#forgot straight old people have no context for my life experience

[livingasaghost]

sometimes i forget that i’m hyper-evolved now as an aroace person who’s been out for a while bc some old person will ask me a question about my “love life” or i’ll make some kind of comment about how i’m not dating anyone and don’t want to date anyone and the other person will just be utterly shocked and won’t know what to do with me…meanwhile internally it’s such an inherent part of who i am and who my friends know me as that i have no clue how to respond when someone says “what is wrong with men these days! they’re crazy! they should be lining up to date you!!”

[krabmeat]

heyyyy, just wanteddd too seee ifff youu cooulddd writteee sommmeee karlll x time!travel readerrrrr, itt coouuullddd beee flufff orr anggssttt. whateeeveerrr youuu wantttt :] (morreeeee iiinnnffooo: reeaddderrr allsooo hasss the abillitttyyy to time travelll and karlll and themmm manageeedd tooo bump intoo each otherrr innn the innbetweeeennnn. bothhh offff themm telll storries aboutttt theiir adventuresss tooo one anotherrr and arreee having a gennuinely goooddd timme! tttheeeyyyy meeet agggainn in theeee lllooosssttt cittttyyyy offff mizzzuuuuu annnnddd youuu caannn dooo whatteeeveerrrr affftteerrr thhhatttt)

sorrryyy fooor myyyy tyyyypingggg ssstyyyleeeee (cccaaaannnn i beeeeeee "beeeee annnooonnnnn" bbbutttt wiithouttt theeee draggged outtt letttterrrssss? I ussseeeeeee beeeee/aviannnn/hiveeeee/boottttleeeesssss prrroooonnnnnouuunnsssss)

𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝚋𝚞𝚍𝚍𝚒𝚎𝚜

𝙺𝚊𝚛𝚕 𝚡 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚟𝚎𝚕𝚎𝚛!𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛 (𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚝𝚘𝚗𝚒𝚌)

𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚜: Karl(Isaac), Ranboo(Charles), Dream(Ranbob), BadBoyHalo(Benjamin), Quackity(Cletus)

𝚖𝚊𝚒𝚗 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚜: they/them

𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚐𝚎𝚛 𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜: brief mention of suggestive content, death, murder, explosions, glass breaking, cursing, weapons, water

𝚊𝚞𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚛𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚎:

I HAD SO MUCH FUN WRITING THIS HOLY CRAP!!! firstly, welcome "bee anon" (bee/avian/hive/bottles) to my account! its lovely to have you here and thank you so much for the request! i hope this adds up to what you imagined and i hope you stick around! :]]

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

The In-Between. Any entity that normally roamed around there knew the place well. If you visited there, you visited often. Karl regularly roamed around the in between. The only face he saw there was his. Karl’s from different timelines traveled to the In-Between as well, but ever since he had found those ominous books that told him to steer clear of the “alternate Karl’s”, that’s exactly what he did. So seeing a new face there while roaming the brick-white palace startled him.

The stranger didn’t even get the chance to introduce themselves when Karl briskly grabs them by the arm and starts running to the room under the tree. 

“Woah-! Wait are you-“

But before the mystery person can finish their sentence, Karl cuts them off as quickly as possible.

“SSHHHH! Please hold on a second, I’ll let you know when you can talk.”

The mystery person nods and stays silent as they make their way under the big tree.

Once they arrive, Karl flops to the ground exhausted from the running.

“It’s the safest down here, no one can see what we’re doing. But that’s besides the point! Who the heck are you and how did you get here?!”

The mystery person slides down against the wall and onto the floor besides him. They think for a second, trying to recall how they had arrived. 

“I’m Y/n, I’m a time traveler and somehow I got HERE instead of the place I was planning on going to. I was walking around and I saw a bunch of the alternate versions of you around the place but I figured that if one of them were to- yknow, drag me away and under the tree, that’d be the one I’d need to talk to that isn’t a fake.” 

Karl nods in understanding before he realizes. 

“Wait- how did you know about the safety room being under the tree? Or the ‘alternate’ me’s not actually being from other realities?”

Y/n looks at Karl with a deadpan expression and leans back into the wall. They swing their arms out in front of them for dramatic effect.

“Well duh, I have an in between! You aren’t the only one, yknow. Did you get a bunch of those creepy, contradicting books from all around the place? The one that told me the useful information was in all caps, and the other one was talking about how great the place is and constantly used smiles. Not the traditional one though, like, it used the brackets instead of the parenthesis.”

Karl shoots up in surprise, they had gotten those too?! He was never aware that there were other time travelers that existed, let alone were able to get into other peoples in between! He nods, eager to ask them questions.

“So, where were you planning on going? You said you didn’t mean to come here, right?”

Y/n nods, remembering where they were trying to go previously.

“Yeah! I forgot the name, but I know that it’s some place underwater. An abandoned city or something. Enough about me though, one of the main reasons we both time travel is to tell stories, right? So tell me about the places you’ve been! Also, what’s your name? You got mine but I never got yours.”

“Ah, right- I’m Karl-!”

Karl turned around and flipped up his hoodie to show his light gray initials embedded onto the white hoodie. Y/n had a long, white robe with vine-like accents on the hems. The ends of the sleeves had Y/n’s initials on them as well.

“Well… the first place I’ve ever visited was this place I like to call….’The Town That Went Mad’! Ever play the video game ‘Town Of Salem’? It was basically that and I was like the host of it, sorta.”

Karl proceeded to explain the different personas and people to Y/n, there were people like Cornelius the Wise, Helga, Miles Memeington, Mayor Jimmy- Helgas husband, Robin the Orphan, Bob (he’s a builder, yknow), Catboy (very deep voice, no one knows why but it’s a strange contrast to the ears and tail. Mutant or furry??), and Jack the Farmer. He explained from how the orphan had tricked the entire town that he was a murderer when he was instead the Jester, to explaining what the word “dunderhead” meant in Helgas context after explaining how she ruthlessly and openly got her husband executed and then soon proceeded to sleep with Bob. 

Both of them were crying tears of laughter, listening and recalling their own stories. By the time Karl had finished telling his story, Y/n was on the ground wheezing from how funny they thought the story was.

“And your telling me they all just, DIED?! That’s so anticlimactic, I love it!”

It’s been maybe 3 hours or so of them discussing stories and laughing. As much as these two travel across the fabrics of the universe, they would have never imagined being able to finally tell someone about their travels and experiences! 

Y/n then started talking about a Sky Dynasty that lived up in the clouds in a kingdom called The Kingdom Of Synnefa. When they had dropped in, they would have fallen straight through the clouds if a kind man by the name of Galen hadn’t found them hanging off a building ledge for their dear life! Galen let Y/n drop into his wagon and he took them to get Skywalkers, shoes specifically make for walking on clouds. 

Y/n had then explained how a very old looking man who looked to be a pig hybrid approached them, asking them if they were new. Apparently the old pig man was the guardian of the Grand Library, saying how he adored the Kingdoms Greek history and fables. The funny part is that his name is Icarus, a very unfortunate demise that Icarus had in the past but apparently that was a sensitive subject for Icarus and he would get very upset if anyone brought it up.

Another 3 hours went by of this time Y/n telling their stories of their travels to The Kingdom Of Synnefa! Both Karl and Y/n were having a wonderful time chatting with one another about both the confusing rivalries between the carnivores and herbivores of the kingdom, as well as how the kingdom was slowly dying due to the mass amounts of pollution damage the “ground dwellers” have been inflicting on The Kingdom Of Synnefa.

Soon though, Y/n had to jump into their next travels- as well as Karl. They said their goodbyes to each other, both obviously upset about having to stop the fun and interesting chat. 

“Look, when I leave I’ll figure out how I got in, okay? If I don’t figure it out, it’s been a real pleasure Karl Jacobs. Anyways, off to the abandoned water city I go!” 

Karl nods and waves his hands frantically at them, eager and hopeful for Y/n to visit him again. 

“See ya around Y/n!”

Y/n then proceeds to take out a small book and pen from inside their robe. They open it and quickly scribble something down before closing it and putting away. Y/n gives Karl a last friendly smile before disappearing in a snap. Before that, they manage to give him one last message.

“Hopefully!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Isaac wakes up in his bed by the sea docks. Meeting what seems to be his friends and roommates, Benjamin, Cletus, Charles and Monroe. Distant arguing can be heard from the docks. One of the voices sound oddly more familiar than the others to Isaac. Isaac walks over to the dock and finds two people arguing. 

“What’s going on here? Why are you guys arguing so early in the morning!”

The two people stand up and point at each other.

“MONROE DOESNT GIVE ME BACK THE F*CKING FISHING ROD!”

“BECAUSE THE LAST TIME YOU CAUGHT A FISH YOU KILLED IT, CLETUS!”

Monroe? Their voice sounds oddly similar to someone else’s, but Isaac can’t quite put his finger on it. He looks down ignoring the minor situation, when he sees a small leather book- then it clicks. Monroe is Y/n! But before Isaac confronts Monroe (Y/n), he picks up the small leather book. It isn’t the one that Y/n had when they left Karl’s In-Between, but it instead had what looked like the directions and coordinates for The Lost City Of Mizu!

“CHARLES! GET THE F*CK OVER HERE SO YOU CAN GUIDE US TO THESE COORDS!!”

Charles walks out of the shared dockside house alongside Benjamin, I hand him the book and start heading for the boats when Monroe stops me. They whisper loud enough so that I can only hear.

“Karl? Is that you?”

“Y/n?! You recognize me!”

We get on the same boat while the others get on theirs as well, and set off following Charles to The Lost City Of Mizu.

“Okay first, we call each other Isaac and Monroe, okay? Don’t break character.”

“I don’t even know HOW I remember! Usually I don’t until I leave!”

“Well that doesn’t matter right now, just try to act like Isaac and not Karl.”

And that’s what they did. Karl was Isaac and Y/n was Monroe. 

Once they found The Lost City Of Mizu, they met a man named Ranbob. Ranbob was the last resident of the city, and offered to show the group around. Rooms and rooms of full on history! It was like a huge museum filled with information of a place Ranbob called The Dream SMP, and Karl and Y/n were eating it up. Ranbob had suddenly disappeared, but the group didn’t pay much mind of it as they were trying to get into the Tree Dome. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Tree Dome room was as marvelous as it was big. The tree was absolutely beautiful, and was also the supply of oxygen for the now abandoned city- though the tree still looks to be thriving tremendously. The group spots a chest on the tree and nominates Cletus to go and retrieve it. Branch after branch and he’s finally up there! But soon after fallen and blown into oblivion because in suddenly appears Ranbob with loads and loads on TNT. Placing it all around the tree and the room, all he says is

“No one survives when they come here.”

And 

BOOM!

He sets off the TNT in the tree, Cletus. Before he died, Cletus luckily tossed the group the book he essentially died for so before reading it, the group ran out of the room and shut the iron doors.

The rest of the group had also found a book that had a key to a “Secret Room”, and very soon after they were making they’re way down a certain “Secret Room” only to be met with another book and a room to the side full of lava parkour. Apparently the last person to try and make it past the lava parkour failed, but they know the key or next clue HAS to be there, so Benjamin is nominated to do the lava parkour, failing and falling into the lava on the final step. Bravely after watching his friend die, Isaac (Karl) decides he’s gonna take a go at the parkour, and succeeds! He gets the key and directions to the final room before they can escape and heads to the final room with Monroe and Charles.

The final room is...strange, to say the least. Black brick walls and flooring, the walls lined with diamond armour and weapons. At the end of the small hallway rested what looked like a terrarium. One of the walls were made of glass so they could look in, and what they saw wasn’t what they were expecting. A normal flat biome with grass blocks, a mini cave in the corner that had a few gold ores in it if you looked hard enough, and the strangest of all was the statue of a looming, smiling, green figure in the very center. 

“Everyone had a person they idolized.”

Ranbob suddenly appears, interrupting the 3 taking in the room.

“Ranbob? Dude what the f*ck?!”

Y/n reaches for one of the diamond axes lining the wall, when suddenly Ranbob unsheathes a netherite sword. 

“Don’t touch anything.”

That’s enough to get Y/n to back up from both the weapons AND Ranbob. 

“How are you even here? We thought you DIED!”

But Ranbob didn’t seem to be bothered nor wanted to be bothered by such minuscule questions, and instead walked towards the glass of the terrarium. 

“This is my idol. His name is Dream.”

“Was he a good person..?”

Karl questioned hesitantly. He didn’t wanna anger or irritate Ranbob after seeing what he said to Y/n.

“Hmm, yes, he’s a good person. Depending on what you think.”

Karl walks up to the glass and shatters an opening with his elbow. He, Charles and Y/n step into the terrarium, observing the statue and its habitat more closely. But they didn’t get the chance to say much more. Ranbob unsheathes his sword for the last time, trapping everyone inside the terrarium. 

“No one makes it out alive.”

GASP!

“What the- where are we?”

…

“Y/n…? Y/n! Your back!”

[albdodaze]

blooming. y.itadori

‘i will never, never leave you’ (chapter three)

warnings: none

context: IN WHICH kami gojo, younger sister of certain powerful jujutsu sorcerer, meets an idiot who makes cold barrier around her heart melt.

"Roppongi my ass," laughed Kami, looking at the abandoned old building they were standing in front of.

"There's a curse here," stated Satoru.

"You liar!"

"This isn't even Roppongi!"

"You were toying with us country folk!"

"There's a big cemetery nearby. The double whammy of that and an abandoned building brought out a curse," Satoru said, not taking his eyes off the building.

"So they really do pop up more often around graves?" Itadori asked as Nobara shouted evil in the background.

"The issue isn't the cementery itself," Yuuji's head turned abruptly towards Kami, who finally spoke up and a blush came over his face that he didn't even notice.

But Satoru did.

"It's the fact that people associate cemeteries with fear," Kami explained, totally oblivious.

"Oh, it was the same for schools, too, wasn't it?" Yuuji replied, ignoring the heat that flooded him at the sound of the younger Gojo's soft voice.

"Hold up. He didn't even know that yet?" Nobara asked, approaching from Kami's left.

—

"He swallowed a special-grade cursed object? Gross! Unbelievable! That's so unsanitary and disgusting! No way, no way, no way, no way!"

"This is what I was telling them the whole time," deadpanned Kami, and Nobara grabbed her by the shoulders and looked her straight in the eye.

"They thought otherwise?!" She exclaimed and leaned her head against Kami's shoulder, groaning at the thought of this. Kami patted her lightly on the head, glad that finally someone understood her.

"What?!"

"I agree with them," Fushiguro said.

"I want to know what all of you are capable of. Just think of this as a field test," Satoru finally spoke up. "Nobara, Yuuji, you two go exorcise the curse inside that building."

"Geh!"

"Huh? But I thought only curses could exorcise curses, right?" Asked a confused Yuuji. "I can't use any jujutsu yet."

"You're basically half a curse already. There's cursed energy flowing throughout your body. Though controlling that energy isn't something you can learn overnight," Satoru said and extended his hand towards Kami, who with a sigh pulled a weapon from the strap tied across her waist and handed it to him. "So use this."

"It's the cursed tool, Slaughter Demon. It's a weapon imbued with cursed energy. It'll work on curses, too," Kami explained as Itadori marveled at the weapon in his hand.

"Lame," Nobara said, and she and Itadori headed towards the building.

"Oh one more thing! Don't let Sukuna out! If you use him, you'll get rid of all the curses nearby in a flash, but you'll also drag everyone around into it."

"Got it, I won't let Sukuna out."

—

"I think I'll go, too," Megumi spoke up after a moment of silence.

"Don't push yourself. You're still recovering."

"But someone needs to keep an eye on Itadori, right?"

"True. But the one we're testing this time is Nobara."

"But don't you think leaving her with Itadori is kinda stupid? I mean, he's kinda... reckless," Kami spoke up, playing with her long hair.

"Also true. That Yuuji... He's missing a few up here," the older Gojo said, pointing to his head. "He has no hesitation when it comes to killing these tings that take form of living creatures, albeit bizzare-looking ones, to try to kill him. And it's not like he's been familiar with curses for a long time, like you two. This boy used to live a normal high school life."

'Normal.' What is normal? Did Kami ever experience or will ever experience something 'normal'?

"You've seen plenty of jujutsu sorcerers, even those with talent, give up in frustration because they couldn't conquer their fear or disgust, haven't you?"

'It will probably be me,' Kami thought, listening to what her brother was saying.

"So today I want to confirm how crazy she is."

Silence.

No one said anything, no one dared to say anything. Because what would they have?

Kami played with her fingers out of nervousness. And she didn't know if it was because of how awkward the silence was, or because she was afraid for the two inexperienced jujutsu sorcerers who were about to face the curses alone in an abandoned building. Maybe it was because of both.

'Or more by the second one,' she thought as she saw the curse fly out the window.

"I'll exorcise it,' Megumi said, looking at the curse.

"Hold on."

Not a few seconds passed, and the curse was gone. It had evaporated. There was nothing left of it but a dirty memory.

"Nice."

"She's crazy, all right," Satoru said smiling.

—

"I live over there! Thanks again!" Exclaimed the boy whom Nobara and Itadori had rescued in the building and whom they had just escorted home, making sure he got there safely.

The Gojo siblings waved the boy away, Kami letting out a breath she hadn't even noticed she was holding in. The white-haired girl felt a hand on her shoulder and lifted her gaze to look at her brother, who was grinning at her.

"Are you hungry?" He asked and started to lead them to where three of her classmates were waiting for them.

"A little, I haven't eaten anything all day," Kami said and put her arm through her brother's waist, leaning against him gently.

"Good Joseph!" Shouted Satoru suddenly, directing this to the three waiting on the stairs. "We made sure the kid got home."

Nobara and Itadori sprang to their feet and stood, prepared for the next mission.

"Now shall we go grab some food?"

"Steak!"

"Sushi!"

"Not again," Kami muttered under her breath, and Satoru laughed softly.

"Leave it all to me!" Her brother shouted. "And you, Megumi?"

Megumi didn't answer anything, being too busy playing some game on her phone.

Without waiting for anyone, Satoru put his hands on Itadori and Nobara's shoulders and started walking in the opposite direction, leaving Megumi and Kami alone behind.

'Ouch,' thought Kami as she saw Satoru laughing with Itadori and Nobara.

"Are you coming?" She heard Megumi's voice who smiled gently at her.

Kami reciprocated the gesture and ran to his left, following the rest.

"Oh, I forgot about my biggest haul of the day," Nobara began, walking in front of the rest. " Hey, you," she pointed to Itadori. "Go fetch my stuff."

"Huh? Why should I do it? I thought we were even."

"We won thanks to my cursed energy. Got a problem with that?"

"What about my raw strength?"

"Your monstrous power from eating weird shit?"

"It's not just that! Right, Fushiguro?"

Silence.

"Huh? What's the matter, Fushiguro?"

"Nothing."

"He's pouting because he didn't get to join in," Satoru spoke up.

"What a child!" Nobara said.

Itadori started laughing, definitely happy. After all, he finally had someone to get along with. And when everyone else joined in, it made his heart fill with warmth even more. But not quite. He didn't hear the laughter he most wanted to hear.

He lifted his gaze to Kami, who was staring dead at him, the corners of her mouth not even lifting for a moment. And that made something in his heart hurt.

Satoru wasn't blind either and noticed something was wrong, slowing his step to walk beside Kami.

"Are you okay?" He asked, leaning over her so only she could hear him.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Kami raised an eyebrow.

Satoru watched her closely, observing her every little movement. The way her hands tangled at the back of her body, her fingers playing with themselves. The way her gaze fled everywhere but at anyone beside her. The way you could see her nervously biting her lip and cheeks from the inside. The way she was so tense.

Satoru laughed softly, knowing what's going on and wrapped his long arm around Kami, pulling her close and kissing her gently on the top of her head, a thing he always did when she was sad and a thing that always helped.

This time was no different as Kami closed her eyes, relaxing a bit.

"After all, you know that no one can replace you for me, you're my little sister, no one could do it," Satoru whispered and reached out his little toe, wrapping it around Kami's one, getting at least serious for a moment before returning to his previous state and tickling Kami on her sides where she was most ticklish.

Kami jumped back with a squeal and threw an evil but amused look at her brother, who only winked at her and started laughing, matching Megumi's step.

The little girl's loud laughter rang through the yard behind the house as her older brother tickled her on the ground, laughing along with her. When he finally stopped, the white-haired girl looked at her brother and smiled widely.

"Satoru?"

"Hm?" The white-haired boy replied, falling onto his back next to his little sister and looking at her.

"Will you promise me something?" The girl asked, sitting down on the ground, crossing her petite legs.

Satoru nodded, also sitting down on the ground. The girl giggled softly and extended her hand towards her brother, showing her tiny little finger.

"Promise me you'll never leave me."

Satoru's face fell, and his heart simultaneously hurt and flooded with warmth. Because on one hand, what had it come to that a six year old girl would think anyone would leave her, and on the other hand, this was one of the most adorable scenes he could ever experience.

After a moment of silence, Satoru smiled softly and wrapped his, large compared to his sister's, finger around hers and rested his forehead against Kami's forehead, looking her straight in the eyes.

"I will never, but never leave you. After all, you know that no one can replace you for me, you're my little sister, no one could do it," he said seriously, never letting go of her finger from his as he felt tears coming to his eyes.

He quickly closed his eyelids and pulled his younger version to him, who immediately snuggled into her warm and loving brother.

"I will never, never leave you."

At the mention, Kami's eyes welled up with tears, which she quickly wiped away and pretended everything was ok.

'Then why does it feel like you're distancing yourself from me now? Like you're not proud of me? Like you want to leave me, just like everyone else?'

[pearthery]

Hi, Pear! I would like to toss the question back to you: What are your favorite Gintama episodes?

shiro!! hello!! thank you!!! ahaha, i would be lying if i said that i wasn't excited to get this question, because despite being typically unable to scrounge up any definite opinions, i've been raring to say at least a few words about my favourite bits of gintama!!

okay, so my own experience with gintama was: i was twelve, and i loved it from even those first and second no-context, utter randomness episodes. the episode where i sold my soul to gorilla sorachi was episode 11, with the very very very stupid strawberry milk speech and the old man with otose's hairpin.

i remember existing in daze after i'd binged through, what, perhaps fifteen?? twenty? episodes that i'd watched on my tiny phone screen in the dark with the absolute lowest volume possible without it coming to silence, on youtube, with the sound distorted and the video squished into a corner of the screen, and split into parts to avoid copyright. and, even still, i was Immersed. it was the most incredible experience i've ever had watching something, because the characters felt so intensely real. also, i was twelve, and i thought the dick jokes were the funniest thing ever. and, ahaha, i still do, because i am very dumb

anyway, my favourite episodes!!! this is going to be a little messy, as i often am, but:

• kagura-radio-exercises (episode 189).

it's been a fair while since i actually watched gintama in its entirety (i've rewatched a few episodes here and there) so i actually forgot that this was a half-episode ahaha. the first part is that dastardly troll of a joui 4 flashback that ended up being a gundam parody, and then the second part's the kagura radio exercise half episode, which made me cry. i cry a lot aesdjfjsjdj. i loved both parts of this episode - the teasing at the then-unknown past, the emotions that come with kagura and her friend, and then gin and all her OTHER friends doing the radio exercises with her ahghhhggh

• summer-journal-when-will-madao-bloom (episode 188).

aksjdjdja i didn't realise these two episodes were right next to each other, but there it is!!! anyway, i don't think this one needs much more explanation than just, MADAO. it's MADAO. he makes you laugh, and cry, and contemplate the nature of life when all seems hopeless, and I just think there's something so (clenches fist) so good about MADAO <3

• mountain-climbing-matsutake-mushrooms-bear (episode 73)

alRIGHTIO!!!! i have! such a deep affection for gintama episode 73 — it's like, it's around the middle of what i think is early-gintama? it's just a general sort of episodic story with the yorozuya, where they go on some Shenanigans, and then,,, the story wraps up on a heartwarming note,,,

it's been six(?) years since i first watched it, and i have rewatched episode 73 more times than i can count. without fail, i am always crying at the ending. adjdjrjwkdjfka, it's the combination of that stupidity at the beginning with otose and catherine Hunting the yorozuya down for rent, and then they go mushroom hunting in the mountains, and Instantly, i'm already seduced by the setting, the combination of humour and more emotional story in this episode gets to me. the way the yorozuya are too, aah — it's dadtoki and his kiddos on a day out, kagura beats up a bear and eats poisonous mushrooms, shinpachi has a delightful mix of being the straight man AND a goofball. they're all so wonderfully stupid, i love them so much

and THEN. THEN. then there's marinosuke the hunter, and masamune the bear, and they're minor characters who never show up again at all, and their bitter flashback story isn't nearly the most heartbreaking thing in gintama, but something about how Good the yorozuya are, and gintoki especially (they invite him to eat lunch with them! it turns out Real Bad, but it's the sentiment of the thing, yknow??) aaaaah it hits me right in the heart, right where i am most tender. gintoki's smile in this episode aasdjdjeiwifhjsj.

anyway, ahaha, now that i've built up to it, i'm going to spout untidy exuberance about the parallels i see between gintoki and shoyo's relationship, his and takasugi's too, and marinosuke and masamune's. marinosuke is a man who takes in ,,,picks up [cue shoyo's: i don't know who picked up who] a bear cub whose mother he had killed. because of pressure from his village, he ends up having to abandon the cub, and the cub grows into this monster of a bear who has been possessed by a parasite and has killed people around the village at the base of this mountain. marinosuke's come to shoot the bear because he feels responsible for what it's become.

aaaaah it's,?? ?? that idea of taking responsibility for your sins? a being that you had loved that is now something that must be put down?? you must take responsibility for this monster of your own making. (i'm tearing up as i think about it ahaha) to me, it resonates so much with gintoki and shoyo's relationship — how they picked each other up and became fond, "tamed" i guess?, and then in the end, shoyo had to leave and then gintoki had to kill him. this goes for takasugi too, in that gintoki's act of cutting off shoyo's head (like marinosuke's abandonment of the cub) was the catalyst for the beast that takasugi became??? aah i'm sorry if i am unclear

anyway, it's probably very evident by now that i am in love with episode 73 ahaha. i can't help but add, though, special mentions for all the shoka sonjuku flashback episodes (heartbreak), and battle on rakuyo, and the vacation arc, and most importantly: the kagura-can't-sleep-jerry-radio story <3 <3 <3

[fromtheplanethexagon]

the robot problem: a critical look at tobecky, 5 years late

hello wordgirl fandom i am back :) and i have a lot of thoughts that i never got around to expressing before i moved on from the show. so be aware that everything i'm saying is based on my experiences during the 2012-2016 era of the fandom & state of tumblr in general, and i am not familiar with more recent fan content.

it's been over five years since the show ended, and @ifbrd​ reminded me (along with some great analysis) that while tobecky was super popular since before the show technically started (thanks to the play date shorts), it's pretty unhealthy in a lot of ways that tend to be excused or flat out ignored in fanworks. i'd like to reflect on that a bit (a lot); specifically, how both the show and the fandom approached this enemies-to-lovers ship, and how easily this ship can slip into uncomfortable territory if we're careless about how we interpret the ship and create fan content of it.

i will admit, i'm mostly writing this as a response to past me and my old creations - though i moved on from the show as a whole years ago, i do like taking the time to reflect on old interests once in a while, and reevaluating my thoughts on them. and this ship is probably the biggest one that still lurks in the corners of my mind once in a while, so let's go.

cherish is the word: a short positive note before a much longer negative one

i wanted to start this essay off with some positivity, because i am going to be very negative after this. tobecky was, in some ways, cute. it's obvious from the very beginning that these two characters are on pretty equal ground, even if one of them isn't aware of it. and that's part of the fun - the irony of how unaware tobey is that his nemesis/crush/person that pretty much always wins against him is someone that he completely dismisses as incompetent. i want to point this out because honestly, in general i don't like enemies-to-lovers because a lot of them use a power imbalance within the dynamic, and i hate power imbalances, especially when it comes to actual life-or-death scenarios (at least, as much as cartoons can do that). in most episodes, becky is never actually forced to go along with his wishes. she's not held in a 'date' against her will, nor is she ever really outwitted by him. i bring this up because there is one huge, uncomfortable exception, which i will get to later.

another big plus to the ship is the fact that they just... get along? even when fighting? of course we get brief moments where they just hang out and talk about paintings or whatever, but i'm talking about how much they get each other, even if they don't realize it. like the word banter, for example. been there since day one. becky loves words, and while most other people in her life don't really care (ranging from 'eh, that's cool i guess' to her brother calling it annoying), tobey gives her a chance to show off and thus treats her as a worthy adversary as herself, not because of her more generic superpowers - something that we've seen in canon that she feels self-conscious about (see: her motivation in patch game). one of the less noticed examples, to me, is "it's your party and i'll cry if I want to", because it's just - okay. they both are excluded from a social event, and while it's obvious that tobey deals with it by destroying the city, it's also pretty obvious that becky also deals with her frustration by fighting in that battle. like, yes, realistically it's just objectively bad that he's destroying buildings. but they're also providing each other with a way to work through their frustrations, first by fighting and then by talking things out, and finally by hanging out together instead of dwelling on being excluded from the party.

so it makes a lot of sense to me that many tobecky fans gravitated towards writing far-in-the-future fic, usually by implying that some growth had taken place before starting to write the ship. (there are, as far as i'm aware, 2... maybe 3 exceptions, that take the time to attempt a real redemption for him, at least when i left the fandom.) because if you take away his worst moments, either by reasoning out that he was 10 years old and a mess, or that he was a cartoon character in a cartoon world where everyone's actions are over-the-top, or by just flat-out pretending that certain episodes never happened, there's some pretty solid ground to start a ship on.

go gadget go: we all do not see it, we simply close our eyes (review of canon)

when the show began, i was the same age as the characters. a lot of other people were, too - at least in my cohort of the fandom. i think it's pretty safe to say that many of us have fond memories of the show's earlier seasons, and held on to that interest as we got older, for whatever reasons. so like, not to be all 'as an OG fan...', but i remember seeing the shorts air for the first time in 2006. i have a diary entry in july of 2009 about how i, a 12yo with no concept of the idea of 'shipping', was disappointed in the new tobey episode because i wanted more tobecky interactions. (that was robo-camping, btw, lol.) and so i remember how exciting their rivalry felt, watching them as someone literally their exact same age, and then watching that again as a nostalgic 17yo, and then uh... growing up, to put it frankly, and realizing just how unhealthy most of their interactions were.

okay what i meant to say was, this section is an overview of the relationship's canon portrayal throughout the years.

first, we have early tobecky: this includes the shorts and the first few seasons. this is their classic relationship: he likes her and takes robots on rampages to get her attention, she majorly disapproves and has fun taking him down. we've all seen the show, you know what i'm talking about. his backhanded ways of trying to find out her identity often feature prominently in the episodes, which - sigh, i've mentioned this whole issue before, but it's kind of a grey area in the whole uncomfortable-factor thing, because while trying to find out her identity is VERY invasive, it's something that like... everyone in the show tries to do, even her canon crush (scoops). on the one hand, it's really not a great look, but on the other hand, this is a cartoon meant to parody a genre in which this trope is extremely common. so i just wanna say that i have Issues and Thoughts on this aspect of their relationship, but there are other things i find more important to discuss here.

second, we have late tobecky: this is seasons 7-8. this is... a very strange and huge shift from the previous dynamic, though it's not necessarily obvious. what i mean by that is that for some reason, the show writers made it so that half of tobey’s rampages have nothing to do with his crush on wordgirl, even though that used to be the sole reason for his villainy. seriously. we have the birthday episode, where he's upset because he feels left out; wg vs tobey vs the dentist, where he's mad that he has a cavity; and trustworthy tobey, where his robot goes on a rampage... after becky accidentally makes it malfunction. the two outliers are ‘guess who’s coming to thanksgiving dinner’ and ‘patch game’, but they still differ from previous seasons because 1) his destruction is isolated to a forest far away from the city, and 2) his motive is still to impress wordgirl, but his methods are relatively tame. also he completely gives up on the secret identity thing??? i may have missed some things but i think he straight up tells her 'yeah there's no way you're wordgirl, lol' and the subject is just dropped for the rest of the show.

i also want to include 'the robot problem' here, because it's one of two season 6 tobey episodes, and follows the 'doesn't destroy buildings to get her attention' pattern: in fact, he teams up with her to try and stop someone else from going on a rampage (even if his reasons are selfish, lol).

and finally. the other season 6 episode. we have go gadget go, the bane of my time spent in the fandom. because GGG is the single episode where tobey truly manages to take away her autonomy, and proceeds to abuse that power for an extended period of time, for his own amusement. it's bad. it's Very Bad. put in the context that it's a white boy doing this to an (ambiguously) brown girl, it's REALLY REALLY BAD. and the more i look back on it, tbh, the more weirded out i am that the show not only made it seem like she wasn't affected at all within the episode, it just... forgot about it (which is not unusual for shows and especially children’s shows, but WG does make some efforts to either retain continuity or create canon reasons for why things are forgotten about). it's the kind of thing that you can't excuse and honestly you can't redeem (like at this point, you gotta ask yourself why you're spending so much effort trying to redeem this guy when becky has several other possible ships that are nowhere near this unhealthy - violet, scoops, honestly even victoria if you want another hero/villain ship, my absolute fave rarepair rose, etc).

so if you want to still ship it you have to just pretend that it never happened. (i remember trying for weeks to write something exploring the aftermath of this episode, to try and make myself feel better about it, but the more i wrote the more i realized just how traumatic this event should've been, so i eventually just dropped it.) and i brought up my own timeline of experiences earlier to point out that this episode aired eight whole years after the show started. which means that when i saw it, even though i was a huge stickler for canon at the time, i'd built up my own idea of the show and characters strongly enough to go 'yeah, no, this episode sucks and i am going to pretend that it doesn't exist'. and i think a lot of other people did too, because i really saw like... no one mention it, ever, except for some rogue fanfics over on ff dot net that already liked dynamics like that.

because here's the thing, and i don't know if people nowadays are aware of it? but i'm 80% sure (cannot find a source, so the other 20% is that it was just a rumor) that the show was originally supposed to end after season 6. and even if it's a rumor, it makes a ton of sense, because we get 1) an 'ending' to tobecky, which is a bad one, 2) a permanent wordgirl identity reveal that significantly changes one of the major dynamics in the show, 3) an episode where TJ gets to work with wordgirl and get a nice potential ending for their sibling dynamic, 4) an episode where we see Two-Brains explore life without his henchmen... the list goes on, and idk how many of these are just major stretches. but the point is. if the show had ended there, that would've been a pretty solid ending for many things, including their relationship: aka, it would prove that it was only ever heading somewhere bad, and when tobey finally has his moment of triumph, he is truly evil about it. and this provides us fans who HATE go gadget go with an easy reason to dismiss it - we can say that it was an attempt to conclude things in a way that wouldn't have happened if the writers had known they'd get more time. but despite that... it is still a canon episode.

it is odd to me how dramatically the dynamic shifts after that, though, because we seriously go from 'worst case ever, tobecky is toxic, your ship is dead' to 'no actually they get along and hang out and get ice cream together and tobey isn't even pressuring her into it, she's happy to go along with it :)' like, immediately. i never knew much about the show writers, so i don't know if the writers changed in between these seasons, but i would absolutely not be surprised if they did.

the earlier episodes are definitely problematic as well (though they pale in comparison to GGG) but i think everyone who ships it is aware considering that tobey is, yknow, a villain. from memory, he destroys buildings to get her attention, lies to her about the level of danger that people are in to trick her into spending more time with him, blackmails her into reading his poetry, and he creates a robot based on her that’s supposed to be devoted to him (but of course, all of these things backfire). not great stuff of course, but like... he’s a villain, that’s the point of his character. and considering that he’s a child these are things that can be redeemed, if done thoughtfully.

anyway, to sum up this section, the show starts off with a pretty standard 'enemies with an unrequited crush' setup, takes a really dark turn for a single episode, and then for the rest of the show takes their dynamic in a direction that makes it much, much easier to ship. as long as you ignore a lot of previous content.

wordbot: where's becky's autonomy in all of this? (misogyny)

we've finally gotten to the fandom. i recognize that a lot of this is going to come across as hypocritical considering how active i used to be re: this ship, but like... i'm a very different person now. anyway. disclaimer i guess - i don't write this to accuse all tobecky shippers of being like this - i know a lot of us aren't/weren't! but boy do i have things to point out, so without further ado:

it is very hard to ship this without allowing some bit of misogyny to slip into it. very, very hard. the entire premise of the ship involves a girl falling in love with a boy that repeatedly pressures her to date him via threats to the safety of herself and people she cares about, which... it's 2020, i shouldn't have to explain why that's terrible & a terrible example to set for children (which is why i am glad they never made it canon, tbh). best-case fan content has tobey stop pressuring her and start working to redeem himself out of an actual change of heart, which leads to becky seeing him in a new light. worst-case fan content treats his incessant pressuring and sometimes outright threats as something romantic - and even worse, romantic to the point where he deserves her attention and love as a reward for not giving up or whatever. i did see this pretty frequently for a while, especially in the earlier 2010s (didn't read much, Not My Thing At All), but i don't feel like going into detail here because of how obviously problematic it is. one medium (but still bad) case is where the fan content makes him start his redemption, but treats her liking him back as a reward for not knocking buildings over anymore. another not great case is where she tries to fix him with her love, which is a very common and very dangerous romantic trope. both are just... so incredibly unfair to her.

in content where she tries to 'fix him'... yeah i feel like it's really obvious how misogynistic that is. girls and women should not feel responsible for the evil actions of men, plain and simple. idk what else to say here i just really hate that trope and hated it back then and it just sucks! so can we not do that anymore, thanks.

in content that treats her like a reward for good behavior, there really isn't much of an explanation for what she sees in him. if she just goes 'oh wow, you're good now, i am going to fall in love with you for it' the whole thing falls flat because it makes NO sense whatsoever. we get to hear so much about tobey and his feelings and why he likes her and how he feels about it, but where is that energy for becky? why does she choose to trust him, to spend time around him, what does she enjoy about his presence? where is her getting over scoops in the process of falling for tobey? where is her telling her friends about this, confiding in them, asking them for advice? where is her choice in the matter?

win a day with wordgirl: do you guys even like becky or do you just like the idea of her (misogyny... 2!)

it was pretty standard for all fandoms the early-mid 2010s, but that's still not a good excuse for why so many tobecky fanfictions centered specifically around tobey's feelings while refusing to give becky the same level of empathy and nuance. it is true that to ship them comfortably you have to redeem him to some degree, which means spending time figuring him out and trying to find ways to pull him to the light without feeling super OOC. but ships take two people??? and there was so much potential for fanfics to explore becky's complex feelings on the matter - because she is! complex! she's heroic and kind but she's petty and has a competitive streak, she easily befriends villains but also doesn't trust them and doesn't believe they can ever really change, she's the savior of an entire planet but has feelings of inadequacy as her civilian identity and struggles with feeling like she can be successful without superpowers, she's great at the straightforward meanings and uses of words and loves reading but struggles to write passages that aren't dry as hell, it can be easily headcannoned that she's neurodivergent (special interests, issues with fitting in with her peers, taking things very literally, etc)... seriously there is SO MUCH to explore about her character, and a lot of it comes into play when you add tobey into the mix (literally ALL of the things i mentioned are explored at some point using tobey as a parallel or foil), but i rarely saw fanfiction that explored her thoughts on things further than 'he's evil but... maybe good?' or 'he's evil but... i kind of like him anyway?'.

if you want her to fall for him while being a villain, explore it!! why does she go against her morals? does she lie to herself about it to feel better? does she feel like she has to 'fix him' as part of her superhero duties to the city, and if so, how does that affect her as she tries and fails to help him? does she fall for him when she believes that he's turning good, only to feel betrayed when he starts acting worse because he feels like he can get away with it? it's such a shame that fanworks spend so little time even considering these questions, and it is absolutely a product of how deeply misogyny is/was baked into how we approach media (especially back then).

tobey goes good: but wait, i thought this show was progressive (a conclusion, i guess)

ifbrd wrote a great meta recently about how the show is a bit misogynist, despite being progressive in several ways. honestly i don't have much to add, but i'd really recommend reading through this; it makes a lot of great observations about the ways that male and female characters are presented differently through the show

i have little to add, so i'd just like to conclude with a reflection on the ship from my current viewpoint. i do think part of the reason so many of us latched onto the ship, despite how obviously problematic it was, is that the show treats a lot of things that would be serious in real life as normal or even comedic - which is fine lol, i'm not going to pretend that it's not a show for little kids, so they have to keep the tone light.

but if we, as teens/adults, decide to engage with this content in a more realistic manner, we have to be prepared to confront how messed up so many of the things going on really are. and if you still want to ship it, there's nothing inherently wrong with that! there's a lot of interesting things to explore in this ship, no matter what stage of enemies-to-friends-to-lovers you write them at, and it can be really helpful to have a space where you can explore a dynamic such as this in fiction. (speaking from experience here tbh, writing some fic for them helped me deal with complicated feelings about some ex-longtime friends.)

so to write this ship at all means that there are canon issues that you need to deal with if you want to have them end up in a healthy relationship in any manner that makes sense (unless you create an AU where none of that is applicable, which, power to you then). and i’m not saying ‘write them with a healthy endgame or you’re Bad’, not at all lol. but at least please, please take a step back once in a while to examine the dynamic that you’re writing, and please be careful about whether you mean to be romanticizing whatever behaviors you end up portraying as good.

[starkey]

[Spoilers for The Haunting of Bly Manor!]

I know everyone is super loving Bly Manor cause ~80′s gays~!!! but some stuff about it sat really bad for me so I’m gonna try to verbalise it. Obviously if you loved it and aren't vibing with a critical analysis I'm not offended if you don't read lol. Also I’m not trying to say that there’s anything wrong with liking it! I just...didn’t, and I want to think about why, for a sec. (Sorry this got a bit long)

I think part of my problem is that I count Hill House as one of my favourite shows ever and I had ridiculously high hopes for Bly Manor, which probably couldn't ever have been fully realised. And there was actually a lot about it that I liked, especially at the begining. I thought the kids were great, and I loved the core group of Mrs Grose, Owen, Dani and Jamie. I liked the fact that the Henry Wingrave element was expanded upon, and I liked the complexity of Rebecca and Peter, and the room it gave them to be fully realised human beings. I quite enjoyed that they kept to the Hill House ghost mythology - that ghosts are lost in time but fixed in place, and that they jump from memory to memory, and haunt the people that they care about without knowing. But there were lots of things I wasn't so keen on...

Until the last episode my issues were mainly that it felt a bit...lazy? I can't stress it enough but the british accents were really really bad. Old!Jamie’s accent was deeply unbelievable and jarring, as was Henry Wingrave's, and although Peter’s accent was passable (I assume because the actor is English and not American like the others) it still didn’t match his mothers, or his ‘background’ - i.e. it sounded like a private school Edinburgh accent, not a Glasgow kid dragged up through poverty in the scheme - and yes there is a significant difference in those accents. I appreciate there’s a degree of privilege at play here - I’m used to the BBC producing high quality television where these details aren’t messed about with, and the production of Bly Manor was thoroughly American, but to put it in perspective, it would be like... if a character had a deep south dirt-poor Louisiana upbringing and spoke like somebody from a private school in Virginia. Other details also felt off - Rebecca’s costumes all seemed weirdly 2020-adjacent, none of the fashion or ancillary details seemed to match the UK in the 80s (which has a distinct feel), and the house that Peter returned to on his ‘memory bumps’ looked much more like an LA condo than a Scottish council house. Really, they should have just set it in America, because it felt more American than British, and they clearly didn't have any British people involved in the production.

I really didn't enjoy the narrative framing device of 'someone telling a story to a group of people at a party'. It makes sense in the Turn of the Screw, because the narrator is reading from a document written at the time of the events, so the narration becomes a first person one where the degree of detail is logically accounted for. In this take, the story alternated from being one which made sense - us just watching the characters move around normally - to one in which 'Jamie' (who’d apparently had a complete personality transplant that had turned her from a feisty northern lesbian into a coy, mysterious victorian englishwoman with a severe accent problem) adopted a falsely old-fashioned manner and told the wedding guests a ten hour long story about a haunted house.  And somehow neither Flora nor Miles recognised any part of this story in the least, in spite of what must have been overwhelming similarities? It was very jarring.  

I also kept waiting for a twist on a level with Hill House, but never got one. The big twist about Mrs Grose was, I thought, obvious from almost the first episode. I mean the woman didn’t eat or drink anything and spent most of her time confused about where she was, I thought it was fairly clear that she was a ghost. And yeah, I suppose because I’ve read the book I was never in any doubt that Peter was already dead. The ghosts in the background were much less spooky than in Hill House. They stood around in broad daylight while the characters talked and joked and it kind of felt like the ghosts had wandered in by accident and felt too awkward to leave. I really liked how spooky Hill House was - even apart from the jump scares I thought the psychological elements and the open discussion of death and grief was really affecting. I didn’t feel that at all in Bly Manor, and by the time we found out the details of Mrs Grose’s death, I’d already come to terms with it.  But all of this would have been fine, if it hadn’t been for the last episode.

I really really didn’t enjoy the bury your gays ending. And I’m not even usually against this in principle! I think in a dark/horror context, where there’s implied to be an ever-present threat of character death, it’s unreasonable to expect that no characters will die or experience tragedy - and in cases where there’s abundant LGBT rep some of those characters will by necessity not be cis/straight. So I don’t have a problem with gay characters meeting tragic or dark ends, as a general rule, particularly when it serves a narrative purpose and isn’t gratuitous. My problem here was in the manner and necessity of that death.

There were ways in which Dani could have died in this story that I would have felt were narratively meaningful and cathartic, but the manner in which she did die failed to hit those beats for me. This is a story in which two women in the 80's fall in love and are doomed by the world around them (we're already in Meryl Streep 'groundbreaking' territory here, in terms of metaphor). They know death is coming for them, that it will likely destroy them both, that they won't have an opportunity to grow old together, that eventually one day it will catch them and everything will be over - they're on borrowed time, and they spend a lot of that time looking over their shoulders waiting for shit to break bad. In the end, they're destroyed by a force in Dani's body/mind that she can't fight, that she can't win against, and the spectre of which haunts her through the years. Like... the obvious parallel here is mental health, and suicide - they even go out of their way to feature that classic heartsink moment with the overflowing bath. And to me, any story that has a message of 'no matter how strong you are, no matter how much love you have and give, or how beautiful the life you've built is, eventually the dark forces in your mind will Get You and it'll probably be before you make it to middle age' is... really shitty. The other echo that struck me was the HIV/AIDS crisis - obviously wlw were relatively spared from this, in comparison to mlm, but it still carries a cultural legacy of pain and trauma, and I really didn't need this show to grind down on that for me.

And the thing is... in the original story, the governess doesn't even die! Miles does, so maybe there's an argument here that Dani sacrificed herself in exchange for Miles's life in this retelling, but I'm still struck by this element of, like... they added this in! They chose to do this! Only one character dies in the course of this show (with Mrs Grose dying before the show starts) and it's the gay woman?? Why?? What did it show?? Why was it necessary?

Not to mention, the 'epilogue' scene paints Jamie as being very lonely and isolated. I'm not sure why the children didn't recognise ANY elements of this story from their past - even assuming they forgot the ghostly elements of their childhood, they should be able to see the similarities in the characters, but the scene also seems to imply that Jamie really isn't very close to Miles and Flora, and that she doesn't even really get to have a relationship with them as adults, in spite of losing everything to protect them, and not having any family of her own.

Almost everybody else gets a happy ending, but Jamie ends the night of the epilogue standing alone at a table, with the love of her life dead in a cursed lake, doomed to spend eternity watching over a crumbling house, and idk to me? that kind of sucked.

[dillydedalus]

march reading

kinda forgot about this i guess. anyway feat. uh, magical ships, dubious mental health institutions (plural) & a parisian building with 99 rooms. 

the forever sea, joshua phillip johnson (forever sea #1) i firmly believe that more fantasy lit should be set on ships bc ships are inherently a sexy setting & you could have pirates which are extremely sexy. this has ships (and pirates) and also a sea made of grass? a magical plant sea on which ships sail via magical fires, so conceptually i’m very into it all. the plot is fine, but the protagonist kindred has a very bad case of Main Character Syndrome so prepare for mild annoyance throughout. also while i generally enjoy book magic vs wild magic i wish more works would treat them as two ends of a spectrum rather than ~book magic bad and boring, wild magic cool and *~natural*~. but overall i think this series has potential. 3/5

jagannath: stories, karin tidbeck ([partially?] translated from swedish by the author) really cool collection of sff stories by tidbeck, many of which veer into mild horror and some of which are influenced by swedish folklore and especially swedish fey stories. i enjoyed most of these a lot, especially the existential call centre horror story, the ‘god won’t let me die’ one, and a taxonomy of a cryptid that goes a little off the rails. 4/5

annette, ein heldinnenepos, anne weber a novel in verse about anne beaumanoir, a real person who was a résistance member during world war 2 and later supported the algerian national liberation front, for which she was sentenced to 10 years in prison (she escaped to tunisia and later algeria). she’s clearly a very impressive and interesting person & i conceptually enjoyed the idea of writing a modern hero(ine)’s epic, but i feel like the language could have been a bit more stylized to match the form. 3/5

salvage the bones, jesmyn ward (audio) bleak but ultimately hopeful novel about a black family in the days before and during hurricane katrina, although the focus is on the family dynamics, the 14-year-old narrator discovering that she is pregnant, and the kids trying to keep the puppies their dog china just had alive and well. enjoyed this, altho i did it a bit of a disservice but listening to it a lot of short chunks. 3.5/5

regeneration, pat barker (regeneration trilogy #1) set mostly at a military hospital for soldiers with shell shock during world war 1, this novel explores the existential horror of war, psychological treatment (& the horrible absurdity of treating traumatised men just enough so that you can send them straight back to Trauma Town), and the meeting between siegfried sassoon & wilfred owen. i find i don’t really have much to say about it, but it is very, very good. 4/5

how to pronounce knife, souvankham thammavongsa a short story collection mainly about refugees and migrants from laos to canada, many focusing on parent-child relationships and being forced to work in low-paid jobs, often ones that are damaging to their health. the stories are very well-observed and emotionally nuanced and detailed, but with 14 mostly very short stories, the collection as a whole felt a bit samey, which i guess is something i often experience with short story collections. 3/5

faces in the water, janet frame horrifying semi-autobiographical novel about a young woman stuck in new zealand’s mental health system, moving to different hospitals but mostly from ward to (more depressing) ward in the 40s/50s. while there is a shift in attitudes during her stay that sometimes makes the wards more tolerable, mostly the patients are neglected, abused, and the threat of electric shock therapy and lobotomy always hangs over them. 3/5

the upstairs house, julia fine fuck why did i read so many books about mental health conditions this month??? this is another entry in my casual ‘motherhood as horror’ reading project, in which a new mother develops post-partum psychosis & imagines the modernist children’s book writer she’s writing her dissertation on and her poet sometimes-lover haunting her and her child (margaret wise brown & michael strange, who are real people i was utterly unaware of). this does pretty good on the maternal horror front, but i wasn’t entirely sold on the literary haunting. 2/5

1000 serpentinen angst, olivia wenzel a very interesting novel about a woman struggling with grief over her brother’s suicide, an anxiety disorder, the (non)state of a (non)relationship and discrimination/marginalisation based on her identity as a black, east-german, bi woman (while also being, as she notes, financially privileged). much of the novel is written in a dialogue between the narrator and an unnamed (& probably internal) interlocutor, which was p effective for a novel more focused on introspection than much of a plot. 3/5

atlas: the archaeology of an imaginary city, dung kai-cheung (tr. from chinese by the author, anders hansson, bonnie mcdougall) fictitious theory about a slightly-left-of-reality version of hong kong and how maps (re)construct the city, very heavy on the postmodern poststructuralist postcolonial (and some other posts, i’m sure). in many ways my jam. unfortunately my favourite parts of this were the author’s preface and the first part (fictitious theory of mapping alternate hong kong); the rest felt very repetitive and not particularly interesting, altho i’m sure i was also just missing a lot of cultural context. 2.5/5

under the net, iris murdoch .........i liked the other two murdochs i’ve read (the sea, the sea & a severed head) quite a lot so either i was not in the mood for her very peculiar style of constructing novels and characters or, this being her first novel, she just wasn’t in full command of that peculiar style yet but man this was a slooooooooog. don’t stretch out your modern picaresque with an incredibly annoying narrator over more than 300 pages iris!!!! 2/5 bc this probably has some merit & i just wasn’t into it

the impossible revolution: making sense of the syrian tragedy, yassin al-haj saleh (tr. from arabic by i. rida mahmoud) collection of articles and essays saleh (a syrian intellectual & activist who spent 16 years in a syrian prison) wrote from 2011 to 2015, analysing the reasons for, potential and development of the revolution, as well as some background sociological discussion on the assads’ regime. very interesting, very dense, very depressing. wouldn’t necessarily recommend it as a first read on the topic tho. 3/5

angels in america: millenium approaches & perestroika, tony kushner the page to tumblr darling quote ratio in this is insane (”just mangled guts pretending” and so on) and also it just really slaps on every level. also managed to get me from 0 to crying several times. brilliant work of theatre, would love to see it staged (or filmed). 4/5

life: a user’s manual, georges perec (german tr. by eugen helmlé) 99 chapters, each corresponding with a single room in a parisian apartment block; some chapters are basically ‘here’s the room, here’s a long list of objects in the room, that’s it bye :)’, some are short insights into the lives of the people living there, some (the best, mostly) are long, absolutely wild tales that are sometimes only tangentially connected to the room in question. why are the french like this. 61/99 rooms 

sisters in hate: american women on the front lines of white nationalism, seyward darby (audio) nonfiction about women’s role in white nationalist hate movements, mainly based on the stories of three women who are or have been involved with various contemporary american alt-right/racist/neonazi hate groups, while also looking at general social trends and the history of white women’s role in white supremacy. interesting and engaging if you’re interested in this kind of thing. if you’re both politically aware and internet poisoned, it’s probably not much that is completely new to you but still worth reading. 3/5

starting in april i will be Gainfully Employed (ugh) & thus probably not read as much or read even more bc i have no energy for anything else 

[antecedentlypod]

EPISODE 4 TRANSCRIPT

[OPENING MUSIC]

LORRIE

Fish is here today; gonna sit in while I read to make sure I’m like... drinking water and stuff? [a bit distantly] Say hi to the mic!

[FISH LAUGHS]

FISH

Huh? Oh--uh, hi! Um, I’m just kinda here to listen--if I’m paying attention. I’m probably going to be on my phone for most of it. But, um, if I do, I will provide some glowing commentary.

LORRIE

Ah yes, the noises of disgust and fear will be a lovely addition to the audiobook.

FISH

Well I mean, they’re, like, fairy tales, right? So, hopefully, there won’t be too much disgust if yo--Well okay I guess some of them are, like, pretty dark. But,[Lorrie snorts in the background] um, if I do have any gripes with it, it will provide a much-needed change of pace from whatever monotony this usually is.

LORRIE

Okay, well, rude, for one. And for two-- take one of “The Devil's Sooty Brother”, read by Lorrie Adams.

[SCENE CUT FOLLOWED BY FISH LAUGHING]

LORRIE (CONT)

[fond annoyance] Shut the fuck up. Shut up! Stop laughing!

FISH

[still laughing] I’m sorry, I’m sorry! It’s just--We’re on the fourth take and you keep messing up the same two words! I’m getting kinda concerned for you.

LORRIE

[splutters] Clearly you don’t appreciate that I’m dyslexic! It’s a--it’s a process! 

FISH

Right, okay, sorry.

LORRIE

Take three of-- 

[SCENE CUT]

FISH

Mhm.

LORRIE

Fuck it--last take for the night. [Fish laughs] No--no! You stop that! You’re not helping with this process! Is there a specific reason you had to say that the devil’s brother was actually slutty and not sooty?

FISH

Well yeah because it sounded like you said “the devil’s slutty brother” which is like--objectively hilarious? And much better; so I think, legally, they need to change it.

LORRIE

[through giggles] Y'know what? Fuck it! This story is now called “The Devil’s Slutty Brother”. Literally everything else is the same, save for that one word.

FISH

UH, well how, uh, how much is the publishing company going to enjoy that? Are these for kids?

[LORRIE CUTS HER OFF WITH A GROAN]

LORRIE

I don’t, I don’t fucking know! But-- [sound of annoyance]. Take twelve of “The Devil’s Slutty Brother”, read by Lorrie Adams.

FISH

[through a laugh] Hey kids! [Lorrie begins to laugh] This is “The Devil’s Slutty Brother” Hope you like--hope you like it! Uh, fucking, Billie.

[LORRIE SHUSHES HER]

LORRIE

A discharged soldier—

FISH

[Cutting Lorrie off] After this we can throw the pigskin around!

LORRIE

Shut up!

FISH

Sorry! I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Okay, okay, go.

LORRIE (STORY)

A discharged soldier had nothing to live on and no longer knew what to do with his life.-

FISH

[in the background] Kin.

LORRIE (STORY)

-so he went out into the forest and after walking for a while, he met a little man who was actually the devil himself.

FISH

Most little men that I meet are actually the devil.

LORRIE

[through giggles] Not Danny DeVito!

FISH

Oh--I love Danny DeVito!

LORRIE (STORY)

I—[splutters]. “What’s the matter?” The little man said to him, “You look so gloomy.” “I’m hungry and have no money,” said the soldier. If you’re ho- 

FISH

I really do kin this man. This man is me. This--This is a story about me. I am the devil’s slutty brother.

[BOTH LAUGH]

LORRIE (STORY)

[groans, but is amused] If you hire-

FISH

Maybe the real slutty brother was the friends we made along the way!

[BOTH LAUGH AGAIN]

LORRIE

Let me read the story! I’ve gotten like two paragraphs in!

FISH

I’m sorry, I’m sorry! But my commentary is just that good! I’m enhancing the experience! Whoever you send this to I am so sorry, get well soon.

LORRIE (STORY)

“If you hire yourself out to me and will be my servant,” The devil said, “You’ll have enough for the rest of your life but you’ve got to serve me for seven years, and after that, you will be free. There is just one other thing I’ve got to tell you. You’re not allowed to wash yourself, comb your hair, trim your beard, cut your nails or hair, or wipe your eyes”

LORRIE

That’s kinda gross.

FISH

Wha--wipe your eye--isn’t that when you get those fuckin little like crusty thi--oh no! How many, how many--seven years?

LORRIE

Seven years.-

FISH

Ew.

LORRIE

-In hell. Not even allowed to wipe the fuckin eye boogies out of his eyes.

FISH

I don’t that at-oh, ew--I don’t like that you call them eye boogies. Take that back right now. [lorrie laughs] Never speak to me again!

LORRIE (STORY)

“If that’s the way it must be then lets get on with it.” The soldier said and he went away with the little man, who led him straight to hell and told him what his chores were. He was to tend to the fires under the kettles in which the damned souls were sitting, sweep the house clean and carry the first out the door, and keep everything in order. However, he was never to peek into the kettles or things would go badly for him.

“I understand,” said the soldier. “I’ll take good care of everything.” So the old devil set out on his travels and the soldier began his duty. He put fuel in the fire, swept and carried the dirt out the door, and did everything just as he was ordered. When the old devil returned, he checked to see if everything had been done according to his instruction, nodded his approval, and went off again.

Now, for the first time, the soldier took a good look around hell. There were kettles all about and they were boiling and bubbling with tremendous fires underneath each one of them. He woul—

FISH

Can I make an educated guess; a prediction if you will. A hypothesis.

LORRIE

Go--go for it

FISH

He’s definitely gonna look in those pots. Is he gonna drink them? I don’t know what's in there but I hope he takes a--

LORRIE

[overlapping] I hope not! That sounds nasty!

FISH

Hope he takes a good long sip of whateher the fuck is in there [lorrie laughs quietlty] Maybe it’s like, um... I don’t think we’re allowed to mention Disney properties, nevermind [they laugh]

[LORRIE GROANS]

FISH (CONT)

I don’t wanna get sued.

LORRIE

Me neither!

LORRIE (STORY)

He would have given his life to know what was in them if the devil had not strictly forbidden it. Finally, he could no longer restrain himself; he lifted the lid of the first kettle a little and looked inside only to see his old sergeant-

[FISH GASPS]

FISH

[overlapping] I’m a genius!

LORRIE (STORY)

[are you done yet?] -sitting there.

LORRIE

It was— it was an obvious—

FISH

[overlapping] wait, what's sitting there?

LORRIE

-set up. It was an obvious set up.

FISH

yeah , yeah but--okay, shut up. I’m, no, I’m just smart. No, oh my god I’m like the children-

LORRIE

[overlapping] Okay, yes you’re a genius.

FISH

I’m like the children on Dora.

[LORRIE LAUGHS AND SHUSHES FISH]

LORRIE (STORY)

[triumphant] “Aha, you crumb!”

[FISH LAUGHS IN THE BACKGROUND]

LORRIE

[appalled] Wh-what the fuck does that mean?

FISH

[just as appalled] you what?? Wait, okay--what was in the pot?

LORRIE

Um, his old sergeant was sitting in the pot.

FISH

Oh, right, he’s a--he’s a soldier

LORRIE

He’s a soldier.

FISH

Okay th—

LORRIE (STORY)

[overlapping] Aha yo—

FISH

Is that an insult?

LORRIE

I... assume so? Given the context.

FISH

[overlapping] Wait, okay, hold up. Gimme a second I’m gonna look it up. You can keep reading. I'm just gonna interrupt and tell you what that means.

LORRIE (STORY)

“Aha, you crumb!” He said. “Fancy meeting you here. You used to step on me, but now I’ve got you under my foot.” He let the lid drop quickly, stirred the fire, and added fresh wood. After that, he moved to the second kettle, lifted the lid a little and peeked inside. There sat his lieutenant. “Aha you crumb!”

LORRIE

Why does he keep saying this?

FISH

Okay, ummmm, [lorrie hms] Apparently it means ‘a worthless person’

LORRIE

Oh.

FISH

Ouch.

LORRIE

Nasty.

FISH

Damn. He went for the throat on that one.

LORRIE (STORY)

[overlapping] “Aha you crumb times two!” He said, “Fancy meeting you here. You used to step on me but now I’ve got you under my foot.” He shut the lid again and added a little more log to the fire to make it really good and hot for him.

Now he wanted to see who was sitting in the third kettle, and it turned out to be his General.

LORRIE

Did these people just not treat him well? Jesus fuck.

FISH

[contemplative] I mean... I gue--well. [Lorrie snorts] Do you think that all sol--okay nevermind this isn’t gonna be a conversation we’re gonna have right now!

LORRIE

No, no, not right now.

FISH

I was like, that’s gonna get really dark. [she laughs]

LORRIE

Mmh, no!

LORRIE (STORY)

“Aha you crumb, times three! Fancy meeting you here, You used to step on me--step on me, but now I’ve got you under my foot.” He got out of bellows and pumped it until the fires of hell was blazing hot under him.

And so it was that he served out his seven years in hell. He never washed, comped himself, trimmed his beard, cut his nails or wiped his eyes. The seven years passed so quickly that he was convinced that only six months had gone by. When his time was completely up, the devil said; “Well Hans, what have you been doing all this time?”

“I’ve tended the fires under the kettles, and I’ve swept and carried the dirt out the door.”

“But you also peeked into the kettles. Well, you’re just lucky you added more wood into the fire because otherwise you would have forgot--forfeited your life.

LORRIE

Wow.

FISH

Oh, woah there.

LORRIE (STORY)

“Now, your time is up. Do you want to go back home?”

“Yes,” said the soldier, “I’d like to see how my father’s doing at home.”

“Alright, if you want your pro— [background noise]

LORRIE

[bewildered] Hello??

LORRIE (STORY)

“Alright, if you want to get your proper reward, you must go and fill your knapsack with the dirt you swept up and take it home with you; and you must also go unwashed and uncombed with long hair on your head and a long beard with uncut nails and with bleary eyes. And if anyone asks you where you’re coming from, you’ve got to say from hell. And if anyone asks—

FISH

[overlapping] He’s gotta smell like shit and look like Merlin.

LORRIE

Probably, after seven years? Like--fuck.

FISH

[overlapping] Yeah. [much quieter] Ew.

LORRIE (STORY)

“And if anyone asks where you’re coming from you’ve got to say from hell. And if anyone asks who you are, say ‘I am the devil’s slutty brother and my king is well.’ 

[FISH LAUGHS IN THE BACKGROUND, LORRIE LAUGHS SLIGHTLY AS HE CONTINUES]

LORRIE (STORY, CONT)

The soldier said nothing. Indeed, he carried out the devil’s instructions but he was not at all satisfied with the reward. As soon as he was out in the forest again, he took the knapsack and wanted to shake it out, but when he opened it he discovered that the dirt had turned into pure gold.

“Never in my life would I have imagined that,” said the soldier, who was delighted and went into the city. An in keeper wa—

FISH

[overlapping] wasn’t it like, um, [Lorrie hmms] to make--to make diamonds, don’t they compress like... some kinda rock or some shit?

LORRIE

I think it’s coal. I think they compress co--that might not be right.

FISH

So like... same dif, but with dirt an--nevermind, that's not how that works.

LORRIE

[decisively] Okay.

LORRIE (STORY)

An innkeeper was standing in front of his inn as Hans approached, and when he caught sight of Hans, the innkeeper was terrified because the soldier looked so dreadful, even more frightening than a scarecrow.

LORRIE

Scarecrows aren’t scary.

FISH

[in the background] I like scarecrows!

LORRIE

It’s not hard to be scarier than a scarecrow.

FISH

They’re friend shaped!

LORRIE

They are friend shaped--

FISH

[overlapping] I wanna give 'em a lil smooch.

LORRIE

[overlapping]--I agree.

LORRIE (STORY He called out to him and asked; “where are you coming from?”

“From hell!

“Who are you?”

“The devil’s slutty brother, and my king is well.” [Fish laughs] The innkeep did not want to let him inside, but when Hans showed him the gold he went and unlatched the door himself. Then hans ordered his—the best room and insisted on the finest service. He ate and drank his fill— 

FISH

[chanting] I hate capitalists, I hate capitalists, I hate capitalists, I hate capitalists—

LORRIE

[amused] I—I know, I know. I know. I do too, it’s fine.

FISH

Consume the rich! Vore the rich!

LORRIE (STORY)

He ate and drank his fill, but did not wash or comb himself as the devil had instructed. Finally, he lay down to sleep but the innkeeper could not get the knapsack of gold out of his mind. Just the thought of it left him no peace. So, he crept into the room during the night and stole it. So when Hans got up—

FISH (BACKGROUND)

What a dick move.

LORRIE (STORY)

the next morning and went to pay the innkeeper before leaving, his knapsack was gone! [Lorrie and Fish both gasp loudly] However, he wasted no words and thought ‘it’s not your fault that this happened’, and he turned straight around and went straight back to hell, where he complained about his misfortune to the devil and asked for help.

“Sit down,” Said the devil, “I’m going to wash and comb you, trim your beard, cut your hair and nails and wash out your eyes.”

FISH

I was gonna say, really bold of him to complain about misfortune to Lucifer, but… [Lorrie begins to laugh in the background] He’s kinda a chill guy! It seems like he’s just vibin!

LORRIE

[overlapping] Uh, yeah he seems kinda cool!

FISH

He’s like “yeah, yeah I’ll give you money if you just, like, do some chores.” He’s basically my mom! [Lorrie snorts] And then he just gives him a little bath! Maybe they’re in love.

LORRIE

Yeah!

FISH

Oh—wait, no, they’re brothers. Is that incest? I mean I know they’re not like actually related but he calls himself his brother so question mark?

LORRIE

Okay, okay, we’re not going down this road. 

FISH

[through giggles] I’m sorry!

LORRIE (STORY)

When he was finished with the soldier he gave him a knapsack full of dirt and said ; “Go there and tell the innkeeper to give you back your gold, otherwise I will come and fetch him, and he’ll have to tend the fires in your place.”

Hans went back up and said to the innkeeper “You stole my money, and if you don’t give it back you’ll go to hell in my place and look just as awful as I did.” The innkeeper gave him back the money and even more besides, then he begged him to be quiet about what had happened. 

Now Hans was a rich man and set out on his way home, he bought himself a pair of rough linen overalls and wandered here and there playing music, for he had learned that from the Devil in hell. 

LORRIE

Dude—Lucifer is just fucking vibing.

FISH

Yeah I’m really—I would maybe sign up to have- to be the devil's servant. He could give me some money and teach me how to play the fiddle, then I could go compete with a man in Georgia… [Lorrie snorts] And, I mean, all I would really have to deal with is looking like shit for a little bit but I already don’t take showers so it's fine!

LORRIE

We get it, you’re depressed. 

FISH

[Through giggles] Shut up! Shut up!!

LORRIE (STORY)

Once he happened to play for an old king in a certain country and the king was so pleased that he promised Hans his oldest daughter’s hand in marriage. However, When he he—when she heard that she was supposed to marry a commoner in white overalls, she said “I’ll go drown myself in the deepest lake before I do that.” So the king gave Hans—

FISH

[overlapping] Nevermind, I kin this woman.

LORRIE (STORY)

[slowly and deliberately] His youngest daughter [A short pause followed by laughter] Who was willing to marry him out of love for her father.

FISH

[overlapping] Me too. I would rather drown myself than marry a man! Me too, queen!

[LORRIE AND FISH BOTH LAUGH]

LORRIE

Y’know what? That’s completely fair.

FISH

Yeah!

LORRIE (STORY)

So the devil’s slutty brother got the king's daughter, and when the old king died, he got the whole kingdom as well. [book page turns] 

LORRIE

And that’s… the end of that.

FISH

That's the end? 

LORRIE

That’s the—I guess he got a happy ending. Good for him.

FISH

I was expecting that to end in some kind of, like, horrifically karmic… I don’t know what the next word in that sentence was gonna be, but it was gonna be something. Um—

LORRIE

[overlapping] Retribution? 

FISH

Retribution! There’s the word, thank you. 

LORRIE

Yeah, of course.

FISH

Um, but—yeah! Honestly the devil just seems like a chill guy, I’m kinda down with him. Maybe he deserves rights. Also, since the beginning of this, like our commentary at the start of it I have been imagining him as Danny DeVito. So, [Lorrie laughs] I think that impacted how much I liked him.

LORRIE

Lucifer is now Danny DeVito. But, I am going to have to re-record this properly again later! But, y’know, this was really fun, I… I wanna do this more.

FISH

Awe! Sap.

LORRIE

[splutters] Sh-Shut up! I do need to read one more story today, so shoo Fishy! I need a proper recording space to get into the zone for it.

FISH

[playful mocking] oooohh… the zone.

LORRIE

[long-suffering sigh] sush! 

FISH

Fucking lame, you’re such a dork. Okay, um, I mean I was having a good time.

LORRIE

Shoo, shoo, be gone, thot. 

[FISH SCOFFS]

FISH

I’m not the devil’s brother. [Lorrie snorts] Okay, um, I will see you later, have fun.

LORRIE

Love you, bye.

FISH

Yeah, whatever.

LORRIE

[more tired sounding than before] Alright, [he clears his throat] This next story is [pages turning] where the fuck is it? [more page turning] A Tale of Parch and Flesh, take one-

[SCENE CUT]

Take six, A Tale of Parch and Flesh-

LORRIE (STORY)

Once upon a time, in a world of dust and nothing, there was war. Where once there had been great kingdoms, stood tall and proud with their many flags and castles, you will find  a wasteland should you be unlucky enough to stumble upon it. It is all unforgiving heat and torrential downpours of dirt and waste, spurred on by humid wind. In this nuclear nation of ours, where we few left, are worth nothing more than the roaches that flood the streets. In the distance, rusted trumpets can be heard going through the notes of a tired battle cry, footsteps to the beat of angry drums and a choir of shots and shouts for as long as they stay distant anyway.

There are bodies strewn across this desert floor, almost fit to cover the sand completely. Those who brave going outside to step around, and between the stiffs on tiptoes, perhaps for fear that one might reach out and grab them. Or that they might join that carpet of corpses and rot. But folks like us? We stay inside, we fiddle with the buttons on the radio, sorting through static for the couple of stations left. One plays music we are too young to recognize, and the other queues up to our king. He is old, and greying, and tired; in a tower that hardly stands, and he is speaking into a busted microphone.

“It’s alright,” He tells us, “There is nothing to worry about.” 

He says that war is just a word the enemy has invented to threaten us, that our kingdom will, of course, prevail. That he has sent his army out to protect us, that they are fighting nobly for a just cause. Those who would have known that cause by name died out long before you and I. There is no justice here. There is nothing but gore and the endless marching of mindless flesh. The dust fills our lungs, but can not state our stomachs, so we feed on roach and rodent, and each other as I’ve heard on occasion. Mothers pat their weeping children’s heads, hushing them through the thunder of bombs and anguished screams.

“It’s alright,” they say, “There is nothing to worry about.”

What a curse, I think, to bring a child into a place like this. One where they will know nothing but a desolate world full of desperate people. Now picture with me, reader, that you are on the front lines; you can feel the sun baking you through, can nearly feel your blood boiling beneath it. This is not what you signed up for. Your uniform is heavy and hot, and you can not tell if what cakes your face is paint, dirt, or the blood of the men you’ve gunned down. Your eyes are just as heavy, if not more, for you have not met sleep. You crawl, and you hide, and you cower. And you stay so quiet you sometimes forget to breathe, because maybe if you make yourself silent—make yourself small enough—you will simply cease to be. You are granted no such mercy.

When it is not hot, it is colder than anything, and you feel it in the core of you. From your weary feet to the unkempt hair under your helmet, you look around for solidarity from the soldiers at your side, but they stare ahead and do not blink and say nothing, like memorial statues in the making. You can’t recall if you’ve ever heard anything from them but cries to move, move, move. In fact, you can’t even remember their names, but you suppose you’ll read them on the plaques

You stare at the fox hole massive route and rock in front of you and watch the growing hive of bugs in and in and in, and not come back out. Your leader parrots the words of your king; you are fighting a just cause, you are doing what needs to be done. There are people to defend and a nation to make a name for. Those who stare down the barrel of your gun are not men, but beasts who must be tamed or put down. But you looked him in the eye when you shot, and he looked just like you. So,” I’m sorry,” you say, but only one of you can make it out of this place and you’ve been here too long for it to not be you. 

And that's what you don’t know; that there is no out. There is hardly a before, and there will not be an after. All your feet know is how to step into line, your helmet has become a shell, whatever is packed on your face has dug its way into your pores beneath your skin and has made a home there. The medals and pins on your chest seem to pierce straight through your skin, and the dirt and dust in your lungs belongs there just as much as your blood and bone. Have your ears ever known not to ring? Have you ever spoken and felt your throat not to be hoarse? Are you any less a beast than those which you end? 

But you are not on the front lines, are you? No. And you are nut huddled with me behind a rusted door, or letting your shaking mother smother your fries with false reassurances. You are safe in bed, perhaps driving to work, sitting at your desk finishing your dinner.  But you have been brought into a desolate world full of desperate people, and it is not alright. 

The end.

LORRIE

[struggling to find the right words] That was… unsettling. These stories just seem to get more and more and more unsettling as time goes on! Not to mention the headaches I’ve been getting while reading them. Like—what kind of story would be giving you a migraine! They’re all different stories, y’know, so it’s just a matter of—I dunno. Maybe my eyes are just getting tired or something. Maybe I’m getting sick too. Fish and I have both been feeling under the weather.

But… I think I should invest in some reading glasses. End recording.

[CLOSING MUSIC]

[badbookreviewclub]

Empress Theresa, Chapter 2

If you haven’t read the chapter 1 review, I highly recommend you do so. You can find it here: Empress Theresa, Chapter 1  Should you choose not to, this could get confusing, though the book is already confusing enough as is, so who knows, it may make sense.  This should be the last time that I copy over my tweets directly, so reviews on here should be far more competent.  It took a full week, but I was finally able to get through chapter 2. It was significantly shorter than chapter 1, which in its own way, made it better than the first chapter. However, that doesn't mean that it was good. In general chapter 2 is going over Theresa's high school and middle school life. This means that Norman has to cover things that a high school and middle school student should experience. However, Norman really only covers two things. 1. The Boy's Baseball Team 2. Cyberbullying Theresa gets recruited to the boy's high school baseball team when she's in middle school. She's about 12 years old when she gets recruited and the best I can make out is that this is her last year of middle school too (9th grade). Call me a liar if you want, but I haven't... ...ever met a 12-year-old in 9th grade. For fuck's sake, I was 14 in 9th grade and I have a late birthday in the (United States) school year. Norman claims that Theresa is so young because she skipped a year in school, but I think there's more to it than just skipping a year. Anyways, Theresa joins the high school boy's baseball team. The reason that Norman gives for this is a bit confusing because he jumps back and forth between her being a 'great pitcher' and 'living in a small town, so they didn't have enough boys to recruit for the baseball team.' Because she's on the baseball team, she starts getting cyberbullied and this is where you see just how out of touch with reality Norman is. For some reason, despite that it's a high school baseball team, Theresa is on television all the time. All. The Time. And because... ...of this, Theresa gets cyberbullied. "Anonymous strangers" make entire websites dedicated to cyberbullying Theresa. Yes, they make entire websites. Not only do they use an online forum, or bully her on "the social medias," as Norman likes to put it, but they make entire... ...websites just to show the world how much they truly hate Theresa for being on the boys baseball team. They claim that she must have slept with the coach or was making out with everyone on the boys baseball team but here's the thing; Theresa is still a minor. She's not any older than 13-16 here. This are absolutely absurd accusations to be making to a 13-16-year-old. Even more so that the coach would sleep with her so she could get on the team. That's an accusation of pedophilia. If a rumor like that was floating around, I... ...highly doubt that nothing would come of it. But, Norman doesn't cover this at all. In fact, all of the people on Theresa's team, including the coach, are faceless cardboard figures in the background. The only person in this story that matters is Theresa, and yet, Theresa... ...is just as much of a cardboard figure as the rest of them. It's maddening. But nonetheless, the criticism and 'cyber-bullying' is really starting to get to Theresa so the principle of the school has a teacher sit down with her to try and cheer her up. What we get is a long as fuck and very repetitive monologue from the teacher who then goes over an amazon ad for a doggy door that is explained in so much detail that it's confusing and puts meaning where there is none. Kind of ironic that it does that when I seem to be... ...doing the exact same thing with this book. If you're curious, I did find the ad so you could watch it yourself if you wanted to: video Aside from Theresa's omniscient Trolls who know what all her moral values are and that she has straight A's, we basically just have Theresa's ego stroked more as Norman desperately tries to prove to the reader just how amazing Theresa is. She really isn't and it comes off... ...as narcissistic and unbecoming, especially because Theresa is supposed to be writing this as her autobiography. The other thing that you get from this whole meaningless section of the book is that Theresa blames the cyberbullies parents for not raising them right. What can be summed up as Theresa's parents are good role models in her opinion is then dragged out in a much wordier manner. "My parents gave a good example of the kind of people to be. I'd have to write a book about them to explain." You're writing a book right now. Explain. Or better yet, space it throughout the book. Lessons that your parents taught you when they apply rather than just in one big go. However, Norman was far too lazy to actually do that or have any sense of planning and continuation of subplot throughout the book, so that's not... ...going to happen. Aside from that we also get this banger of a sentence. "It's enough to say I wanted to be a woman like mom and I wanted a husband like dad." Now I know Norman didn't mean it this way, but it sounds an awful lot like Theresa wants to bang her dad, in... ...context or out of context. Blah blah blah we get more boring stuff until it skips to her senior year of high school where she's still 16. She's supposed to be turning 17 in high school so I assume she has an early birthday? That is if Norman still remembers that. Theresa meets Jan Struthers, who I can't remember if I covered or not before because there are so many fucking people in this book who are completely pointless and disappear whenever Norman just forgets about them or doesn't want to keep them in the book anymore. Going back and looking through my tweets, I did indeed cover who Jan Struthers was. For anyone who forgot like me, she's the lady from the government who is in charge of watching Theresa and has been since Theresa was 10, despite being absolutely horrible with children. Anyways, Jan meets Theresa in a Burger King so they can talk about HAL. Despite being in such a public place, Norman gives the reasoning that it's a good place because "the noise gave privacy as good as the Sahara Desert..." I don't know about you but it's really easy... ...to eavesdrop on people in public. Especially in Burger King. Not saying I've done it before, but I've definitely done it before. We find out more about how they found out about HAL and Theresa and the operation that was created to watch Theresa and search for HAL. If you're curious, the operation is literally called the Office of Orbital Phenomena Surveillance, or OOPS. Yes, fucking OOPS. This book was a fucking OOPS. Apparently, the reason for creating the office was, and I'll put it in Norman's words here so it makes sense; "It was supposed to keep track of all the space junk we put into orbit. Its real purpose was to watch for anything going on anywhere in the world that would later be something HAL was doing." The group is called fucking OOPS. Office of Orbital Phenomena Surveillance.  I don't know about you all, but space trash is not a phenomenon. This is just kind of piss poor logic on Norman's part and a weak excuse for him wanting a good acronym for the group. Surprise Norman, we kind of already have a group like that. The CIA. They already...  ...investigate shit like this. But you do you, Norman. You do you. Blah, blah, blah, we get introduced to like 3 more presidents in the span of two paragraphs which is confusing as shit, but alright. "I hadn't heard a peep out of HAL in the six years since he merged with me." So Theresa assumes that HAL is sentient despite the fact that HAL has given literally no indication of sentience. This is a theme that at the very least continues on from chapter one, even if... ...it makes absolutely no god damned sense. Norman brings back in the idea about how HAL makes Theresa put out an absurd amount of heat despite the fact that nobody around her seems to notice that she puts out an absurd amount of heat, which is more absurd logic. Apparently there's a column of disturbed air above Theresa that goes into space an this is how they tried to see if there were any other HAL's on the planet (there aren't). We also get another one of my most hated lines in this book when Theresa asks how much... ...the satellite cost that they sent up to look for more columns of disturbed air. "a hundred million" This is terrible grammar for one, and when someone says it out loud, it sounds wrong too. "One hundred million." is better in every way shape and form and nobody... ...can convince me otherwise. Anyways, Theresa says that they can give her 'a hundred million' and she'll give them HAL. She can't even fucking do that at this point. She doesn't even know if she can do that so why is she offering it? Besides, Jan never even responds to it... ...in the slightest. It's a fucking pointless line in this stupid fucking pointless book that I'm covering because I guess I just love to torture myself with terrible literature before I have to go and read a good book for my history classes. Moving on though, Jan goes into how Theresa needs to get a broad education just in case she ever needs to be the alien ambassador. She really doesn't. She just needs to double major or have a major and a minor in two things probably, Linguistics and Foreign Affairs. But no, instead Jan says that "You might need the knowledge of Thomas Jefferson, and the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln." Apparently, these are our brightest minds in history. Like not to bash on the two of them, they did a lot in the foundation and the forming of the USA... ...but what about the brilliant philosophers of the past? What about the leading and brightest minds of today? What about the scientists of the past who revolutionized how we think and act today? There's more to what formed history than just the people in America. In fact, the... ...presidents of the United States pulled from the philosophy and the knowledge of histories most prominent figures of the Enlightenment. They just helped to spread the word. But how could I expect Norman to know that? It's not like it's taught in every single school... ...in the United States or that all it takes is the fastest Google search to ever happen to find out about that. But I heavily digress. We move on from the meeting and Theresa gets a note in her mailbox that only has her name on it, meaning that someone slipped it... ...into her mailbox while she was away at school. The letter asks where Jan Struthers is and if Theresa can meet him [Jeremy Benton] at the Framingham Library. Theresa tries to email Jan to let her know about it at "janswatchers at snoop.gov" That is exactly... ...how it was worded in the book, not as "janswatchers@snoop.gov". Anyways, the email doesn't go through because I suppose it just doesn't exist anymore. We find out that Jan is missing and the blame is put onto the NEW president who gets brought in with 0 context. They assume that President Martin got rid of Jan because she 'knew too much' or she said something that he just didn't like. We find out that Jeremy Benton is the P.A. to Prime Minister Peter Blair in England. And oh yeah, Theresa brings Father Doughnut back into the fray. Blah, blah, blah, we get this brilliant line; "Seeing you close like this took my breath away. Do you realize the effect you have on people?" from Jeremy to Theresa (who is still 16/17 at this point). We get another of my most hated lines in the book, "I'm beginning to." More bad an inconsistent writing. Apparently, HAL showed up when Theresa was 3 and not six months before she was born. Jan sent all the information about Theresa before she went missing to the Canadian Prime Minister and the Canadian Prime Minister sent that information... ...to the British Prime Minister. Blah, blah, blah more pointless repeating shit. Jeremy offers Theresa and her family a home in England along with new identities (which is 0-100 real quick) all because they think that President Martin made Jan disappear. Father Dick Doughnut jumps in and says that the Holy Father is interested in Theresa's case and wants to offer her a place and protection in Rome. Speaking of Father Dick Doughnut, the meeting with the cardinal that he promise to Theresa never actually happened. Jeremy suggests they bring Theresa's situation to the public, and Theresa agrees though she doesn't exactly completely agree because she thinks that it will ruin her life. Despite wanting to bring it to the press though and agreeing that it would be a decent enough idea... ...she still doesn't want to tell her parents because "one mistake on their part and my future was ruined before I had it." I just... I can't at this point. I'm only two chapters in and I just can't. Besides that, we get the most confusing diatribe ever and I'm going to subject you all too it because I had to suffer through it and still don't know what it's trying to say. "I'd learned that somebody with eloquence may not have seen his powers of understanding receive... ...any aid from education. Ignorance and deficiency of mental improvement could still remain. There's some quirk in their personality that keeps them from becoming wise. The President gave great orations but he was a babe in the woods when it came to dealing with me." If you understood any of that please let me know because even after typing that out I'm still not entirely sure what Theresa is trying to say. I think she's threatening death on him for making Jan disappear, but I'm not sure. and at the very end of the chapter, she says; "If HAL wanted me to do something good I was ready, if it was something bad, I wouldn't do it. President Martin should have left things alone." However, when I first read this I read it as her saying that she wouldn't do the... ...bad thing alone. Which made her sound like she really was going to gather a group a murder President Martin. However like I said not even two tweets ago. It really does sound like Theresa wishes harm on President Martin, with or without HAL's influence.

[writhingcreature]

Why? ~ F.W. (part 7)

A/n: Forgot to do this yesterday- sorry!

Word Count: 7500+

MASTERLIST

I sat down slowly, eyes trained on the floor and lips parted in shock. I needed a second. Hermione and Ron were staring between Harry and me. I looked at him finally too, unsure if he wanted me anywhere near him. I felt a need to comfort him, but... I mean, I was surprised he hadn't just left me in Hogsmead. I waited for him to lash out at me. Yell or scream and push me away or curse me or hit me or something. Something other than just emptily staring straight ahead like he was a statue. Cold and empty.

Swallowing, I stepped forward. "Harry?" He slowly looked at me, his lifeless eyes landing on my face. The second he took me in, he began to move, and I braced myself for the hit. Hermione and Ron didn't even flinch.

He didn't hit me, though. His arms wrapped around me, and he buried his face in my neck. He was shaking. "Don't stop me," he barely whispered in my ear. I almost missed it. "I'm going to kill him. If he gets anywhere near me, I'm going to kill him. Don't stop me. Don't- don't hate me." His voice grew softer. "Please don't ask me not to."

At that moment, I knew what he was so torn about. He wanted to kill Sirius Black, but he didn't want to upset me. Even at this moment, he only cared that Sirius Black was my father in the sense that if he killed Black, I might be upset about it. I was shocked. He didn't hate me. He didn't even care. I hugged him back. "I never knew him. He never knew. And he's an evil man. Being related to him brings me no pride. I've only had a harder life because of it. I'm glad he doesn't know me. I- I hate him." My blood boiled. "I hate him for hurting you and your parents and for serving Voldemort with such pride. I can't believe he was their friend."

Harry relaxed in my arms, but my body went rigid. My eyes widened, and I sucked in a breath. Harry leaned away, concerned I'd been hurt or something. "You okay?" He asked, eyes looking briefly over my body for injuries.

"What was your father's name?"

"Wha-?"

"His name Harry, what was his first name?!"

Taking a step away, he looked confused and maybe a little irritated. I didn't blame him. "James. Potter."

I relaxed, shaking my head to clear the thoughts from it. "Right." But then another thought occurred to me and I tensed again. "Did you know that Lupin was their friend? Your dad and mum, my dad, and Lupin? When they were here?"

Harry nodded slowly. "Lupin told me he knew my mom. He told me a little about her." His face got a little dreamy, like being able to remember his wonderful mother, even though someone else's memory, was an experience he was happy for.

Trying to hide my thoughts, I nodded and smiled. "He told me the same. Well, about my dad at least." I frowned, my face puckering in distaste. "Until now, I've only ever been confused about how I felt about him. I was unsure, balancing between what everyone said and what it would mean for my lineage if I accepted and believed them. My sense of pride, I guess." I shrugged. "But no one messes with my friends. I promise Harry if he gets anywhere around me I'LL kill him. Okay?" Harry managed a little smile, nodding appreciatively.

We parted on that, but I didn't head back to my room like I said I was going to. I went to Lupin's room. I knocked on the door. "Come in," Lupin's voice allowed evenly. I moved into the office. I knew my face was dark. I knew my body language was full of hate for Sirius Black, but also maybe for this man in front of me. When he saw me, he paused, nearly greeting me happily if not for the murderous look on my face. "Liv," he offered uncertainly.

"Remus," I returned.

Lupin paused. "Not that I have any major objections to you calling me that, but I don't think it's proper, calling me by my first name when I'm your teacher." He rose his eyebrows, ever being polite.

My insides turned. "It's you." My voice was flat. "YOU'RE Remus?"

"My name is Remus Lupin, yes." He was confused by my reaction to his name. I didn't blame him.

Something clicked in my head. My head was filling with information from the essay Snape had given us, triggered by his name. His eerily perfectly fitting name. "Oh my god." I ran a hand through my hair, mind racing as I searched his face. His expression changed, and he looked back with a new expression. Exhaustion. He aged again like he did every time he was upset. I forgot how young he really was sometimes- especially when he wore that expression. I recognized the look as the one he wore that day he'd looked between Hermione and me after we first got the exams. It had been the way he and Hermione had looked at each other. He seemed so sad and old. Hermione had smiled after a second, and that was that. It was over. There were two huge things in my head that echoed and bounced around, screaming at me to run. To not trust the man in front of me. "You're a werewolf," I whispered. I didn't know if he really knew that Hermione knew, or if maybe he just expected, but his expression grew even darker, so I knew that his relationship with me knowing was different than his with Hermione knowing. I demanded an answer for him, silently, and after a second, he nodded slowly. I sucked in another sharp breath, this one slower. I nodded, mirroring him. I couldn't bring myself to care about it. It was still Professor Lupin. With his gum charms and his defense of Neville and his little rivalry with Snape. With his perfect classes that were always fun, only giving way when he became a wolf at the full moon and conniving, vindictive, Snape took over. "Professor?" He seemed surprised by my addressing him as such but stood a little straighter, ready for whatever I was about to bring to his attention. Him being a werewolf isn't what bothered me. "Were you in love with my dad?"

Lupin looked stunned and like he was about to pass out. "Sorry?" He croaked.

I flinched. "I'm sorry to bring it up, but... I suppose that's not actually my question. My real question is, do you suppose he was in love with you?" He looked at me like he was ready to cry, and I felt terrible. "I'm so sorry to ask. I can't imagine what I've made you feel. But you see sir, my mum left me this letter. When I was a baby. When she left me at the orphanage. She left me a letter, for when I was eleven that explained everything. That explained about me being a witch- a half-blood. You see, my dad was a pureblood, but my mum was a muggle. She told me that he liked her because of his family... they were terrible. They hated muggles. They were- they were really set on keeping the bloodline pure, so he used to flirt with muggles to piss them off." I stepped closer. "But you see, he actually had a crush on my mum. They went further than he usually did. My mum fell in love with him." The look on Lupin's face made me feel even worse. "Sir, please, don't be upset." I sighed, struggling.

"Don't worry about me, Liv," Lupin assured. "Continue. I'm fine."

My eyes watered, and I was relieved. Now I didn't have to see his face when I continued this story. "Well, you see, he didn't love her back. And when she tried to think about a future between them, it scared him away. See she knew she was pregnant, but she wasn't sure how he'd feel about it or what he would want to do. So she wanted to see what would happen between them first. And he left." I swallowed. "But he left for good reason, I think. He left because he was in love with someone else. Or, he told my mum he was. He told her- that he was in love with someone named Remus." Dead silence. "I've always wanted to meet you. I just- I NEED to know. I need to know that he really did love you. Even if he was a terrible person, I need to know there was some good in him. I need to know if my mum really was special, or if he went around shagging loads of girls just to retaliate against his family. And I need to know if he was really in love with you, or if you were just an excuse or another victim, or if he just wanted a sob story to tell my mum to get her to leave him alone."

It fell quiet. I wiped my eyes, taking in quick breaths and blinking fast to try and calm down. Lupin moved closer, sitting on the back of a chair so that he had something to lean against even though he was closer to me now, still giving me room. "Liv, your father and I were best friends in Hogwarts. He was..." he smiled a little. "Trouble." I scoffed, and he chuckled. The double meaning of that word in this context was genuinely hilarious. "When I found out about what he did to Lily and James... when I found out he killed Peter..." He grew sad again. "Peter Pettigrew was another in our group of very close friends. All in one night, all my friends were lost to me because Sirius Black was secretly evil." He looked so lost that a part of me filled up. The look on his face mirrored how I felt. "It was a shock. To everyone. For a long time, I refused to believe it. I refused to believe that Sirius of all people could-" He shook his head. After a second, he continued. "I did love him." He swallowed. "And I know he loved me, too. In whatever dark, twisted set his mind was in that night, there is no denying what we had. It' something I struggled with a very long time. How could I love a man who had done the things he'd done?" His words made me feel better and worse at the same time. I felt relief but also pity. For both of us, really. "I can't say he was a good man, but he was good to me. It wasn't obvious, what he did. It didn't appear in the look in his eyes or the curves of his lips when he'd smile. I've come to terms that there was a dark side of him he kept hidden until he no longer could. Now, it's taken over him. And all the good things? The good parts of him?" He stood up straight, placing a hand on my shoulder. "They moved to you as he lost them. He did the worst thing someone ever could, and he lost all his goodness when he helped make you." I began crying. "I see him in you. In only the good ways. In the way you fiercely defend people. How you can never keep your mouth shut. In the way you look at things when they irritate or puzzle you. In the way you face people like Malfoy. People you don't get along with. You have all of his best qualities. He may have messed up on a lot, but one of the VERY few good things he did was bring you about."

My smile was small and my face was wet when I whispered, "May I hug you?" Lupin nodded and I surged forward, burying my face in his chest. I let out a choked sob and he rubbed my back soothingly. He smelled distantly of chocolate and I wondered if he'd eaten some recently. After I calmed down a bit, I leaned away. I wiped my face as each of his hands rested on each of my shoulders. "Thank you."

"Anytime." He smiled. "It's getting late though. Return to your dorm, get some sleep. I'll see you in the morning."

I nodded and moved away from him, going into the hallways and heading towards my room. I was exhausted by the time I reached it. Too many emotions had hit me today, between all the things with Harry and my dad and Lupin. Oh heaven, and what had happened between me a Fred too- a pleasant thing that seemed a million years away now.

I didn't even waste time to change into pajamas before I collapsed in my bed, hiding my face in pillows and sheets and falling asleep as I hid away from the world.

-

The next day was the beginning of the Holidays. Thankfully I'd packed a few days ago; otherwise, I would have been ridiculously unprepared for when Beth woke me up so she and Sam could say goodbye to me. I scrambled to get ready and gathered and said goodbye to my two friends before taking off to meet Cedric. "I was worried you weren't coming!" Cedric joked weakly as I approached. As he took in my scrambled appearance, I knew it was less of a joke than he was letting on.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," I assured him.

I was never good with the Holidays. I had no family to enjoy it with, or even graves to visit and cry over or reflect on like most of the other kids at the orphanage. I didn't even get to have a break from school and chores like the others. Headmistress would always give everyone's work to me- I'd only learn later that she did it because of the whole squib thing. She'd been tormented by her magical siblings and their friends her entire life, and now she got her revenge by being horrible to me. Holidays were usually a time of misery and the most laborious work of the whole year... but Holidays weren't like that since I'd been to Hogwarts.

Waking up on Christmas morning was waking up to Cedric jumping on my bed, the blankets and pillows and mattress he'd slept on the night before strewn across the floor next to my bed. It was waking up to the smell of waffles and cookies and racing out in our pajamas with messy hair to see a tree and spooky decorations and presents and food and light that made the whole house seem to glow with happiness and warmth. It was waking up to Amos, who was grinning and greeting us with enthusiasm that you just couldn't fake. It meant waking up to a visit to the Weasley's because I'd been invited a few days ago via letter and had agreed to go.

Before I went, we opened presents. When Hermione had asked about it weeks ago, I'd told them to send any gifts they'd gotten me to the Diggory's, but I was handed only two- one from Amos and one from Cedric. I assumed that maybe they'd gotten busy or didn't forgive me for what my dad had done like Harry had. Harry was different. He wasn't into what the Wizarding World thought and felt and the things they did like his friends were. Hermione was so aware of everything because she learned and read about it regularly. Ron was because he had been born and raised in it and had parents that knew and talked about it. Harry had neither a personal desire or an outside source to hear information from, so he had no influence from the Wizarding World to get a grip on Sirius Black and what it meant to be his kid. He could separate parent from child. Most people couldn't. Maybe Hermione and Ron were part of most people. Maybe there was a limit to their kindness towards me. I wouldn't be surprised.

Cedric got me a magic spray can from Hogsmead- he still believed I hadn't gone. The can could turn into anything people usually sprayed, if I asked it to. Hairspray or silly string or spray paint. All I had to do was ask it and the label would go blurry and then clear and it was now whatever I'd asked it to be. He said it was actually something that had been influenced by muggle products- another thing that wizards had improved upon but used in a less drastic way. Afterward, Amos pulled me aside to tell me that Cedric was totally lying to me. He hadn't gotten it from Hogsmead- they had no use for the things that the can produced. Amos told me that Cedric had learned about some things in Muggles Studies and had found a can and worked tirelessly for weeks to figure out how to enchant it the way he had to give me something he thought would be the perfect present. The can was functional and cool just as a Muggle can, but with a wizard's touch, it became even better. I felt like the can was me. Good without magic; even better with. It was odd, feeling so close to a spray can. I was touched. It was the best present I'd ever received.

Amos gave me a Christmas sweater. It had a tree and presents and three faceless people that looked a lot like him, me, and Cedric. He told me he'd had it made since he had absolutely no talent with needles but I was grateful for it all the same. I hugged both of them in thanks and each was so homey and familial and amazing that it seemed to wipe everything else from my mind, presenting a clean slate.

Just as I was about to take the Floo Powder to go to the Weasley's, things in hand, Cedric and Amos told me they had something important to run by me. We sat at the table, my stuff by the fireplace as they awaited me, and Amos began to speak. "I was wondering," he began. He looked at Cedric who smiled, nodding, encouraging him. "Well, I think you spend a lot of time here as it is. You have made your place in our home. In our lives. In our family." I looked between them, a thought passing through my mind that I didn't dare entertain. "Well, it would never be the same if you left that place. There would always be a hole- just as there was a hole when Cedric's mother died."

My heart was racing. Among the other things that Christmas meant in the orphanage, Christmas was perhaps the biggest adoption time. People wanted to help orphans and they wanted to have family and they wanted to not feel alone. Married couples that couldn't have kids, or lonely hearts that couldn't find love. They flocked to give their hearts to those who had none to receive from everyone else. Children who had a house but not a home. Arms but no one to hug. A bed but nowhere to cuddle up and dream of Santa Clause and presents on Christmas morning. Every Christmas I'd seen kids clean themselves and line up after playing all day, their cheeks rosy and their smiles bright as the lonely and unfortunate filed into our halls to look at them. Every year, I watched kids be picked and taken to homes to be loved as I cleaned and cleaned and got yelled at. As Headmistress hid me because she hated my magical blood so much she refused me any and every happiness- especially the joy of having a family.

Now as I sat there, I saw two people who truly felt like family. Oddly enough, Amos felt more like an uncle than a father, but Cedric did feel like my brother. He had from day one. He had protected and guided and helped me. He had loved me. He had treated me as a little sister and had only ever been happy when I thought or referred to him as my brother. This was my home. I'd never had a home before. They were my family, just as much as Harry had begun to feel like.

When Amos stopped, trepidation in his eyes, Cedric continued. "Do you want to join our family in the eyes of the world, same as you've joined it in the eyes of us?"

I was shocked. I ran a hand through my hair, letting out a breath I didn't realize I was holding. Amos put a hand on my shoulder. "I know there's a lot going on right now." His voice was gentle. "I know you're feeling a lot and have a lot on your plate. You don't have to answer right now. Take your time. Even if you say no, we won't be upset about it. I know it's a lot to take in and it would be a huge change for you. You can have the rest of the year even to think about it. I only expect an answer this Summer. Your Headmistress has demanded that you return this Summer, which is what prompted us to adopt you." He put his hand on my shoulder. The gesture had become something that people did to make things personal. I'd only ever had Lupin or Amos or people like them do it to comfort and keep me close without invading my space. It felt like something people in my new, better life did to address me as a person. No one had ever done it any other way. Now it made me feel incredibly loved. "I'd never thought of it before because I never imagined you not coming back to us, but I refuse to see you back in a place where they treat you as terribly as they do. I'd never let my kid stay in a place like that. My- my family." He blushed and I grinned.

"I would love to," I whispered. "But this is very overwhelming and I won't lie, it'll be a big adjustment. I..." I let out another breath. "I would like to take that time, to think and let it sink in. That way, you won't have to have me around, unadjusted to it and such." Amos nodded and Cedric grinned.

When I stood, Cedric pulled me into a hug. "You ready to me Liv Diggory?"

I let out a laugh that sounded near a sob. "I would love nothing more."

That's when I headed to the Weasley's. The first face I saw was Fred's and the first hug I received was from Mrs. Weasley. "Are you alright, Love?" Fred asked after his mother finally gave me over to him.

I nodded. "Amos offered to adopt me." My eyes watered. "I'm going to have a real family. A family that's MINE. Not a friend's or a group of kids my age that has become my family. This is going to be a family where we all have the same last name and goal and house and traditions and-"

Fred pulled me close. "That's wonderful." Everyone had heard and they all grinned and congratulated me. Ron suggested I write to Harry and Hermione to tell them the amazing news so I did, sitting down immediately to do so.

I'd sent their Christmas presents yesterday - I'd gotten Hermione book one of a series that had kept me sane as a child (The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan) and Harry a necklace that I'd made. The string was made of yarn that was green and red; Christmas colors, but also representative of our friendship and how it brought our houses together. On the string was a key and a ring. In the letter I'd attached to the necklace, I told him about my adventures in the garden of the orphanage and how I'd found the key that lead to a hidden door in the ground. It might have been a shelter or a storage from before the building was used as an orphanage and I used to go there all the time to hide away. To read and play in my imagination, by myself, making things grow on accident and playing with animals that shouldn't have been tame but were because I'd magically trained them without knowing it. The Headmistress had had it filled in with cement and dirt when she'd found it out but I'd kept the key as a memory of fun and freedom and escape from the horrors of my life. The ring had been another thing I made, except this was from my childhood as well. People used to come in with necklaces and rungs bearing a family crest. Me, without a family, had made one up and wore the wire ring like it was an heirloom. Both of these things I'd put on the string because they were used to find solace in a dark place in my life. But, Harry had given me a new level of safety and happiness that I hadn't ever even dreamed of having before. I gave him the key and the ring on the string because he was an even better reminder of what family and friendship could offer me. I would never have better adventures or safer places than the fun and safety he gave me when he talked to me and accepted me and looked at me apart from my father.

Ron's present had been hard. I'd felt like it wasn't as meaningful as the others'. It was a joke book. Thick and older, from one of the stores Fred and George had taken me too. It had a faded red cover that reminded me of Ron's hair, and the jokes inside I knew Ron would enjoy. However, when I went further into the house, I saw Ron sit next to a book that was turned upside down, opened, as if someone had set it down while they were reading, leaving it open as to not lose their place. Ron picked it up and I saw it was the joke book I'd given him. As I talked to Ginny, he moved to the kitchen, coming back with a bookmark in his place before setting the book down with dare, moving over to join us. I guess I'd been right to give it to Ron; he did seem to love it.

Ginny was wearing the flower crown I'd made her. I'd enchanted it so the flowers would never lose their smell or be damaged or die. She grinned when I commented on it, ranting on and on about how much she loved it and how excited it made her. She asked me if it had been hard and I lied, telling her it was something we'd learned in class. Ron gave me a sideways look- he knew that I'd researched in all my spare time for several days with Hermione and Luna to try and figure out how to get the crown just right. I shot him a look, though, and he kept his mouth shut.

I'd given Mrs. Weasley a cookbook that had all kinds of muggle and wizard meals in it. I saw it resting on the counter, opened to a page, and it warmed my heart. Arthur, I'd gotten a book with loads of information on Muggle objects and their function and how they're made. It was a bunch of instruction books and informative and explanatory articles and news clippings and book sections I'd found and put into a blank book- another spell, but one that Cedric had given me so it hadn't taken as much time and effort. As I talked to Ginny about her crown though, he ranted about how amazing the "Field Guide to Muggle Messes Vol. One" book was and how he'd showed everyone at work that would still long enough to hear more than one word about it. George joked that the whole family hated me for giving him something to annoy them further with, but everyone laughed so I knew it was in good fun.

When I asked about Fred and George and how they'd liked their presents, they both grinned at me. When they'd taken me to Zonko's and showed me around, they'd talked briefly about some of the dreams they'd had about owning something like that place- but better. An epic joke shop full of crazy things they'd invented themselves. With how amazing their minds and magic were, I believed wholeheartedly that they could do it. To prove it, I'd made them each homemade versions of the Chocolate Frog cards. There were moving pictures of them on each of the cards, with their names below the picture and description below it.

George's was about him being an amazing friend and brother- most well known for opening the most epic joke shop with his twin brother and becoming one of the most successful people, at an age that broke records across the board. The youngest, most successful, happiest wizard- who shared the title with his twin only.

Fred's had been around the same until I made last changes to it, adding about how he was handsome and known for falling for none other than the daughter of Sirius Black, breaking hearts from all lands as single girls pined after him and sighed because he was taken by someone most people hated. It had been a little self-deprecating but I put it in to leave a little hint. I guess it was my way of flirting while still making it something a reporter would say. Dramatic and ridiculous.

As George mentioned his card and how much he loved it (he'd been using it as a bookmark to every book he interacted with so that he could see it every time he studies or read or anything. He'd been thrilled anytime someone asked about it, following his dad's example of showing it off as much as possible, but so fully as to bother people with it), I looked at Fred. He was already looking at me, a smirk on his face. I blushed. "And how did you like yours, Fred?"

Everyone looked between us. I wondered if maybe he hadn't shown it to anyone, leaving the joke between us only. His eyes bore into mine and I found my own lips curling in a smirk to match his own. "It was perfect," he finally added. "I couldn't have asked for a better Christmas present." Something flickered through his eyes and I wondered if he was maybe thinking of other things I could have given him. I tried not to show how much the thought genuinely appealed to me as flashes of mistletoe and eyes closing and soft lips meeting flashed through my mind. I looked away first as someone coughed. Everyone was smiling at us, curious but in a way that most of them guessed the gist but wondered at the details. His hand brushed mine as we all walked toward the tree. My smirk turned into a shy smile and I felt my face burning terribly.

"When Fred told us you were coming over, I figured it would be a waste of time to mail you your gifts, so I wrote Harry and Hermione- they had yours sent to our house as well," Ron explained as he directed me to a little corner. My eyes widened. There were five differently sized gifts and I was speechless. I looked at Ron with surprise and he smiled wider. "What? Did you think we'd forgotten about you?" I looked away, swallowing, and something in his face changed, just a bit. Grew a little sad. I felt guilty for ruining the high mood in the room.

Changing the subject, I sat down to open the presents- the others had opened theirs this morning already, so everyone gathered around to see my reactions to everything. Mrs. Weasley explained hers as I took it out- a sweater with an L on it. "I didn't know if you wanted a Y or an L but they all say you preferred Liv so..." I saw everyone else wearing sweaters like it. Ginny had one with a G. Ron one with an R. Fred one with an F. So on. I changed out of the one I already wore, realizing she'd made an offer of family and friendship in the same way Amos had, but she'd done it through tradition and work of hand rather than just meaningfulness. The sweater was green, the letter silver- a suggestion from Mr. Weasley. Everyone else's had Gryffindor vibes, with reds and golds and tans and all sorts of shades in between. Fred complimented how good it looked with my green eyes and I loved it even more.

Ginny and George had paired up to get me a quill who's ink could change colors- Ginny's suggestion but something George had been the one to find.

Hermione had gotten me a children's book full of Wizarding stories. Ron told me it was from both of them since he'd helped her think of what book to give her after she'd told him about our conversation about books when we bonded over our love to read. I laughed, telling him that I'd gotten her a book too. He teased us about being nerds.

Harry had gotten me a drawing of a green eye. It had a message on the back of the paper that had been in an envelope. 'Had someone draw it for me- from one green-eyed orphan to another.' "He didn't know what to get you," Ron sighed as I looked at it, fingers tracing the curves and edges gently. "He told me that he wanted to get you something that reminded you of how similar you two were. Something you could look at and remember your friendship and stuff." He shrugged.

I whispered, "I love it." Ron didn't seem to get why but he let it go.

Fred handed over the last present, telling me it was from him. I looked at the others and he rolled his eyes, motioning me to open it. Sure I was blushing again already, I did so. I stared at the object for a second, stunned. It was a hairpin. It was silver with little green gems in it. Suddenly the others were making excuses to leave and I giggled, watching them scramble to go. George sighed, telling us to be safe before standing and leaving. Leave it up to him not to BS the situation, keeping it straight forward but also still considerately polite. When I looked back to Fred, he'd moved significantly closer. He took it gingerly from me, my skin tingling from where his hands brushed mine. "I like when you wear green things," he told me quietly. "It reminds me of how good you are. How much you've changed my view on Slytherins. It reminds me that there's good in everything. Everyone. Reminds me to keep my mind open and my mouth shut." He smiled as he slipped it into my hair. "And you look really pretty in green, with those eyes of yours." I blushed as he placed it, letting his fingers brush my jaw as he moved his hands away from my hair. "Happy Christmas."

"Happy Christmas," I returned. I leaned away, cocking an eyebrow. "You didn't go and get me some expensive gift just so you could tell me my eyes pretty did you?"

He laughed. "Don't worry yourself. It's actually sort of an heirloom. No one in my family wore or liked it. It remained in this box, untouched for who knows how long." He rolled his eyes. "And it's not like you could sell it for any kind fo worth. It's just metal and fake stones. But I thought it would look nice in your hair. And I was right."

I leaned over, kissing his cheek. "I like it a lot, Fred, thank you." He nodded, his cheeks red as I imagined my own would be.

The rest of the Holidays was wonderful. I spent it with the Weasleys, writing to Cedric to tell him about how everyone loved their gifts as well as the ones that had been waiting for me. I tried to be vague about my interaction with Fred since I knew every time I mentioned the boy Cedric would roll his eyes and talk about how I was too young for boyfriends and romance. The last day of break before we were to return to Hogwarts was pleasant. We all sat around and chatted about the week. Every time I came they told me something new about the Wizarding World. They'd already showed me everything odd and non-muggle that was around the house but they thoroughly enjoyed the questions and wonder on my face when they told me new things about the world I'd never known. I was like Mr. Weasley but intrigued by the Wizard part of my life instead of the Muggle part. Since they knew about wizards and such, they were only too excited to tell me about it.

After dinner, everyone began to head to bed. Ginny had pinned her crown on the wall, unsure if she wanted to take it to school where it might get damaged. That's what we were talking about when Ron finally replaced his bookmark in his joke book - the only book I'd ever seen him read - and head to bed. That left her, me, and Fred. I saw him steal a glance at me before returning to his after dinner clean up his mother had assigned him to. "I think you should take it," I finally told Ginny. "If it gets damaged, I can fix it. You look far too adorable in it to save it for just at home. And it works for winter too since the flowers are white!"

"Oh my gosh, you're right!" She cut off, yawning. Then she looked over at Fred. She paused, slowly looking over at me and then back to him. When she looked at me again she was smirking and I blushed. "I'm gonna go to bed." She said it slowly and Fred snorted, amused, his back still to us. She winked at me and I pushed her away. She left, laughing.

Fred didn't look at me as he continued as if he hadn't been cleaning at a ridiculously slow pace just to be able to have a moment alone with me as he did now.

I stood, leaning against a doorway. My eyes flickered up and I smirked. "I'm going to head to bed too."

Fred turned around, eyes wide. "No!" When he saw my smirk he tried to reel it back in. "I mean, this is so hard and I don't want to deal with it alone. Come tell me jokes or maybe help me or something? It's so boring to stay up all alone."

Without speaking I nodded, helping him put things away and cleaning dishes. He didn't even suggest the use of magic which is what really gave him away. While we cleaned his hands and shoulders kept bumping mine- a product of both of our efforts. After, I returned to the same doorway, wiping my hand on a towel to dry them after doing dishes. "Okay, NOW I'm going to bed." He frowned, not meeting my eyes. I knew what he wanted and I knew he wouldn't try for it out of respect for me, and I think that was what convinced me. "Can I have a goodnight hug from my best friend?" I asked, opening my arms. He chuckled and approached me, obliging my request. He pulled me against him, our bodies curving as they always did to accommodate for the height difference. When he went to pull away I tightened my hold on him, allowing enough room only for him to look at me as our noses lay maybe inches apart. "Oh look," I whispered, not even looking up. "I didn't notice that mistletoe before. I guess we've been caught under it."

His eyes widened as he looked up. Sure enough, the decoration we'd (mostly me, because even if they were the others' parents I'd always wanted to have friends to do this to and the twins were only too willing to fill my want for some pranks, even if they looked away and dramatically gagged as their parents kissed cheeks and foreheads and laughed at their sons) been teasing Mr. and Mrs. Weasley about all break, getting them under it and then making them kiss (stress on forehead and cheek kisses. I thought they were being too nice, sparing their children the embarrassment, but I knew the others were more than grateful.). Now it wasn't Mr. and Mrs. Weasley though, and as Fred looked back at me his eyes were shining and his grin was wide. Despite his excitement, he softly asked, "Are you sure?"

I rolled my eyes, pushing myself closer by going up on my toes, my fingers slipping into his hair as he let me push him closer to me as well. "If I wasn't sure, I wouldn't have stood under the mistletoe and brought you to me in the first class, now would I have?" I spoke against his lips and he shivered.

"I guess not," he mumbled.

He didn't move and I nudged his nose with mine. "Kiss me, Fred. Please."

Whatever was holding him back snapped and he closed the distance so hard - even with so little room - that my feet flattened on the floor again. Our lips parted as I was accidentally pushed away but Fred chased me, our lips meeting again. The shock of the initial kiss passed in that separation. When our lips met again, I was ready. I inhaled sharply through my nose, eyes shut tight, kissing him back fiercely. His body pushed against mine, pressing my back into the wall behind me. It was heated and passionate and fast- tension and feelings (that had been building slowly over the years but rapidly over the last week or two) finally being released in this action. One of his hands held my waist, fingers digging into me. The other hand rose to rest against my neck and jaw, his thumb brushing over my cheek.

His tongue ran over my bottom lip and I parted my lips in surprise- I'd never felt something like that before but after all the heat of his breath and his skin, the air on my now wet lips was cool and it made goosebumps rise on my skin. He took that moment to deepen the kiss. I'd never kissed anyone before, so to have both a normal kiss and a french kiss for the first time in one sitting was quite an experience. I didn't regret it though. I was glad it was now. Glad it was him. Here. During the best Christmas I'd ever had and maybe would ever have.

There was a part of being a horny teenager that didn't allow heated kisses like this to stay innocent. So, after I realized the thoughts that were flickering through my mind were also most definitely passing through his as his pointer finger began to trace shades against my hip, I pushed him away. He let out a breath, blinking hard as he tried to control himself. "Sorry," I whispered. My words were breathy, mangled by my fast breathing to make up for the lack of air, before. My head spun.

"No," he reassured me, both hands on my face now. "Don't be sorry. It's not your fault." He laughed breathlessly and I knew the feeling. I took in his slightly mussed hair, flaming cheeks and swollen lips. I never wanted to see him in any other condition than this as he tried to gather his thoughts after I put him in such a messy state. "You should go to bed. I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?" I nodded and he pulled me after him, guiding me to Ginny's room where they had a floor bed like the one Cedric made in my room for Christmas nights when we'd stay up and tell stories and jokes until we were too tired to stay awake anymore. He kissed my forehead. "Goodnight love."

We were both calmer now and I stepped away from him, my head racing on a track now as I reflected on what had just happened and the things it had awaken inside of me. Lordy. "Goodnight Fredward." He chuckled and stepped away. I stopped him, squeezing his hand- we'd been holding them as we walked. He smiled at me before pulling away and moving to his room. I watched him go before clumsily opening the door behind me, tripping into bed.

I don't think I slept that night. I just lay there in bed, in a half-asleep daze, forever smiling and blushing and remembering. My feelings flared and I realized Fred Weasley was dangerous. The perfect amount of danger. The kind I chased. My kind of danger. I knew I would chase him anywhere. He had me hooked, wrapped around his finger. And you know what? For once in my life, that didn't scare me one bit.

-

Taglist: @reddie-steddie-go

[bipercabeth]

So, can we hear your thoughts on TS7? I remember your breakdown for the Ben Platt album and wanted to hear what you have to say about Lover

oh man, i already know this has to go under the cut. i have,,, so many feelings

i forgot that you existed - this song is such a good opener for the album. both the lyrics and production are so light and carefree, which makes it the perfect transition from the intensity of reputation to the softness of lover. she’s not reinventing herself, she’s growing. i love the way she plays with harmonies in the chorus! and i adore how the last line of the verses swells ominously before releasing into the playful staccato of the chorus, i think it’s really indicative of the anxiety surrounding the situation vs the simple and relative ease with which it was all forgotten

cruel summer - tbh i’m glad this wasn’t a single in the place of ME! or yntcd because listening to this was literally a full body experience. it would’ve killed as a lead single, but it definitely hit harder for me hearing for the first time in the context of the album. i read the lyrics of the first five songs when they leaked and genuinely thought i wasn’t going to like this song, but i went absolutely feral at the bridge. (also upon listening i adored the lyrics, so i will no longer be trusting my opinions based on lyrics alone.) if i wasn’t sold on the rest of it, the bridge is what solidified this as one of my favorites on the album. the way the synths build and then cut out for HE LOOKS UP GRINNIN LIKE A DEVIL,,, i lost my shit. astral projected. if this song is playing, i will not turn it off before i get to scream that line. also “i love you, ain’t that the worst thing you ever heard?” is incredible. 

lover - words cannot describe my love for this song. my friend veronica described it as the love song of our generation and honestly? she’s not wrong. lover’s lyrics are simple, but hit like a ton of bricks regardless. the key to simple lyricism is finding the words that everyone has always wanted to say (lean on me is a really good example of this but i’m not going to get into songwriting theory on this post) and lover does exactly that. simple descriptions of simple acts are her window to how all-encompassing this love is. the 6/8 timing (a fucking WALTZ y’all) gives it the 2 in the morning kitchen dance feel. it’s a love song in every aspect. i’m never gonna be over it. 

the man - a bop. the low notes in this song? incredible, especially in the bridge. those low harmonies took me OUT! the first line of the chorus is so killer as well. and she says bitch twice! taylor said i am 29 i curse and have sex, get over it. there’s less to analyze in this song, but that doesn’t mean i’m not in love with it. 

the archer - i am telling you i heard the first goddamn synth note and KNEW jack antonoff was all over this song. i really needed this song to come out when it did, because after those two singles,, i needed some hope for this album. it did not disappoint. the slow build of the synths into one massive crescendo at the bridge instead of the usual rise and fall of most pop music. every single note builds to the bridge, to the anxiety of that repeated they see right through me, to the cause all of my enemies started out friends / help me hold on to you. it swells like the slow draw of a knocked arrow, like an archer taking aim. and then all at once, it fades like the string was released. i adore every single aspect of this song. 

i think he knows - my percabeth loving ass needs to take a second to talk about the line i am an architect, i’m drawing up the plans and how it sent me to the fucking moon. but anyway. different post. it is physically impossible for me to stay still when this song plays. the harmonies on that AH in the chorus made me lose it. i want you, bless my soul is so southern and absolutely beautiful. she’s straight up pining in this song, and she knows it. that way she closes the song with that line on loop? sets the tone so well.

miss americana and the heartbreak prince - i have no idea why i didn’t like this song upon first listen, but now i like it! still not my favorite on the album, but the bar is high. 

paper rings - god i cannot believe that she said his friends were high at the met gala i’m fucking dead. this whole song is peak old taylor, just grown up. it’s got the same catchiness as stay stay stay, but with a more grown (but still fun) outlook. this one is real experience talking, and it shows. she’s got the love she always wanted to write about! i’m not okay! 

cornelia street - her delivery really makes the song for me. you can physically feel how much she loves joe and how real that fear of losing him. that stripped down chorus after the bridge where her voice breaks? she’s so in love. i’m so in love. 

death by a thousand cuts - GOD i love this song with everything in me, even more since watching Someone Great. it’s the perfect narrative song for that movie. it also contains the single most Taylor Swift^tm lyric of all time: but if the story’s over, why am i still writing pages? ALSO? WE WANNA TALK ABOUT BRIDGE CITY?? this bridge goes so hard. i can’t convey my love for it unless we’re in the car together so i can scream it properly. ultimate car song. 

london boy - so fun! people who are upset over this song gotta calm down, it’s a fun, catchy song. i don’t have much to say about it, but i enjoy it! i won’t go out of my way to queue it, but it’s cute and cheeky and i like it.

soon you’ll get better - i knew from the first goddamn guitar lick that this was going to wreck me, but once i realized what it was about,,, i didn’t stand a chance. i literally went back after my first listen through the whole album and listened to this song on loop for at least half an hour and just. sobbed. it hits home way too hard for me. again with that devastatingly simple songwriting. you’ll get better soon / cause you have to absolutely destroyed me. also, this is a really small detail, but that breath at 2:41 really does me in. it’s so defeated, i can’t. her delivery in this one is an absolute gut punch.

false god - jack antonoff is all over this one and i love it for that. taylor swift said i fuck and i respect that. the sax? get out of here. it’s so perfect. it’s horny, but like,,, emotionally horny. perfect fit for this album. i adore it.

you need to calm down - okay ngl i don’t like this song or ME!, but i’m really glad they were singles because if i heard them on this album for the first time i would’ve been :/ about it. instead we got that right out of the way and now i can appreciate the good parts of them. the oh’s in the chorus are really pretty! i don’t actively dislike this song, but i don’t actively like it either. 

afterglow - i love that taylor put a song about fighting on this album. i think this made the album feel so much more real. it’s about love, and fighting is a part of that! we break a little from the picture perfect aspect of songs like paper rings and get a little grittier. people make mistakes, but the love guides the choice to stay, to ask for forgiveness and promise to do better. this makes the entire narrative of lover so much stronger.

ME! - same sentiment as yntcd in terms of it being the lead single, except i’m really not a fan of this song. i can handle it up until the spelling is fun part. i cannot believe “can’t spell awesome without me” is so close to daylight. i appreciate the point of the song and what she sets out to do with it, but i just. can’t get over that damn bridge. 

it’s nice to have a friend - i really didn’t like this song at first and i’m still warming up to it, but i definitely am! it’s such a percabeth song. i’m not sure why i didn’t like it, probably because it doesn’t escalate or go anywhere, but i think that steadiness contributes to the meaning of it

daylight - i could literally write an entire essay on this song alone. it’s the perfect closing song for this album. i don’t want to see anything else now that i saw you / i don’t want to think of anything else now that i’ve thought of you are literally the most tender lines i have heard in my whole life. the comparison between this and her notes from red make me openly weep. the bridge of this song literally feels light daylight, it shines and feels warm and god i love love! i once believed love would be burning red, but it’s golden made me cry when i heard it. i can’t stop thinking about that quote that says “lover is the sound of a songwriter getting to write the album she’s always wanted to write”. i could literally cry just thinking about that. she got to write the album about golden love! her whole career is based around singing and writing about love, and now she has exactly what she’s been grasping at all this time. it’s downright poetic. the monologue/outro only did me in more. she’s spent so long being defined by other people, and here she makes that definition for herself on an album that she owns every part of. it’s perfect. 

[italianfish]

Here’s some things that I’ve overheard recently

- That bridge was created by erosion

- Holy tolino that’s a nice tree!

- Ivy! There’s the guy we don’t like (Trump in a car)

- Why wouldn’t you want to be king? You could get corgis, they’re adorable

- That’s not an allergy, that’s a life choice

- Are you that one guy? Are you DongleMc DongleSon?

- Woooo! CHEMEX!

- THE FURIES ARE COMING

- I NEED A BOYFRIEND AND A SWEATSHIRT

- I wonder what animal that is? Oh wait, it’s a log

- Just a cone, no ice cream. I don’t like ice cream

- My chicken BLT came without the chicken!

- I should have kept the headband from the tampons

- You’ve been reduced to a codename

- Hug, Marry, Exile, the Brucified sleepover game

- It’s just the toes

- Parf Tarts

- It’s crispy?!?!

- When I’m like, 60, I’m going to do drugs

- What really is life without watching Bob Ross?

- 13 YEARS!!!

- Stacy’s mom is Parker’s grandma~

- EmBruce it

- It’s not a water break, it’s a hydration break

- That bird is using a crosswalk!

- I don’t know any colleges in Massachusetts!

- What even is frick without frack

- I’m emotionally offended by your haircut

- That’s like a cat fart

- Someone just shat

- I’M NOT A CHILD PREDATOR DEANNA!!!

- I’ll sue that movie, they stole my idea (Just finished watching Hotel Transylvania 3)

- See, Amanda. That’s your noise

- My mom told me that if you sleep with your phone under your pillow you get fat

- If he were gay he’d be adorable

- He’s racist to chairs

- Flarion is my boob

- Don’t throw the ball at the referee, it’ll hurt his feelings

- Fuck yeah, your name’s Keith

- Can you deep throat a firecracker?

- Your earlobe is soft

- I would sell my toes for my old hair

- It’s like eating a period, NO

- What a funny looking animal (Giraffe)

- Giraffes are the most ridiculous animals

- Ew, keep your ebola away from me

- Look at that glass shard, that must be uncomfortable

- Do sloths have ears?

- Lip jellies freak me out

- A: I have three boobs (Sloth in shirt) B: I have uh.... Arthritis

- Instagram knows I’m lonely

- Knock on any Nonna’s door and tell them you’re Jewish and they’ll pity you and throw you a feast

- But this time it’s just the nose

- I want Granny panties

- Why do we only have confidence when our shirts are off?

- Why is an 8 year old twerking on my leg

- She has curves, you have rectangles

- I’m depressed, give me your water

- Dude! I look like a freaking lion!

- My loofa unraveled...

- I’m eating ramen with a singular coffee straw

- These walls better be soundproof (Amanda loudly singing in the background)

- I’m ready for my 4am Taco Bell runs

- Wifi in Spanish is wee-fee

- I didn’t see the body

- We should crochet together

- Yeah! I was a baby model.

- I don’t know if he likes me or if he’s just the gay best friend

- Have you pooped this week? You need to poop

- You’ve got all your limbs and you’re ready to go

- I need affection

- Diego’s eating rocks again~

- Wait. You’re instagramming my dog?

- I love letting people know what I’m up to

- It’s so funny, it’s like the ying and the yang

- You’re in my world now Grandma

- Two nipples? I don’t need nipples

- You are one gassy fellow

- You’ve got a lot of nerve showing up on our side of the bus

- I can never tell if you’re just depressed or listening to music

- I’ve got a photo shoot coming up for a calendar, for hot teachers with 6-packs. I’m October

- 38 on rotten potatoes!

- I’m hungry, I’m delirious

- DON’T PINCH MY CHUB

- I love clapping thighs in the evening

- Dude, I’m so ready to mingle

- Do you have a magician book

- Let’s taste those minerals

- The sauce is forever

- Why is everything so straight

- The right nipples don’t deserve rights

- We used to have a zebra and he was vicious

- Very important, I forgot shoes

- You look like a lumber snack

- A: I’m the only one here who looks like a hobo B: Really? Say that again A: We can be hobos together

- Woah dude! Can we take a picture of you? *Truck next to the bus*

- What were you guys doing? Bathing yourselves in the toilet?

- I want to be those people in Wii sports (The background characters that make the noises)

- Then we can have a dance party in a prison cell!

- Most of the bible sounds like gay fanfics

- It’s Frozen all over again!

- I have my metal bus on the straw

- My mom told my Dad to not be a weenie

- I’m going to build my house doors really short so you can’t come in

- Do you want to be black with me?

- Are you the black man?

- How did chutes and ladders go sexual?

- What if there was a rotisserie chicken hanging from the ceiling

- No one said Californians are smart, they’re just hippies who smoke weed

- Stop losing me in airport bathrooms

- What’s with those muscular kneecaps

- Queers doesn’t shake hands

- I’m drowning! I’m not even in the water

- Is this baptism?

- Breakfast doesn’t deserve grace

- It’s not just airport bathrooms

- Ice Age, watch it, absorb it

- I call first waz

- If you’re saying waz you’re not fancy

- I have so many bodily fluids to get rid of

- Don’t eat the lotion samples

- Why are our shoes not curved

- I’m just a fat guy so everything is delicious

- My name is Gay Fieri

- *Monotone iCarly theme song*

- I love Chipoodle

- The others are just Bat-ships

- You ever tie a banana to a tree?

- Can we have a fashion show?

- I’m gonna waz myself

- That’s the Death Star again

- Why do you have glitter on you?

- I smoke the mara-ja-wanna

- I have a gelato emergency

- This is our entertainment for the day (Watching a (probably) crazy man dance)

- I have a lot of questions about pottery

- Ever since I was a small child I have found myself goo-goo-ga-ga

- There are too many cans

- We need to stop canning beans

- Forks are way better than spoons

- I hate spoons

- Do you not want two hours of smooth jazz

- A man just stole my nut

- That’s a really bad name for a gay bar

- Is your tongue comfortable in your mouth

- I’m a penguin enthusiast

- He kept force feeding me marshmallows

- Why would you judge a girl by her neck?

- Are there shampoo bars?

- Why would you want a shampoo bar?

- Don’t burn down the house

- Halloween is my day

- You want to be hydrated?

- Are you kidding me? Right in front of my salad?

- We can still cartwheel into a fiery ball

- It’s your last day of camp, why are you trying to land a plane

- There’s a scale from dude to bro to sir

- Gotta vacuum the bird

- I’m teaching my rabbit spanish

- Ok, who got the cheese on a bun???

- I feel like a wet lasagna

- You can get a star for Jazz???

- I have 3 bottles of hand sanitizer

- A- We make children cry! B- NO WE DON’T

- A- Can I have chicken on a plate? B- Chicken on a plate? A- Chicken on a plate

- I want to go to band to get sweaty

- Proactive, it helps your face

- The cult meeting is next week from 2-7

- This is so vegany

- I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE SONG! NOT THE BEATLES!

- I have shrimp for later

- It burns my eyes, I love it

- It’s not that we hate you, it’s just that sometimes we can’t stand you

- Locked and loaded for a photoshoot first period

- This chalk keeps following me

- Kinda like a Starbucks atmosphere

- How dare she learn how to drive

- You have to sing our anthem with us

- It fits right into the squiggle

- I’m immune to hot sauce (Downs little cup of hot sauce)

- How was fake meatloaf?

- Can you train a fish?

- I haven’t worn pants in a year

- It smells like yogurt

- I have ties for every holiday

- There’s no laws on the moon, so like, you could kill someone???

- Optional means I don’t do it

- I’m gonna cook your dog!!!

- Is that where we almost went to park jail?

- We don’t condone sporting

- I want to turn orange

- Let’s make a buzfeed quiz that tells you what bridge you are

- (In Spanish) Where is the milk?

- If silence is gold, duct tape is silver

- A: So, what are you guys doing? B: Drugs.

- Young successful jewish boy

- A: I’m fun size! *Friend laughter* B: I’m just short...

- A: Where’s my medal??? B: Up your ass

- I’m a leech

- If anyone’s getting salmonella, it’s going to be me

- Does it involve backflips?

- I get to see all the little children getting confused as you disappear into a chair

- I think someone stole my balls by now

- A- A plastic knife can cut another plastic knife B- Why did you cut a plastic knife? A- Dedication!

- A- Oh my god! B- What does this have to do with god? C- *Whispering* Everything

- You’re probably going to die of liver

- I’m a five year old! You can’t have that profanity in here!

- Hey kids get in the van, we’ve got free wifi

- That’s worse than 10 babies hanging from a tree

- Are you from the piggers of creation???

- A- You’re like an old married couple B- (From the distance) He started it!

- I am a Jesus Christ in a person!

- YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MANY CHROMOSOMES THAT COST ME!!!

- I will implant a chip in your ankle! And you won’t know which one!

- I’M AN AVATAR! AIR! (Nothing happens) AIR! (Still nothing)

- When I was on a plane, we started dropping 200 feet at a time, the funny thing was that half of the plane had just gotten their drinks so half the plane was soaked

- Is Christianity a cult?

- A- Do you have experiences with holes B- (Very Unsure) Yes

- I’m her bitch, not your bitch

- He has the IQ of half a ferret

- A- Did you read the game manual? B- The gay manual??

- I want the pleasure of whipping you

- One time I poured a glass of apple cider vinegar and I drank it

- I changed my name to Johnyay West

- Too much damage done to the duner

- On a scale to 1 to Bill Cosby

- Ariana Grande is a criminal

- A- It’s sticky B- Can I take that out of context? A- No

- YOU ZIP TIED HIM TO A CHAIR?!

- It’s half past a freckle

- I need the crotch

- I don’t have imaginary friends. I don’t have friends.

- It’s like a mini fridge for pillows

- You hurt yourself with a stationary elbow

- My parents met at Burger King

- A- What’s the capital of Ohio B- Arkansas...?

- A- What do you do after school? B- Eat C- Sleep D- Cry

- Ask for cocaine, not Coca-Cola

- HOW HAVE YOU NOT TOLD US YOU MAKE STAINED GLASS?!

- You stole my meme bro

- A- Where you the one who drank chocolate sauce? B- (Seemingly proud) Yes.

- OW! MY CALVES!

- The Kardashians are necessary in our society!!!

- I feel like a homeless prostitute

- Ya wanna share a fork

- Now you have a pile of hot cheese

[jodywegner]

A bad day. (I just need to rant into the abyss of the internet)

I’ve never actually left work early for a bad day before. But I felt that today if I didn’t, I’d end up embarrassing myself and ruining all of my relationships with my coworkers or better yet end up in the HR office. It was just an accumulation of a few too many small things that have been building up for months while I’m emotionally vulnerable.

I also know that none of my coworkers will ever see this post. But even if they do, I doubt they were aware of my feelings. The worst part is that nothing is really anyone’s fault. There’s no bad guy, and that makes it all the more frustrating, and that finally came to a head today. Because I can’t chew people out for doing nothing wrong. Sorry for the long post. Lotta resentments getting bottled up.

So context. 1. My grandfather has been in declining health for a while now. This isn’t very upsetting for me. He’s in his mid 90s and lived a full life. We were all provided for and everything is taken care of. For me, it feels more like a natural thing that is now finally happening. My aunt and my father have been fighting for years over different things, but my grandfather’s declining health has definitely rekindled the flames of war. 2. I work in TV animation production, and my goal is to become a storyboard artist. I’ve made that goal clear. I’ve asked for tests but I can never get any. I’ve asked for feedback and no one has given me any. The shining star of this was my boss giving me 5 long minutes of not quite saying “it’s not good enough.” I figured he was busy and didn’t want to hurt my feelings. He did say that if he hadn’t hired our then current revisionist, he’d love to have me start as one. Since then, he’s hired 4 more revisionists who have come and gone for different reasons. 3. I don’t think I draw that fucking bad. I’ve been told my artists I work with “why don’t you have an art job yet?” which the answer is “because no one will fucking give me one when I ask and you guys aren’t in a position to.” (they mean it as a compliment but it just really keeps bringing me down whenever I fail) And there are a lot of people my age getting art jobs while I’m not and yah I’m not that old but it’s very stressful and discouraging regardless of logic and optimism. 4. My intern this last semester showed my boss a sample board and got extensive notes and feedback and was offered freelance revision work even though she’s still a junior in college. She’s 3 years younger than me and was here for 2 months. My boss literally walked into my office then started talking to her in the adjacent cube over the wall about how good she is and the upcoming freelance revisionist work. And I have to sit there quietly and pretend it’s not killing me. 5. I’m lactose intolerant. 6. I guess I’ve been suffering from job related depression for the above reasons. Nothing major, I’m not suicidal, but I’m definitely very unhappy and going to work is definitely not a fun or even neutral experience anymore. It’s hard because the correct answer to my problem is “git gud’ and we all know how NOT FUCKING HELPFUL that is. Today 1. I get a text from my parents at 6 am telling me that my grandfather has passed away. We went over yesterday to say our goodbyes expecting him to pass either today or tomorrow. We left at around 8pm and asked my aunt to call us when he passed and that we’d come over. So my parents find out that he passed away at 6 am today. From a third party that isn’t even FUCKING RELATED TO US. Apparently my grandfather had passed away 10 minutes after we left yesterday, and she decided not to let us know. We had to find out through some other person offering my father his condolences. 2. Well the two coworkers I am closest with were late for miscellaneous reasons so I kinda had to keep #1 bottled up for 2 hours. 3. When things happen, I bluster and storm for the first hour before calming down and becoming rational. So I’m sitting at my desk all morning trying my best to keep my shit together because I’m absolutely fuming and was (forbid) by my mother to retaliate. She’s not wrong but there’s a lotta stress and emotions here. (3.5. Although I was directly forbid retaliation, I still went ahead and planned it anyways because it was a mildly constructive use of my stress. DM me if you want to know how to ruin someone’s entire week and never get caught.) 4. I took some Lactaid 30 minutes before I decided to finish my leftover mac n cheese from the fancy food truck yesterday as breakfast. Yah the Lactaid didn’t work at all for some ungodly reason... It’s 9am and I’m in a lot of pain both physically and emotionally now.... 5. So one of my favored coworkers finally beats traffic and gets in so I go to talk to her about all of this. I immediately get cry-y. Which blah blah blah crying is part of grieving but I can do that later. It’s not great when I’m at work because crying opens up the floodgate of emotions and the near impossible task of re-wrangling them under control is now daunting. Emotional fortitude -50. And people just kinda didn’t notice that I was crying and upset and not very quietly recounting this horrible morning story. They kinda walked right by. Not a single person other than that one coworker (and my other favored one who came in a bit later) offered me any condolences or asked about how I was doing of if I was ok. It’d be one thing if that happened and no one was around and I regained my composure. BUT I DIDN’T. 6. That fucking intern (who’s a nice person but god I wish they’d stop existing in my life. It’s fucking petty but today is really the worst day for it so fuck it I’m saying it.) is coming in for a big storyboard meeting between all the board artists, revisionists, and supervisors. So I had to see her and pretend to smile and be pleasant and supportive while I’m emotionally compromised, grieving, pissed, and now petty and jealous all over again. So I get that out of the way and I sit back down and get to work. 7. The other coworker I like to talk to comes in. She was a former intern who also wants to be a board artist so we try to help each other in our endeavors together. She’s an optimist. She says that she’s going to ask if she can sit in on the meeting and asks if I’d like to come along. Bless her outgoing-ness that I struggle with. But as much as I’d like to... that’s a room full of people who either forgot that I want to be a board artist, don’t care, or are straight up ignoring me about it and keep doing and saying all of these unintentionally hurtful things to and near me. Also that fucking intern is there. Also I’m pissed. Also I’m emotionally distraught. So I declined her offer. Even if I could get something good out of that meeting, I’m pretty sure I would have just had a breakdown in the corner. So I didn’t want to embarrass myself like that or make people feel uncomfortable for doing their normal business. 8. So by this point I’m sure I’m going to be snippy or mean or start crying in front of people, so my goal was to finish my most important task and leave at noon. I finish, I grab my bag to leave. As I do, they all get out of their storyboard meeting and bluster past me because they are now late for seeing the storyboard trainee program final presentations. GREAT. 9. Another production coworker of mine comments on how its important for them to go in case they see anyone they’d like to hire as a revisionist. I fianlly hit FUCKIT and say “IM GOING HOME.” And so I go to walk to the elevators. 10. I chose the wrong time to walk to the elevators because everyone in that meeting is waiting at the elevators to go look at the storyboard trainee presentations and scope out the new talent. They’re in too much of a busy mind to notice that I’m about to cry and am probably glaring with white knuckles as I clutch my bag. Luckily for me the elevator is full and I have an excuse to take the next one and not theirs. A part of me wished that they would say “come on in! i’m sure you can fit!” But... stuff like that never happens with them. No one goes out of their way to include me in things. So... whatever. Maybe I’m just being negative trying to find the bad in every little thing, but this is a rant so I’m going to do just that because fuck the consequences of people liking me and thinking I know how to adult properly. 11. I’m driving home and get a message from my coworker (glanced at a long red dont arrest me pls wait till tomorrow) saying that the intern asked if I had sent her intern evaluation to her school yet. I did. A few weeks ago. This isn’t really a bad thing it’s just that I was finally fucking free and just about to not have any reason to keep it together but then BAM. Intern shows up in my life again. Right after I though it was all over. A little god damn poke. Now So I managed to drive home without crashing into buildings or furiously honking and I am now just holding my cat and typing this. I’m pretty sure none of my coworkers will ever see this. A part of me wishes they would and that maybe they’d care, because I really don’t want to have to start a conversation specifically about all of this with them.    Who the hell starts a conversation with: “By the way boss, can you please stop discussing giving the intern freelance work when I’m within earshot let alone in my god damn 6′x8′ cube?” “Hey boss, remember when I asked you for feedback and got none? Why does the intern get your full attention when you are even busier?” “Hey boss, why have you hired 4 more revisionists when you said that’d you’d love to have me as one? Did you forget? Were you just lying to me because you didn’t know how to give me feedback? Did you even care about what you say to me?” “Hey intern, I understand you are excited and this is a great opportunity for you, but can you please read the room at least a little because I want to cry every single time?” “Hey everyone, I want to be a board artist remember? REMEMBER?” ”Hey everyone... I’m an artist too.” “Hey everyone, can anyone just give me a little help?” ”Hey everyone, if I keep my purse stocked with your allergy medications, pain killers, band aids, digestive relief, girly goods and keep good snacks around and remember your schedules and try to make your jobs easier and serve as your primary IT person...will you remember that I’m here?” “Hey everyone, do you all dislike me or do you all just not care enough to notice me?” They’re all good people, but it’s not stuff that I really know how to say just out of the blue. So today... I just couldn’t stand being even in my own cube anymore. I’m not an outgoing entrepreneurial person who bugs people everyday trying to sell themselves as an artist. I’m someone who tells you my intentions, and asks for help, and then believes people when they tell me sorry they’re busy, that they wish they could help, that they’d love to have me if only not for “x”. No one is entitled to give me a job or help me. But... I don’t get why I’m the only one who gets nothing for a response when I do ask. If they were busy, that’d be fine. But since then things have gotten busier, and my boss personally worked through multiple iterations of my intern’s practice board with her. A good piece of advice I got was that your first 5 tests are awful...but I can’t even get anyone to give me my first one. I’m told to work hard and “git gud”. But it feels like I’m just bashing my head against a brick wall, and no one even acknowledges the effort. It feels like if I decide to stop doing that because I’m about to have a breakdown, I’ll be looked down on as a quitter and not passionate enough. I have passion, but all of this is 100% killing it, and I don’t want to hate art. I really don’t. But I’m starting to. It’s hard for me to enjoy it when now it’s only done to seek attention and approval that I’ll never get from these people. Today would have been difficult still, but not unbearable if not for that. My grandfather’s death isn’t a tragedy for me. He was in pain for a long time and he definitely made the most of his life. The tragedy is that despite all of this, my aunt decided that my family didn’t deserve to know that our grandfather, my father’s father (who lives literally 5 minutes away by car), had passed. I’m definitely not looking forward to the memorial service for my grandfather. Not because the death is hard to deal with but because all of the family there is. Would love to make life terrible for my aunt. Would love to be just as petty. I have so many colorful things to say and do. But ultimately none of that matters. It’s just death. Nothing changes it or adds a new flavor to it. So all of that anger and hurt just kinda snowballed today. And to top it all off as I’m typing this some asshole is beating a dog somewhere in the neighborhood and the dog is screaming and yelping. (called the police so hopefully they find them) Thanks for reading this long negative rant. I hope it helps anyone who is feeling similarly frustrated, because I dont have someone around who’s breaking down quite like I am so this is all I have. Shooting it into the internet in a passive aggressive attempt and chance that maybe someone who needs to read it will. Positive news: I watered my plants with the extra time. I hugged my cat. I will be returning with art for Mermay.

[roxannepolice]

But yah rey as a character is just so frustrating you know? Cause like, yeah sure she could be complex with a powerful arc where shes forced to come to terms with the fact she wasted years of her life on self-imposed delusions in a cathartic way, or she could be a flat piece of marketing cardboard which Disney is banking on vagina+superpowers=profit without having to go through that persnicty character flaw overcoming or the like. Because like you said, hearing shes a nobody (which ngl, her assuming she was a somebody wasn’t really ever supported in tfa, just that her family was coming back and she desperately wanted them to) is apparently the worst thing but it changes absolutely nothing, not her approach, not her demeanor , if vaguely sad is the absolute worse a character is gonna experience in a goddamn space opera then yeah, full offense ill take the l on Mary sue discourse but her character will definitely be a boring ass wash. We all make fun of whiny new hope Luke but him being a kinda nuisance to both the audience and those around him is what made is transformation into full blown Jedi knight so powerful. With Rey so far what weve got is badass perfect cinnamon roll finally get her due as such, which is clearly working for some people, but I fail to see how that isn’t spectacularly tone deaf to make a protag in this genre such. Operas about drama, not patting you on the back. Rey (assuming she remains as is) would’ve been fine as a protag s the only piece of Star Wars media we ever got was a new hope. But rn she a chosen one architype (and I know that bunch of ppl are gonna go but the series ‘but shes not the chosen one, Anakin still is, the new series isn’t trying to make her one!’ but lets not beat around the burning bush, if u got a character that walks on water and the reason why is because god said so, ur dealing with a chosen one trope and if a character is star wars is made ultrapowerful in lore breaking ways because force said so? Yeah were dealing with a chosen one.) when we had both the deconstruction and the reconstruction done. Shes a straight hero when the success of the ot rest on hitting the formula near perfect the first time. What exactly is Rey, the individual character, bringing to the table? What makes her story supposedly so important the a perfectly good ending had to be made invalid to tell it? A bunch of ppl will say heroines’ journey! But if that’s the case I gotta say, wheres all the feminine shit? Im serious, if the heroines journey is reintegrating the feminine and realizing ‘oh shit mom had a point’ there where is both the feminine skills/coping mechanism and the mom? I mean I saw some ppl arguing for leia in a ‘reys Persephone!’ meta (she isn’t, you can make a much better case for ben himself as Persephone to be quite frank, yall are focusing so much on the trees ((girl gets abducted by guy)) that u forgot the forest existed, the actually story ((girl winds up queen on the underworld, well gee whiz which character just took control of that after leaving the world of living and a grieving divine mother behind, it’s a mystery apparently) behind, it’s a mystery apparently) ((but seriously though even if we hope for dark rey does anyone assume its gonna be taking control of a dark/dead coded org at least partially at this point, do you, do you really??). but given the fact she had what, one line of screen dialogue that’s breaking ur arm with that stretch. As far as skills go I guess you could make an argument for scavenging, but if that’s the case dlf did a shit job of conveying that as female-coded. Everything about rey in tfa seems deliberately androgynous, and yeah, she had her hair let down/mascara moment, but that’s tied to her ‘failure’ on the supremacy thus something nw.SPEAKIGN OF FAILURES ON THE SUPERAMCY AND LACK THERE OF. I find it kind funny that bunch of reylo bnfs (you know who they are) are all ‘hur dur fanboys/antis are dumb and don’t get story structure.’ And then going, ‘why are yall asking how/assuming rey fucked up in throne room/climax of her story in the second portion/darkest point of her character arc? Why do you hate women/ur own ovaries so much?’ because it like walking into a prefurnished house and being told by the relator ‘HERES THE LIVING ROOM’ and having no damn couch. It’s a living room, I expect a couch here. And in a movie where it’s the low point of a character arc and they drag puppet yoda out to tell me the movie is about failure, I expect a damn failure in whats clearly the climax of the characters arc for this movie. As it stands now there are three possibilities imo. 1st, rey had no failure, she is the pure badass maid o light ppl want and every inch the boring cardboard she is accused of by fanbros, remains static, and is relegated to an also ran to benlo taking the most compelling character trophy this trilogy in 10 yrs2nd possibility and the one im hoping for, failure speech wasn’t just thematic explanation but also foreshadowing, rey fucks up big and dramatic in a way that makes her manage to stand out as unique with both her contemporaries and her predecessors(last part, if its ever to much lemme know pls im sorry i just gotta get it out) 3rd and most likely possibility, rey isn’t the main character, benlo is and that’s why his failure both moral in the throne room and logistic on criat take center stage for the last third or so of the movie. Rey is merely a pov character to tell the dramatic villain protag story they wanted and have their very marketable unproblematic Disney heroine cake too.

Ok, so this discourse kinda died down by now, but thanks to that it’s possible to maybe have a calmer look at it I’m totally not trying to justify my late response.

Anyway, the good result is that quite recently my brother, who’s not overly taken with Rey - or the sequels in general, for that matter - said something which really stuck with me as a possible crux of the problem: 

She’s neither comical nor tragical. Just bland. 

This neither comical nor tragical really struck me. And the more I though about it, the more it was appearing to me that this qualm really applies to the sequels as a whole. The thing is that DLF are essentially telling a straightforward story that they’re trying to make captivatingly convoluted. And not just make, but keep this appearance over four years. And this is... a narrative teeth crasher. Like, when you’re honest about the endgame (in the context of the most structural meanings of comedy and tragedy), you can maintain a decorum, though you can also play with it, of course, whereas when you don’t want to be honest about the endgame, you end up mixing the styles somewhat messily. You can’t break or discuss with the rules without acknowledging them, so to speak. Because the originals were honest about the happy/hopeful endgame (the first episode is title A New Hope ffs), they could allow themselves deeply tragic moments like Larses’ deaths, Han getting frozen, destruction of Alderaan, etc. Because the prequels were open about being a tragedy, they could allow themselves lighthearted comic relief for the sake of lighthearted comic relief. 

The sequels... badly want us to consider the possibility of FO winning and Ben dying unredeemed while simultaneously insisting we root for those things not happening, while appearing conscious we’re definitely not buying the former and the latter only somewhat. And it’s tiresome. Dishonest. And indeed, bland. If the story is a tragedy it will be a bloodcurdlingly real one, if it’s a comedy it will be a borderline grotesque one. 

But yeah, returning to Rey, I guess as the main character she’s a lens which focuses the above problems. A very bitter tragedy of what her parents did t her prevents her from being comfortably comical whereas whoohooos I like thats and prancing like a husky on red bull over idols and visions because it’s for children so it must be hopeful prevents her from being intriguingly tragical. So I guess the intentioned effect was tragicomism but, from pov of an engaged casual fan that is my bro, it’s neither. 

As far as Rey’s heroine’s journey lacking some of the usual elements, I blame it on Disney being... a bit too ambitious, maybe. I think they tried to make a heroine’s journey that isn’t ostentaciously seeped in traditional feminine/masculine traits, maintains the structure without what could be called accidentals. On the one hand, I would point out that hero’s journey has pretty much desexualised itself over time, we are rather accustomed to “shero’s” journeys, but on the other... maybe Disney set out on a too novel a territory and may crack their teeth on it, alongside trying to out-Vader Vader at redemption. To elucidate, “toxic femininity” in which a heroine is supposed to find herself in the beginning of her journey, in Rey’s case is uprooted from any of our usual concepts of feminine-masculine social roles (it’s space, duh). My interpretation is that Rey’s version of toxic femininity kind of exists in contrast with Kylo Ben’s version of toxic masculinity - and since the apparent focus of the story is the attitude towards the past/parent figures, toxic femininity would mean her clutching onto the past. Which is why I predict that some act of IX will find Rey inebriated with apparent success in masculine world, meaning she’ll be the one rejecting the old gods this time - and I would point out that panel in Poe comic where she shows herself more sceptical towards idolisation of past don’t mind me, I’m just expressingmy trash dreams for a proper sith lady Rey.

Then again, Rian Johnson said she already found perfect balance between Luke’s clinginess and Kylo’s rejection of the past, so... idk, maybe I’m giving DLF too much credit again.

As for the Persephone thing, I guess the rub is that this reylo reading focuses less on the traditional reading of the myth (where Demeter is the actual main character and Kore is a Princess Peach MacGuffin) and more of an interpretation of it as one of the eldest (at least in Europe) versions of story depicting a transition of a girl into a woman, making Persephone more of a protagonist. 

Like, y’know, this Persephone (D. G. Rosetti, source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proserpine_(Rossetti_painting))

I’m no expert, but myths can lose their original meanings because of power relations (anyone still remember about Dionysus, the god associated with excessive drinking, going through a very Christ-like death and resurrection?) and I think it’s possible that this is the case with the story of Persephone becoming a pre-scientific explanation of seasons changing over the year. So teah, that’s how I always understood the Persephone theme regarding Rey.

But yes, I must agree that I’m confused about Disney’s handling of the mother figure, which... Look, SW became a legend of a modern myth because of how epically Lucas handled the hero dealing with his very explicit father. So yes, I don’t understand what exactly is their game with Rey Nobody from Nowhere in this regard. It’s one thing that they had a cool idea with giving her no lineage, another that parent figures are an essential element of archetypal journeys and from symbolic viewpoint the case of a female character the biological relationship is even more crucial than in male’s. And I swear to all the ewoks and porgs in the galaxy, I do hope Disney’s idea of Rey healing the mother/daughter divide isn’t through her healing the divide between Leia and Ben. Again, this isn’t the idealistic sphere. Just... no. 

Anyway, I still maintain hope (this whole meta blog is built on hope) that Rey will indeed turn out to have a proper personal mistake which will make her stand out in the saga. I do have to admit, though, that I find your last theory very likely. I mean, even when I read all the reylo metas going oh, Rey is going to have such an exciting arc in IX, she has so much to deal with though of course it’s not going to compromise her morally, it will be sooo exciting, I just... f*ck’s sake, what you’re describing isn’t a dramatic character only a dramatised role model. It’s great if that’s your thing, but don’t claim it is space opera-worthy, in operas people drown themselves because of cursed sailors, kill over a break up, decapitate over a bad dream and get dragged to hell over a dinner, not persuade their fallen lovers to change their ways, let alone patienly wait for them the understand the error of their ways (and if they do it’s doomed to end in someone dying).

[tessatechaitea]

Scarab #4

Is this child porn? I hope this isn't child porn. I bet it's not child porn because this is a fetus.

Apparently this is why Marty was so bloody. He beat an old woman to death. Or to miscarriage.

Marty claims the old woman wouldn't stop screaming so he had to beat her. But why wouldn't she stop screaming? Was Marty raping her? Probably. As I mentioned before, Marty believes the women of this town deserve physical violence. Although he ended last issue screaming, "Look what it did to me," which doesn't make any sense in this context. Maybe he just means Pan drove him crazy by not allowing him to kill himself? So this violence is Pan's fault and not part of Marty's toxic masculinity? Marty goes on to explain the entire story to Scarab so that the reader isn't confused anymore. All the men in town were castrated by Pan who then pissed in their mouths. And afterward, either due to visions of heavenly glory or the ripest of all embarrassments, they marched into the sea and killed themselves. Except Marty had a broken leg so he didn't get to experience the beauty and wonder of castration followed by ritual suicide. But earlier this evening, he glimpsed Pan and came in his pants. I think the "Look what it did to me" while opening his pants before Scarab was to demonstrate he'd lost his balls. Then he beat the old woman to death because she couldn't stop screaming after seeing his mutilated manhood. So now Scarab feels like he needs to put things to right although it seems like the women of Whitehaven are happy with how things are going. And the men are dead so what do they care if somebody destroys Pan? I guess this is why I'm not a superhero because my first reaction to seeing dozens of naked women engaged in a passionate orgy is to think, "Things look good here! I guess I'll be off! After staring an inordinately long time. You know, to just top off the wank bank."

Meanwhile, this pornographer happens upon the scene and decides to join in. Little does he realize, it's Pan's fetuses who are in control. He's fucking the fetuses!

Scarab seeps into the ground to confront Pan and to nobody's surprise, Pan threatens to fuck his arse off when they finally meet. This is another reason why I'm not a superhero or Jesus Christ. Because I can't resist temptation. If I were Jesus Christ, Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation of Christ could probably still have been called that. But, just to clarify, it would also have been The First Temptation of Christ. Satan would have been, "Look. Knock this shit off for a handful of Fizz candy and a Snickers bar?" And I would have been all, "Ooh! Fizz!" Scarab punches Pan and Pan responds by saying, "Hey man! Why so violent?! Sheesh. Let's be civil. Come inside my lair and let's talk. Watch out for the puddles of semen. Don't touch those socks. I apologize for the stench."

Pan reveals his real name and exposes himself for the vanilla sex monster he really is.

Why would Pan joyfully claim he's the missionary position?! At least be "The Beast Whose Penis Looks Like a Backwards Woman So I Can Stare Straight Up Her Butthole as We Fuck!" It turns out Pan is dying. Probably because he only fucks in one the worst position. Scarab can't convince Pan not to die so Pan dies. Some hero. After Pan dies, the women of the town begin realizing they don't want to be pregnant with a smell goat god's disgusting progeny so they begin to perform abortions on themselves or scream until they miscarry or simply go insane. Pan told Scarab that Eleanor will be taking care of his children. I don't know if he meant because they're all going to be killed now or because they'll be born into the Net or any number of other stupid reasons I can come up with through my terrible ability to speculate. The pornographer turns out to be Sidney Sometimes, the Fortean publisher, who I completely forgot about because I read that section of this comic book yesterday. Maybe he'll become the Scarab's lead on weird things to investigate. The issue ends with one more revelation: the "it" in Marty's "Look what it did to me" was indeed impregnation. I'm not going to rule out the castration as well but that wasn't ever explicit. So Marty wanders off to ignore what's going to happen when he gives birth because it certainly won't be a lot of fun finding out. Scarab #4 Rating: C. I think Pan fucked up this entire town just to get a few more months of life. I can respect that. People act horrified at the thought of bathing in baby's blood to stay eternally young but, I mean, seriously, if that were an actual option, we'd find out a whole lot of people were way less concerned about the welfare of infants.

[shannaraisles]

‘Ships & Qs - Berenice Adaar/Cullen Rutherford

No takers so far for this one, so I thought why not just do one anyway? ~grins~ Gives me an excuse to show off this gorgeous artwork by @hes-per-ides of my adorable Benni Adaar again, too! Benni/Cullen is a Modern AU ‘ship - firefighter and EMH (emergency mage healer).  It’s long, so it’s under a cut - enjoy!

Who in your ship is the serial butt-slapper and who is constantly getting their beautiful butt slapped?

Benni is the butt-slapper, and it is purely because Cullen blushes like a fire engine every time she does it. In public, it’s a playful slap to the butt just to shock him into smiling at her in front of their colleagues; in more private moments, she’ll squeeze as well. Cullen would never admit it, but he really likes how brazen she is with her playful affection.

Who wants to be immortal and who wants to die before they’re old?

Interestingly, neither for neither. Benni wants to live her life to the fullest, with friends and love and experiences galore, but she knows it wouldn’t really mean anything if it never ended. For the same reason, she doesn’t want it to be cut short. She’d love to have a future where she and Cullen are elderly and embarrassingly in love in front of their grandchildren. Cullen is a little simpler - he’ll be happy living so long as she is.

Who smokes and who pulls the cigarette from between their lips every time they try to light one?

Cullen smokes, or at least he used to. As of their relationship, he has been trying to give up for a while. Benni takes the cigarette out of his mouth every damned time, regardless of his mood. She’s completely unflappable in the face of his annoyance.

Who always has cold hands and who is always warming them up for them?

Benni always has cold hands (and feet). Cullen would rather not have to warm them up at all, but if he doesn’t, she sticks her hands up his shirt and does it herself.

Who plays candy crush in important meetings and who elbows them in the ribs to make them pay attention?

Benni’s the one on her phone, playing a game or texting, during meetings, to the point where Cullen has given up elbowing her and just confiscates her phone before they go into handover or official meetings. He isn’t subtle about it either - everyone knows she can’t be trusted not to distract herself if she has her phone with her.

Who can fall asleep anywhere (and does) and who has to put them to bed?

Cullen’s the serial sleeper. Benni envies how he can just switch off and sleep anywhere, but he’s pretty much impossible to wake up once he’s settled in. She’s got used to having to haul him back to bed and tuck him in.

Who is the genius procrastinator who wings every test but still comes away with straight As, and who takes preparation and conscientious work very seriously?

If Benni could, she would never sit a test ever again. As it stands, she does the bare minimum, while Cullen crams and studies and write up revision schedules. They both get the same grades in the exams they have to take for work, but they approach it in very different ways.

Who takes their coffee black and who likes it with milk and two sugars, getting called a pussy by Person A?

When they first got together, Cullen drank his coffee black because he seemed to think that was how he was supposed to drink it. Once he tasted Benni’s cream and two sugars, however, he switched and ignores all the teasing from their coworkers because of it.

Who initially seems shady but turns out to be a cinnamon bun, and who initially seems like a cinnamon bun but turns out to be shady?

It’s Cullen who started out seeming shady. He had an attitude and issues, and then sort of melted all over her. Benni, however, is not the shady one in her family. For this context, though? Okay, yeah, she’s a shady cinnamon bun.

Who moans and talks with their mouth full whenever they eat good food, and who tells them to stfu but can’t help laughing?

It takes a while, but this is Cullen’s main method of embarrassing Benni in public. He knows perfectly well what his moans do to her, and her only recourse when he does this is to try and laugh it off or make him shut up. Or both. It never works.

Who gives the bear hugs and who is always sidling up to them and snaking their arms around their waist?

Benni’s the bear-hugger. Cullen pretended not to like it at first, but he can’t really hide the fact that there is something remarkably freeing about having a girlfriend who can completely envelop him in a hug and lift him off his feet in the same motion. He’s definitely the waist from behind hugger, combining that usually with a kiss to her shoulderblade, because he’s just a soppy romantic, really.

Who still buys juice boxes and fruit snacks to put in their lunch?

Benni. She never got juice boxes and fruit snacks when she was in her Circle boarding school, so as soon as she became an independent adult, they became a staple of her packed lunches. Cullen steals her fruit snacks and thinks she doesn’t know it’s him.

Who packs the other’s lunch and who repays them in sexual favours?

Cullen packs Benni’s lunch - for a healer, she is appalling at remembering to feed herself most of the time. He doesn’t consider the consistent sex life as repayment for something she wouldn’t do anyway, though.

Who leaves notes in the other’s lunch and who tells them they’re dumb (but secretly has a collection of every note Person A has ever written them)?

Cullen packs the lunches, so Cullen writes the notes. He also watches her face when she opens her lunch to see her expression when she reads them. Benni’s collection of those notes is not at all secret. She has a bright pink binder covered in multicolored hearts where she keeps everything even slightly related to their relationship preserved for all time.

Who unconsciously holds their breath the first time they kiss, and who pulls back and says, “Breathe…”?

Cullen was the one who forgot how to breathe. ~chuckles~ She took him by surprise a little, but he certainly warmed up to her. Once she reminded him that breathing was kind of important for his continued enjoyment.

Who gets arrested for a petty crime they committed by accident and who bails them out?

Is this really a surprise at this point? Benni is definitely the accidentally arrested one, and Cullen is absolutely the one who bails her out. Bonus points whenever it happens in the middle of the night.

Who grabs the other’s hand just as they’re getting out of bed and pulls them back under for cuddles?

Cullen, perhaps surprisingly. Benni’s the kind of person that once she’s up, she’s up, and there’s nothing she can do to stay in bed. Which is how Cullen ends up being the one who pulls her back into bed at stupid o’clock and cuddles her until she gives up and cuddles back.

Who gets mad about something unrelated to Person B and punches the wall, and who patches it up and kisses it better?

They follow their actual stereotypes with this one. Cullen has a lot of pent-up anger and frustration, and every now and then it spills over. And yes, he punches walls. Benni’s a healer, first and foremost; she’ll always kiss his boo-boos better. More importantly, she’ll be right there to help him through what caused the injury in the first place.

Who has the plain black phone case and who ordered one with cat ears off ebay?

Ah, now ... Cullen may have ordered the one with cat ears off ebay, but it was a present for Benni. And once he did that, he should have known his plain case wasn’t going to stay plain for long. She bought glittery pens and decorated it while he was sleeping.

Who likes to drive with the music blaring and who is too shy to sing along?

Benni can’t drive, so it’s always Cullen behind the wheel. But she’s the one who turns the music up and sings along at the top of her lungs, while he tries to simultaneously enjoy her unashamed performance and pretend he isn’t in the same car.

Who’s the fantastic kisser and who has the beautiful eyes?

Neither one of them would give me a straight answer for this one, so I’m going to go with both, on both sides.

Who has the sunshine smile and who has the seductive gaze?

Benni‘s definitely got the sunshine smile, and she’s very free with it. She likes to see people smiling, and the best way to do that is to smile herself. And then Cullen will look at her like that, and she gets adorably flustered for about five seconds before dragging him off to a broom closet.

Who gets offended by the intensity of the other’s crush on a celebrity?

Cullen! He knows it’s just a crush, he knows there’s no chance of Benni ever meeting Alistair Theirin, poster boy of the Grey Wardens, but he still gets mildly offended when he overhears her gushing with her friends about him.

Who is embarrassed that they have to wear glasses sometimes and who wants them to wear them in bed?

Cullen is so embarrassed by needing to wear glasses on occasion that he managed to keep it a secret from Benni for quite some time. He stopped being embarrassed about it when he forgot to take them off one afternoon, and wasn’t allowed out of bed until the following evening.

Who cheats on the other then immediately begs for their forgiveness?

Neither one would ever cheat. It’s just not in their natures to be able to do that to someone they love.

Who is the jealous one and asks why the other was being so flirty all night, and who is oblivious to their own charms?

This one depends on the moods they’re in going into the evening. Jealousy only really comes into play when one of them is feeling insecure about something, and it’s fairly easily talked out. However, Benni is the one who seems utterly oblivious to her own charms, which Cullen finds adorable. She’s 6′7″ of curvy Qunari goddess, and she has no idea why horny people flock to her.

Who orders a milkshake with their food and who orders a soda?

It took a bit of coaxing, but Benni finally managed to talk Cullen into enjoying his food rather than just consuming it. Which is why he gets the chocolate milkshake and she gets the soda, because he deserves to have something innocently enjoyable, dammit!

Who runs their battery down to 1% and who feels the need to charge theirs at 80%?

You know, I think Cullen’s the one who always has his charger with him and never uses it? Whereas Benni is never down to anything past 49% on her battery at all times. What can I say, she’s obsessive about being contactable.

Who has the excellent singing voice and is always singing around the house (and for Person B), but has no interest in going professional?

Cullen! Absolutely Cullen. And Benni loves it. It started with singing in the shower, then he started singing to himself while he was cleaning, then singing along with the radio while they were cooking. It usually turns into dancing and laughing in the kitchen, but she adores his singing.

Who would rather be barefoot if the setting is appropriate, and who has the huge and spectacular shoe collection (possibly also socks)?

To be honest, if Benni could go naked everywhere, she would. She’s not that fussed on clothes unless they’re spectacular, and she is incredibly comfortable in her own skin. And then there’s Cullen, who not only has a pair of shoes for every occasion, but probably has underwear specifically for every day of the week, too.

Who takes their liquor on the rocks and who likes it neat?

Cullen’s a drink it neat kind of guy. Benni, on the other hand, likes to not be hungover, so she’s all about the ice and lots of it.

And I learned a lot about them doing this!