#google image search is now failing me so i need the actual book

[lordansketil]

Found an old copy of 'George IV: A Life in Caricature' for $10 and only $30 shipping, so a giant hardcover coffee table book for only $40! And, best of all, it's second-hand, so I'm not giving money to Kenneth Baker! Win win!

[gaysindistress]

Allies or Enemies - three

disclaimer: credits to original creator/poster of image/gif. found on google/Pinterest

pairings: Dragonborn!bucky x f!reader

Summary: The reality of her cruel world is more evident than ever before when her stepfather sends her to her death under the guise of diplomacy. Y/n, the expendable daughter of a scared king, must find a way to secure her own protection among the Dragonborn and she will do that by whatever means necessary.

Warnings: nothing

Word count: 3.8k

Author’s note: there are two povs here and I didn’t add who’s they were on purpose *cue evil laughter*

Ari-Hengot means ‘my leader’ in Draconic (based on the very unhelpful google search I did so if it’s wrong it’s not my fault)

series masterlist | two

taglist: @blackbirdwitch22 @alyeskathewave @learisa @screechingfangirlaf @oh-gods-its-a-dragon @globetrotter28 @mostlymarvelgirl l @salvatoreitmeanssaviour

The words spoken by the sick and ignorant spread like wildfires; drawing close to any unattended wilting blade of grass and engulfing the field in a raging blaze within minutes. What happens now is a question on the lips of every poor farmer as they watch their life’s work burn to nothing but ash and broken spirits. No amount of water and tender hope can rebuild the life that’s been destroyed in seconds. 

Much is the same with the towns where the cowardly king’s words are as revered as their holy books. 

 “Where is she?”

A woman stared off into the distance, looking through the thick trees and towards the small village where the girl lived. The man who had spoken off to her side huffs at her silence, growing impatient with her and the cold wind that sends another shiver down their spines. 

“In a small cabin towards the back of the village, the furthest side from us,” she finally answers his question as she looks back at him, her violently red eyes blinking rapidly in adjustment. 

He tries not to flinch at the unnatural glow of her eyes but fails miserably as he speaks, “Is there anyone with her?”

It’s her turn to huff, “You couldn’t have asked me that when I was looking?” “Well I never said to look away. You did that on your own accord.”

Rolling her eyes, she looks back towards the village. 

“It looks like there are two men next to the door but that’s all I can see. We need to get closer if you want me to see more.”

“Of course, I need you to see more than that.” 

The woman narrows her eyes at him and he looks between her and the cabin. 

“You have a horse or legs if you feel inclined to actually do any work,” he gestures to both items and then points towards the village, “Get to it.”

“Haha very funny,” she sarcastically laughs, yanking her horse’s reins to the side and leading it away from her male companion. 

“Wanda,” he calls after her, his horse not trailing far behind hers. 

“No, you absolute ass. You dragged me to this cold barren, disgusting, foul…”

He cuts her off, “Wanda.” “No, do not interrupt me,” her head whips toward him, her headscarf slipping down to reveal a wave of red hair as she rips into him with her words, “You dragged me here, teased me like I’m a commoner, and then demanded things from me while still expecting me to cooperate. You’re dumber than a donkey if you think that I’m going to walk or force my horse to do so in the snow just to see a few more feet than I did before. I'm not doing it. Work with what I gave you or go scout it yourself!”

When she is done and can see past her rage, all she sees is his stupid smirk and she kicks her horse, demanding to be taken far away from his smug attitude. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he mumbles under his breath and takes off after her. 

Wanda, the red eyed and haired woman, dismounts her horse the moment she reaches their base camp and passes off the reins to a lowly soldier who grumbles at the leather that falls into his lap. Marching straight through the small camp of seven tents, she pushes aside the heavy red fabric that make up the center tent and storms in without a care in the world. 

“If you ever put me with Samuel again, I will send a wind storm into your tent and rip you from your bed the moment before you finish with a woman,” Wanda sneers at me. 

I glance up at her with a ghost of a smirk before looking back at the papers and writing something on a map that is nestled on top. 

“Excuse me,” she demands as she marches to the table, “Did you hear what I said?” “I did,” I answered without looking at her and looking at his maps. 

“Are you going to say anything?”

I don’t respond as I continue to write and draw on the map, charting out our journey home. 

“Wanda, I was joking,” her riding companion and my second in command, Samuel, calls after her as he pushes into the tent, taking note of her irritated state and my unbothered one. 

“Get out,” she nearly barks at him, pointing at the entrance as her red eyes flare and a breeze sweeps in, “now.”

Samuel shakes his head at her, ignoring her as he walks over to the table and brushing past her as he does so. She physically recoils, causing her headscarf to fully fall and scoffs at the brazen touch. She looks wild with her dirty hair spilling out around her and her sanguine eyes narrowing at him.

“Ari-Hengot,” Samuel starts, “I asked her to tell me if anyone was in the house with the girl and all she gave me was two men but wasn’t able to see anyone else. Is it really so wrong of me to suggest she gets closer if that’s what she needs to be able to see more? I feel like that’s pretty reasonable.”

“You told me that I had legs and that I could walk. In the snow.” 

The two start to argue like children in front of me, causing me to drop my quail back into the inkwell and straighten myself to my full height while I clear my throat to get their attention. 

“Wanda, Samuel,” I warn, his voice low and commanding before looking at Wanda, “Can we move tonight or do we need to wait?”

“Yes, it looks like there’s only one person with her at all times. We should move tonight before they start to notice someone’s been watching them. It’s only a matter of time before they see a group of brightly colored tents close by,” Wanda snipes as she stuffs her hair back into her headscarf and pulls her thick red coat around her tighter.

I nod  in approval of her answer regardless of her sass. I’ve never cared if she lashed out on me, disrespected me the way a soldier should never do to their captain however she wasn’t really mine to wield nor could she control me. Regardless of our dynamic lieutenant and captain, We have a long standing agreement to never use their status or titles against each other. Being the daughter of a well respected human ally to the Dragonborn and a newly appointed lieutenant, Wanda was known to have a tongue that could cut like the cold winter wind and soothe the wounds when she wanted. I had learned very quickly to stay in her good graces to protect myself from her wrath and she, in turn, protected me from the crushing weight our leaders gave me. 

“That’s not what you said earlier,” Samuel argues, growing angry that I would so casually accept her appraisal of the situation without a second thought. Him and I may have known each other for several years longer, it is still Wanda that has made any headway in our mission. 

“You didn’t ask what I thought. You assumed that because I could only see to the girl that I would say no but,” she turns back to me, “we should make our move now. We only have the snow storm for a few more days and after that, we won’t have cover anymore.”

“Samuel, you may leave now.”

He makes a noise of annoyance about how Wanda’s word always outweighs his but leaves nonetheless. Both of us will soon hear how wounded his ego is but for now it’s not our concern. 

“And your visions?” I ask once I’m sure that Samuel is gone and no longer in earshot. 

Wanda flinches but shakes it off as she occupies her hands and mind with a thread on her coat, “It has to be tonight and soon or we lose hope of getting her altogether.” Getting the confirmation that I need, I round the table and come to stand before her. Placing my large hands on my arms and pulling at them, I silently ask her to look at me. 

“You’ve done well,” I mummer to her, a smile wide on my normally frozen face. 

She wrinkles her nose at my praise but accepts it nonetheless. Peeking under my arm she spots the map that I’d been working on. Fear and anger rise up in her as she looks over what lies behind us. 

The map is of our lands, stretching as far south as the Unsea and as far north as York. The tiny village that we are encamped by sits in the northernmost mountains of York, placing us deep within enemy territory. 

A dotted line marks a route back to Devora and she gasps at where the route has to cross through. 

“Are you trying to get us killed?” she almost shrieks as she pushes under my arms and points at my handiwork which does mark a path through certain death. 

“He’s been found in their capital, ” I state as I join her at the table’s edge. 

“Well then congrats to the Coward King,” she scoffs, “but what business do we have going through there?”

I look at her like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “We’re going to get him on our way back.” “No we are not.”

“And why not?” “It’s…” she pauses, searching for a valid reason to avoid the capital city of York, Brookshire, “your personal vendetta against him is not a reason to risk all of our lives. We will be killed as soon as we are within sight of their walls. 

“I’m sure we can devise a way to get in,” I tell her while I start to cover the map, “and it is not a matter of my personal issue with their king. It is a matter of political correction.” 

“Political correction? Have you been taking lessons with Stephanos?” 

I offer her a small smirk instead of words as I rub at the spikes on my jawline, my scales reflecting the fire’s blaze at Wanda. 

“I shall ask again; are you trying to get us all killed?” 

I don’t drop my smirk but add to it with a shrug,“Isn’t that how all great military leaders die? In search of a great treasure for their people? ” 

Wanda scoffs at her captain’s undesirable need to prove that I am the best, “We are not treasures. We are people no matter what they say.”

“Ah but you Wanda are the greatest treasure that this world has to offer,” I tell her while I grip her shoulders. 

“Flattery will get you nowhere with me, you know that,” she sighs. A shiver passes through her and it’s then that I am reminded of how…fragile humans are. York is not a warm place; both in manners and climate but here in their mountain range it is far colder than anything that Wanda would’ve experienced before. Her entire body shakes when the wind brushes through the tents and pushes her way to the front when there is a fire. Some of the others have taken to giving her warm clothing or fabric they find when we pass a village. A few times she’s come to my room at night and wordlessly crawled in, hoping that she would find a pocket of warmth in the thick blankets I collect. 

Outside of the tent, I hear Sameul shouting at the others, demanding they be ready within the hour. Footsteps crunch in the snow and horses protest against the cold beneath their feet. This new country is nothing like any of our homelands and it proves to be a worthy adversary as many of us fail to conquer or even assimilate to its conditions. During our nearly year-long expedition, we’ve lost nearly half of our party and things do not look to be any better if we can’t get to her. Soon. 

“Praised be the Sfant!”

An elderly woman cries as she shuffles her dying husband out of the small cabin. A hovel really is a better term for the bare shelter that I’m being housed in held captive in. With only two rooms, one being a tiny bedroom and the other the main living quarters, I have little room to practice my ‘gifts’. Although my guards, my captors truly, have clasped thick cuffs wrists to prevent me from leaving. The first time I attempted to run, a thin red string had connected me to my guards and led them directly to me. 

I learned to ignore my desperation for freedom rather quickly afterwards. 

I try to smile at the woman and allow my body to slump when she is gone. The ache in my bones has not gone away since I woke up in that freezing tower room. Pepper, all too gleeful, explained to me that immediately following my fainting spell, the guards on Anthony’s command attacked the Dragonborn and ‘rescued’ me from the ‘bastardly demons’.  My mother had been lost in the battle but Anthony miraculously survived and managed to use her death as yet another example of Dragonborn violence towards York. It became clear with the more I was told that it wasn’t a Dragonborn sword that killed her, it had been a human one. 

I’ve grown to believe that it was Anthony’s however I have nothing but hatred and vengeance to support my claim. 

Two men, tall, pale, and unnerving, are slumped in the two chairs that were left in the cabin. The taller one, a man with cropped golden blonde hair and a beard to match, is watching her intently with light eyes that unnerve me when I meet them. The other is a dark haired man with similarly cropped hair and facial hair is picking at his fingernails with a knife. 

Jonathan, the blonde, stands and places a table in front of the door as an alarm if anyone were to attempt to break in. He tosses a piece of bread to Brock, the dark haired one who gestures towards one of the rooms with the bread as he speaks to me, “Time for bed.”

I can’t help when my eyes roll on their own at his request and instead I decide to clean the altar around me instead. Candles, herbs, and jewelry as well as a book lay around my kneeling body, artifacts from the ineffective ritual I’d just performed. The woman had begged Jonathan and Brock for days to let her husband be seen by me but the two men merely waved her off in hopes that a person with a bigger purse would come by. Finally after sitting at the doorstep day after day, I took pity on her and allowed her in before the assholes could say a thing. 

Her husband had been poisoned, the woman claimed as she wiped at his sweaty brow and held him. One look at the black veins that crawled up his neck and were threatening to overtake his face let me know enough; the man had been poisoned but there would be no way for her to heal him. I could only offer remedies to ease his pain and end his life swiftly in his sleep. Dabbing oil on his temples, lips, and behind the ears would ensure that his death would come before the woman even made it to her own hovel. 

“Y/N, now,” Brock snaps sternly, his dark eyes beginning to rage at my brazen actions. 

I quickly turn my head, the chains and strings of gems that hang from my diadem swinging as I do so, “I’ll go when I’m finished cleaning.”

His eyes flash for a moment before he stalks over to me and rips me up by my arm. He knocks over countless expensive remedies and breaks what he didn’t spill in the process but he shows no concern for it all, not that he ever did. His grip on my arm is bruising and steel- like so I can’t tear myself free. Again my jewelry and other adornments clang together in a painful symphony as I’m dragged across the room; a stark reminder that I am nothing but a living doll to these people and to Anthony. 

“You do as I say and quickly,” he grinds out through clenched teeth before slamming the door on me, leaving me in the dark and alone. 

I let out a frustrated cry as I tear the undoubtedly priceless jewelry from my body and hair. Letting it clatter to the ground, I resist the urge to break it any further by stomping it or picking it back up to throw again. I’m left in my cuffs and thick layers of robes and dresses I’m forced to wear to look the part of their saint, the Sfant of the Great Rebirth. The heavy fabric becomes suffocating and I tear them off next, shedding the black robes that were embroidered in white and gold before nearly breaking off the buttons to the outer black gown. Similar to the robe, it too is embroidered with white and gold threads but within lays the signature blue of York. A part of me is tempted to burst out of the room in my chemise and throw the foul articles of clothing into the fire but I know I would not be fast enough. The foul men outside would hear my movements before I even made them and would stop me. 

Instead, surrounded by the fineries of my captors, I crumple to the floor and cry into my hands. I cry for the people that I cannot save, the people that have died to protect me, for the people that I will inevitably fail, and for the girl that died that night. I cry for the life that I once had where I was insignificant, for the life that was stolen from me when I was bound to the Dragonborn, and for the life that I am forced to live now. I cry harder as the pendant against my sternum weeps and pulses wildly, screaming out to its other half to no avail. The pain and sadness that lives instead of its milky heart has never faded in the year since it was given to me. For an entire year I have felt my very soul being torn in a thousand directions and yearn for the one they all lead to. 

 I hear the scuffling boots of the men outside my door, no doubt muttering to themselves about how pathetic I am and I wipe at my nose with the back of my sleeve. I get to my feet and gather the reminders of my imprisonment before Jonathan opens the door. Ever the quiet and observing man, he narrows his eyes at me and then scans the room before shouldering in with Brock not far behind. It turns my stomach rotten at the idea of having to sleep in the same room as them but there is no alternative. The first week I had been with them, I tried to escape only to be met with a heaving Jonathan clad in only his pants on the other side of the window. Ever since then, he’s slept under the window and Brock slept in front of the door, leaving me with no way out. 

Brock smirks at my state, puffy eyed and barely dressed, and goes to make a filthy comment but Jonathan shoots him a stern glare and the comments stay in his mouth. I should have thanked him for his “protection” but is it really protection when he helped take my captive? 

Regardless of his part in my capture, I find myself drawn to him. He is the better looking of the two, tall and corded with muscles from years of training. When he enters a room, he has to duck to avoid hitting his head on the door frame. Since that night I had tried to escape, the sight of his broad muscular chest has not left my mind but I will it away. Instead I try to focus on the stubble of his short beard. Only a mask of stoic duty and harsh words live on his face but sometimes a small smile will take their place. I might have found myself peering at his full pink lips and then up to the pale blue eyes that hide beneath his lashes and thick brows. 

But this is not another life and now only malice lives in my heart for him. 

Jonathan jerks his head towards the small bed against the wall, silently telling me to climb into bed before Brock forces me to. Not wanting to suffer another bruising grip, I drop the items in my arms at the foot and climb in. I can feel him roll his eyes at my child-like behavior but he doesn’t say a word as he settles onto the cold floor beside me. Brock wishes us both a goodnight laced with something that makes my skin crawl as he too settles in. I quickly turn to face the wall and curl into a ball while my blood pounds in my ears. 

Sleep doesn’t find me nor does rest in any form no matter how long I lay there. It feels like hours have passed when I hear something. Beyond the fire crackling and the men’s breathing, I can barely make out the soft crunch of hoofs on snow. My breath catches in my chest as the sound gets louder and the pendant begins to grow warm, nearly vibrating in nervous excitement. I clasp my hand around it as I force my lungs to slow down and try to regain my nerves. The buzzing in my hand has to mean one thing and if I am correct, Brock and Jonathan stand no chance. 

A powerful stream of wind whips through the cabin and pins them to the ground, awakening them within seconds from the force. Instinctively I shoot up in bed and am met with the sight of a person covered head to toe in deep red cloth, leaving only their thin pale hands and unnatural red eyes to be seen. I’m so swept up in the stranger’s eyes that I fail to notice men pouring in around them. One thin pale hand removes the cloth covering her face to reveal a woman who’s beauty far outweighs any person that I've ever come across. 

A human woman stands before her. 

A human woman who commands Dragonborn Knights as if she’s one of them. 

The woman cocks her head as she looks over me on the bed and says something in Draconic to a familiar hulking Dragonborn knight beside her. Jonathan growls at their words and struggles against the red wind that keeps him pinned in place. 

With a smirk fitting for a snake, she says, “Hello Sfânt Y/N, we’ve come to take you home.”

[cinamun]

Hi! I've been wanting to make my own sim story (currently in the stages of fighting my insecurities of inadequacy) but I wanted to know what's your process between writing and talking pictures? Like, do you find poses to fit the scene you've written, or write around poses you've found? I have this image in my head of how things should look, but I can't find the poses for them and it has become very frustrating.

OMG THATS SO FRUSTRATING!!! Sorry nonny, I had to react to that last sentence first because maaaaaannnnn lol

Secondly, I absolutely want you to make your own sim story, we're a whole subculture and we're kinda dope. Plus who doesn't love a good book? But instead of a book, its 10+ pictures and a transcript from a game we all love?

My process changes depending upon what I'm going for but here's the gist of it:

Before I even open up the game (or while its loading) I'm thinking about what the scene is gonna be. Then I start googling poses. Mind you, I have a LOT of poses already so I do this moreso to see if I already have something. Will the scene require hugging, physical touch, arguing, playing a sport, etc. Then I start downloading. Now, if google turns up nothing, I use what I already have and make it work. I typically have to google if I'm doing something out of the ordinary, like that football game. As a storyteller, you'll want lots of conversation, emotion, couple and single poses. Of ALL varieties (like couple walking, single texting poses, stuff like that), you can never have too many of those. Model poses and stuff like that I rarely use (except for prom lol).

Then, I go in game and set up scenes, go into CAS and change outfits for the occasion and start thinking about dialogue. For me, the dialogue happens in Photoshop. I have a general idea of what will be said, but it isn't fleshed out until I'm looking at the screens in photoshop (when I'm doing this, I'm noticing facial expressions, body language, the mood, the lighting, etc). I don't have anything scripted, I just have the idea in my head, although I've definitely taken notes because I'll think of something I want to be said and don't want to lose it (my short term memory sucks ass).

If you get stuck on the poses that don't fit, definitely google, its helped me more than I can imagine, sometimes google images will lead me to pinterest which will have poses that don't show up in the google search. Don't let that frustrate you too much, because when all else failed, I've had two OCs just start a conversation, watch real close and if I'm quick enough with the pause button, I can get a great shot:

Above pic Indya was not posed but Darren was. I sent her to the bedroom and she walked past looking at him like this LMFAO swear! So I hit the pause button and the dialogue I was thinking of lined up perfectly.

If anything, this is a practice and I'm so glad you asked because for as long as I've been writing sims stories, I still get stuck, I still can't find what I need and only recently actually asked a friend if they did commissions because I really REALLY wanted a certain scene!! Ugh! And with the level of adulting I have to do, I honestly don't have time to learn poses so I'm so so thankful for those that know how and share them. I get how frustrating it is because the last thing you want to do is change a mood or a scene because you can't find the right pose.

This was long as hell but I hope it helps in some way! Reach out any time for tips, tricks and whatever the hell else! I love y'all and want to read your stories!

[kalihaze604]

offline is the new luxury

Monday, January 15th, 2024

offline is the new luxury.

Seriously. I just deleted all my social media apps yesterday because I was starting to feel like my phone had simply become a time wasting device, and most of my “friends” and “followers” were not actually real friends, just frenemies and lurkers that wanted a livestream of my suffering to laugh at and someone to pity and point at and say “hey at least my life isn’t as bad as theirs?”. I don’t need leeches and lurkers silently hating and judging me. Go live your fucking life in the real world like I am?! It’s not hard to live without social media. It’s not hard to live without doomscrolling becoming a full time unpaid job. It’s so easy to stare mindlessly at a screen for weeks on end while you put your life on hold. It’s so easy to curate a fake image to sell lies to desperate fools. What isn’t easy? Actually being an authentic messy human being living life and trying to heal and recover! We live in a society that tells us that the poor deserve bad health because they can’t afford better and then we place the disabled in a complicated legislated poverty trap as a eugenics program to kill us off faster. Western medicine ain’t shit. It’s a failed experiment sponsored by big pharma’s elites. Same with the education system. Why do I need to pay for a degree when I can Google the answers and do my own research online? And find rare valuable books on the street or at value village for a couple bucks that silently whisper to me and say “I was left here for YOU to find me”. Like that thought about Google came from a rather shitty community member that stated “I don’t need a degree, I have Google!” And despite this person’s otherwise highly problematic views- this one seems to hold value. You don’t need to pay to find answers, if you want answers, either you search for them yourself or they come to you. It’s as simple as that. Anyone asking you to pay? Are you paying for their time and expertise? Their knowledge? Are they really an expert or just another fraud? It’s best to seek answers for yourself instead of paying a fraud. But Instagram is filled with people claiming to be healers practicing “medicine” without a license and getting rich off exploiting peoples suffering while making miracle claims. It’s sick. There are so many narcs online and in the sex work industry. But it makes a lot of sense- like these people are obsessed with their image and trying to pretend to be something they’re not which is easily attained via social media marketing pageantry. I don’t really have much of a fear of missing out anymore on online nonsense. You know what I’m ACTUALLY SCARED OF MISSING OUT ON? living my fucking life authentically without feeling like I need to prove anything or put my life on display! I am scared I’ll miss another day of sunshine before a week of rain because I chose to stay inside staring at a screen instead. Like it’s a sunny day today. I was supposed to be doing laundry right now. But I decided -ya know what, I’m gonna write a blog post about my thoughts and then reschedule laundry and go outside and get some sunlight on my skin (after applying spf of course like a good slut) and get some fresh air. Might go chill (literally) in a park with some lunch but I haven’t really decided yet where today will take me. I feel like I like the long form of blog posts better and I think this will be the only place I’ll be posting online for the foreseeable future. I don’t really care who reads this blog, it’s not really a space where I care about marketing myself to potential clients other than …idk showing my true self and personality and maybe that is scary or maybe that’s exciting and interesting to know that I’m not just a doll, I’m a living, breathing human being with a brain and a heart! Shocking, I know.

Why do I think that offline is the new luxury? It’s about simply not caring about the lurkers, the haters, the critics. Not comparing yourself to others, focusing on simplicity, decreasing stress and anxiety. It’s the whole “I’ll see you when I see you”, being mysterious and moving in silence so that nobody interferes because they don’t even know what you’re doing or where you are and can’t access you or bother you. It’s about independence. It’s about living my life in privacy. It’s about my own inner peace and healing my nervous system at the end of the day and I can’t do that when I’m doomscrolling or feeling so much rage at every single tweet I see talking about how brutally cruel this world has become and how evil people behave towards others. It’s not that I want to look away or stop feeling those emotions, I recognize it’s not good for my mental health to constantly be reading about hatred. There is so much hatred online! But anyways. My time is money. I no longer want to waste it on social media. I want to put my phone down and go live my fucking life. and that’s what I’m gonna do. Byeee

[choicesarehard]

I keep my streams about Wolf Bride light-hearted. It’s been a hell of a year, and I think we all need a space where we can laugh together. But part of responsibly consuming problematic media is being aware of where it fails. And that’s why I think it’s important to talk about Morgan, and Wolf Bride’s troubling depiction of blindness. 

Morgan is one of the first Love Interests in Choices to have a canon disability. She is representation many players with disabilities, like myself, are eager for. But like any form of representation, writing a blind character requires research. A quick google search will lead you to numerous visually impaired voices who outline the tropes and stereotypes that harm their community. Wolf Bride has included nearly all of them. 

signal boosts are appreciated

Not All Blind People Wear Sunglasses

Morgan is shown wearing dark sunglasses from the moment she appears on screen. And there are certainly blind people who wear sunglasses — particularly those who (unlike Morgan) can still perceive some degree of light and dark, and experience painful light sensitivity. But no context is ever giving for Morgan’s use of sunglasses. In fact, they aren’t even addressed for four chapters. 

[ID: Two screenshots from Chapter Four of Wolf Bride. The first features a text box over a forest background, and reads “You glance at Morgan, and are surprised to see the dark glasses still covering her eyes.” The second features a labeled image of her sunglasses, placed over a black background, with a selectable button that reads “What does Morgan look like without these?”] What follows is a scene Pixelberry could have used to provide insight into an assistive device the sighted community may not be entirely familiar with. They could have touched on degrees of visual impairment, or why some blind individuals need dark lenses while others don’t. They could even have explained that for some individuals with visual impairments, dark lenses make tasks like reading or navigating dimly lit spaces harder.  Instead, and far more troublingly, MC is given the option to ask Morgan not to wear them anymore. And depending on your choice, the book is coded to remove the sunglasses from her sprite in future scenes. This reduces an assistive device to a fashion choice, something our MC can wish away if they don’t find it attractive. And that isn’t okay. 

Unusual Eyes

[ID: Two side-by-side screenshots from Chapter Four of Wolf Bride. The first features a text box placed over a forest background that reads “With a start, you realize her pale eyes aren’t looking at you, aren’t seeing you, aren’t seeing anything.” The second features Morgan’s sad sprite in the same forest setting, and a text box that reads “...I’ve been blind since birth.”] Morgan has a customizable sprite. But regardless of the ethnicity you select for her, she is depicted with pale blue eyes. And that troubles me. Because the stereotype that all blind individuals have cloudy, distorted, or unusual eyes is pervasive and harmful. 

Even when it isn’t tied to another harmful trope — the blind character as mystical seer or psychic — this stereotype create an expectation that blindness is something that always manifests in a visible way. And for millions of blind individuals, that isn’t the case. 

And while cataracts, trauma to the eye, and corneal infections can all cause the clouded effect most of us recognize from media, none turn your brown eyes into blue.  Heightened Senses

Another common stereotype in media is the blind character who’s remaining senses have become heightened as a compensatory mechanism, often to a supernatural degree.

[ID: Two side-by-side screenshots from Chapter Four of Wolf Bride. The first features Morgan’s surprised sprite in a forest setting and a text box that reads “I guess I sort of...feel things. Like the place on my cheek where the branch blocked the wind.” The second features Morgan’s neutral sprite in the same forest setting, and a text box that reads “I can smell the dew on the leaves, and the moss on the bark. Can’t you?] Individuals with visual impairment may learn to rely on their other senses to navigate the world around them. But they do not suddenly gain the ability to sense the location of a branch based on wind patterns, or to accurately throw a dart at a carnival game ballon based on its smell. 

[ID: Two side-by-side screenshots from Chapter Eight of Wolf Bride. The first features a text box placed over a carnival background that reads “Pop! Pop! Pop! Three darts fly through the air, striking their targets.” The second features the white MC with straight blonde hair. Her sprite is surprised, and beneath it is a text box that reads “So you did that by smell, too?]

This trope may seem harmless — after all, it gave us Daredevil, a beloved blind superhero — but it contributes to the unachievable expectations we often place on real-world individuals with visually impairments. And that isn’t fair. 

Of course, we all suspected Morgan’s abilities were due to something other than heightened senses. And that in and of itself is a problem. 

Magical / Supernatural Abilities

To the surprise of no one, Morgan exhibits these unusual abilities because she is a werewolf. But choosing to give a blind character magical abilities should only be done after asking yourself some challenging questions. As visually-impaired Tumblr user @mimzy-writing-online explains:

Your blind characters don’t need a magical ability that negates their blindness. [Ask yourself why it’s so important to you to give them one]. If it’s because they can’t do all the things you want them to do without it, then should you really have written them as blind in the first place? 

And that’s the thing. Morgan isn’t actually written as a blind character, not when it counts. Morgan shoots bullets with accuracy, runs through unfamiliar terrain, and navigates moving objects with ease. She doesn’t use common assistive devices like canes or screen readers. Her sunglasses are discarded at MC’s request. The scientific papers that fill her research facility are not digitized for accessibility or written in braille. 

Even her dreams, which should be reflections of how she perceives reality, look identical to Bastien's — which makes no sense for someone who has been canonically blind since birth. 

[ID: Two side-by-side screenshots from Chapters Five and Eight of Wolf Bride. The first features a scene from Morgan’s lucid dream. Set in a glamorous hotel, it includes visual details like twinkling lights, and patterned carpets. The color is tinted a grey-blue and the exposure on the image has been increased to an unnatural level. The second features a scene from Bastien’s lucid dream. Set in a forest, it shares the same tinted and over-exposed qualities as the first.]

Her blindness isn’t an integral part of her character. Instead, it’s a narrative device, paraded in front of the reader when it can further a central — and deeply disturbing — plot point. [content warning: discussion of discrimination and child abuse / abandonment ahead]  Morgan Was Left to Die Because She Was Blind 

And Jesus, what a plot point it is. In Chapter 11, we learn that Morgan was left to die in the woods because she was born “wrong, sickly, blind.” But the only canonical disability or illness she is ever shown to have is her blindness. 

[ID: Three side-by-side screenshots from Chapter Eleven of Wolf Bride. The first two feature the white MC with straight blonde hair’s shocked sprite in front of a forest background. The first text box reads “I don’t understand...” followed by two dialogue options “Why was Morgan abandoned?” and “Is that what you do to full moon babies? Kill them?” The second panel’s read box reads “Just because she was blind?” The third panel features  the old woman Noemi’s sad sprite, placed over a forest background. Her text box reads “If we know an infant will not survive, it is best to let it die quickly.”]

I...am frankly having a hard time thinking through the screenshot-induced fury to make a coherent argument here. To imply that blindness is an impairment so limiting that death is the only foreseeable outcome? That being born blind somehow makes a child “wrong”? The ignorance and prejudice shown in this scene is staggering. 

But equally troubling is the response of the main characters to this revelation. Yes, in fiction, bad people sometimes do bad things. But Noemi isn’t shown to be a bad person. Neither is Bastien, who knew what his pack had been guilty of in the past, and even seeks to justify it to a limited degree. 

Most shockingly, Morgan herself, who in the second screenshot below has just overheard that she was left to die as an infant because she is blind, isn’t angry or upset. She’s almost apologetic, still seeking a place within the pack. 

[ID: Two side-by-side screenshots from Chapter Eleven of Wolf Bride. The first features Hispanic Bastien’s sad sprite in front of a forest background. The text box beneath him reads “It doesn’t happen often, Clara, but...” The second features white Morgan’s sad sprite in front of the same forest background. The text box beneath her reads “I didn’t mean any harm. Especially after...what I just overheard.”]

By introducing the idea that a child born blind cannot survive, let alone thrive, without superhuman abilities, and then failing to soundly and thoroughly refute that idea through the characters we identify with, Pixelberry is unintentionally perpetuating the same false beliefs that have led to real-world instances of infanticide for centuries. And that isn’t okay. 

I don’t know where Pixelberry will go with the story from here. Perhaps in today’s chapter some of these concerns have been addressed...but I doubt it. In the meantime, I’ve also written to their support staff to express my deep concern and disappointment in the treatment of Morgan’s character. And I’d encourage you to do the same. 

Will I continue to keep streaming Wolf Bride? For now, yes. My VIP subscription is already paid for, and frankly, I want to see Morgan’s arc through. I guess the small part of me that was excited for the representation is still hopeful the narrative can be corrected. 

But I’ll be adding a content warning at the start of each stream for ablism, and that’s something I never thought I’d have to do.  Screenshots courtesy of CrimsonFeatherGames on Youtube

[chiefgiverstrawberry]

I can’t sleep. Once again. Woke up at 3:30 thinking about this man who played kind games with me. I was so excited in fact so enthusiastic too enthusiastic in fact to have finally talked to him on the phone and I got a very short and salty feedback that he was tired from his trip and needed to rest and by the way his phone was almost dying and would call me the next day. That was the same guy that sent me those flowers and in the past month sent me literally sweet nothings that had actually made me believe there was something good between us. I told myself heck yeah warned myself to never EVER believe men like these. But he was a little off from the start when I first talked to him. However I let time show his true face and yet again my gut feel was right all this time. He wasn’t his true self and I don’t know exactly why he would say “I would do anything for you” and “I adore you”. Why say those sweetest words when you don’t really mean them? I don’t understand why some people like him can be really mean and play with other people’s feelings? I met so many like him in a span of two freaking years. One would lie about his pictures to me, making excuses about not having a strong enough WiFi to have a video call somewhere in Nigeria! He posted a hunk of a man as himself and I image search the man on the photos and googled his name and voila! I found him on Instagram as a gay man in San Francisco! That man I was talking to was a fake! That was in January 2020. February 2020 I met the biggest con man of all- a master manipulator whose identity I am still trying to figure out as he cannot be found on the internet. An Italian British claiming to have a business as a renovation contractor, this man borrowed money from for up to $25,000 in a span of more than a year during a horrible pandemic. He took advantage of my loneliness and went ahead to say something that he was deeply in love with me . Yeah right- he should be because I sent him those monies that should have been used for myself. I filed for bankruptcy due to my failed second marriage (that’s the second part of my autobiography later to be written for everyone to be forewarned). But despite this financial problem, I still was able to help this man financially as he promised to pay me back. I haven’t met him and of course there were so many warning signs about online scammers out there and he was one of them! I felt flat on my face once again. I subscribed to a dating app called Match. It was a waste of my time and money because of that pesky subscription. I practically met the worse men - I expected them to be mature and committed to looking for a serious long term relationship. However, all they wanted was sex and that was it! Maybe momentary entertainment. I did sleep with three out of how many men I online. And they just turned out to be just a blob an amoeba so to speak that just occupied my precious space and time but they did not matter because they just did not care, they just wanted to sleep with me and go to the next woman they meet. They’re like man-whores! And finally this man I am talking about at that beginning of this blog was I thought a little special. He wasn’t. Little red flags here and there and I should know better now not believe what I read and hear and see. I wish I could find that man who would genuinely adore me and keep me in his arms everyday who would never want to let go because he literally wants to be with me for the rest of his sweet life! Alas! I don’t know if I can find that man. Now I have to stop looking. I’m exhausted and more jaded than ever before! I booked a flight to LA just to get a away from Chicago. I need time to regroup, to refresh and to re-energize my wounded body. I should say my prayers that once I stop looking, may God give me an oasis with an almost perfect partner in the horizon. Thank you in advance. But if I don’t find anyone out there that it’s okay to be just me and my furry friend and stay happy and grounded! As always.

[the-genesis-caveat]

i’ve been listening to way too many creepypastas.

@irrelevant-proxy-bitch as promised, my creepypasta sona/oc origin story. hopefully it meets the standards, heh

Genesis Caveat Origin

or, How I Became a Proxy

That thing is watching me again.

I first noticed it after a particularly boring day of school. I hadn’t paid attention in most of my classes, instead opting to scroll through Tumblr, mess around on Discord, and listen to Creepypasta readings on Youtube. I’m probably failing most of my classes at this point. I can’t bring myself to care. I can’t bring myself to care about much of anything these days. Fiction is the only thing that piques my interest, those made-up worlds are so much more entertaining than the boring one I’m stuck living in. That’s probably why I like writing so much, I can create and destroy whole worlds with no consequence to me, I can control everything and nothing, and it can be as entertaining as I want it to be.

I’m getting off-track. Sorry.

I’d been ignored all day, as per usual, so when I was walking home and felt someone watching me, I was confused and more than a little curious. I normally walk at a fairly quick pace, but I slowed my steps a little when I felt I was being watched. I turned to look behind me, but no one was there. The sidewalk was empty. Actually, the whole street was empty, which is what caused my anxiety to spike. There were no people, no cars, even the storefronts looked empty. I turned back forward and picked up my pace again, walking quickly all the way home. It wasn’t until I’d reached my front door that I realized the feeling of that stare had vanished the instant I’d turned around.

Since then, I’ve felt that stare every time I walk home from school.

After the first day, I didn’t bother looking back. Something told me I wouldn’t be able to see anyone if I did. I was more than a bit creeped out by the whole thing. Why was someone spying on me? How long had they been watching me before I noticed? I was half-convinced I’d been singled out because I’m a textbook wallflower- no one at school would know if I went missing, and they definitely wouldn’t care. If someone snatched me while I was on my way to school, my parents wouldn’t find out until I was late getting home, and by then their frantic calls to the school and police wouldn’t do a thing- I’d probably be long gone.

I guess I was right about that part, heh. Just not for the reasons I thought.

. . .

I’m getting ahead of myself. Where were we? Ah, right.

It’s the seventh day of me being stared at as I’m walking home from school. For the past week, caution won out over curiosity, and instead of trying to spot whoever’s stalking me, I’ve just gotten home as fast as I can. I also made a habit of texting my parents when I leave school- they know how long it’s supposed to take me to get home, so if I get kidnapped they’ll know sooner. Same as when I head to school in the mornings, because I’ve been feeling the gaze on me then too.

I think part of me always knew it wasn’t human.

Shit, sorry. Focus.

Anyway, walking home. Seventh day in a row. Blah blah blah. Only this time, my curiosity outweighed my caution. Maybe I was just so damn bored of the life I had, that I’d do anything to mix things up. Actually, I’m sure that’s what it was. Suffice to say, as I walked down the eerily empty street, this time I slowed my steps instead of speeding them up. Then I slowly turned my head to look behind me. And saw it. The thing that was stalking me. I only caught half a second’s glance before it vanished, but that was enough. The details flashed in my mind. Tall, freakishly so. Black suit, torn sleeves. Something like tentacles raised up behind it. And the face- no face. At least not that my mind allowed me to see.

Then it vanished.

I spun back forwards and sprinted the rest of the way home.

The minute I got home I locked myself in my bedroom, drawing the curtains closed and booting up my laptop. A barely comprehensible entry in the Google search bar was autocorrected in seconds, and with a shaking hand, I moved the mouse to click on the images tab. Photoshopped pictures, fanart, and blurry photos stared back at me.

“I knew it.”

Like I mentioned at the start of this narration, I listen to a lot of creepypasta readings on Youtube. So I’m familiar with some of the stories. Laughing Jack. Jeff the Killer. Lost Silver. So many others. And of course, the one that started it all.

Slenderman.

“Holy fuck.”

I was being stalked by Slenderman. Why? And why hadn’t he killed me? I needed answers. Luckily, the internet is a magnificent place. I curled up in my swivel chair and started typing away, searching up everything I could about Slenderman and his proxies. Even the stuff I already knew, I read or listened to again. I took in as much information as possible. It’s said that knowledge is power, and for some things, the more you know, the more danger you’re in. But in this case, well. I’d seen him. He knew I’d seen him. What did I have to lose?

The next time I look at my clock, it’s nearly five in the morning. I’d done about all the research my brain could handle, even with my hyperfixations running at full throttle. More info probably wouldn’t matter anyway.

I’d made my decision, my plan.

Now, to execute it.

I empty my backpack of school supplies and pulled out a Sharpie. Lowering the felt tip to the fabric on the inside of the backpack, I let out a slow breath. With things like this, power always came from belief, at least that’s what the stories told me. I’d seen him, I knew it was real, it was all real. Now that I knew that, anything was possible. The line between fiction and reality is blurring.

As an author, it’s my job to break it.

I scribble a phrase on the inside of the backpack and capped the sharpie. Then I reach over to one of the books I’d stacked in the ‘bring with’ pile and drop it in.

The book hit the bottom of the bag and vanished.

I grin and reach in, hand passing through a cool sort of veil. I feel around, grabbing the book, and pull it out. It worked. It worked! I giggle, flapping my free hand in excitement. Pocket dimension backpack, success!! I start piling the books into it, all the stories I will carry with me. Then my sketchbooks and drawing supplies. My laptop, chargers, wallet, phone, anything I think I might potentially need. Even some of the food and drinks I’d snuck into my room. My blankets and pillow. Some clothes I’d grown attached too. Hell, let’s bring my stuffed animals and collection of keepsakes too, why not? It can all fit! I empty my shelf of little knick-knacks into the backpack. Nearly everything that I can lift in my room has gone into that pack.

Now… to wait.

7am. I make my move.

I stand in front of the mirror in my room, looking myself over. I’m wearing an outfit I wear almost every day. Grey jacket with a red upside-down heart on the chest, grey shorts with red on the edges, boots, a long red scarf, and a pair of fingerless gloves. The only difference is that now, all my clothes have been altered by my newly discovered ability. I’m calling it “author powers” because that’s the closest I can get to properly explaining it. Now, my entire ensemble is fireproof, waterproof, and much harder to cut through that ordinary cloth. My boots are much more comfortable and molded to my feet. Everything fits just right.

Oh, one more thing. I pick up the blue-light glasses I’d left on my desk. I don’t even have to write on them to alter them, but it’s a fun little gimmick so I might just keep doing it. A couple lines on the glasses, and they’re suddenly much more useful. They’ll function as sunglasses now too, as well as a night vision and heat-seeking mode. And they’ll stay on my face without falling off. I push the glasses up my nose and look back into the mirror.

I guess the function wasn’t the only thing I altered. My ability has a lot to do with intentions.

Instead of glasses, I’m wearing a black mask with turquoise lenses. The mask only covers the upper half of my face. But that’s not the only thing that’s changed. Instead of my hair being the usual dirty-blonde and down to my shoulders, it’s pink, shorter and sorta spiked up- at least that’s the best way to describe it. Not spiked, that’s too sharp. But I can’t find another word right now, so we’ll stick with it. It was a transformation I hadn’t anticipated, but one that I’m sure to keep. I grin, showing teeth sharper than normal.

“This is gonna be fun.”

I hear someone in the kitchen. My dad, getting ready for the day. It’s Saturday, so he doesn’t have work. We don’t have a foster kid at the moment, so mom will be sleeping in. And my sister is still asleep in her bedroom. Perfect.

I raise a hand, seeing the black claws that now extend from the ends of my gloves. I’d been wondering how I’d get to a knife, but I guess now I won’t need one. I tighten the straps of my backpack and step out of my bedroom.

“Heh. Time to raise hell.”

~

Six days later. Thirteen days since this all started.

It took me for-fucking-ever to find the mansion. Even longer to get there with the burden I’m dragging along. But here I am. It looms over me, giving off the same creepy vibe I got from my stalker. I know he’s there, and he knows I’m here. Someone will answer the door soon, I don’t even have to knock.

The smell of blood isn’t as bad as I thought. I’m glad I made my clothes stain-proof, I’d hate to have to throw away my gloves. As I’m waiting, I tap my foot idly and inspect my fingers. I have a nasty habit of biting the skin around my fingernails, which shows even with my claws. Oh, there’s blood on my claws. Not quite dry, so I just lick it off. Huh, doesn’t taste that bad either.

Someone’s moving inside. I straighten up slightly, hand dropping to my side. I nudge one of the bodies next to me with a foot, then take a half-step away when an arm flops to the ground. I look back to the door, arms crossed (carefully, to avoid cutting myself) as I wait. The door finally creaks open, revealing someone I don’t recognize. I assume it’s one of the proxies, but it’s not one that I’ve read anything about. Only one way to find out.

“You’re one of his proxies, I assume?” Even my voice is different, with the mask. I like it.

The proxy laughs. “Fuck yeah, I’m the number one proxy bitch. But you can call me Irre.” She pronounced it like ‘eerie’, which I thought was fitting.

I snort with amusement and take a moment to look the proxy up and down. She has pale blue skin, long hair that faded from black into red, and silver eyes. She’s about my height, maybe an inch shorter, with a healthier-looking build than the almost-too-skinny twig stature I see every time I look in the mirror. She even looks to be about my age too, give or take a year. She gives off a chaotic sort of presence, but in a way that’s almost difficult to perceive. I’m reminded of my school days, blending into the background. After a few people told me my stare was creepy, even though I’d just been looking at them, I didn’t meet anyone’s gaze. Apparently I had an intensity others found unsettling, but only if they noticed me. I’m reminded of that with this proxy, only with chaotic energy instead. I smile slightly. We might just get along.

“Well, nice to meet you, number one proxy bitch,” I respond with a chuckle. “Speaking of proxies. Where do I sign up? I brought a peace offering.” An idle hand gesture draws her attention to the bodies sprawled next to me. Two bodies, carved up with precise markings, and very much dead. What remains of my parents. My claws had marked them, turned their corpses into a work of art. I’d saved the blood, bagged it and put it in my backpack. I might need it later.

Irre looks the bodies over and grins. “I think you’ll fit in just fine here. Course, that’s not my decision.” She glances back at the house. “The others will get curious soon. Last chance to turn back.”

“I’m not going back. Besides, he sought me out first,” I admit. “Took me awhile to figure it out. But I’m here now.”

She nod in understanding. “In that case… what’s your name?”

I grin, showing sharp teeth. “I am Genesis Caveat.”

[sunnyrosewritesstuff]

Day 3 Hobbit Plot Bunnies

Title: Second Chance at a Happy Ending

Summary:  Modern Reincarnation AU. Thorin is the CEO of Erebor Industries and Bilbo is a reclusive paralegal. Two people who have no business existing in the same universe as each other, and yet they dream of each other from the time of The Hobbit. So when Gandalf offers Bilbo’s services in regards to a legal problem in Erebor, well it’s a second chance neither of them thought they would be lucky enough to receive.

Possible Trigger Warnings: Thorin struggles with PTSD

POV: Switches between Bilbo and Thorin

It was happening again. The dreams. It wasn’t every night. In fact, sometimes Bilbo would go months, even years, without having one. However, every single one of them was as vivid as the last and seemed to haunt him for the rest of the day.

“You! What were you doing?” The injured dwarf commanded relying on the help of his kin to regain his footing.

“You nearly got yourself killed!” He continued taking a step closer. “Did I not say that you would be a burden? That you would not survive in the wild? That you had no place amongst us.”

At this point he was mere inches away. Close enough that Bilbo could feel the warmth radiating off of him and the glare burning into him. Not that he was able to raise his eyes higher than the dwarf’s booted feet.

“I have never been so wrong in all my life.” The dwarf sighed in relief before enveloping Bilbo in a tight hug.

Bilbo stiffened completely unprepared for the embrace, and he was certain his jaw was dropped in surprise. Being in his arms though...a smile split his face as he hugged back just as tightly amidst the cheers of the remaining company. Too soon, the dwarf stepped away looking him over as if to double check that he was alright.

“I am sorry I doubted you.” He stated, his eyes full of guilt.

Bilbo shook his head, his chest burning under that look.

“No, I would have doubted me too.” He answered. “I’m not a hero or a warrior...or even a burglar.”

Never once did the dwarf’s sky eyes waver. Never once did his soft smile wane. Bilbo would have done anything to always have that smile on him. However, the sounds of eagles screeching seemed to drag both of their gazes away, and when Bilbo looked back the dwarf was staring over the top of his head, his mouth agape. As he walked ahead, Bilbo spun around as well only to see a single mountain rising out of the expanse as if trying to reach out to the rising sun.

“Is that what I think it is?” Bilbo questioned following the dwarf to the edge of the ledge they were standing on.

“Ere.... The Lonely Mountain. The last of the great dwarf kingdoms of Middle Earth.” A familiar voice answered.

“Our home.” The dwarf breathed reverently.

Bilbo stared at him with a smile appreciating his strong profile as his eyes stayed glued on the mountain. Somewhere behind them there was something about a bird.

“We’ll take it as a sign.” The dwarf grinned looking over at Bilbo fondly. “A good omen.”

Bilbo felt his chest puff up in pride as he nodded along. He turned back towards the mountain as if it held all the answers to his problems.

“You’re right. I do believe the worst is behind us.”

Bilbo truly believed it too. And then there was a giant golden eye glaring at him.

Bilbo gasped, his hand reaching for his ring finger, yanking at something that wasn’t there. When he finally had his wits about him again, he fell back against the pillow rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He glanced over at his alarm clock with a groan. It was still too early to get up.

He fiddled with the lamp on his side table before reaching for the notebook in his first drawer. His mother had taught him to keep a dream journal back when he finally decided to confess them to her. The beat-up twenty year old spiral was full of torn and stained pages that contained detailed accounts of the odd encounters with the dwarf king he had taken to nicknaming Oak. 

Once he wrote down what he remembered of the dream, he flipped to the back where he had been working towards a sketch of Oak. The problem was, as clear as he could see him while dreaming, the image always tended to flicker away from his consciousness the moment he woke up. All he had so far was a very detailed set of eyes with a rather striking nose. When Bilbo finished eking out every last moment he could remember, he carefully put the notebook back in the drawer and hopped up to make a pot of coffee before starting his day.

Not that long ago, his morning would consist of fighting his way into a suit to get out the door with plenty of time to fight the Tube’s morning commute to one of the top law firms in London. However, the death of his mother three years ago had him re-evaluating his priorities. So he said goodbye to the spacious apartment, goodbye to the hustle and bustle of Zone Two, and retreated north to Lancashire. He would have quit his job as a paralegal completely, but Gandalf Grey, one of five partners at Maiar Law, refused to accept his resignation.

So here Bilbo was, receiving his workload via email, and going outside only for groceries and to mess around in the garden in order to preserve his image from total and complete hermit. Not exactly where he pictured himself at thirty-four that was for certain. He was in the process of seeing what exactly Gandalf had in store for him today knowing he still needed to finish putting together the information on the Proudfoot case only to narrow his eyes at the strange email in his inbox.

As he opened it and scanned the contents, he immediately had his phone in hand and Gandalf’s name highlighted before he even stopped to think of whether it was a good idea or not. Especially considering it was 6:30 in the morning.

“Bilbo! My dear fellow, how are you on this glorious morning?” Gandalf’s voice answered.

It was almost obnoxious how cheery he was.

“Do you at all remember our conversation last week?” He demanded, skipping the pleasantries.

“Of course.” Gandalf returned.

“You came all the way down to my house and said there was a job for me in London if I wanted it, and I told you I was fine where I was.” Bilbo prompted further.

“I dare say my memory hasn’t failed me quite yet.” Gandalf huffed. “I recall the conversation.”

“So then why in the world do I have an email from Erebor Industries confirming my 2pm appointment with someone named Thorin Durin?!”

“Because I thought your argument was a load of poppycock.” Gandalf scoffed. “So I took the liberty of accepting for you.”

If the man was standing before him, Bilbo would throttle him. He swears he would.

“No, absolutely not. I won’t do it.” Bilbo snarked, rubbing a hand down his face.

“Can you give me one good reason why you shouldn’t?” Gandalf pestered.

“How about the fact that I only stayed with the firm because you allowed a work from home clause to my contract? How about the fact that I’m woefully underprepared to meet with one of the richest CEOs in the UK? Oh and if those aren’t good enough, let’s bring up the fact that I’M NOT ACTUALLY A LAWYER!” 

There was silence on the line for a long moment. Long enough for the anger to slowly dissipate out of Bilbo.

“Bilbo, what you’re doing right now isn’t living. It’s existing. The world isn’t there in your little cottage amongst your books and garden. It’s out here. Come back to us. Besides, all I need you to do is gather information on what Mr. Durin needs our services for. You’re not to advise him in any way, and he’s well aware of this fact. Just this one small favor, and I’ll leave you to your precious Shire.”

Something ugly and painful welled up in Bilbo’s chest at Gandalf’s words. What did he know anyways? Bilbo was perfectly content here in his mother’s house. Perfectly content.

“I’m sorry Gandalf, but you have the wrong person for the job.” He murmured softly.

“Well…” Gandalf’s disappointment rolled through the phone in waves. “I don’t believe that is true. But if this is what you wish, I won’t press the matter. Take care of yourself, Bilbo Baggins.”

With that, he ended the call, and Bilbo numbly set his phone down on the countertop. Well that was that. He decided to pitter about the kitchen and start on something for breakfast. Probably just eggs and toast. He pretended the silence of the house wasn’t oppressive in the least.

He took a shower, dressed in something sensible, and settled himself into his study again with a nice cuppa. He fished a pair of reading glasses out of the pocket on his jumper, staring at the documents to do with Mr. Proudfoot’s case. However, he couldn’t take in the words. His mind was elsewhere. He felt relatively guilty for his behavior towards Gandalf. Maybe he could just put together some information about Erebor Industries that could help whoever was going to take his place.

He opened up a search tab on his computer and started reading through the google listings. He knew the company for it’s massive steel mill, but he had no idea they had a jewelry chain, and that they made weaponry for the military. That seemed rather ominous until he read further and found out that Thorin Durin was a war vet. Medically discharged eight years prior for a shot in the chest that nearly collapsed his lung. Bilbo winced, rubbing his own chest in sympathy.

His search switched gears at that point, and he clicked on a page dedicated to the relatively young CEO. Forty-two, only surviving family was his sister and two nephews. Seemed to be a relatively private person. He found it odd that there were no scandals surrounding him or the company. It was odd for someone seeking legal counsel outside of his own company. Then, there at the bottom of the page, was a photo of Thorin Durin, and Bilbo swore his heart forgot how to beat. 

It was him. It was Oak, the dwarf king. Bilbo would recognize the face from his dreams anywhere. How though? How was this possible? Bilbo’s fingers traced Thorin’s haunted eyes and humorless face so unlike the soft smile from his dream this morning. In that moment, Bilbo wanted to do whatever he could to relieve this man of even a fraction of his worries.

Bilbo jolted. The meeting. He had to be there. No way was he missing out now. He checked his phone. He had time. He ran into his bedroom turning on the iron as he searched the closet for one of his good suits stuffed in the back. Twenty minutes later, he was all but flying to his car. It was going to be a long drive into London. He paused to send Gandalf a quick text before peeling out of the drive like his house was on fire. He had an appointment with destiny he was not about to be late for.

[mashounen2003]

Here is the text of the video, translated into English. Seriously, check out this video, this guy is awesome.

"Conspiracy Theories" by Guille Aquino.

Posted on June 27, 2019.

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Warning: if you're influenceable, you need to watch this.

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Alright, before we start, I want us to welcome and applaud our new friends from the CIA, the FBI, NASA, the former SIDE -today, the AFI-, the KGB, Interpol, and the lazy virgins at the troll centre on Miserere Park, who are surely already watching this video because today we're gonna talk about...

Conspiracy Theories.

We all know some: the humans didn't go to the Moon, the 9/11 was a self-attack by the USA's government, Bin Laden never existed, Walt Disney is frozen, Elvis Presley is alive, the Simpsons predict the future, Marcelo Tinelli went to a famous hospital with a famous object inserted in a famous place on his body, and Dengue and Zika fever were created by Bill Gates who genetically modified mosquitoes to depopulate the Earth because it most likely was easier than making work that "Internet Explorer" bulls*** he sold us. But let's get to the news: in early 2019, YouTube modified its recommendation algorithm to avoid promoting conspiracy theories and false information. And let's stop here because I want us to become aware of the magnitude this matter took on and how this little joke of the conspiracy theories videos completely went to Hell.

Think of it this way: YouTube, the second most trafficked website in the world after Google, with over 30 million visitors per day and over 1.3 billion users -almost a third of all people connected to the Internet in the world-, where 300 hours of videos are uploaded per minute and almost 500 trillion videos are viewed per day, had to change its own recommendation system because all of us were watching too many videos denouncing that Lali Espósito is an Illuminati:

Video excerpt: [with obvious robotic voice] "Also, at the second Number Ten, she covers one of her eyes again, obviously symbolizing the All-Seeing Eye."

And I'm very sorry to tell you that, in today's world, if YouTube has a problem, we all have a problem.

Conspiracy theories are the Internet's new porn. In fact, if you filter the words "conspiracy" and "theories" by the number of views, the most viewed video has 36 million views. THIRTY-SIX! MILLION! VIEWS! That's like putting together the total populations of Belgium, Greece, Cuba and Jamaica, and then lighting a giant reefer to everyone and making them watch this video of people saying the Earth is flat:

Another video excerpt: [Channel 13 interview with Flat-Earthers, recorded in a park in Buenos Aires] "I pour water into this dish... Look, I pour water, and it stays, you see? But we pour water into the globe... and it goes down, people."

Okay, now we're gonna go over some of the most popular conspiracy theories of recent times, and we're gonna try to deconstruct the psychological profile of the average consumer of the conspiranoid world.

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We'll start with everyone's favourite...

The Flat-Earthers.

Excerpt of the second video: "This first meeting began to be announced in the groups I followed on YouTube. (And the tattoo you have there, what is it?) This is the flat Earth, the Sun and the Moon."

The Flat-Earthers basically hold the theory that the Earth is not actually spherical, and they claim Galileo Galilei was an old smoke-seller blabbermouth who often played into the Far-Right's hands, cut his hair in an old-fashioned barbershop and used the 1610 telescope mainly to bed with chicks. And I have nothing personal against the Flat-Earthers but I find it difficult to take them seriously, mostly because much of their scientific hypothesis can be explained with this blooper.

Excerpt of another, different video: "There's an inflatable pool filled with water and with two people in it, a third person suddenly jumps into the water, and the pool deforms and overflows on the other side, as one of the two previously present people also falls over the edge."

(Images from the film "Armageddon".)

The truth is that the "flat Earth" theory has one fundamental premise, and it's the same one that supports 100% of conspiracy theories:

There's a power above us that manages everything.

Governments, lobbies and other de facto powers are capable of lying on a massive scale, just as intelligence services, the New World Order and FlyBondi hostesses do.

Excerpt of the second video: "(And you can't see the curvature of the Earth from the plane.) Uh... I travelled by plane to Bariloche, and no, I didn't see it. There's some aircraft glass with a small magnification or something that changes your perspective, due to the thickness of the window, and because aircraft glass also has something."

Alright, stop, let's not turn this into "Point at the crazy assholes and laugh" either, right? Well, yes, a little- But we go beyond that! We're better than that!

Why do so many people choose to believe we're puppets of an evil system? One might say that, in the absence of a sense of real control over our own lives and in the face of the desolation of living in a seemingly random, chaotic world, believing there's an external force exerting control is, to some extent, comforting. Yes, phone the Vatican.

And according to a certain old white upper-middle-class snob who teaches at Harvard University, conspiracy theorists share several or at least one of the following features: they're paranoid, radical, extremist in their opinions; they aspire to a feeling of superiority, and basically, they feel special for possessing information that exceeds the common citizen. Yeah, it's like the row for an indie film festival.

Umberto Eco even said:

"The control syndrome invades us. When someone claims to have a secret, their strength is not in hiding something but in making people think there's even a secret in the first place."

And I didn't understand a f*** because I've never read a book in my life, but it sounds ultra-mega-hyper cool. I dare you to deny it!

So who would be the most likely to believe in these kinds of theories? People who had bad experiences in life, people in search of an answer that would rescue them from a deep existential crisis, and the most important: people in search of a place of belonging.

Excerpt of the second video: "Well, no, this opened a door for me to start thinking more, to question things, about a supposed alien invasion."

Wait, stop right there. Excuse me, but if I'm an alien and I have the power to cross the universe in a spaceship, with my own army and the ability to colonize a celestial body, I don't even waste my time invading a paper-thin planet. Give me a round planet or give me death!

And that's when the contradiction comes into play. Because if you believe in one conspiracy theory, you immediately start to believe in all of them. It's like the weed. Even the refutation of a plot fits within the plot itself: for example, if you believe Lady Diana was killed by the British Crown, you're also prone to believe Lady Diana is actually still alive.

(Woah, Mind Blown... She was totally killed anyway, sorry.)

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Good, let's move on to the next one:

The Anti-Vaccination movement.

Okay, here we come to a key point, since clearly there are the "harmless" conspiracy theories and the... rather dangerous ones. We've all heard someone say vaccines may cause autism in kids. Now, I'm clearly a specialist in absolutely nothing, and I ain't gonna explain why you guys have to vaccinate your children, so I better recommend to you the websites of any Ministry of Health or Wikipedia, so that you later visit them and find out how very important it is to inject legal drugs to your sweet little angels. And it's not to detract from any position or to err on the side of bigotry, but if you're an anti-vax and your baby coughs next to me, I swear I'll kick their head off.

(Tack! That bag of germs...)

And after all, that's why we invented Democracy!

(Ha, of course not, but...)

In fact, I dunno who gives a f*** about this but maybe someone will find it useful: I follow a pretty simple method when it comes to ideologically locating myself regarding any issue. And this is:

Always do the opposite of whatever Gisela Barreto says.

Gisela Barreto: [speaks with a flag in the background] "Vaccines show up, and they show them to us as something that heals us. Actually, they're part of our death."

(Seriously, she came this close to being in the Avengers.)

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Okay, and now let's move on to one that touches us all closely (at least here, in my country):

Hitler in Argentina.

It's the conspiracy theory ensuring that, after losing World War II, the Nazi leader, the most disgusting dictator and genocide in Human History, came to live incognito in our country. And I ask myself: what the heck did we need to shelter Hitler for? The birth of Alejandro Biondini, who's pretty much our local version of Nazism, was imminent:

Interview with Biondini in 1991 by Mariano Grondona in his program "Key Time":

Grondona: "Would you condemn Adolf Hitler?"

Biondini: "No, we vindicate Adolf Hitler."

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Okay, question: is it possible to keep a secret on such a large scale for so many years? Well, the Math says no. Seriously! I've read that a physicist at the Oxford University (Where else?) took the "humans didn't go to the Moon" theory, and then this guy created a mathematical calculation based on the number of conspirators involved, the time elapsed since the conspiracy, and the inherent possibility that a plot would fail.

For example, in the case of Apollo 11, 411 thousand NASA employees were involved, and according to the variables this physicist analyzed, the lie should have been known in less than four years; half a century passed, and no employee denied the mission. What does this tell us? Well... they were threatened and killed off, of course! It's obvious! [imitating Mirtha Legrand] Stanley Kubrick was not in the coffin! Nobody saw him. Nobody saw him!

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Gimme more!

Famous people who are actually dead.

For example, Paul McCartney. On the cover of the album "Abbey Road", he's barefoot; a clear subliminal message that the real one died and was replaced with a stand-in. (Why?!) It sounds silly, but the rumour got so big that McCartney himself had to go out and publicly deny it... Although come to think of it, he also came out to congratulate the butchers who named their butcher shop "Paul Mac Carne" ["Paul McMeat"], so maybe he's truly a stand-in and, to top it off, looks like a raisin.

Excerpt of another video: "Well, thinking of different names, someone said "Paul Mac Carne". And well, he, being a vegetarian, says the idea was very good, started laughing and sent us a greeting."

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I love this one:

The Reptilians.

It's basically the theory that there's a race of amphibian aliens [Wait for a second: aren't they called "reptilians"?] living among us for centuries and hiding their reptilian features behind human faces.

(Oh, you were telling me they're not actually aliens because they were born here?)

Excerpt of the 1996 movie "Mars Attacks!".

And who discovered this? David Icke! Or "Ique". An unsuccessful former soccer player and sportscaster. (How can you be unsuccessful as a soccer sportscaster?! All you need is a suit!) It's like believing in a religion where your Pope is Diego Latorre.

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Now, I know what you're thinking: after all, how dangerous can all this get? I mean, no conspiracy theory has someone popular to represent it, no spokesperson of ridiculous and implausible plots has reached a truly important position in today's world.

Bah... There's actually only one.

The President of the United States of America.

That's right! Donald Trump, once the leader of the most powerful country in the world, had come to power mostly by throwing out fake news and conspiracy theories. And here are some:

Barack Obama is an immigrant.

Trump: "And I just say: why doesn't he show his birth certificate?"

Global warming is a myth.

Trump: "Obama is saying all of this has to do with global warming and I say all that is a hoax..."

Gisela Barreto was right.

Trump: "At two and a half years old, the baby, the beautiful baby, went to get the vaccine. Now he's autistic."

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Okay, then... Conspiracy theories. For what? Well, in the case of Trump: influence on public opinion and accumulation of power. In the case of people who upload videos to YouTube... What do you think? A profitable, monetizable business! In fact, there's the conspiracy theory that we're actually making this video about conspiracy theories in order to have lots of views and earn buttloads of cash. (We'd never do that!)

And finally, a much deeper, inherent aspect of the human condition:

The need to believe in something.

The world is divided into two types of people: some think everything happens for a reason, everything is a sign, and perhaps there's also a magical entity organizing things for us; the other half of the people think we live in a desolate world without meaning or messages, there are only atoms randomly colliding with each other, and the Universe gives no f***s about us. Which of these two groups seems happier to you? Which one do you belong to? Which one would you like to belong to? I choose to join the conspiranoids! And listen to this, I know exactly what's going on:

The New World Order organized the Lollapalooza at the request of the Illuminati, who wanted to marketingly manage Lali Espósito, who actually wears a mask and underneath is "La Mona" Giménez, who's not actually a monkey but a reptile and has drank all the wine to get immunized against the vaccines at the request of Gisela Barreto, who was born in Corrientes just like Barack Obama, who claimed to have killed Bin Laden, who's actually alive and was driving the car that crashed that night and carried Chano Charpentier, who taught driving to Lady Diana, who was actually Mexican and was assassinated by Donald Trump, who was matched on Tinder with Hitler, who lives in a nursing home in Recoleta and has glaucoma, so he's hitting the reefers with Biondini, who is actually a hippie and a fan of León Gieco, invented global warming and, when being in a bad mood, takes a bus and goes to dinner at "Paul Mac Carne", where they invented the extra-thin Provoleta cheese, which coincidentally has the same shape as the Earth, which is actually flat!

*sigh* Knowledge is power. Quiero creer.

Soundtrack: State Anthem of the Soviet Union.

[pellicano-sanguino]

The Long Carmilla Post 2 - Return of the Long Post about the Queen of Lesbian Vampires

When Tumblr tightened its policy about censoring nudity, they targeted a long post I'd made about Carmilla, since I showed photos of Ingrid Pitt and Yutte Stensgaard with their bare breasts in it. I have now censored the post, edited it and added a little. Carmilla is my favourite vampire of all time, and I have a long history with her different incarnations, so I wanted to bring the Long Carmilla Post back.

When I first posted the Long Carmilla Post, I had just seen the movie made by the Carmilla webseries folks. The sudden fame of the webseries surprised me. I can't help but think, that there must be a lot of new Carmilla fans, who instantly think of Natasha Negovanlis when they hear that name. If this series had been around when I was a teen, damn, would I have loved it! I would have been obsessed with it. But it was not, and I can't really become as obsessed with it now as the new fans do. Because when I hear the name Carmilla, several different faces appear in my imagination. I have already been obsessed with Carmilla from a rather young age, and while I love the webseries and this movie, for me it's just one of Carmilla's newer incarnations, not her default form.

I don't want to sound like a hipster (”I liked Carmilla before the webseries made her cool!”), I just thought that as a lesbian vampire lover I should make a post about my favourite vampire, and the history I have with the character.

There are some images of blood under the cut.

When I was younger, there really wasn't any lesbian litterature around (well, there probably was but I didn't know what books to search). I had a habit of switching genders in the books I read, making everyone female so I could get the girl romances I craved for, but this always felt forced and not ”real.” I read lots of vampire stories, because I've always loved that genre, but it was very much dominated by stories of male vampires. When I read Dracula, it had a short introduction speech that talked about the history of modern vampire stories, and it mentioned Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla.

Tracking the novella down was a bit hard, considering that back then I didn't have internet and so could only read books that I found in the library and bookstores. Fortunately the translation of Carmilla was included in one horror anthology that our library had. I managed to get my hands on it, and this cover illustration was the first ”face” of Carmilla that I knew.

I can't really put a finger on why I became so obsessed with this story. It's not that great of a novella. A very basic old-timey vampire story about a monster who threatens the life of the protagonist, who is saved when the monster's true nature is revealed, after which it is hunted down and destroyed. And the lesbian subtext is very, very subtle. There was just something very mysterious and fascinating about Carmilla. She is still among the few vampires who actually frighten me. Though Le Fanu's story isn't very scary by modern standards, Laura's nightmare scenes somehow got under my skin. There's something very creepy in the way vampires in older stories used to steal blood from their victims while they were sleeping. The idea, that there exists a predator who instead of straight up attacking its prey, approaces it by a cover of flawless mimicry, is horrifying. You are being slowly eaten alive and you're not even aware of it happening, or that it's your charming friend doing it to you.

I started having dreams about Carmilla. The first ones were nightmares, but even if they were scary, they didn't make me anxious, just excited. I was scared of Carmilla, but I wanted to see her, I wanted to hear her voice. It was as if I had fallen under her spell, much like Laura, but unlike Laura, I was aware of her true nature. I knew what she wanted, I knew that in my dreams, her kisses would lead to bites. But to a young lesbian who loved vampire stories, those kisses were worth losing a few drops of blood in the dream kingdom. She was one of ”my people.” She was not a genderswapped male hero, she was ”real.” She genuinely loved women and blood, and I loved her.

Halloween isn't really celebrated where I live, but one October a friend of mine decided that she'd hold a Halloween party (which became a yearly tradition for us for many years to come). She invited a group of her friends to watch horror movies at her house, and everyone should wear a costume. There was no competition what I would go as. I had a light blue dress that I decorated with blood stains, and over it I wore a dark gray cape, on which I had painted purple flower patterns to make it resemble the coat Carmilla wears on the cover illustration. It must be almost twenty years old, but I still have that cape.

Little Pellicano as Carmilla. I think I must have been 13 or 14 when this party was held.

Then I saw my first Carmilla movie. A Hammer film called Vampire Lovers.

This is a very silly movie. Very cheesy. But young Pellicano loved it. I can still quote many of the scenes from memory. The movie follows LeFanu's novella rather loosely, but I think it's one of the most faithful adaptations. It included the basic ”plot” that Carmilla uses to get close to her victims, has the nightmares (including Carmilla's monstrous cat form), keeps the plot point that she must form her new names anagrammically and makes her killer be a man who lost his daughter to the vampire. So far I think it's the only movie version that includes the scene where Carmilla sees the funeral procession of a girl she killed and loses it completely. I've always found that scene interesting, many claim that her fit of anxiety is caused by hearing the chanting (being unholy creature who's weak to christian things) but I think it's more than that. Either she has horrifying flashbacks to her own funerals (waking to vampirism and having to claw her way out of her own grave, that would scar me for sure) or she is genuinely sorry for killing the girl and terrified of having to face the truth that her love will always end in death.

I want to interpret Carmilla as a vampire who really loves her victims, not as playthings but as real lovers. But she wasn't a reluctant vampire either, she embraced the monstrous side of herself. It was natural to her, and so it was inevitable that the women she loved would eventually die. Maybe she preferred to ignore this knowledge in the daytime, and when she was forced to see what her night time activities had resulted in, the fit of anxiety happened.

A bit off topic, but one scene from the novella that I've never seen make it into a movie, is when a wandering salesman offers his dentistry services to Carmilla, offering to file down her fangs, which sends Carmilla into a fit of rage. I don't know, I always thought that scene pretty funny. Poor guy, offering to de-fang a vampire and getting a HOW DARE YOU rant in response.

So, the next ”face” of Carmilla was obviously Ingrid Pitt. While this movie wasn't particularly explicit (all the sex happens off screen), the lesbian subtext was much less subtle, which pleased young Pellicano. And then there was the infamous bathing scene (would show pics, but gotta censor for Tumblr. You can easily find them by image googling.).

When I was younger, I suffered from being underweight for a long time (had always been a small girl). Seeing Ingrid Pitt's figure motivated me to try to gain weight. She was so beautifully soft and curved, not just her chest, but her shoulders and legs and everything just looked so smooth and nice, while I had thin, pointy, stick-like limbs with sharp edges and none of that lovely roundness. I know teens should not look at celebrities and actresses as body models, but I think having Ingrid Pitt's shape as body goal was healthy for me. I never reached that goal, of course, but I did eventually reach normal weight limits (50kg, the weight needed for blood donors).

That friend of mine, who hosted Halloween parties, watched the movie with me and knew that I was obsessed with Carmilla. One day she got me a fake gold necklace with a red plastic gem on it, shaped like a blood drop. I don't know where she got this trinket from, but it was similar to the pendant Carmilla wears in the movie, and even if it was just cheap junk, I treasured it. And totally wore it during the next Halloween party, going as Carmilla like I always did. I've lost the gold chain, but I still have the gem.

Also still have the VHS. I don't know why I've kept it, I have no VHS player anymore.

Before I move on from Ingrid Pitt, I’d like to mention a pet peeve of mine. Ingrid Pitt has done two vampire roles (three if Elisabeth Bathory from Countess Dracula is counted). The more famous role is obviously Carmilla, it’s probably her most famous role ever, period. Her other vampire role is Carla Lynde from House that Dripped Blood. Now, the thing that annoys me is that article writers tend to always mix these two up. Whenever they write something about Carmilla or female vampires in general, they always mention Ingrid Pitt’s role as Carmilla in Vampire Lovers, but they always use the same damn stupid promo photo that is from House that Dripped Blood. That’s lazy research! Do they just image google “Ingrid Pitt vampire” and fail to check if the photo they use is actually from the movie they’re talking about?! The roles don’t even look identical, Carmilla’s a brunette while Carla Lynde is blonde, Vampire Lovers is set in 1800s, House that Dripped Blood is set in 20th century. The worst one was when the museum in my home city had a vampire themed exhibition and even they used the wrong photo for Vampire Lovers. If a museum can’t get their facts straight, that’s just sad.

Here is an example of my pet peeve in action, an article about vampire movies, using the wrong fucking photo for Vampire Lovers. And yes, I know why they like using this particular photo (”höhöhöö boobs, I’m so mature”). But that just makes me more angry when they do it.

Hammer made a sequel to Vampire Lovers called Lust for a Vampire. It was...  disappointing. It introduced a male love interest for Carmilla, which in my opinion was complete bullshit. If you want to make a story about a female vampire who falls in love with a human boy, by all means make it, but don't call it Carmilla, call it something else. That being said, there were a good amount of lesbian action going on as well (this time Carmilla plotted her way into an all girls' school...) and if there's one thing Hammer rarely fails at delivering, it's the bucketloads of unconvincing bright red fake blood. I skipped the icky het sex, but always enjoyed this scene:

Yeah, Yutte Stensgaard was the third ”face” of Carmilla. When I think of that name, this blood-covered, sleepy-looking vampire maiden is among the images that instantly pop into my mind.

The third Carmilla movie I saw was titled just Carmilla and starred Meg Tilly.

This was clearly a cheaper (maybe made for TV) adaptation. Meg Tilly didn't leave as big an impression as Ingrid Pitt and Yutte Stensgaard did. But I do remember one line from the movie clearly. When Marie (the southerner ”Laura” of this version) asks about Carmilla's past, Carmilla brushes it aside by saying ”That was another lifetime. I'm much happier now.” I adopted this phrase into use. Whenever people are unknowingly asking about a painful thing from my past that I don't want to talk about, I will say it to let them know that nothing good comes from digging old wounds that have already scarred. That was another lifetime. I'm much happier now.

I do remember that Meg Tilly's Carmilla was the movie with the ”awkward floaty blood drinking pose.”

I'm sorry, but that just doesn't look comfortable. Or functional.

Then the big day came – my family got a computer that could access internet. It was an awful piece of junk that could barely be used for writing emails and visiting messageboards. It wouldn't play videos, loading images took forever and big pictures often made it freeze. However, I had access to the internet now. The first word I ever googled was obviously ”carmilla.” Among the sites I found back then, was one about a German play, starring a woman called Ulrike Schneidewind.

The site had big, beautiful promo photos of the play. They took forever to load, but I returned to watch them often. There was something captivating in Ulrike Schneidewind's look for Carmilla. I'm not usually a fan of vampires with the white face+red lipstick+loads of mascara-look, but hers was beautiful, like a painting, like a creature that really wasn't human.

I don’t know if they used fake blood in the actual play or if it was only for these promo photos, but it looks incredibly pretty and surprisingly convincing.

I have no idea what this demon looking thing is supposed to be - Carmilla’s monstrous cat form maybe?

Ulrike Schneidewind became the next ”face” of Carmilla, even though I have never seen her act. All I've seen are these promo photos of the play (I have heard her speak. There's a couple minutes long news clip on Youtube about a vampire lifestyler event she attended). Supposedly there exists a VHS of the Carmilla play they performed on a Romanian tour, but they must have only made a handful of those, since I've never seen it on sale anywhere. I check the German eBay every now and then in faint hopes of finding a copy but I've come to accept that I'll probably never see this show. But still, Ulrike Schneidewind's look left an impression on my mind.

Around those times I started to draw comics in which my self-insert character shared a house with six vampire roommates (Carmilla, who owned the house, Brunhilda from Wake Not the Dead, Teresa from Last Lords of Gardonal, Ruthven, Dracula and Francis Varney) and an OC named Charity (Brunhilda's donor and girlfriend). I mostly pulled the designs for my vampires out of thin air, really (well, Dracula was as he was descrided in the novel, with fuzzy moustache and bushy eyebrows) but Carmilla's design was based on Ulrike Schneidewind's look, with blue veins shining through the white skin and lots of dark makeup and black hair.

Sad part is that it's been over ten years and my drawing skills have not improved at all. This is not ”art” this is doodles. But drawing these was super fun back then, so I shouldn't feel ashamed of them now, I think.

Besides these comics, I wrote some fanfics too. But I'm very glad I never put those anywhere public, because damn, they are embarrassing to read now. It's because my fanfics were actually serious business, full of drama and sturm und drang, and they turned out rather cheesy. Also full of, ahem, erotic content written by someone who had no personal experience on the subject yet. The comics on the other hand were just made for shits and giggles, and I think they've survived the test of time better (by which I mean, that I have actually shown my comics to other people, because occasionally I think I made a fun one, while I've never shown my fics to anyone and have already burned the worst ones.).

When the wonderland of internet was opened to me, I gained access to all the books in the world. I was no longer restricted by what our library and book stores had, I could buy stuff that wasn't published here. So obviously I got a copy of Kyle Marffin's Carmilla sequel. It's not a very good book. Quite silly, childish and badly written (men really shouldn't write about lesbians, they know nothing about them and enjoying an erotic scene becomes rather hard when you imagine some gross het dude writing it while drooling on his keyboard). But it was the first time I read a rather explicit lesbian sex scene, and that got me very excited, because finally all the subtext was thrown to garbage. Here it was, black on white, proof that Carmilla was into girls, not just their blood but their bodies as well. My late discovery of lesbian erotica may seem weird now, when anyone can gain access to mountains of lesbian smut in the internet, but back when I lived with my parents I never dared to look up smut on the home computer, in fear that they'd find out. Until I moved out, my only access to lesbian erotica was books, and Carmilla's Return was the first one I got.

Rant time: I might also add, that annoyingly enough I had been encountering explicit het sex scenes in books, movies and TV years before. And while I never intentionally searched naughty stuff on the net, I had bumped into het porn there accidentally as well. I wonder if heteros understand how freaking frustrating this kind of thing was. Their smut was all over the place, in every book, every film and all around the net, pretty much rubbed to my face, while MY stuff was so obscure I didn't even know where to look for it. And then they had the nerve to claim that we are ”flaunting it” and ”making it all about ourselves” whenever there was a gay sidecharacter somewhere. Grr. Grrr. Rant over.

I bumped into some incarnations of Carmilla later too, but none left an impression on my mind like these early ones did. The worst Carmilla I ever saw was the main villain in Lesbian Vampire Killers. That movie is easily the worst vampire movie I have ever seen (maybe even the worst movie I've seen, period), it's an ”erotic horror comedy” that is neither sexy, scary or funny. It is nice that when they were thinking of a character to star in a movie about lesbian vampires, they chose Carmilla. But the movie is such utter garbage, I'd rather they'd left my favourite vampire out of it. Save your money and sanity -  don't watch this movie. It's bad.

I feel like a lot of time people want to take Carmilla's name and make a whole new character with it (like Reimi Urara's character in Vampire Succession, who is named Carmilla but isn't even a vampire at all). These ”Carmilla in name only” kind of characters don't count, and frankly speaking I'm not that fond of them. I guess it is nice that people want to pay respect to the legendary vampire by naming a character after her, but my opinion still is that if you don't want to tell the story of a lesbian vampire, call your character something else. If you take away either of Carmilla's two passions; that of women or that of blood, the character loses her trademark characteristics and stops being ”real.” You don't make a Godzilla movie where the king of the monsters isn't allowed to have his trademark atomic breath, and you don't make a Carmilla who doesn't love women and blood.

Now that I have said that, you probably guess my opinion about the (*spoilers*) ending of the webseries's third season. Yeah, I wasn't a fan of humanizing Carmilla. So, I went to see the movie with rather low expectations, and was pleasantly surprised. This movie is more Carmilla than all of the webseries's seasons together.

But let's speak about the webseries first. I was very positively surprised by it. One day I ended up googling Carmilla again (was probably looking for fanfics) and discovered this little gem. It had very little to do with Le Fanu's original, but what it decided to change was so good that I didn't care. And it had still lots of little nods to the novella. Carmilla's anagrammical names, the nightmares, they freaking included Laura's governesses De Lafontaine and Perrodon (I would totally watch a spin-off that just follows the adventures of Laf and Perry) and there's even a scene where Carmilla is watching over sleeping Laura, looking a bit similar to a famous illustration of the novella. Also, the theme song ”Love will have it's sacrifices”, is a direct quote, from a scene where Carmilla is describing to Laura the night when the curse of vampirism was passed on to her (of course, she doesn't out right say it, but the reader knows what she's talking about).

”--- I was all but assassinated in my bed, wounded here," she touched her breast, "and never was the same since."

"Were you near dying?"

"Yes, very--a cruel love--strange love, that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood.---”

I'm not going to say the webseries doesn't have its flaws, a little lazy writing here and there, plot holes and inconsistent characters occasionally (I feel sorry for Danny. She just can't win.). But it was incredibly entertaining, it made me laugh and it made me care about what happens to everyone. And like probably a lot of the fans, I adored the fact that they didn't dance around the lesbian thing. When Laura understands that Carmilla's advances weren't blood-related, her reaction isn't any dumb ”But we're both girls, how can this be?!” Whoever understood to make Laura gay too was a genius. When she gets all flattered and blushing after learning that a beautiful girl finds her attractive, it's such a relatable feeling. It's the lesbian romance I so wanted as a teen! Not stories of a predatory lesbian seducing dumb clueless het girls to the dark side, but girls experiencing all the usual things female leads in romantic stories do, only with another girl as their love interest.

The first season of the webseries is my favourite. The second was pretty good, too. Third, in my opinion, a bit unnecessary (here I think you could see the writing starting to slip). Then came the movie.

They could have completely abandoned the vampire theme and proceeded with the heroes' further adventures. But they didn't and thank goodness for it. They return to draw inspiration from the original source; the novella. We have nightmares, and I admit they actually made me uneasy, reminding me of that creepy feel Laura's dream scenes gave me in the novella. The image of Carmilla laying down in a coffin filled with blood is also from the story. There's a scene where Carmilla is forced to reveal her vampiric nature, and it really reminds me of the scene where it happens in the book.  

And they freaking quote it, probably being the first adaptation ever to use straight quotes from the book. ”Die together so they can live together”-speech isn't quite right word-to-word, I think, but still, it's an identifiable quote. I used to be able to quote the ”You are mine, you shall be mine”-speech in English, Swedish and German, but have now forgotten most versions (yeah, I read Carmilla in several languages when I was younger. I was freaking obsessed with the story). I still think it's the most memorable quote from the novella. Also, the book-reading scene with ”Girls are caterpillars who undergo several larval stages before becoming butterflies”-speech is also from the novella. I think the only famous quote missing in this movie is the ”I've never been in love and never shall unless it should be with you”-speech.

As a fan of the ”old” Carmilla I adore how they pay homage to the origin respectfully, while still making their very own story. Again, teenaged Pellicano would have been all over this stuff. But I had to make my lesbian vampire stories from other versions, and while those also have their flaws, I adore them just as much. I am just happy that Carmilla lives on, not forgotten and left in the shadow of the countless more famous male vampires (seriously, where the fuck are all the female vampires? Ones that are actually main characters in their story and pass the freaking vampiric Bechdel test?)

Carmilla lives on, indeed. She has made a new comeback in Netflix's Castlevania series. I watched the first season and liked it quite a bit. It was a bit too gorey for my personal taste, but that wasn’t a dealbreaker. I liked the art style and was interested to see where they take the story. When I heard rumours that the second season would have a character named Carmilla, my reaction was pretty much “Carmilla is part of the Castlevania franchise?! Why did no one tell me this before?!”

Of course I’m always eager to see new adaptations of my favourite vampire. So, I did some research to know which games she appears in, made some popcorn and sat down to watch some Let’s Play videos (I’m not a gamer and don’t own game consoles so the only way I get to experience videogames is through Let’s Plays in Youtube.). But I ended up rather disappointed. Carmilla in the Castlevania games is cartoonishly silly at best, downright insulting to the original at worst.

So, after seeing how poorly the games treated my favourite vampire, I looked forward to the second season of the Netflix series with mixed feelings. I was hopeful, thinking that they can't go anywhere but up from here. And I was pleasantly surprised. The character design made her a bit silly looking with eeeevil face and her body language is very femme fatale-ish (I don’t really see the appeal of the femme fatale trope, but then again, it’s usually written for male audience), but they didn't put her in an ugly, revealing costume and the camera focused on her face instead of her breasts.

It's disappointing that she isn't a lesbian in this one (she makes one joke that hints she might be into girls too, but because Dracula's war council is mostly one big sausage fest, we don't see her interact with other females much).

I am so, so happy that the makers of the show understood that Carmilla is not some boot-licking notice-me-senpai Dracula fangirl (an aspect of her I loathed in the games). The only reasons for a lesbian vampire to ally with a male one are if they have a common goal (such as defending themselves against vampire hunters) or if she has no other choice. Netflix Carmilla is the latter. Dracula is a powerful, dangerous monster, who is also very much insane and therefore unpredictable. When he summons Carmilla to join his senseless crusade against humankind, Carmilla can't afford to refuse and take the chance of the mad vampire king killing her for disobedience and making a warning example of her. She has to go to war she herself deems pointless (well, Godbrand had a point in his ”If vampires kill all the humans, what will the vampires eat?”-speech.). So she begins to plot to prevent the genocide (she actually wants humankind to keep existing as opposed to wiping them from the face of the Earth, remind me again why she is the one every fan hates while they love Dracula the Kill All Humans-madman? Oh right, she assaults one of the male fan favourite characters on screen and is therefore deemed much more evil than Dracula who slaughters countless innocent humans offscreen without mercy. Got it.).

I love that she uses cunning instead of seduction when putting her plot to gain freedom from Dracula's servitude in action. Admittedly, some of the scenes where she's manipulating Hector seem a bit seductive-ish, but are still nothing compared to the ”Oh great master let me lick the blood off your sword!”-bullshit from the games. Also, was I the only one who could see right through her mindgames? Every time she complimented some man, I was shaking my head ”Lady, even blind Reetta can see that you are full of shit.” So it really surprised me when Hector fell for it. How do you fall for such an obvious trap?

I like that Carmilla's reasons for her schemes are reasonable and based on common sense and war strategy rather than just being evil for the sake of being evil. That being said, the scene where she beats Hector felt unnecessary, the man was tied up and would have gone with her even without getting his ass handed to him, because he's a prisoner and has no choice. I understand that it's an important scene symbolically, tying back to the scene where the animal-loving Hector compares vampires to cats, to which Isaac points out that cats play cruelly with their prey. It's a turning point for Hector, who abandoned humanity and tried to find a new family among monsters only to realize that they are, well, monsters. What did you expect voting for Leopards Eating Peoples' Faces Party would bring to you? Anyway, I understand that the scene is important to the plot and character growth, but I can't help but feel that making Carmilla assault a fan favourite character so brutally was the writers way of making sure the audience hates her. I have a feeling that they want to be sure the audience hates her, because they have something disgusting in mind for her for the third season.

I already talked about this in my ”If you have to kill female vampires on screen, please don't make it look like a rape”-post. I am worried what they are going to do with Carmilla. She's obviously going to get killed, but I hope they allow her to go down with dignity. Lords of Shadows 2 already gave us a really disgusting, rapey killing scene (I’ve only seen one killing scene with an even clearer “lesbianism can be cured by rape”-theme, in Lesbian Vampire Killers where Carmilla is impaled by a dick-shaped sword), we do not need another. I don't want Hector or Isaac or Dracula impaling her body slowly and looking downward at her in disgust as she painfully dies. Yes, Dracula will be coming back, it's Castlevania after all. I'm also worried of the possibility that instead of killing her, they make Dracula force her back into his servitude, which would also be super gross.

I am happy that the character of Carmilla lives on, that new fans get to experience her with these new incarnations, but whenever a new Carmilla surfaces, I am also a bit worried at how they are going to handle her character this time. I will have to wait and see how the third season of Castlevania ends, until then it is useless to speculate.

[wackygoofball]

Moodboard: Jaime x Brienne - Lord of the Rings AU

One would think that peace was finally agreed upon after the One Ring was cast into the fires from which it was born. And for a long time, Middle Earth was a place of peace and prosper. And yet, it did not last.

Lines that were believed to last a thousand years failed against the ravages of time, dried in the sand and gave rise to those driven by darker forces, by vanity, ambition, and a thirst for power.

The Targaryens assumed dominion after they discovered a way to tame one of the gravest calamities Middle Earth ever saw: dragons. They took over the city of Gondor quickly and continued their rule for many, many generations. Not all were bad kings and queens. Some were good. Some not so good. Some were worse. Far worse. And then, the Dance of the Dragons came to pass, which marked the ongoing decay of a family that had since grown too obsessed with the purity of its own blood. The dragons died, one by one, but the Targaryen’s power remained intact.

After that, the madness spread much faster, festered like an old wound, only fate deciding over it by no more than the flip of a coin, or so people started to believe.

Then Aerys Targaryen took the throne. Over time, he had his pyromancers develop an even worse weapon than the Fire of Orthanc, which once was used during the Battle of Hornburg, a green liquid soon to be known as wildfire. And Aerys, as fate would have it, used it against the people he was sworn to protect, burned them alive, just to hear them scream for a mercy that never came.

However, the Age of Dragons came to an end when a young member of the Army of Gondor, who was part of the chosen circle Aerys coined his own Kingsguard, a man by the name Jaime Lannister, drove a sword through Aerys’s back.

And where one reign ends another begins.

Robert Baratheon took the throne after him and became the new King of Gondor. Sooner rather than later, the crimes of the Mad King became no more than a whisper in the dark, stories told to children to scare them into slipping under the covers to finally go to sleep.

Though it was never just a story.

It was only the beginning of something that should keep every man, woman, and child, every elf, every dwarf, and every hobbit in all of Middle Earth wide awake.

Because history, or so it seems to be, is always on the verge of repeating itself.

However, our story begins elsewhere, in the small town called Bree, at an establishment known as The Prancing Pony.

Disgraced wizard Tyrion is sipping his second jug of ale, waiting with all patience he can muster. Not that he prides himself being on time. He found that it’s much easier to assume that he is on time for the sole reason that he will appear wherever he sees fit when he sees fit.

That doesn’t mean he likes to be kept waiting, however.

“I suppose I am right to assume that this is not your first?”

Tyrion smiles as he turns around to see the familiar bulky, blond figure stride past him, one hand always resting on the pommel of a sword.

He smiles. “It’s been a long time since we last saw one another, Lady Brienne.”

“You are not supposed to call me that in public, Wizard.”

“My pardon, Captain Galladon,” he laughs. “But rest assured, no one around here cares for who you are. The Prancing Pony is not exactly the place known for offering shelter to the most virtuous of Middle Earth. They would be fools to report to anyone. Even more so because it would be quite a ride all the way to Gondor.”

The mannish woman studies him for a long moment, but then sighs as she unbuckles her sword and sets it down next to her with a thud.

“So. Why did you have me summoned all the way to here, Wizard? You know I don’t like to leave my post for longer than is necessary.”

“Acutely aware, yes. You are very devoted to your service, of that there is no doubt.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to make you an exception offer, in fact.”

“Offer.”

“Yes, to take part in an adventure. You were chosen as one of the members of my company in pursuit of no less than saving Middle-Earth. This mission will involve a great deal of fighting. There is no guarantee of success. And no one must know about it. But of that I assure you, Captain, this is a quest of utmost honorable intentions.”

“And what is that mission supposed to be, may I ask, Wizard? I have a city to defend, and no time to undergo some adventure.”

“I need your help to gather some items across Middle-Earth. My brother over there will join us as well. And some more fellows,” Tyrion informs her. “I know he tries hard to look broody and mysterious, but he is a jolly fellow once you get to know him a bit.”

He waves at the cloaked man, who gets up slowly to stride over to the table. Brienne tilts her head as light illuminates the man’s features even under the hood, and she cannot help but gasp, “The Kingslayer?”

Jaime grimaces at the strange fellow he watched from across the room at his brother’s behest. “Is that… is that a woman?”

“Oh, I see you two will get along wonderfully! The fascination, I see, is absolutely mutual.”

“You must be joking, Wizard. Or perhaps you had some mushrooms on your way here, but I can only repeat it: I have better to do than this.”

“In fact, you do not. None of us do. The fate of Middle-Earth, I am afraid, is at stake here. Why else do you think would I bring my brother into this? Even more so since he is actually… dead.”

“For most to know,” Jaime huffs. And inside his heart, he only ever adds to himself.

Brienne remains reluctant to undertake this quest, but the Wizard is the only one, well, now one of two, who knows of her secret identity. And she cannot be revealed as anyone other than Galladon, or else all sacrifices she made to become part of the Army of Gondor will be in vain.

In the safety of Tyrion’s chamber, he reveals the details of his motivation to undertake this adventure.

“Rumors have since become more than rumors. The cast out daughter and only living heir to Aerys Targaryen, Daenerys Stormborn, is out to reclaim what she believes is her birthright.”

“She wants to be Queen of Gondor.”

“Yes. In the dead fire pits of Mordor, a new and perhaps even darker power rose in the shape of the Night King who turned to ice what once was blazing fire. I have seen the Mount Doom, I travelled there and saw that the fires died out.”

“What?”

“The Night King and Daenerys Stormborn made a contract of sort, it appears, wherein he will revive three dragon eggs from stone, her children, as she says, so she may rule in Gondor. In exchange, she is meant to help him free the armies of the fallen in Mordor so they may march westward.”

“And how do you think can that be stopped?”

“I found a scroll, an ancient text that says that there is a way to defeat the eternal ice with the aid of two magical swords made of Valyrian steel, which, combined, will form Lightbringer, a blade that may slay the Night King and thus end his reign of terror before it can even begin.”

“That still leaves one question, though: why do you want me for that quest? I can’t help you with those magical items better than any other knight with my skills could.”

“Because we need to get into Gondor, as part of what is needed to forge Lightbringer. You will well know that I am no longer… wanted there… for a number of reasons. And to make matters worse, as you will know better than anyone, there is the issue of the barricade no one without your consent will move past. And if I may add, you have proven more capable than most knights I ever came across. You have a particular set of skills I believe vital to the success of our mission, Lady Brienne.”

At last, Brienne agrees, under the pretense that they will speak the truth to one another and that the Kingslayer, a man of questionable morals to say the least, remains as far away from her as is possible.

“I am doing this for the greater good, not for either one of you.”

To disguise her identity as Galladon, she has to travel as herself, cutting short the hair she used to wear longer as Captain of the Army of Gondor, a sensation that since grew unfamiliar to Brienne, who barely recalls the girl who liked wooden swords as much as she liked to twirl in a dress around her father’s halls, unaware and childishly uncaring of how ridiculous she looked to the rest of the world.

Jaime, for his part, has to come to terms with travelling with a man, pardon, woman, of the Army of Gondor, a responsibility and honor he had to abandon in favor of his own life when he became the Kingslayer. Though no one, safe for Tyrion, would even begin to comprehend why he did it, why he slew the Mad King.

It was his finest act, but history, more often than not, will forget its heroes until its concluding chapters.

And so, the small company begins its quest in search for Lightbringer, a journey that soon proves dangerous as the undead Dothraki riders of Daenerys Targaryen start to chase them as well as the items they are so desperate to obtain.

Along the way, they meet a great many interesting characters, some friendly, others not so much, sharing, in fact, in a great adventure. Yet, the impending threat of the Dragon Queen as well as the Night King may not be the only danger ahead of them, as secrets and lies may put them apart when they must stand together.

As their success hangs by a single thread, so does the fate of the world, just about to flip the coin another time.

And one can only hope that history, for once, does not forget itself and learns from its errors, so there may be a tomorrow, so there may be light.

Note: my knowledge of the franchise is mostly limited to the movies, not the books, alongside some good old google search. No offense to LOTR fans intended in case I mess up timelines and such! Also... sorry for weird edits, I could not resist. :)

Additional Image Sources: The Lord of the Rings trilogy & The Hobbit trilogy.

[fromtheringapron]

Reviewing Google Audience Reviews of WWE Raw

One day, I searched Monday Night Raw on Google for reasons even unbeknownst to me. What is it out of boredom? A sliver of hope that I’d discover Raw had been canceled and replaced with a rebooted Prime Time Wrestling? I don’t know, but I did stumble upon some treasure in my aimless journey: Google Audience Reviews of Raw! This is apparently a new feature to Google. It allows people like you and I to give our baseless, uninformed opinions on any TV show at any time. Isn’t the Internet great?

But, man, if that wasn’t good enough, the real treasure are the reviews themselves. Such an intriguing look into the jaded, ignorant, infuriating, hilarious, and naive group of folks who make up WWE’s fanbase. The thing about the Internet, for better or worse, is that it gives a platform for all sorts of people to voice their opinion, even on a silly wrestling show. However, I’d like to think that also means it gives me the platform to give my opinion on their opinion. There are countless Raw reviews in this new section of Google, but here are a few that have really caught my eye:

Review #27: The AEW Truther

Okay, I’ll start out by sussing out some bullshit: All Elite Wrestling has a lot of promise, but we need to stop with the narrative that they’re going to be breathing down the WWE’s neck right out of the gate. They haven’t even put on their first show and don’t have a TV deal. In addition, outside of the diehard Internet fans and wrestling journalists, the casual fan who tunes into Raw isn’t going to give a fuck about AEW, mainly because they haven’t heard of it. So, no, “us Pro Wrestling fans” aren’t just going to turn to that. Again, it’s got potential and the excitement over it is valid, but I can’t help but feel the ones hyping it up the most will be the first to voice their disappointment when it doesn’t match even a fraction of what they expected.

With all of that said, I absolutely agree with this fan on the egregiousness of WWE putting an actual fascist dickhead and a convicted rapist into their Hall of Fame, especially when there’s inexplicably more rage geared toward the likes of Koko B. Ware and Torrie Wilson getting inducted, two people who were company employees for several years. I’m usually never the one to be up in arms over who gets inducted in the Hall of Fame because it’s a fake hall for a fake sport at the end of the day, but I do earnestly believe the focus should be on the workers who clocked in the hours.

Review #352: The Benoit Truther

Look, even though many will disagree, it’s okay for you to think Daniel Bryan sucks. Everyone has their own unique set of faves and least faves, and yours is no less valid than anyone else’s. Consensus in the fan community is boring, anyway.

Well, within reason anyway, because I’d like to think that the probability of Chris Benoit rotting in Hell right now is something we can all agree on. And, honestly, still listing Benoit as the greatest of all time feels wrong on a deep, moral level. The dude did some great things in his career, yes, but that’s besides the point. That doesn’t cancel out that he murdered his wife and son. Is defending the name of someone who will always be associated with a slaughtered family a hill you really want to fight on?

I don’t want to make it seem a comment like this is totally uncommon. It’s not much different from the various Youtube comments that linger on to this day about how Benoit should be inducted into the Hall of Fame. It still infuriates me though, largely because it feeds into the cesspool of Benoit apologia that’s only swelled since that fateful weekend in 2007. It’s the kind of language that words Benoit as ultimately a tragic figure whose poor brain was so damaged that his crimes were practically unavoidable, an explanation that wouldn’t be afforded to him if he weren’t so widely regarded by smarky wrestling bros. And that’s a bunch of shit.

The first half of the review isn’t so bad, which is why I didn’t include it. Maybe this fan just isn’t aware of what they’re saying, and I get that, but intentions can only go so far with me. The scariest part though? 78 people found the review helpful. The most of any review I’ve seen so far.  Fuckin’ balls.

Review #658: The Anti-Bullying Crusader

Okay, so I kinda love this. It’s such a nice reminder in a time where kayfabe is long dead and the WWE roster, regardless of heel/face alignment, will post pics with each other out in the town on social media that there are still fans who eat all of this shit up. I obviously know nothing about this person, but the review conjures up the image of an ornery senior citizen sitting ringside ready to whack those dastardly heels with a cane.

The bullying argument is hilarious. We all know WWE’s anti-bullying campaign Be A Star is hypocritical, disingenuous bullshit, largely birthed out of Linda McMahon’s failed run in politics. Like, how many of their storylines involve and normalize bullying? How many times have guys like The Rock and John Cena engaged in homophobic and misogynistic taunting on-screen over the years? There’s nothing wrong with informing your younger viewers on why bullying in real life is wrong, but you can’t deny the WWE has certainly trivialized the message. 

And it’s even more ridiculous when someone stops watching because of all the fake, scripted bullying on the show. Honestly, my friend, what are you expecting out of a wrestling product then? Bobby Roode vs. Heath Slater in a Handshake Contest? Also, this fan has been watching since they were five years old, no doubt remembering a more innocent time where Steve Austin would give the Stunner to someone who completely didn’t deserve that. 

I also love the last line. After bashing Raw for its bully-enabling platform, they at least concede that the ladies are killing it right now. Such an encouraging feminist stance!

Review #229: Everyone Had Fun and Nobody Got Hurt

Um, what? I do get what this fan is saying in the sense that, yes, wrestling is just play fighting, but “their policy of no violence”? Do I need to bring up that Roode/Slater handshake battle for the ages? And the wrestlers may sell fake injuries on TV all the time, but they can sustain injuries that are real as hell and carry some severe long-term repercussions. I feel like I’m being way too harsh, but come on now. If you’ve been watching since 1999, you’ve probably seen plenty of guys take unnecessary, dangerous bumps that shorten their careers. Watching even a small bit of Mick Foley’s work can probably tell you that.

With that said, I do love the refreshing stance in loving wrestling because it’s scripted. People usually hate on wrestling for that reason alone, largely because the business has historically gone to great lengths to make it seem real. It’s great to have someone who basically says, “You know, this is scripted bullshit and I’m okay with it.” And honestly, girl, I feel the same way. We need more people like us.

Review #44: Garden Variety Lapsed Fan #15,712

This certainly is a take. I can’t comment on what it’s like in other fandoms, but so many wrestling fans love to engage in the narrative that WWE stopped being good a long while ago and the current product is the worst it’s ever been but because they’re such a diehard fans they’ll stick around until it gets good again and willingly suffer through all of it due to the innate goodness in their hearts or some shit. The only difference in each of these arguments is that the date of the tipping point always changes. There are fans right now who’ll tell you WWE circa 2019 is the worst it’s ever been, but this was also true back when I first started traversing the Internet back in 2004 or 2005 and fans then were talking how that period was the worst it had ever been.

With that in mind, I find this review a bit refreshing in the face of Attitude Era truthers, who’ll repeatedly tell you wrestling, and seemingly all of pop culture, stopped being good sometime in the early 2000s. But as we near closer and closer to 20 years since that era ended, the more likely we are to see younger fans who have no real nostalgia for it. It won’t be long until we hear more and more talk about the salad days of Roman Reigns, Braun Strowman, and others. This fan says WWE stopped being good in late 2016/early 2017, which obviously wasn’t that long ago. I’m sure some fan daydreaming about the days of the Monday Night Wars would find this completely baffling.

It begs the question: when exactly was the WWE good? Has it ever been good? I don’t think any one answer is the sole correct one. None of these perspectives are invalid by any means. Every era of wrestling has had its pros and cons, and everyone has their own set of standards on what they consider a quality wrestling product. And, to be real, I don’t want to excuse the WWE of their shitty, at times irredeemable, booking and creative decisions. Fans have been driven away for numerous, valid reasons over the years.

But there’s that whole notion that nothing can ever bring back those early feelings of puppy love, and that’s just as true with the way wrestling first captivates you. Perhaps the constant frustration with present day WWE is partly the inability to rekindle what first hooked you in and never being able to recapture that feeling because, well, it’s simply not possible.

Review #788: Our Savior

We are not worthy of this review. A true diamond in the rough. So many good bits here. The prediction that Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose will compete in a “no holes barred” match, which sounds like something out of a Sean Cody wrestling parody. The invention of the “Tang Tang Championship” featuring the likes of “Pop Scott Dulson and his tag team partner." The referring of Baron Corbin as not only “Barry Korgan,” but also as “Brian Corbin.” The passage that merely says “All winding.” The passage that merely says “Bobby Lashley.” That it’s not even a review of Raw, the TV show, but more a comment on the existential nihilism we feel in the Trump era.

I’ve never seen a review that makes no sense but also says so much. I love the complete refusal of punctuation marks. Who needs those archaic things, anyway? It just makes it all one, continuous thought, a stream of consciousness that could make even James Joyce blush. I also dig the experimentation with spacing. After all, why do we need to just one space? Why not several? It’s important to give our thoughts the space they need and this fan understands that. Plus, it makes for poetic reading.

The review ends on an ominous note, with the fan’s last message being “My name Matthewhisee.” Is this meant to be a threat? A coded message of some sort? Matthewhisee, if that is your name, please let us know more. The world needs your insight. Oh, and to the 7 people who found this review helpful, you are the vanguards of the resistance. Bless you all.

[austennerdita2533]

Hi, Ashlee! I didn’t want to mess up our messaging system (and I’m going to get back to you soon, I promise!), but I have questions and I think you’re the right person to ask. Plus, I *think* you won’t mind if I start a discussion on Neruda’s work, haha. I’m going through Cien Sonetos de Amor and I’m a intrigued with the repetitive use of some words, especially “clavel” (not sure what’s the word in english for that lol). Any thoughts on the meaning of it? I’m curious about your opinion!

Hello Luiza. :) First, take your time getting back to me. Our messages to each other are long since we have so many different things to chat about, and it took me an abominable amount of time to get back to you last time so you’re totes fine. Second, I AM SO EXCITED you came to talk to me about Pablo Neruda!!!! It gives me a justifiable excuse to pull out and peruse this poetry anthology of his again: 

^^This book is one of my most prized possessions. No joke. It’s his entire collection of poetry in both English and Spanish. If there was a fire set to my bookshelves, and someone told me I could save merely a handful of titles,  (theoretically speaking only, because if this happened I would bawl my eyes out for years and years; probably forever lol), this collection would be one of the first things I’d grab.^^

Not only is Neruda one of my favorite poets of all time, but I often revisit his work whenever I’m in need of inspiration for my own writing or want to remind myself how figurative language and imagery - in either language - can be wielded in beautifully creative, unconventional ways. Just ahhh! His words fill me with an equal amount of warm and fuzzies and writer’s envy. The way he strings phrases and meaning together never fails to astound me. I mean–wow! Consider me an unapologetic Pablo Neruda fangirl. 😂

His100 Love Sonnets, in particular, are among those which I flip through over and over again, partly because I’m a romantic sap who aches to read about love in whatever form, and partly because his portrayal of it is so evocative and poignant that I shiver any time his words leap up at me from the page. 

As for your question, I believe “clavel” translates most closely into “carnation” in English? (That’s what I found through a Google search, anyway.) So that’d be a fragrant, double-cloved flower which is usually pink, but can come in other color combinations, too. I think a more archaic meaning of the word “carnation” has something to do with the color of flesh as well. Which makes me think of Sonnet XXVII in “Morning,” specifically, since he describes nakedness pretty heavily in it. More than that, the color pink/light red radiates from that poem and can be linked to both meanings of the word, imo. He describes a naked hand which is “transparent” with “apple paths”; he talks about naked wheat, which can be light-toned and/or burnt with color; he adds vibrancy to the bed of a nail in these lines: “naked you are as small as one of your nails,/ curved, subtle, rose until day is born”–and all of these bring to my mind the imagery/meanings of a carnation, if not the word itself. I love how - through his descriptions - he often alludes to certain words like that, too, without using them overtly, because when you look closely, you can see how he saturates his stanzas with them figuratively instead. It gives them more substantial weight and gravitas, you know? Carrying them from stanza to stanza and sometimes even from poem to poem. 

(Does the translation “carnation” make sense in the context of where the word “clavel” appears for you, since you’re reading in Portuguese? I hope I’ve hit upon the right-ish one.)

You are so right that Neruda weaves certain words or images repetitively throughout these sonnets, though! It’s one of my favorite things he does, actually, because not only is it purposeful but it’s done in a way that progresses from section-to-section, from “Morning” to “Midday” to “Evening” to “Night.” To be more specific, flower and earthen/nature words feature prominently in his love sonnets and what’s fun for me is recognizing how he flourishes them differently in each subsequent section in an effort to demonstrate the stages or cycles/maturation of love. 

For example, throughout “Morning,” Neruda overloads your senses with pomp, vivacity, pungent aromas, and thirsty sensations in order to highlight the “spiky passions” (III) “where sweet aromas rose and trembled” (IV) “hunting for you, for your hot heart” (XI) that often take place at the beginning of a new love - also known as the “morning.” It is the kind of love that is raw and visceral, pervasive, “fiery with its long red rays” (XVI) because it’s brand spanking new and has no roots as of yet. So almost everything he describes is budded and sweetly fragrant. The sensations feel fresh in this section; they taste pure and powerful, overwhelming ever part of you. 

Then, in “Midday,” he hits you with love’s growth and maturation where everything is still green yet will be “fed [to] the roots” (XXXIX) so that “little by little [love] turned into fruit” [VLVII]. There’s a lot of water and ripening imagery in this section, sodden with feeling, so as to show the ways in which love continues to change or continues to twine like roots which will “cast two shadows that flow together” (XLVIII). This is where and when and how love sinks into a heart. Twisting and curling into knots that cultivate in a way that’s meant to make it more and more difficult to snip them away.

Once you arrive in “Evening” after this, therefore, Neruda adds a profound sense of tangledness and “eyes squeezed shut in love that doesn’t help” (LV) because he wants you to feel how - at this point - love is embedded in you like poison. Living inside you in a way that “can no longer [be protested]” (LIX). In addition to that, he makes sure to mention some darker emotions like sorrow, troubles, stubbornness, etc. which attach themselves well to the fading of the day and to the expiration of a love that’s comprised only of “honeyed contentment” (LV). I think it’s meant to show how love is not always happy or delightful, that it can feel like a “craw full of teeth” (LIX) sometimes, but how that’s okay because those feelings are part of love’s fire. They belong to the heart’s wasteland as much as the sweet and savory stuff, too. 

Finally, in “Night,” I think his sonnets arrive in a place that’s equal parts reverie, reflection, and ethereal revelation. There’s this restless, intangible quality to the way Neruda describes love in this section, whereby he combines imagery of nature in a way that neither entombs aged sentiment in the life it’s already lived, nor bleeds it dry once the fruit’s been consumed in death. Love is “stubbornly transient” (XCVII), “waiting, raining on the dust, eager to erase even absence”(XCI). It’s eternal and beyond the corporeal at this point. Something that cannot be given up because it’s passing in silence “through an eternity of buried mouths” (XCV). It exists beyond the bonds of time, seeps back into the earth when it’s empty only to rise again and again and again. Effectively living multiple lives. Suggesting it never ends. 

It’s fascinating to me to see the variety of ways Neruda manipulates, or puts into startling context, words like “blood,” “fruit,” “earth,” “kiss” etc. and how he embeds the theme “love is a flower” no matter the stage - Morning, Midday, Evening, or Night - you find it in. In short, I LOVE IT SO STINKING MUCH.

Do you have any favorites, btw? It’s always hard for me to choose specific sonnets because I always fangirl over perfectly phrased lines, but as a whole, I love love love Sonnet XI ad Sonnet XXVII from “Mornings” and Sonnet XC from “Night.” The last one in particular gives me MAJOR Klaroline feels any time I read it, especially now with how they ended in canon. *cries* 

I’ve been dying to find a way/excuse to use this one in a fic:

I thought I was dying, I felt the cold up close

and knew that from all my life I left only you behind:

my earthly day and night were your mouth,

your skin the republic my kisses founded.

In that instant the books stopped,

and friendship, treasures restlessly amassed,

the transparent house that you and I built:

everything dropped away, except your eyes.

Because while life harasses us, love is

only a wave taller than the other waves:

but oh, when death comes knocking at the gate,

there is only your glance against so much emptiness,

only your light against extinction,

only your love to shut out the shadows.

ME:

Anyway, sorry for my longgg and effusive analytical spewing which I could continue for goodness knows how long, but I couldn’t help myself because I mean–PABLO. NERUDA. IS. AN. INSPIRATION. Sometimes I want to curl myself into the complex splendor of his words and never crawl back out, you know?? I read his stuff and I experience this rampant instantaneous fluttering that morphs into a squealed, “Omg, why can’t you write like this?”

What are your thoughts about Neruda in general? Or about his Love Sonnets specifically? I’m so curious to hear what you think of his writing even if you disagree with me, my analysis, or my estimation of him, completely. Like I said before–totally unapologetic fangirl here haha. xx

[prudencepaccard]

you probably posted about this before but your recent posts had me thinking. like. were convicts actually allowed to modify their uniform? how strict were the clothing restrictions anyway, would they get in trouble if they lost/added an item?

I have SO many questions about uniform protocol and have so far only had tantalizing glimpses of what I’m sure is a wealth of information somewhere. While bagne documents are sometimes organized by topic, this isn’t one of them–not only does the archival classification system in use at the SHD not help in this regard, but clothing discussion seems to be kind of dispersed even within the bagne administration’s own bureaucracy.

I’ve looked in the most likely places, but it’s impossible to really find everything without doing an exhaustive sweep, of well, EVERYTHING. Ministerial dispatches are particularly frustrating–it’s like trawling through a corporation’s e-mails but without a search function. There are at least memos summarizing the content, and often labels about what bureau is involved, but they’re still mostly organized by date–not only volume to volume, but within the binding.

I’ve gotten hints that there might be richer veins in the Vincennes SHD, but I wasn’t able to get there at all, for logistical reasons. I would very much like to someday. (Particularly disappointing was the fact that I couldn’t any reference whatsoever to the so-called arlequin uniform, despite having leads to follow wrt the year and circumstances of its abolition. It must be discussed somewhere–if not in Rochefort, then perhaps at Vincennes.)

Anyway so far I’ve only been able to go off of, like, random anecdotal pieces of evidence plus the occasional case study. I have unfortunately been doing a lot of generalization and extrapolation. I have no found any sort of mode d’emploi regarding the convict or guard uniform, although I have found manuals regarding convict hygiene, how to register convicts’ arrival, liberation and death, and the design of sailors’ uniforms. The closest things I have are a July Monarchy-era ministerial dispatch in Rochefort about the fabric needed for casaques, and Restoration-era letters written by the commissaire in Brest about schako orders for the guards, the shitty quality of their shoes, and–finally–an itemized list of the elements making up the convict uniform + how long each was supposed to last (a lot less time than I had previously thought!) + modifications thereof (by which I mean changes made by the administration, not the convicts).I have found no textual evidence, administrative or otherwise, regarding the modifications convicts were permitted to make to the uniform–unless you count Brissac talking about the office dandies wearing their casaque and bonent a certain way (but this doesn’t involve adding or taking away a garment). All my evidence, such as it is, is iconographic–various illustrations, most notably those done by Clemens. And boy, is that like…a minefield. How literally do I take it? Clemens is at once very close and very far from the truth. He has knowledge an outsider doesn’t, but for obvious reasons his reportage is very–spun? Biased? But there are also things he has no reason to lie about–unless he’s a pathological liar, of course, which he might have been! It’s impossible to tell what to take seriously–especially since sometimes the lies are their own truth.

But suffice to say that, hermeneutic headaches aside, Clemens’ representations of himself and others contain an absolute shit-ton of image management, and this includes garments that were definitely not issued by the Maison–primarily cravats. Anything else would probably have been considered disguise material, and not allowed; I have even seen “possessing a garment foreign to the bagne” listed as a specific infraction in Toulon’s punishment registers–as is SELLING items from the uniform, which really baffles me (who was buying???). But a cravat alone doesn’t really interfere with the disciplinary logic of the uniform, and it’s not big enough to really serve as a disguise (although it could certainly aid in one!).One of the focal points of Clemens’ self-portrait is a white cravat with a blue gridded pattern, which matches his eyes [1]. This cravat makes a lot of sense in the image. What’s a little stranger is the red cravat worn by Auguste-Silvestre Jallez in another watercolor [2]–the man’s in handcuffs, being punished for an escape attempt (there’s an allegorical caged bird because Clemens is Like That) but he’s also really sartorially differentiated, not in spite but because of his affliction. Clemens’ thesis in the text is that Jallez is just a wild motherfucker who needs to chill and this is reflected in the clothes he gives him–the casaque is nowhere in sight (perhaps this was practical, because of the handcuffs), instead he wears the chemise and the red waistcoat that formed the underlayers of the uniform, but with the striking and highly supplementary detail of a flamboyant and fairly large cravat of the same color as the waistcoat. Your eyes ceaselessly move between his cuffed hands, his defiant eyes, and his cravat. As far as the verisimilitude/accuracy of the image goes, I can’t speak to the clothes but I can say that Jallez’s physical depiction is consistent with the anthropometric details of his matricule entry.

To recap, removing a garment was almost certainly not allowed, and losing one was probably punished, as was selling them. And adding was punished insofar as a garment could be used for disguise. But cravats and other small additions just may have been allowed.

P.S. This isn’t pertinent to the bagne proper, but the Huguenot galley-slave Jean Marteilhe (imprisoned 1700-1715) talks of being allowed to upgrade his clothes at his own expense, so long as the fabric was still red.

[1]

[2]

ETA: more musings on Jallez ^ from a tumblr chat with revolutionaryshoe–

> so, I got to see the Clemens journal in its entirety!>which means, like, there are finally EXPLANATIONS for the illustrations>unfortunately I’m still as much in the dark as ever[regarding the birdcage and anvil in the Jallez portrait]>but I’m pretty sure it’s allegorical>but like, by default, because he doesn’t explain it>but that was my interpretation before I got ahold of the text>oh well also more than that>now that I have more info it also makes even more sense that it’s allegorical>esp. with Jallez/caged bird>what I can’t figure out is the anvil with the hammer and rivets on it>I guess it represents him being shackled once again–which is kinda the language Clemens uses, like “so after his nth failed escape attempt, here he is back in irons…”>he doesn’t talk about the guy’s backstory much, he just emphasizes how the guy keeps trying to escape and it just isn’t happening>there’s palpable pity there>the only bit of info we get about the man’s history is that he’s from the Midi and very smart and very angry>I did some digging and found ONE source on Google Books about him (a hapax legomenon!)>his first name seems to have been Auguste-Sylvestre (Clemens doesn’t tell us his full name) and he was sentenced in Vaucluse (which is in the south of France) so that matches>for theft, which also matches>and the dates line up>what I like about the picture too is that he has this extremely subtle half-smile>but it’s an angry half-smile>and Clemens even says that the guy’s lips often smile even though he’s extremely bitter>Clemens is just good like that>like he’s often pretty bad at drawing people’s *physiognomies* well, but boy does he nail their personality>or like–nail what he wants us to think their personality is>because he could be lying! but it’s a convincing visual lie is my point>like doesn’t he just look the lovable rogue in his self-portrait>I should be able to find him at the SHD archives tomorrow>his file [note: I also have his matricule entry from Toulon, which I don’t remember taking AT ALL but I must have stumbled on it and taken a photo in case it was the same guy which it is; all that’s left is Brest if I want his full history]>done>and it indeed was him>they’re the same guy, as I assumed>Auguste-Silvestre Jallez the versifier and Jallez the caged bird>and his physical description in the matricule matches Clemens’ verbal description (and portrait)>his name is spelled “Jallès” in the matricule>whereas in both Clemens and that one source about his poetry it’s “Jallez”>I don’t know why this tickles me so much>but when Clemens describes him he’s like “he has a unibrow”>and draws him with it>and sure enough, his eyebrows are described as “thick” in his matricule>when normally all it says it the color>I wonder how much else was true to life in that portrait>like again the bird is allegorical for sure>but I’m fascinated by Jallez’ fashion sense>he has a cravat>which isn’t part of he uniform at all but is a piece of individuality you were allowed to have [maybe???]>and yet, it’s red>which strikes me as an odd choice>Clemens’ choice is much more expected (the blue and white checked cravat)>the aesthetics of his “visual identity” (to borrow a term from a Freudian queer theorist named David Greven) are so fascinating>because on the one hand he’s being totally ground down>like he’d just been caught for yet another escape attempt, and is being punished for it/imprisoned more thoroughly for practical reasons–like okay you’re an escape risk, we’ll double down on the carceral impedimenta then shall we>there are two focal points in that painting I feel–or like, three but two of them are kind of sharing the role>they’re in tension>one of them is his cuffed hands, which are so attention-grabbing because of 1) the awkward position he has to hold them in and 2) the clear defiance in his fists which kind of radiates out into his entire posture>and is shared with his eyes–that attitude of, well you called it pissiness so let’s go with that>meanwhile there’s that *extravagant* red cravat which is like–fiery red, passionate etc. but also it’s like..that’s the color of institutional repression>and his eyes are kind of a pivot between the two points>the flash in them is linked to the cravat, but the defiance is linked to his hands>I have no idea if I’m making sense I haven’t slept in two days>anyway my eyes keep moving back and forth between those three points>his hair is very distinctive too and I now know that to be on purpose, from reading the text>he mentions Jallez having grown it out a bit prior to his escape>one more thing–unlike many of the portraits in the journal, this was completely from memory>Clemens arrived in Rochefort in 1834 and Jallez (who’d been there since 1830) was transferred to Brest in 1835>they didn’t have that long of a time together compared to the others and Clemens made the journal MUCH later–I forget exactly when but sometime in the 1840s>but he must have made an impression>his subtitle for the Jallez section is “Yet another plan foiled”>referring to his latest escape>and Clemens kind of tsk tsks about it, like why won’t this fiery Meridional calm down and make it easier on himself>and I’m just like Clemens my dude the guy was sentenced to life for ONE THEFT I’d be mad too>jeez I just realized I started an “on the one hand…” construction and never said what the other hand was>but I presume it’s clear I was going to talk about the cravat>how the idea of somebody accessorizing while ALSO being punished (more than usual) is so striking>being casaque-free also creates quite an effect, sartorially>like obv it’s not a bourgeois effect. Not with those colors.>but still–like, it’s a waistcoat. It’s not even an unstylish one.>The “red waistcoast  under the casaque rouge” thing slays me and I’m almost certain it was a common uniform design>like the bagne uniform varied a lot and I have no idea when a gilet would have been introduced but it just…it’s endlessly fascinating to me>okay I’m gonna peace out before I start making no sense

[marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer]

MTVS Epic Rewatch #183

BTVS 7x04 Help

Stray thoughts

1) I feel that season 7 had started on the right foot, and Help is one of the prime examples of that. Hardly ever were MOW episodes the most memorable of the show, albeit a few exceptions that include unique premises and/or demons (Hush, OMWF.) But I feel Help is definitely one of the strongest episodes of the season. It is in no small part because of Cassie Newton. And let’s be real, how often is the victim more memorable than the monster? The actress who plays Cassie does a marvelous job of playing the “woe is me” type without being obnoxious, which is quite the feat. Instead, Cassie comes off as sensitive, intuitive, empathetic, and, unfortunately, doomed. But I think the real reason this episode works so well is how Cassie’s predicament mirrors Buffy’s, and ultimately, how Cassie is just yet another person of the countless Buffy feels she failed to help. But more on that later.

2) The montage of Buffy trying to counsel the kids is pretty neat because they kind of nailed their different reactions to being counseled. You’ve got Amanda, who’s honest and opens up immediately and kind of welcomes Buffy’s pieces of advice. Then the douche (who also played a douche in VM, btw…) who is basically just a douche. And the kid who doesn’t want to talk and just stares at her. And then there’s Buffy, who kind of doesn’t know what to do with any of them, regardless of their attitude.

3) 

XANDER I bet she's giving them great advice.

WILLOW Absolutely! Those kids are lucky to have Buffy looking out for them.

That’s sweet! Especially considering Xander and Willow are having this conversation on their own. They’re being 100% honest. 

4) Willow’s timid and insecure demure is such a welcome change from her almighty and overconfident demeanor in season 6. And it’s an arc that eventually pays off.

WILLOW I don't know what I can do. I mean, frankly, I'm scared of what I might do. 

XANDER Yeah, I get that. Figuring out how to control your magic seems a lot like hammering a nail. Well, uh, hear me out. So you're hammering, right? OK, well at the end of the hammer, you have the power, but no control. It takes, like, two strokes to hit the nail in, or you could hit your thumb.

WILLOW Ouch.

XANDER So you choke up. Control, but no power. It could take like ten strokes to knock the nail in. Power, control. It's a tradeoff.

WILLOW That's actually not a bad analogy.

XANDER Thanks.

WILLOW Except... I'm less worried about hitting my thumb, and more worried about going all black-eyed baddy and bewitching that hammer into cracking my friends' skulls open like coconuts.

XANDER Right. Ouch.

WILLOW Sorry. Xander, being back here... I don't know...

XANDER It'll take time. Are you sure you're ready for this?

Also, kudos to Xander because I think he was doing a great job of acknowledging Willow’s concerns while giving her sound advice, you know? He wasn’t his typical “it’ll be okay” self. He was honest. He admitted it would take time and that it would be hard on her, but he didn’t doubt for a second that she would make it. 

5) And then…

6) This is perfect…

BUFFY It sounds like it's difficult for you. Like maybe your sister makes it hard for you to establish your own identity. You said she's controlling, she doesn't let you make your own decisions— 

On a more serious note, though, how does the school allow Buffy to counsel her own sister? I mean, talk about conflict of interest, right?  

7) 

PRINCIPAL  When I was in high school, I had a thing with this guy, right? Real bully. I kept telling everyone that he'd better sleep with one eye open 'cause I was gonna bust his ass. Well, I got suspended. Talk like that is taken pretty seriously where I come from.

BUFFY The hood?

PRINCIPAL Beverly Hills... 

Yeah, Buffy, you know what happens when you assume...

8)

PRINCIPAL Every time there's a threat like this, we do the same dance. Inform teachers, search lockers, but we can't—we can't know what's gonna happen, and we can't search their brains. We just—we just do what we can.

BUFFY It's not enough. I need to fix this. I don't usually get a heads up before somebody dies.

This is what’s interesting about what Carrie represents, both in the show and in real life. Buffy goes into this purely as a counselor, and she soon finds out that her resources as such are very limited. She probably thinks Cassie is having suicidal thoughts, and Buffy finds herself helpless to prevent this. The education system’s red tape makes it impossible for her to take action in a more effective way, and there’s no demon she can kill to prevent Cassie from dying. This is addressed again when she goes to Willow and Xander.

XANDER Buff, you spilled a cup of coffee. I'm not saying you don't have slayer grace, but it's not the first time.

WILLOW I mean maybe, just maybe, you're trying so hard to help that you're seeing paranormal when there's just normal.

9) Wow is this joke dated!

WILLOW Have you googled her yet?

XANDER Willow, she's 17.

Side note: did you know this line right here made BTVS the first TV show to use the word “google” as a verb?

10) It seems Xander took a line from Veronica’s book, right? You marshmallows out there will get what I mean...

BUFFY Wow, that's a lot of poems.

XANDER Poems. Always a sign of pretentious inner turmoil.

11) 

WILLOW I don't know. I mean, a lot of teens post some pretty angsty poetry on the web. I mean, I even posted a melodramatic love poem or two back in the day.

XANDER Love poems?

WILLOW I'm over you now, sweetie.

12) Buffy was really stepping over her boundaries, though…

BUFFY We know you've been picked up by the police a couple of times. We wanted to know if you still—  drink a lot.

MR. NEWTON What's that got to do with Cassie?

BUFFY Frankly, we were worried that you might—drink too much and hurt Cassie. That's all. (that’s all???? you’re accusing this guy of beating up his daughter!!!)

MR. NEWTON Oh. Oh, I see. That's-that's all. You just come in here in the middle of the night, into my home, and start accusing me of beating on my daughter? That's all?

BUFFY We just want to make sure that Cassie's—

MR. NEWTON Well, that's a lie! Who told you this? Did Cassie's mother put you up to this, 'cause I pay my support, OK? To the dime! She just wants to take away the one weekend a month I get to be with my girl.

I’m sure in any other town but Sunnydale this type of behavior would get a counselor fired, right? 

13) And isn’t Cassie Buffy’s mirror image?

 CASSIE You think I want this? You think I don't care? Believe me, I want to...be here, do things. I want to graduate from high school, and I want to go to the stupid winter formal... I have this friend, and it would be fun to go with him. Just to dance and hear lame music to wear a silly dress and laugh and stuff. I'd like to go. There's a lot of stuff I'd like to do. I'd love to ice skate at Rockefeller Center. And I'd love to see my cousins grow up and see how they turn out 'cause they're really mean and I think they're gonna be fat. I'd love to backpack across the country or, I don't know, fall in love, but I won't. I just never will.

This is pretty much Buffy’s plight to a tee, right? The wanting to have a normal life but knowing she won’t be able to. I actually made a parallel set between this speech and Buffy’s in Becoming, but there are so many other examples of Buffy voicing this same concerns and wants (Welcome to the Hellmouth, Prophecy Girl...)

14)

SPIKE Yes. There's evil. Down here. Right here. I'm a bad man. William is a baaad man. I hurt the girl. 

BUFFY Spike, stop it! What did you do?

SPIKE I hurt you, Buffy, and I will pay. I am paying because I hurt the girl.

BUFFY Spike. No. It's not me. It's a different girl, OK? Her name is Cassie Newton. Please, do you know anything specific?

SPIKE Don't—don't leave me. Stay here, and help me be quiet.

BUFFY  I think it's worse when I'm here. 

On the one hand, I think it was necessary to see Spike flogging himself over what he’d almost done. I mean, how do you keep a character who’s done what he did without having him beat himself up for it? And I get that Buffy, as the victim of his assault, needed to be the person to witness how guilty and sorrowful he was. But... on the other hand, the writers had put themselves in a no-win scenario. They ruined Spike’s character development by having him almost rape Buffy, and now the only way to turn things around was to have Buffy, his victim, feel sorry for him. She shouldn’t have been put on that spot, especially when so little thought was given to her own trauma (a few flashbacks in Beneath You, that was it... never again does she flinch from Spike’s touch or get away from his company...) At the same time, Buffy is this type of person, the one who constantly puts the other cheek. Not only does she forgive easily but she also takes care of those who hurt her (think of her comforting Willow right after she almost had Dawn killed, or the oh so many times she tried to help Faith after one of her betrayals...) She is selfless, and I don’t see why this time should have been any different. Still, I can understand why this can make people uncomfortable. It sets a weird - to say the least - example for assault victims. But I don’t think it’s fair to say Buffy was out of character. 

15) I kind of liked this guy until he said this…

BUFFY You aren't mad at Cassie, with her rejecting you like that?

MIKE Nah, she's a girl right? Making boys crazy is like your job description.

Well, your job description is being a stupid dumbass, apparently. And Buffy laughed??? Buffy would NEVER laugh!!!

16) 

PETER Back off. Get back! Get back, you stupid bitch! 

Now that’s the Buffy I know and love.

17) I have nothing to base this assumption on, but I’m guessing they had Spike beat up the douche and get a headache because fans might have bought the previous season’s red herring that he had gone on the quest to get the chip removed, so this was the writers’ way of telling the fans: “Spike still has the chip, he really did get his soul back.”

18) This is so sad…

19)

WILLOW Cassie didn't know? Then it was fate?

XANDER I think she was gonna die, no matter what, wasn't she? Didn't matter what you did.

BUFFY She just knew. She was special. I failed her.

DAWN Uh-uh. No. You didn't, 'cause you tried. You listened, and you tried. She died 'cause of her heart, not 'cause of you. She was my friend because of you. I guess sometimes you can't help.

BUFFY So what then? What do you do when you know that? When you know that maybe you can't help?

It’s kind of odd that Buffy went seven seasons without asking herself this question, though. It is a quintessential superhero question, after all. And it’s very similar to the question that’s brought up on ATS in season 1, although we do get an answer there. So, Buffy, here’s your answer:

If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.

[scentedsublimehologram]

Serial Number For Stage Plot Pro

Serial Number For Stage Plot Programming

Serial Number For Stage Plot Project

Serial Number For Stage Plot Processing

Serial Number For Stage Plot Proposal

Let me offer a recent, real life example of why sending an up to date stage plot and input list when advancing is critically important.

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We had a fly date into a festival in San Francisco, with a tight window of arrival. Our window became even tighter when our flight out of LAX was cancelled, and we were bumped to a later flight, now arriving across the bay in Oakland. It was one of those moments on the road where things are out of your control, and travel is either going to work out, or it isn’t, so it’s best to simply relax. With pre-arranged ground transportation botched, the festival hustled and sent us a runner van to get us on site. With traffic from Oakland into San Francisco, we ended up arriving on site 29 minutes prior to stage time. Woof.

There is a certain due process to arriving on site at a festival. Artist check in, meeting up with the festival liaison, getting your bearings, settling into the dressing room, checking in with production, checking in with backline, loading or crossloading gear to stage, building gear, grabbing a bite to eat, potential press, using the bathroom, etc. The picture that I am trying to paint is that there are a lot of things that happen before your set, and when you arrive so close to set time, things you have done in advance become even more important.

Walking onto stage, it was as if an ethereal force had descended and backline, monitors, and mics were all placed exactly where they needed to be. How did it get to be this way? How did they know to put it like this? Allow me to introduce you to the Stage Plot and Input List.

The stage plot is a visual representation of how gear is organized on stage. What do you need to include when creating a stage plot?

Band name – Imagine not putting your name on the plot if you are playing a festival with 100+ other bands. You want people to be able to find and utilize your plot, right?

Serial Number For Stage Plot Programming

Date – I like to title things with the season and year. IE:Summer 2015. This allows the person receiving the plot to know that what they are looking at is current. If it is dated Fall 2012, and it’s Winter 2015, audio begins to question the validity of the plot they are looking at.

Contact information – the production contact for your band. Your name, role, phone number, and email address should suffice. Put it right on the plot. No one wants to dig up an email to find your info.

Names of band members – People don’t always use it, but sometimes it’s nice to have the people you’re working with for the day know your name when you are thousands of miles away from home. First name and instrument does the trick.

Ok, so the above is important in its own way, but this is the part that really matters.

Placement of gear – use labeled shapes to show where a piece of equipment is going to live on stage. Guitar, Bass, Drums, Keys, Horns, Vocals, Doom Reverbinator, Strings, etc. Doesn’t have to be fancy; simply write it in a box, and plunk it down where it’s going to be set.

Placement of monitors – use labeled rectangles (IE: Monitor 1, Monitor 2, etc.), and number the monitor mix. Place the rectangle in front of where the player will need their monitor positioned. On a separate page, you can include notes for the monitor engineer, as far as what a player wants in their mix.

Placement of power – Until future technological developments arrive, we are tethered to the archaic system of “power cords” where we have to “plug in.” Wireless electricity, can you get here already? Need to plug in an amp? Need to plug in a pedal board? Need power for something else? Denote where you need to plug in on your stage plot. Oh, shit! What kind of power do you need? Are you using American or European gear? Bollocks, we haven’t the step down convertors!

Placement of mics – Maybe you are cruising with a non-standard piece of equipment. Telling the engineer how you want a mic placed (on axis, off axis, distance, etc.) helps them work more efficiently and quickly. This means more time for your sound check or line check. Is your singer on wireless? Make it known. Need an extra long XLR? What kind of mic stand do you want? Boom? Straight? Include all of that information either on the stage plot or input list.

To be even more specific, I’ve seen people label their plots with measurements of how things should be laid out. I encourage you to do this. Someone will appreciate it. Additionally, actual photographs of your stage layout are useful and provide a true visual for those setting things up before your arrival. Keep in mind that fine tuning will be required upon arrival. These documents are simply meant to get things close.

Serial Number For Stage Plot Project

The input list describes to an engineer what each channel is being utilized for. In the left hand column you will see ascending numbers. These are the channels that are being used. In the middle column, you will see what is being utilized on that channel. In the right hand column you will see what microphone we have requested, to mic or DI that element. For example, input #1 is the kick drum microphone placed inside of the kick drum. We’ve asked the engineer to use a Shure Beta 91a. Sometimes the house will not have certain mics available, and you will have to be flexible, unless you are traveling with your own mic package. Further, but not included in the example above would be effects that an engineer could apply to certain channels. I’ve seen where people will specify compressors, or gates on certain channels. I tend to let the engineer do their thing, and if something is grossly inaccurate to my ear, I will tastefully let them know.

**Please for the love of God, if you are a local engineer, do not put any vocal delay in the house mix unless explicitly requested. That is the peeve of all pet peeves. I will never understand the thought process that is occurring moments before letting that delay rip-roar through the lead vocal channel. Why would you ever do that? Reverb is commonly requested, but delay… NEVER!!

Full disclosure: I am not a FOH nor a MON engineer.

Serial Number For Stage Plot Processing

There are a slew of resources available online, both free and paid, to put together both. I personally have enjoyed success using Google Draw that is available for free in Google Drive. It is simple, intuitive, and has all the options one could want to effectively create a stage plot. The examples I provided above were created using Google Draw. Photoshop is another option, but it is more complicated, and costs money. I try to use the K.I.S.S. system whenever possible. Keep it simple, stupid.

Serial Number For Stage Plot Proposal

Stage Plot Pro is another option, and can be checked out here. I’ve personally never used it, but if you search stage plot in Google images, someone certainly has.

If all else fails, you can actually DRAW a stage plot. Crude, but it gets the point across and it’s better than nothing. (Photo credit: RockOnColorado.com)

As far as making an input list, any word processing software will do the trick. Simply create a table and wa-lah!

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Sometimes despite sending an updated plot and input list, the engineer is looking at an ancient technical rider that has somehow made its way to them. That is the worst feeling when you arrive and see lines run to the tune of an old plot. Despite your best efforts, unintentional sabotage does occur. I like to keep a stack of correct stage plots and input lists on hand for arrival. Make it a priority to provide management and your booking agent up to date copies of your technical rider to avoid this issue. These documents are only useful if you can get them in the hands of a skilled production staff.

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I highly recommend checking out Mark Workman’s book, One for the Road: How to be a Music Tour Manager. He is the one who turned me onto using Google Draw to create a stage plot, and I would be remiss if I did not give credit where credit is due. It’s a great read if you are fascinated by this subject matter, and I can’t recommend it enough.