age, found themselves employed in the tower. Some helped Amanda, the brilliant orphan like their kin, in the hangar to maintain, test, and repair ships and sparrows. Some found themselves in general tower maintenance, or the armory, or if they were really lucky, the Ramen shop. All of them found a home.

           I was sitting in a circle, a ring of children ranging from toddlers to teenagers, telling them stories of my latest adventures while Athena spun around their heads, allowing them to marvel at the sparkle of her newest shell. She couldn’t help but chuckle when one of the toddlers promptly tried to use her as a teething toy.

           A young girl who went by the name Ary stood behind me, braiding my hair as I spoke.

           “So, you see children, that is why you should never try to beat a Vandal in a sparrow race on the tangled shore. They love to take your glimmer and go in peace when they win, but boy are they sore losers”.

           I looked across the room to see Kai passing around her deactivated Arc Staff, and Mate allowing the children to paint his face. I couldn’t help but smile.

           One of the boys, sitting on the edge of his pubescent years, raised his hand.

           “Yes, Manuel, what is it?” I inquired.

           “Dex, sir, can you tell us the story of the day you were resurrected?” he asked abashedly.

           I chuckled. Children always loved the resurrection stories. Filled with mystery and adventure as they were. “Yes, I’m sure I can manage that. Be warned however, if you’re looking for an epic tale of survival, Kaileia has a much more interesting one than I do. My first day of my second life was mild by most comparisons. Would you still like to hear it?” The ring of children nodded their yes. “Alright, here it goes” …

            I remember it was sunny when I first opened my eyes. I couldn’t remember where, who, or even what I was. I blinked the sunshine away and pushed the long hair out of my face to see a small floating robot hovering above my head.

           “Hello Guardian, I am-“, before she could finish, I swatted her away with the back of my hand and jumped to my feet, wobbling as I tried to do so. I steadied myself against a tree and rubbed my forehead and my eyes. I looked up to find myself standing in a beautiful, sunlit grove of trees. The sunlight filtered its way through the branches, illuminating patches of healthy green grass, and a rainbow of seasonal flowers in full bloom, a patch of which Athena was digging herself out of. I was in too much awe of my surroundings to pay her much mind, until I once again found her hovering inches away from my face. “Wait!” she yelled. “Just listen to me”, having not yet found my voice, I nodded, and she let out an audible sigh of relief, despite not actually needing to breathe.

           “As I was saying, I am your ghost.” She waited.

           This did nothing to ease my confusion. “M-mmm-my gh-ghost?” I struggled to find my voice for the first time in somewhere around a millennium.

           “Yes, your ghost”, she repeated in a matter-of-fact way that still didn’t help. “And you are my guardian”. I’m sure the look on my face was enough, because she rolled her eye.

           “You were chosen by the Traveler. You were dead, I brought you back, and now you are a super-human warrior who has been chosen to fight the forces of Darkness and evil”. At this point I assumed I was crazy.

           “Hold up. I don’t even know who I am, and you want me to do what now? I’m dreaming. Or I’m dead and this is hell.”

           “No, this is very much real, and you are very much alive. Now I can’t help you much on the whole ‘who am I’ side of things. I don’t know. What I do know, is that the Traveler saw the Light in your soul and deemed you worthy. All I know is what you will become”.

           I stood dumbfounded. There I was, not knowing so much as my own name, and here was this little Light telling me I would become a hero. I let myself slide down against the trunk of the tree, at a loss for words. After several minutes of an awkward silence, I was able to find a few. “What shall I call myself then? I can’t go on without a name.”

           We both went into a swivel, taking in the surroundings once more. What I had missed in my first evaluation was the rusted shell of some sort of vehicle. I raised a finger and pointed, and the Ghost’s eye followed. “Ah. A bronze age transport. I believe they called it a ‘car’, or something like that.” I lifted myself to my feet once more, brushing hair out of my face as I went, and began rummaging around the husk of metal. Hidden within I found a worn leather jacket, which I threw on over my tattered T-shirt, pulling up the hood almost by instinct. In the background I thought I heard the ghost say something like ‘hunter’. I reached into the jacket pocket, and my hand found a small leather package, that I was able to unfold when I pulled it out for further inspection. Inside there was a small card, showing a picture of a man with long, messy hair cascading down his shoulders.

           “I wonder who this is?” I wondered, flashing the card in the direction of the small being.

           She let out a chuckle, “that’s you, silly”.

           “Oh” was the only reply I could muster, searching the small card for answers to questions I didn’t even know enough about to ask. I found a small answer in the right-hand corner. “Dexter Wyndfall”.

           “What?”

           “That’s my name, Dexter Wyndfall”, my voice came with less emotion than I anticipated.

           “Dexter huh? Alright Dexter. Can I call you Dex?” she pondered.

           I couldn’t help but smile, “Sure, Dex works. Now what shall we call you my small new friend?” I looked back down at the Card. On the bottom it read ‘Athena Co. Bookstores’. “How about, Athena?”.

           She did what I imagine was a Ghost’s best impression of a shrug. “Athena it is.”

           I ripped a bar of metal off the side of the car and spun it around in my hands. I cracked another smile, “Alright Athena, let’s go home, wherever the hell that is.”

            The children remained silent for several moments, until Manuel spoke up again. “I thought it would be scarier than that, aren’t guardians supposed to be super intense?”

           I chuckled, “Don’t worry Manuel, I’ve had enough intense for several lifetimes. Have I ever told you about the time I arm-wrestled the Kell of the House of Devils……….”

[disappearingground]

Jenny Lewis Escapes the Void

Pitchfork March 21, 2019

After a turbulent childhood and two decades of brilliantly vulnerable songs, the L.A. idol has finally arrived at something like happiness.

By Jenn Pelly

Jenny Lewis and I are in her brown Volvo, idling outside her childhood home. On a Tuesday afternoon in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, we are two blocks from Van Nuys Middle School, where Lewis once sang “Killing Me Softly” in a talent show and got suspended for flashing a peace sign in a class photo (it was mistaken for a gang symbol). We are walking distance from what used to be a Sam Goody record store on Van Nuys Boulevard, where Lewis once bought a life-changing tape of De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising, stoking her obsession with magnetic wordplay, as well as her first Bright Eyes CD, Fevers and Mirrors, which she quickly shared with the three men in her burgeoning indie band, Rilo Kiley, in the early 2000s.

We are not far from the bar where Lewis’ older sister, Leslie, sings in a cover band every Saturday, following in the tradition of their parents, who sang covers in a Las Vegas lounge act called Love’s Way in the 1970s. And that strip-mall pub is just across from the movie theater where Lewis and her mother once conspired to steal a cardboard cutout of Lewis’ 13-year-old self—a souvenir from when, as one of the busiest child actors of her generation, she starred alongside Fred Savage in the 1989 video game flick The Wizard.

Lewis left the Valley alone when she was 16 and vowed to never go back. “That was my number one goal: just to get out,” she tells me now, at 43. But on the occasion of her fourth solo record, On the Line, I asked for a tour of her past life, and here we are—Lewis in a royal blue jumpsuit, with electric blue sneakers and eyeliner to match; me, staring up at the rainbow of buttons fastened to the sun visor of her passenger seat, a collage that includes Bob Dylan, a peace sign, and a hot-orange sad face.

From the driver’s seat, behind her oversized shades, Lewis mentions the Bob Marley blacklight poster that once hung in her Van Nuys bedroom, and I imagine the scores of teenage bedroom walls that have made space for her own iconic image through the years. Lewis’ catalog of cleverly morbid, storytelling songs with Rilo Kiley and the Watson Twins ushered a generation of young listeners through suburban ennui and personal becoming—like a wise older sister we could visit on our iPods, offering an example of how to do something smart and cool with your sadness and your solitude.

In the mid-2000s, Lewis was like an indie rock Joni Mitchell for the soul-bearing Livejournal era, or an emo Dylan, the poet laureate of AIM away messages. Words—some cryptic, some elegant, some brutally, achingly direct—burst from the edges of her diaristic songs, with a dash of Didion-esque deadpan for good measure. It’s no surprise that Lewis’ earliest bedroom recordings were just Casio beats and what she describes as “raps.” Lewis was the first feminine voice I ever encountered leading a band outside the mainstream, with a sound that initially befuddled my ears because it was, in that overwhelmingly male indie era, so rare: a woman’s plainspoken voice.

Cruising around L.A. together, my mind maps the California of her lyrics. What does it mean for the palm trees to “bow their heads”? What becomes of the cheating, California-bound man in Rilo Kiley’s filmic “Does He Love You”—the soulful rave-up where Lewis belted the heroic mantra, “I am flawed if I’m not free!”? But my most pressing question, the one I must ask Lewis: Is California still “a recipe for a black hole,” as she sang on 2001’s “Pictures of Success”? “I guess it’s all the void,” she tells me straight. “It’s not really geographical. That’s what you find out on your adventures. It doesn’t really matter where you go. You accompany yourself there.”

The main destination of our Van Nuys excursion is the small ranch home of Lewis’ youth—or rather, homes, as there are two, practically adjacent. It’s a little complicated, I learn, as are many things with Lewis’ upbringing.

Lewis was born in Vegas on Elvis Presley’s birthday. In 1976, her parents and sister were living out of suitcases on the road, playing Carpenters and Sonny and Cher songs at casinos like the Sands, the Mint, and the Tropicana. “My mom was so pregnant but she would not miss a show,” recalls Leslie, who was 8 at the time. “Jenny would be kicking her on stage, and I remember seeing my mom flinch. I think that was Jenny saying, ‘Let me out, I want to sing!’”

Soon after Lewis was born, her parents divorced, and her father, Eddie Gordon, left the family and continued his career as one of the world’s leading harmonica virtuosos. Lewis’ mother, Linda, moved back to her native Los Angeles, working three jobs to rebuild a life with her daughters. At 2-and-a-half years old, Lewis was discovered by the powerful Hollywood agent Iris Burton (a young Drew Barrymore and the Olsen Twins were among her clients) after the toddler spontaneously wandered over to her table in a restaurant.

When Lewis was 5, she was already supporting Leslie and their mom with her commercial and TV acting, and they bought their humble first home, the one we’re visiting. “But we always used to dream about the house on the corner,” Lewis says, slowly circling the block, “so then my mom bought that house, too.” It’s two doors down, looks pretty similar—why dream of it? “Because it was right there,” Lewis says, “and it was nicer than the one we had!” (A 1992 L.A. Times headline dubbed Lewis “A Teen-Age Actress With 3 Mortgages”—she owned a townhouse in North Hollywood by then as well—calling her “the youngest member of the United Homeowners Association.”) “I know it’s confusing,” Lewis says. “This is part of the simulation; this is craziness. Why did we also want that house?” She erupts into a cackle. “None of this makes any fucking sense.”

In life as in her songs, Lewis is a consummate storyteller, mindful of how tiny details make a great tale. In the car, for instance, she tells me about the time she played Lucille Ball’s granddaughter on the notoriously bad 1986 sitcom “Life With Lucy.” It was the last show Lucy ever starred in, and it was canceled before the first season even finished. The mood was blue, but a wrap party was still planned, and Lewis’ mother convinced Lucy to have the gathering at their little house in Van Nuys. “So Lucy rolled up with her two dogs,” Lewis remembers. “She walked in the front door, looked around, and said, ‘What a dump!’”

Lewis’ mother typically attracted fascinating characters to the house—like the producers of the TV special “Circus of the Stars,” who trained Lewis in trapeze; or “Fantasy Island” star Hervé Villechaize, who came over for a scammy “Pyramid Party”; or The Exorcist writer William Peter Blatty. One year on Halloween, at the recommendation of the family’s illusionist friend—who, according to Leslie, levitated Jenny in their house—her mother invited over Ghostbusters star Dan Aykroyd’s brother Peter, who was himself a real-life ghost buster. Peter planned to “check out the levels” of the house.

Intrigued by the Lewis’ paranormal investigation, the local news showed up. Back then, Lewis was hanging out with fellow child actors Sarah Gilbert, Toby Maguire, and Leonardo DiCaprio—who also came through to scope things out. Recalling the ghost-busting scene, Lewis says, “They came over and set up their vague, infrared equipment and they captured some sort of reading coming down the hallway and going into my childhood bedroom.”

I ask Lewis if the ghostbusters’ findings felt accurate. “Well, totally,” she says. “Something was going on. We always had weird vibes in the house. Very dark vibes.”

In person, Lewis’ temperament is one of constant cheer. She radiates positivity, takes bong rips in her kitchen, says “dope” and “vibe” often. This sunny disposition is occasionally punctuated by looks of deep, welling concern for others—as if she is on the brink of tears for humanity. Still, she calls herself a “total skeptic,” and tells me that show business trained her, early on, to master the art of getting along. “I didn’t ever wanna be one of the dicks on set—like in a family situation, where one person can really fuck up Thanksgiving,” she says, before veering into more existential territory. “We all know we’re careening towards the end of humanity. I just wanna do my work and hang out with my people.”

It’s only later, while sipping Modelos at the dining room table of her quaint ranch house in the hills of Studio City, that Lewis reveals the source of her childhood home’s “dark vibes” was her mother’s lifelong heroin addiction. “It is painful to go back there,” Lewis tells me. “I get a weird feeling. I don’t know if the ghostbusters could have detected it, but there was some kind of energy that was not conducive to survival. So when I left, I left.”

“My mom was an addict my entire life, and it was a fucking rollercoaster,” she continues. “It lent itself to some amazing situations, but it was manic as fuck, and there were drugs constantly. It’s a lifestyle, and it’s a community to grow up around. I feel grateful for having been witness to some pretty outrageous human behavior from a young age. Nothing really shocks me.”

Leslie attests to their complicated home environment, and recalls “stepping over people trying to find my books to go to school.” She became a mother figure to Jenny, taking her little sister to school on her bicycle and making sure she did her homework. Leslie was just a teenager when she put it together that their mother was pushing Jenny’s acting money into buying drugs and, ultimately, selling them. “It was a terrible realization for both Jenny and I to have,” Leslie says. “I give our mom a lot of credit for being resourceful prior to that. We probably wouldn’t be talking to you today if she hadn’t been so inventive and so diligent. But it escalated.”

When Jenny quit acting in her early 20s, Leslie wasn’t surprised. “I remember her finally having the burden lifted off her shoulders, that she didn’t need to support our mom anymore, and she didn’t need to be told what to do anymore—she was free,” Leslie says. “Her agents were calling me, asking ‘What the hell’s going on? We’re booking her in all this stuff.’ It was a big deal for her to walk away. But she had to do it. I think she didn’t want to be saying other people’s words anymore.” Leslie recalls the bubbly dialogue Lewis would have to recite on screen and adds, “That’s just not where she was at in her life.”

Focusing on her own words, Lewis arrived instead at death, disease, loneliness, deflated dreams. Rilo Kiley’s 2002 breakthrough The Execution of All Things opens with a hushed monologue from Lewis about the melting ground. On the title track, she sings genially of a will to “murder what matters to you most and move on to your neighbors and kids.” Disguised by twee album art, Rilo Kiley created an indie rock uncanny valley, a sweet-sung pop moroseness of Morrissey-like proportions.

The centerpiece of Execution is a gritted-teeth fight song called “A Better Son/Daughter.” It bursts from a music-box twinkle to a monumental marching-band wallop, from a depressed paralysis to refurbished self-worth, from “your mother […] calling you insane and high, swearing it’s different this time” to “not giving in to the cries and wails of the Valley below.” In the past, Lewis has rarely discussed how her own biography fits into her songs, but the sense of hard-earned triumph and conviction powering this particular song is unequivocal. When I ask what might have inspired its climax—“But the lows are so extreme/That the good seems fucking cheap”—she simply remarks, “I mean everything I say.”

In 2006, Lewis wrote the fablistic title ballad of her solo masterpiece, Rabbit Fur Coat, to convey the feeling of her story—a mother waitressing on welfare in the Valley, the promise of a working child, a fortune that fades—if not the concrete details, which, she says, don’t really matter. But the haunting “Rabbit Fur Coat” laid her mythology bare. “I became a hundred-thousand-dollar kid/When I was old enough to realize/Wiped the dust from my mother’s eyes,” Lewis sings, the last line quivering into a moment of piercing a capella. “Is all this for that rabbit fur coat?”

I ask Lewis where she thinks her optimism comes from, and she just says “survival.” This summarizes an equation of emotional resilience that more women than not are tasked with solving young. “Jenny has basically been on her own her entire life,” says her best friend, the musician Morgan Nagler. “She’s the definition of buoyant.”

It’s hard to imagine rock in 2019 without Lewis’ radical honesty, without her hyper-lyrical mix of the sweet and the sinister. “In the early 2000s, the really big indie artists were Bright Eyes and Death Cab for Cutie, and Jenny was one of the only women fronting that kind of music,” says Katie Crutchfield, aka Waxahatchee. “But in the next generation after that in indie music, there are so many women. How could she not have been a huge part of that?”

Crutchfield, now an indie figurehead in her own right, says no songwriter has directly influenced her more than Lewis. When she was still a 20-year-old punk living in Alabama, Crutchfield got the cover of The Execution of All Things tattooed prominently on her arm. Lewis’ odd, poppy, poetic songs had a musicality she hadn’t found in punk, but they still spoke to her as an outcast.

Seeing Rilo Kiley play for the first time—at a Birmingham venue she would go on to play herself—was a watershed moment. Crutchfield and her two sisters stood front row center, sang every word, and cried. “It was so huge to see a woman on stage holding a guitar, being powerful but still very feminine,” Crutchfield says. “That was my first foray into seeing that as a possibility for myself.” She recalls the exact outfit Lewis wore that night: red leather skirt, knee socks, T-shirt tucked in, and “a belt that was like a ruler—something you would see on a teacher.”

When Eva Hendricks, singer of sugarrushing New York pop-rock band Charly Bliss, was still in high school, she would spend days writing Lewis’ lyrics in her notebooks over and over, becoming attuned to the virtues of unsparing openness in songwriting. “Listening to that music unlocked something I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to understand about myself,” says Hendricks, who also appreciated how Lewis never downplayed her femininity. She distinctly recalls going to a Lewis record signing around 2014’s The Voyager: “I waited in line and when it got to be my turn, the only thing I could think to say was, ‘I can’t believe that your voice is coming out of a real human being.’”

Harmony Tividad, of Girlpool, was 12 the first time she heard Rilo Kiley, and calls Execution’s “The Good That Won’t Come Out” one of her favorite songs of all time. “That song is more like a diary entry, and vulnerable in this way that feels like a secret,” Tividad says. The unvarnished album opener peaks with Lewis speak-singing, “You say I choose sadness, that it never once has chosen me/Maybe you’re right.”

“I was a really emotional, awkward young person and felt kind of socially trapped,” Tividad, now 23, reflects. “I was a freak. And that song is about exploring all of this stuff inside of yourself that you can’t really show people. It’s about isolation, which I have felt a lot. This music was a soundtrack to that recalibration of personhood. It was very integral in me developing a sense of self.”

Lewis has resided in the quiet show-biz neighborhood of Studio City—which she refers to as “Stud City”—for 11 years. She mentions that her current home is still, technically, located in the Valley, and shoots me a conspiratorial look: “Don’t tell anyone.” There are retro-looking landlines all around the house (cell service is poor), and eye-catching vintage Christmas bulbs strung in the kitchen window. The house was previously owned by the late Disney animator Art Stevens, who worked on Fantasia and Peter Pan. Standing amid dozens of plants in the little green room at the heart of her home, sipping a coconut La Croix, Lewis enthuses about Mort Garson’s obscure 1976 electronic record, called Mother Earth’s Plantasia. The whole place has an air of magic.

Its infrastructure has been unchanged for decades, which stuck out to a location scout for Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Charles Manson film, who knocked on the door one day and asked to take some photos. He did not return, but his business card is on Lewis’ refrigerator, alongside one from legendary songwriter Van Dyke Parks, and a Bob Dylan backstage pass. The fridge is mostly covered with hospital stickers from when Lewis was visiting her mom, who died of cancer in 2017, and inspired her new song “Little White Dove.”

The other big change in Lewis’ life was the dissolution of her 12-year relationship with singer-songwriter Jonathan Rice—after which, to shake up the energy of the house, Lewis’ friend and photographer Autumn de Wilde painted the walls of her bedroom a striking shade of rose. Directly outside the door is a life-size photo of her best friend Morgan, and the window of her bedroom, spanning the right wall, looks out to a built-in pool. The sill holds carefully arranged objects: ruby slippers, her passport, a candle, a plethora of sunglasses, and a violet notebook labeled “Lewis homework for On the Line.”

Talking with Lewis, the despairing elephant in the room is Ryan Adams, who played on the album. Two weeks before we meet, Adams was accused of sexual misconduct and emotional manipulation from musician Phoebe Bridgers, his ex-wife Mandy Moore, and others, including a woman who was allegedly 14 at the time, prompting a criminal investigation by the FBI. “The allegations are so serious and shocking and really fucked up, and I was so sad on so many levels when I heard,” Lewis tells me. “I hate that he’s on this album, but you can’t rewrite how things went. We started the record together two years ago, and he worked on it—we were in the studio for five days. Then he pretty much bounced, and I had to finish the album by myself.”

“This is part of my lifelong catalog,” Lewis continues. “The album is an extension of that thing that started back at my mom’s house—I had to save myself and my music, and get away from the toxicity. Ultimately, it’s me and my songs. I began in my bedroom with a tape recorder, and it was like my own fantasy world. I’ve taken all these weird turns in my life—with mostly men, sometimes women—but I feel like I’m finally back to that place, which is autonomy.”

Though On the Line features an impressive array of players—Beck, Rolling Stones producer Don Was, Dylan drummer Jim Keltner, literally Ringo Starr—the album marks the first time Lewis has penned an album of songs solo, without co-writers, since Rabbit Fur Coat. “I’m not fully myself when I’m co-writing,” Lewis admits, describing a directness to the songs she’s penned with men, like Rilo Kiley’s “Portions for Foxes,” as opposed to songs she’s written alone, like “Silver Lining.” “With the songs I’ve co-written, it’s almost as if there’s a trimming of the emotional, rambling, poetic hysteria, which is where I live when I’m writing by myself,” Lewis says. “I don’t think of songs structurally. It’s a feeling, and I’m chasing the feeling.”

The cover of On the Line is a close-up of Lewis’ chest in an ornate blue gown. She chose the snapshot intuitively, from a pile of Polaroids taken by de Wilde, and only later recognized it as a deep homage to her mom, who once dressed similarly in Vegas and had an identical mole between her breasts. “Over the years I’ve become more comfortable in my skin,” Lewis says. “It’s funny to feel good in your skin when it’s not quite as tight as it used to be.”

With her voice sounding more refined than ever, On the Line finds Lewis singing about getting head in a black Corvette, feeling “wicked,” and—on the devastatingly delicate “Taffy”—sending nudes to a lover she knows will leave. “There’s a lot of fantasy in my songs,” Lewis tells me. “Sadly, I don’t get that much action. I should have gotten more.” She says she has always written about sex as “character projection,” but when she did so on Rilo Kiley’s final album, 2007’s Under the Black Light, it polarized fans. Lewis recalls one journalist who made a flow chart claiming to correlate the declining quality of the band’s music and the shrinking size of her hot pants. “It was so puritanical,” she says. But as the borders between the underground, mainstream, and genre have broken down, the artists who Lewis inspired are continuing to make space for more expansive expressions of sexuality.

The new record’s sound is warm and sleek, and when Lewis says she listened primarily to Kanye’s recent work while mixing it, I recall yet another wacky tale she shared with me at her house: Once, circa 2008, Lewis chanced upon Kanye at an airport. He played her a cut from 808s and Heartbreaks, and she played him her sprawling psych-rock triptych “The Next Messiah.”

Listening to On the Line, I find myself fixated on “Wasted Youth,” which uses a jaunty piano arrangement to deliver its neatly bleak refrain: “I wasted my youth on a poppy.” Lewis then slyly draws a line from the drugs to our numbing daily realities. When she sings, “Everybody knows we’re in trouble/Doo doo doo doo doo/Candy Crush,” I can feel my phone festering in my palm.

“I feel like that song is more about Candy Crush than heroin, if that’s even fucking possible,” Lewis says. “That’s the fuckin’ end: Candy Crush. It’s terrifying. I feel like my brain has been taken over by one of those weird fungi that grow out of the head of an ant in the rainforest. It’s like we’re spracked out on our Instagrams. It makes me feel like shit even talking about it.”

By the bridge, however, Lewis offers a blunt jolt of hope: “We’re all here, then we’re gone/Do something while your heart is thumping!” That’s a surprisingly heartening sentiment from a songwriter who has referred to herself as “a walking corpse,” who once made a springy emo anthem entitled “Jenny, You’re Barely Alive.”

“I’m in my 40s and something has shifted,” she says, when I ask what she does these days to help herself through. “Maybe you’re more aware of your own mortality, and have the balls to walk away from things, and be untethered, and do the reflection and the hard work—getting your ass out of bed and walking a couple miles, going to the gym, talking to a therapist.”

Lewis says her relationships with her female friends have deepened profoundly in recent years. “Maybe this is what we’re picking up on: the collective consciousness,” she says. “Women are talking to one another more. Reaching out to my girlfriends has helped me through these lessons that keep coming up. It’s the same lesson, where I’m like, ‘How am I in this situation with this fucking person that’s crazy… again? Why am I here and why have I stayed this long?’ And then my girlfriends are there to go: ‘Get the fuck out of there!’” (She is clear that this is not about her relationship with Rice, but rather about other romantic and working partnerships.)

I tell Lewis that these get-me-out predicaments remind me of her own song, “Godspeed,” from 2008’s Acid Tongue, which I had been revisiting quite a bit lately—a golden-hour piano ballad from one woman to another, a paean to “keep the lighthouse in sight,” to get “up and out of his house,” because “no man should treat you like he do.” “I wrote that for my friend,” Lewis says. “But maybe I wrote it for myself now.”

By the end of my time at Lewis’ house, the sun has set and we’re sitting in near total darkness, save for the neon pink glow of one of her many landlines. “You have to make a choice to be happy, or try to be,” Lewis insists. “Sometimes that involves moving away from people that you love, or that hurt you, or that are toxic. You have to find your bliss in life, right?”

I almost can’t believe that the same woman who provided me with my personal millennial-burnout anthems is asking me about unfettered joy—the artist who wrote the lyrics “I do this thing where I think I’m real sick, but I won’t go to the doctor to find out about it” and “I’m a modern girl but I fold in half so easily when I put myself in the picture of success” and “It must be nice to finish when you’re dead.” But I nod; it’s true.