#i would 100% rather get money or someone tell me a budget and i send them links

[prettyboyprettyeyes]

dream gift basket

[dialovers-translations]

Diabolik Lovers Lost Eden Yoyaku Tokuten Drama CD: “The Ultimate Money Saving-Jutsu ★ The Vampires’ Secret Teachings”

Original title: 究極の節約術お見せします★ヴァンパイア道の極意

Source: Diabolik Lovers Lost Eden Tokuten Drama CD [CD not owned by me]

Audio: Here

Seiyuu: Midorikawa Hikaru, Hirakawa Daisuke, Kaji Yuki, Toriumi Kousuke, Konishi Katsuyuki, Kondou Takashi,  Sakurai Takahiro,Kimura Ryouhei, Suzuki Tatsuhisa, Kishio Daisuke, Toshiyuki Morikawa, Shoutaro Morikubo & Tomoaki Maeno

Translator’s note: I think this is the first time I translated a drama CD which has Kino in it! It threw me off guard at first because suddenly I heard this unfamiliar voice and I had no idea who was talking, haha. xD It’s also a fairly short track despite all 13 boys being in it, but I’m not going to complain about that. Personally, 25 to 30 minutes is the perfect length because translating a 50-minute track can be really draining. > <

Ayato: So, what’s the big deal? You gave us a rude awakening in the middle of the day...

Shuu: *yawns* ...Sleepy.

Subaru: Oi, Reiji. Don’t just stand there silently and speak up already.

Reiji: Good grief...You lot have it easy. I am certain that once you hear about this, you no longer will be able to peacefully sleep either.

Shuu: ...Stop acting all high and mighty and just tell us what this is about.

Reiji: Haah...I’ll get straight to the point. At present, our household does not have any money.

Reiji shows them a booklet.

Subaru: ...What’s this?

Reiji: The passbook that shows our household’s balance. I assume you will understand just how grave the situation is by checking it.

Shuu flips through the pages.

Shuu: ...! This is...!?

Kanato: One...two...three... (1) There’s 4 zeros and 1 one...

Laito: Eeh!? ¥10.000...!? 

--> 10.000 Yen is approximately 100 USD

Subaru: ...Are you for real?

Reiji: Yes, unfortunately this seems to be the truth. We have no other choice but to survive with just ¥10.000 until next month’s deposit.

Shuu: ...Just what on earth happened?

Reiji: To put it simply, the castle has not been sending us money at all.

Ayato: Which means...Oi, Reiji! What about this month’s allowance!?

Reiji: In your dreams.

*Duuuuuun*

Laito: Eeeh!? You’ve got to be kidding, right!? 

Reiji: What makes you think I have the leeway to do such a thing? By the way, I will be not be paying your phone bills either so alas...If you wish to use them, please cover it for yourself somehow.

Subaru: ...Hold up!! Do something about this!!

Kanato: Uu...*Sniff* Uuh...*Sobs* ...W-We’re Vampires living in the modern world...Y-Yet we can’t even use our mobile phones...YOU’RE BEING FAR TOO CRUEL!!

Reiji: Once we’ve paid our electricity bill, there will be barely any budget left so it can’t be helped. In that case, would you rather not pay for the electricity? By the way, once the electricity gets cut off, you unfortunately won’t be able to use the shower either. Well, if needed you’ll still have access to the cold water.

Laito: ...!? Not being able to take a hot shower...That’s ridiculous! Anyway, can’t you get in touch with the Demon World and have someone send us money?

Reiji: I’ve already tried that. However, they won’t get back to us.

Laito: Aaaah~ Jeez! This is the worst! Now I can’t even go on dates!

Reiji: Anyway, with the remaining ¥5000ー

Shuu: Hold it, Reiji. Earlier you said ¥10.000 though...?

Reiji: The electricity bill, remember? We have to pay that one, right?

Ayato: No, that’s a waste! It’s ¥5000...! Wouldn’t it be better to give up electricity and use it on something else?

Laito: Wait up! Don’t you guys ever shower!? That’s just unbearable!?

Shuu: You can just use the showers at school, right? 

Reiji: You lot...Have you lost your minds? Well, either way, I won’t be able to cover for your phone expenses with just  ¥10.000 so alas. 

Laito: To be honest...Isn’t being able to use our phones even more of a struggle than not having electricity? We won’t be able to get in touch with anyone.

Shuu: Ah...For god’s sake...Being out of money...Hm? Hold up.

Kanato: Is something the matter?

Shuu: No, I was just thinking how those Mukami guys are faring if things are like this for us.

Reiji: ...! I-I wonder, indeed...

Laito: Actually, if they have some why not go get it~? It comes from the same source (2) after all!

Kanato: Exactly! We deserve to get that money!

Subaru: ...Let’s head to the Mukami manor right away!

Reiji: *whispers* ...It will all be in vain though.

Laito: Hm? Reiji, did you say something just now?

Reiji: No, nothing.

*TIMESKIP*

Shin: Aah...This sucks...Without that wallet, I’m in a pickle...

*Rustle rustle*

Shin: Haah...What excuse should I use to tell Nii-san?

Carla: ...You mentioned me?

Shin: Wah...!! N-Nii-san...!?

Carla: ...Why are you so startled?

Shin: N-No...Nothing...

Carla: Are you making fun of me? Do you truly believe I can trust those words when you are acting like that?

Shin: ...R-Right ー I’m sorry. You see...It’s actually...

Carla: What’s the matter? Hurry up and spit it out.

Shin: Nii-san, I’m sorry! I dropped our wallet and the ¥100.000 inside somewhere!

Carla: That’s it?

Shin: Eh...? Y-You won’t scold me?

Carla: I am not the type of man to get upset over a measly ¥100.000. Don’t think lightly of me.

Shin: ...T-Then, you don’t mind if I can’t pay for the painting you ordered, or if I can’t buy you any serrano ham?

Carla: Come again. What do you mean?

Shin: There’s no real reason except...We don’t have any money so it can’t be helped, right?

Carla: Oi, don’t tell me. Was our entire budget inside that wallet?

Shin: ...Exactly.

Carla: ...Kuh...

Shin: B-But, earlier you said it was just a small amount of  ¥100.000...!

Carla: Don’t talk back to me! Either way, we need money. Somehow get us the money. 

Shin: Nii-san...Putting it like that makes you sound like a money-grabber...

Carla: My painting and cured ham are at stake here! It has to be expected! For starters, you are the one who dropped our wallet. Do something about it!

Shin: ‘Something’ you say...This month’s deposit arrived just the other day which leaves...Having someone from either the Sakamaki’s or the Mukami’s cover for us or...

Carla: Mukami Kou...If I recall correctly, he’s been active as an idol or something...

Shin: Ah! Now that you mention it, he is! If he’s an idol, I’m sure he’s making some big earnings! 

Carla starts walking.

Shin: ...Eh? Nii-san?

Carla: No time to waste, we are heading towards the Mukami manor.

Shin: Ehehe...Nii-san’s obsession with paintings and cured ham knows no bounds...

*TIMESKIP*

*Munch munch*

Ruki: How do you explain this...!?

Kou: Huh? What’s the matter, Ruki-kun? So out of the blue.

Ruki: Don’t play dumb. ...I’m talking about this!

Kou: What’s this? A passbook? Is something the matter with this?

Ruki: This particular withdrawal comes from your card.

Kou: Right...Seems like the amount was rather...large, huh? Haha...Hah...

Ruki: You dare call this ‘a little’...? You used up nearly all of our household budget and call it ‘a little’!?

Azusa enters the room.

Azusa: Ruki...Kou...What’s the matter? You look kind of...tense.

Ruki: Kou used up our expenses.

Azusa: Are we perhaps...Out of money?

Ruki: Yes.

Kou: Wait!? What about our savings!?

Ruki: There aren’t any.

Yuma bursts into the room.

Yuma: Are you for real!??

Azusa: Yuma...How long have you been...listening?

Yuma: For a bit...Anyway, Ruki, about us not having any savings...

Ruki: ...There’s no savings to speak of.

Kou: W-Why!? It’s you we’re talking about so I figured you had been saving just in case...

Yuma: Kou...You bastard. That basically means you counted on Ruki to have some savings, haah?

Kou: ...! T-That’s...

Azusa: Kou...Just what did you buy...?

Kou: Uhm...You see...T-There’s was this watch I wanted...

Yuma: Hand it over.

Kou: Eh?...W-What?

Yuma: That watch! If we sell it off at the pawn shop, we can get some money for it.

Kou: I-I don’t have it anymore! 

Azusa: You don’t...? What do you...?

Kou: One of my kouhai (3) at the agency took a liking to it so I...gave it to them.

Yuma: I can’t believe this...

Ruki: Haah...

Kou: Aah!? Don’t tell me, are you guys blaming it on me!?

Yuma: It’s obviously your fault! What are you gonna do ‘bout our money problem!?

Azusa: Ruki...The money...How much do we have left?

Ruki: ¥10.000.

Kou: Eeeh!? That’s all!?

Yuma: Don’t complain! Whose fault do you think this all is!?

Kou: Riiight...~

Azusa: Can’t we get some...extra money from the Demon world...?

Ruki: That’ll be difficult. To tell the truth, I had been keeping a secret from you guys, but as of late, we haven’t been receiving money from the Demon World. That’s why we have no savings either.

Kou: Huuh!??

Yuma: That means...You’re expecting us to live almost an entire month off just ¥10.000...!?

*Knock knock*

*Knock knock knock*

Ruki: Someone’s at the door.

Azusa: I’ll let them...in.

Azusa leaves the room.

*TIMESKIP*

Kou: For some reason...I can only have a bad feeling about these guys being gathered here at this manor.

Ayato: Actuallyー Oi, Carla, Shin, why are you two here as well?

Carla: To get straight to the point, we dropped our money. Shin did.

Yuma: Dropped!? So where did you drop it?

Shin: Well...That’s the part I don’t know. I must have dropped it somewhere while running in my wolf form. But where exactly it fell, I don’t...

Azusa: Everyone’s...in a pinch, huh?

Subaru: ...!? Don’t tell me...

Ruki: Unfortunately, we have no money either.

Ayato: Eh? S-Seriously?

Kanato: Haven’t you guys been saving up? In that case, hurry up and pull out the money.

Kou: ...Hehe~ About that...

Ruki: Kou spent it all.

Kou: ...B-But, there was this watch I wanted after all! I thought I’d buy it with my own money but it was rather pricey, you see...I figured you had been saving up money anyway, so it wouldn’t be that big of a deal if I made a large purchase (4) but...

Subaru: Oi!! Where is that watch!?

Kou: ...So Subaru-kun’s gonna ask that as well. I don’t have it. 

Kanato: What do you mean!?

Kou: Like I said,  one of my kouhai at the agency took a liking to it so I gave it away!

Shin: ...You gave it away!? The entertainment industry is a scary place... (5)

Ayato: Gave it away, my ass! Don’t just casually throw away something so expensive!

Ruki: On top of that, similar to the Sakamaki’s situation, deposits from the Demon World have been put on hold.

Reiji: I already assumed that would be the case. Seems like I was right. 

Azusa: You heard it so...We don’t have any money...either.

Carla: ...!!

Carla drops to his knees.

Shin: N-Nii-san!? Is everything alright!?

Carla: F-For the King of the Founders...To be in poverty...

Shuu: Haah...We came all the way here, but every single one of you are completely useless.

Reiji: That’s just how it is, so let us give up and somehow make do with the ¥10.000 we have left.

Ruki: Exactly. There’s nothing wrong with being a little stingy with money (6) every once in a while.

Ayato: ...No! Not yet! There’s still one way left!

Shin: What? Do you have an idea?

Ayato: The money you dropped must be around somewhere, right? How much was in that wallet?

Shin: Aah...¥100.000, but what about it?

Laito: Ah! I see~ I get it! If we find it, all our problems will be solved at once! Ayato-kun, you genius~

Carla: ...Oi! Don’t get ahead of yourself. Even if you find it, that money belongs to us.

Yuma: Oi oi, don’t you know the laws of this land? The finder gets to keep part of the money.

Subaru suddenly runs towards the door.

Subaru: ...The early bird gets the worm!

Yuma: Ah, oi!! You jerk!!

Yuma runs after him.

Shuu: Haah...Guess I’ll look for it.

Laito: It can’t be helped~ 

The two of them dash away as well.

Kou: We’re running behind! Azusa-kun, let’s hurry!

Azusa: Yeah...!

Carla: Shin, we are going as well. As if I’d let them get a head start on us!

Shin: R-Right!

They all run off.

Reiji: Haah...Good grief...How did things turn out like this?

Ruki: Their fixation on money is abnormal.

Reiji: With this, our plans are in vain.

Ruki: Yeah...This was an excellement opportunity to sharpen our families’ saving techniques.

Reiji: ‘One family, one month, ¥10.000 lifestyle’...If we managed to pull it off, the dream of ¥300.000...Now it’s all wasted.

Ruki: If the prize money is ¥300.000, wouldn’t they go along with the plan as well?

Reiji: You haven’t told them either, have you? 

Ruki: Well, yeah. After all, we have a big spender at my house.

Reiji: Likewise.

*TIMESKIP*

Kino: Yaho~ What are you all doing together? Weeding?

*Rustle rustle*

Ayato: Can’t you tell by looking!?

Kanato: We’re looking for something! If you have spare time on your hands, help us out.

Kino: Haah? I don’t want to do that. What did you droー

*Rustle rustle*

Carla: Found it!

Kanato: ...!? No way!? 

Shin: N-Nii-san! That isn’t a wallet! It’s a dirty magazine that got wet by the rain!

Carla: ...!! Disgusting!!

Ayato: More importantly, how do you mistake that for a wallet?

*Rustle rustle*

Azusa: ...Found it!

Kou: Really!? ...Well, you’re not wrong but is this really Shin-kun’s wallet?

Azusa: It’s a sparkling...glittering...wallet...

Shin: ...What!? That wallet isn’t mine! I’m not into that kind of stuff, cut me some slack!!

Kino: Hm...I see. You’re all looking for Shin’s wallet together. So, for what reason?

Yuma: It’s a long story. 

Kino: ...Yuma!? When did you...!?

Yuma: I was looking ‘round the shopping district, but I didn’t find it, so I decided to join up with these guys here. The others will be here soon as well.

Kino: Heeh...You all get along well, huh?

Yuma: ...

Kino: What?

Yuma: Nothing. It can’t be helped, so I’ll tell you what happened as well.

Kino: Eh? Really?

Yuma: Sure.

*TIMESKIP*

Kino: Heeh...So that’s what happened. You’re all having money issues.

*Rustle*

Ayato: Hm...Hold up, now that you mention it, you exist as well.

Kanato: ...! Right! Kino should just give us some money!

Shin: I see! Great idea!

Kino: ...Aren’t you guys embarrassed? Saying that kind of thing.

Kou: If we were embarrassed, we wouldn’t be doing this in the first place.

Kino: Good point. But I’m not giving you any money.

Kanato: Why not!? Your brothers are in a pinch...!

Kino: I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t think of me as your brother only when it’s convenient to you.

Shuu: Can’t you make an exception?

Subaru: We’re begging you!

Kino: ...!? Is this what they mean with ‘you can’t fix a problem without making a sacrifice’? (7) No hard feelings, but I can’t.

Laito: Eeeeh? How come? We’ll return it later so why not?

Kino: Because I can’t know for sure that you’ll be receiving money from the Demon World in the future. What will happen then? You guys will be piss-poor. 

Kanato: ...! T-That’s...Right! Kou will provide it somehow!

Kou: Eh? Me? Why!? 

Subaru: Now that you mention it, this guy’s an idol, huh? I assume you make quite a bit in a month. 

Kou: Our household is one thing but he definitely won’t be giving you guys any money!

Ayato: What did you say!? You plan on hogging it all to yourself!?

Carla: In that regard, we’re safe. If you want money, we’ll be able to provide from next month onwards.

Shin: Exactly. There’s plenty of rich aristocrats providing for us behind the scenes.

Shuu: No wonder you guys seemed to be stacked, so that’s how it is.

Kino: ...Hm, when you say that you put me on the spot. But I’m actually participating in this challenge right now.

He pulls out a flyer.

Azusa: ‘One family, one month, ¥10.000 lifestyle’ ...If you succeed, you win ¥300.000.

Kino: Exactly, it’s a campaign they’re holding over at the shopping district. It depends on how much money was subtracted your bank account, so I can’t make any withdrawals right now. Why don’t you guys join in as well? You might be able to get ¥300.000 in the end.

Yuma: Oi, show me that flyer.

Kino: Sure. Here you go.

Kino hands him the flyer.

Yuma: I remember seeing this...

Azusa: ...This is...Ruki was holding this the other day. When I asked him about it...he quickly hid it. This logo seems familiar to me, so there’s no mistaking it.

Shuu: Oi, isn’t this fishy?

Ayato: What is?

Shuu: At this exact timing the donations from the Demon World ceased, and coincidentally, both of us have a passbook of exactly ¥10.000.

Laito: Aah~ Shuu, are you suspecting Reiji perhaps?

Shuu: What about you?

Laito: Nfu~ I thought that Reiji is hoping to participate in this and keep the ¥300.000 all to himself, I suppose~

Kanato: ...! Which means...He lied about there not being any money sent to us!?

Ayato: Fuck off! That four-eyed bastard!

Kou: Then...Ruki-kun too!?

Yuma: I can picture it.

Azusa: Ruki’s always keeping an eye on the...bank balance, right?

Reiji and Ruki arrive to the scene.

Reiji: Everyone, have you found the wallet?

Ruki: Hm? Kino. You’re here as well?

Kino: Ah...Y-Yeah. Somehow. Although, I have something to do so I’ll be taking my leave now. See you~ 

Kino makes a run for it.

Reiji: Hm? What’s the matter with him? He disappeared as soon as he saw us. ...Wait!?

Everyone is glaring at them.

Reiji: W-What’s the matter, everyone? You’re making an awfully scary expression...

Ayato: ‘One family, one month, ¥10.000 lifestyle’

Reiji: ...!? H-How do you!?

Subaru: Reiji...You bastard!

Laito: Did you try to deceive us and get ¥300.000 out of it all for yourself?

Reiji: ...! Please do not make such insulting assumptions. I was simply hoping to use said ¥300.000 toー

Shuu: Regardless of your reasoning, it doesn’t change the fact you tried to trick us.

Kanato: I won’t forgive you...!! Give me back my sleep and peace of mind!

Reiji: It’s a misunderstanding! I just...I just wanted to save money!

Reiji starts running away.

Ayato: Oi! Hold it!

Reiji: I won’t wait!

Kanato: Wait!

Subaru: Reijiiiii!!!!!

Laito: Hold up!

They all chase after him.

Shuu: *yawns*...I’m heading back and taking a nap. 

Shuu walks away.

Yuma: That case is closed. Then...We’re moving onto this one.

Ruki: No ill will was involved.

Kou: Thought so. It’s Ruki-kun we’re talking about after all.

Azusa: Basically...Kou, you can’t...really blame Ruki in your position, right?

Kou: Ugh...Fair point. That’s true too.

Ruki: Let’s treat ourselves to a feast with the ¥300.000. 

Azusa: So the saving is...ongoing?

Ruki: It’s ¥300.000!

Yuma: But you know, ¥10.000 is really pushing it.

Kou: Hmm...

Ruki: So, no?

Azusa: Ruki...Let’s save up...money with everyone again. What do you think?

Kou: Mmh. I’ll try my best not to make any wasteful purchases and I’ll pay you back for the watch once I get my next pay check!

Ruki: Yes.

Yuma: Oh well, I’ll try my best and grow some vegetables as well.

Ruki: I’m sorry.

Kou: We’re still siblings after all, right~?

Yuma: Yeah, exactly.

The Mukami’s walk away.

Carla: ...

Shin: ...In the end, our problem didn’t get solved in the slightest, huh?

Carla: Shin! We’re searching for your wallet. Until we find it!

*Rustle rustle*

Shin: Yeah...My wallet...Honestly...Where did it go!??? Come baaaaack!!

ーー THE END ーー

Translation notes

(1) In the olden days, Japanese people counted differently. Instead of saying ‘ichi, ni, san,...’, they would use ‘hi, fu, mi,...’ instead. Since the Sakamaki’s were born hundreds of years ago, they still use some of those customs even in modern times.

(2) Laito is referring to the fact both the Sakamaki AND the Mukami household get their budget from the Demon World, through Karlheinz.

(3) The word 後輩 or ‘kouhai’ is used in several facets of Japanese society and refers to someone younger/less experienced to you. This can be a younger student at school, a new colleague, etc. Either way, the senpai/kouhai dynamic is very important within Japanese society, with the latter paying respect for the former, while the senpai also look out for their kouhai.

(4) Kou uses the expression 足が出る or ‘ashi ga deru’, which literally means ‘your feet/legs are showing’. It is often used to refer to someone miscalculating their budget and making a big purchase, possibly leaving them in debt afterwards.

(5) Shin literally says: ‘That really screams ‘THE’ entertainment industry’ (ザ・芸能界), referring to how idols have no problem gifting each other such expensive items. 

(6) Ruki uses the expression 節約の鬼 or ‘setsuyaku no oni’, which means ‘the demon of money-saving’, referring to a person who always has to watch their budget and is therefore rather stingy with money.

(7) Kino refers to the proverb ‘背に腹は変えられない’ or ‘se ni hara wa kaerarenai’ which implies having to make a sacrifice to earn something in the end. It literally means ‘the back can’t be changed into a stomach’, implying that the backside must be sacrificed for the sake of the stomach, since the latter holds many precious organs.

[aion-rsa]

RiffTrax: A Guide to Christmas and Holiday Episodes

https://ift.tt/3p3xspq

Since its inception, RiffTrax has regularly visited the crazy world of Christmas movies and shorts because when you get down to it, Christmas is a crazy time and Santa’s such a rich concept that it’s easy to go completely off the rails with him. Here’s a look at all the various Christmas-related movies they’ve watched. Luckily, all of them are available on-demand, so you can buy them and download the entire movie with the audio already synced up.

A handful of the shorts were featured in previous editions of RiffTrax Live, but are also available on their own. Then there’s the Christmas Shorts-stravaganza, which not only featured a bunch of Christmas-based short films, but also a film about serving pork and some kind of competitive swimming event. Weird Al was there too! At the show…not…not the swimming event.

Like when I discussed the 30 Most Insane RiffTrax Shorts, I’m going to give both the lucid explanation of what each short or movie is supposed to be in a sane, reasonable world and what we actually get.

You can check out RiffTrax’s collection of Christmas movies and shorts right her.

“Now, come on. Let me show you the rest.” “No, really, I have to go, I…”

NESTOR THE LONG-EARED CHRISTMAS DONKEY (1977)

The Idea: Remember how great the Rankin/Bass stop-motion version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was? It was such a classic that people watch every year as a holiday tradition. Expanding on that world, the same company released Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey, figuring they’d spin another classic out of a more religious context. In it, Nestor undergoes some hardships due to the massive size of his ears, but is chosen to help Joseph and the pregnant Mary make it to Bethlehem.

The Output: You remember how Rudolph went, right? He was teased for a bit for being different, but that led to him discovering lovable, memorable characters and getting into fantastic adventures before proving his worth and showing that his so-called deformity was really his greatest strength. Okay, now imagine that exact story, only remove the lovable, memorable characters.

Then take that part of the movie where he’s teased and stretch it so it makes up 95% of the story. Hell, just make the thing completely depressing. There. You have Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey.

Read more

Movies

MST3K: A Christmas Episodes Guide for Mystery Science Theater 3000

By Gavin Jasper

Movies

The 21 Best Christmas Horror Movies

By Rosie Fletcher and 5 others

This is an earlier RiffTrax release, so the only one on it is Mike. Hearing one riffer can be a little off-putting, but it’s worth it to see such a terrible rewrite of Rudolph without any of the magic. Oh, and spoilers for a 40-year-old holiday special, but Nestor ends up becoming best buddies with the man who killed his mother and it’s never explained because it’s at the very end of the movie. I guess Jesus being born really packed a punch.

“Introducing Chewbacca’s family!” “And many scream-yourself-awake nightmares!”

STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL (1978)

The Idea: In a time when Empire Strikes Back was far from release but the studios wanted to keep Star Wars in the public’s mind so they’ll keep buying their merchandise, it was decided to bring the cast in for a prime-time holiday special in the ’70s. Based on Han Solo trying to get Chewbacca home to his family in time for Wookie Life Day, the special features everyone from Luke to Vader with special guest stars Art Carney and Bea Arthur. It also has an animated short that gives us the very first appearance of Boba Fett!

The Output: Whenever I try to explain the Star Wars Holiday Special to someone who has never seen it or even heard of it, I point out that George Lucas, known for being a pretty greedy guy, refused to make money off of it in any way. He would never release the Holiday Special in any format because he was that disgusted by it. I don’t blame him because if not for Mike, Kevin, and Bill, I wouldn’t have been able to sit through it myself.

Read more

TV

Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader Had a Rematch Before A New Hope

By John Saavedra

TV

100 Best Christmas TV Episodes of All Time

By Wesley Mead

Each segment appears to be more horrific than the last. We get huge stretches of time where Chewbacca’s family just kind of meanders around their household, growling at each other, with no subtitles. There are “comedy” and musical bits that are just a slog to sit through. One such bit appears to be Chewbacca’s father Itchy watching virtual reality porn. Not even kidding. Mark Hamill is covered in enough makeup to put the studio in the red from their cosmetics budget, Harrison Ford looks like he’d rather be doing anything else, Carrie Fisher is pretty high, and Bea Arthur sings lyrics over the “Cantina Song.” It’s a glorious Hell.

As the cherry on top, the version they watch has all the 1970s commercials completely intact. One of which features Schneider from One Day at a Time!

“He always has loads of fun.” “Why, here he is in Dallas in 1963!”

A VISIT TO SANTA (1963)

The Idea: A couple of kids send a letter to Santa Claus, asking to visit him at the North Pole before Christmas. Santa decides it’s a good idea and has them picked up and brought over in a magic helicopter. He shows Dick and Ann around his home and talks for a moment about how he spreads yuletide cheer through Thanksgiving parades. Then they ride around on a rocket and look at Santa’s prized train set.

The Output: It’s summed up perfectly when Kevin notes, “Interesting. I didn’t know that David Lynch made a Christmas film.” The whole production is very creepy, reminiscent of Manos: Hands of Fate’s cinematography. With all the many Santas that the RiffTrax guys have seen over the years, this one is probably the least jolly (that is, until A Song for Santa). He comes off as a deranged murder suspect trying to lay low with a disguise. In fact, everything about this short is suspect, like the elves, who are really just little kids in miniskirts.

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Movies

Why Chronicles of Narnia’s Santa Claus Celebrates Christmas with Weapons of War

By Juliette Harrisson

Movies

Christmas Movies: A Complete Holiday Streaming Guide

By Alec Bojalad and 1 other

Dick and Ann only have a few lines in the opening and thank God for that. We can understand maybe five percent of anything they have to say.

“Ah, good. Finally, on the silver screen, the be-top-hatted spider-dog of my nightmares. Unless…I’m just having another nightmare.”

CHRISTMAS TOYSHOP (1945)

The Idea: As two kids are put to bed on Christmas Eve, their father tries to set up the tree and all the gifts downstairs. He stumbles around and the ruckus makes them think – in their dreams – that Santa just fell down the chimney. Sharing the same dream, they go downstairs and greet Santa. The little girl asks about where the toys come from and Santa tells the story of a magical toy shop. From here, it becomes a cartoon about living toys having fun when the shop owner is gone.

The Output: The animated sequence is your usual old, black and white cartoon fare. A bunch of toys do stuff for several minutes, including a forgettable musical number, then a plot suddenly happens at the end. Here, it’s an evil spider showing up to try and kidnap a toy of Little Miss Muffet, causing the toy soldiers to come to her rescue.

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Movies

20 Christmas Movies for Badasses

By Michael Reed

Movies

The Mystery Picture on the National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation DVD Cover

By Daniel Langrish-Beard

Somehow, the live-action segment is supposed to be a framing device and everything about the cartoon is being related by Santa. Why he’s telling them about a spider kidnapping a toy, I don’t know, but there you go.

This won’t be the last questionable piece of Santa Claus storytelling. We’ll get to that in a bit.

“Wow. I have literally never seen anything as small and of no account as this tree.”

CHRISTMAS RHAPSODY (1947)

The Idea: A lonely, tiny tree sits in the middle of the snowy forest, feeling itself worthless and meaningless. To its surprise, it’s taken in by a family and set up in their cabin. They decorate it for Christmas and give it the meaning it had been wanting for all this time.

The Output: You know, this one is almost decent, at least in concept. The basic Christmas moral buried in there is rather touching. Too bad the short has two things working against it. One, it’s really boring. Two, the tree is such a sad sack and won’t shut up about how much it sucks. It keeps explaining itself as being small and of no account, which will get your eyes rolling after the eighth time it repeats that.

There’s really nothing else to talk about here. Well, maybe the father’s creepy scalp.

“I need you tonight.” “WHOA!”

RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER (1948)

The Idea: No, not the Rankin/Bass cartoon we all know and love. This animated short is a completely different adaptation of the Rudolph song, predating the stop-motion special by decades. Rudolph is still made fun of for his nose and Santa needs his help due to a foggy night, but don’t expect to see his elf dentist buddy or the abominable snowman.

The Output: Other than the missing characters (which isn’t a criticism, since this came first and those guys weren’t mentioned in the song), the biggest difference in this telling is Rudolph’s status. The Rankin/Bass version made sense in that Santa had a bunch of reindeer living at the North Pole, so of course Santa would come across Rudolph. Here, Rudolph lives in a reindeer civilization. According to this short, animals live like humans around the globe in different sectors (ie. a rabbit-only town) and the only known human being is Santa Claus.

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TV

Doctor Who: revisiting Steven Moffat’s Christmas specials

By Mark Harrison

Movies

17 Movies Secretly About Christmas You Need to Watch

By Mike Cecchini and 4 others

Oh, man. Maybe this is a sequel to Peace on Earth. Pretend you know what I’m talking about.

Another high spot is Rudolph’s mother, who is for some reason shown completely dressed, walking on her hind legs, and having almost human proportions. The riffers all find themselves sexually confused by this.

“Watch this!” “I saw Bam Margera do this on Jackass!”

A CHRISTMAS DREAM (1946)

The Idea: A little girl is happy to receive a few new toys on Christmas. So happy that she discards her older, rattier doll. As she goes to sleep that night, Santa decides to teach her a lesson about the value of one’s belongings by giving her a dream where her old doll comes to life to plead for her attention.

The Output: This is live-action and the doll is depicted with stop-motion animation. To this short’s credit, the animation is incredibly well done, especially for such an old film. It’s also really horrifying and the riffers don’t stop harping on that. The little girl is so excited when any sane person would be in a fear coma.

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Movies

The Strange History of the Die Hard Movies

By Ryan Lambie

TV

Doctor Who: revisiting Russell T. Davies’ Christmas specials

By Mark Harrison

Also, Santa can make you dream whatever he wants. I didn’t know that. That’s disturbing and a far bigger threat than getting coal in your stocking. All he needs are elves in the background, playing jump rope.

“One, two…you better not shout… Three, four…you better not cry… Five, six…you better not pout… Seven, eight…I’m telling you why…”

“Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night!” “Well, Happy Christmas to the one household I visited! The rest of the planet can ram it for all I care!”

THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1946)

The Idea: We all know the famous poem A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore. This is another adaptation of it, though without the bickering cartoon mice. Rather, we see Santa as he visits a home, delivers gifts, and flies off into the night.

The Output: This is one of the most reasonable of all the entries here because there isn’t much you can do to screw up that classic. The only questionable stuff is how rather than have any kind of special effects budget, shots of Santa flying off on his sleigh are done through animation and go back to live-action in close-ups. Otherwise, it’s fairly forgettable amongst the other freaky shorts and movies they watch.

Still, it is a dick move of Santa to give one kid a tiny toy shovel for Christmas. Who the hell would want that?

“Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in 150-plus movies, RiffTrax has nothing to say.” “Just this…enjoy.”

SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY (1972)

The Idea: Santa is stranded in the sands of Florida. His sleigh is partially buried in the sand and his reindeer have abandoned him. He calls over a group of children to help him get the sleigh out of the ground, but to no avail. Santa insists that they don’t give up and relates their situation to the story of Thumbelina (or Jack and the Beanstalk). Luckily, the kids know one magical creature who just might be able to help Santa and make sure Christmas is saved.

The Output: God, where do I even start with this? It’s hard to sit through, but this is one of the most must-see riffs.

The Ice Cream Bunny is practically a mascot for RiffTrax (sorry, Disembaudio). It’s bad in every way. It’s an inconceivable mess. The Santa parts are embarrassing to watch and make you feel really uneasy in its disturbing, low-rent cheesiness. Then you’re rescued from it thanks to Santa telling the story of Thumbelina. By that I mean that they play a completely separate movie with a higher budget that has absolutely nothing to do with the Santa situation. This “flashback” is 50 minutes long and the entire movie is an hour and a half, so yeah. The Thumbelina stuff is also creepy to watch, if not boring at times, but it’s worth powering through.

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Movies

A Complete History of RiffTrax Live

By Gavin Jasper

Movies

The Rod Serling Christmas Movie You Never Saw

By Chris Farnell

Once we return to Santa, we’re finally introduced to the Ice Cream Bunny. Words cannot do this justice. It’s a guy in a terrible rabbit suit driving a fire truck filled with kids when the guy most certainly can’t see what he’s doing and almost runs over a dog. There’s this really unsavory feeling watching what’s supposed to be a delightful movie for children and Bill kills it by adding a horrifying, demented laugh whenever the Ice Cream Bunny is on screen.

RiffTrax has two different versions of the movie. One is the classic VOD released in 2010, where the movie takes a lengthy break to show us the stuff with Thumbelina. In 2015, they did a RiffTrax Live edition with a different print of the movie. In it, the Thumbelina stuff was replaced with Jack and the Beanstalk. Comparing the two is a no-brainer as Jack and the Beanstalk is far more entertaining on its own and is 70s as hell. Plus the RiffTrax Live version includes several bonkers shorts beforehand.

“The sequel to The Ice Cream Bunny’s Amos and Andy!”

SANTA CLAUS’ PUNCH AND JUDY (1948)

The Idea: Santa visits a large group of children (orphans?) and delivers their presents, but one of them asks for a Punch and Judy puppet show. Santa uses his magic to summon such a performance to the delight of the children.

The Output: Have you ever watched a Punch and Judy show? Yeah, nobody goes out of their way to see one. There’s nothing all that wrong with the kids, Santa, or the setup in this short. The focus is just on what I imagine to be a skilled exhibition of puppeteering that hasn’t aged well. Just a puppet beating his girlfriend with a stick, as well as various animals, and we get a break where two minstrel show puppets have a boxing match. So yeah, fun for children.

“He’s like some horrible Soviet Bloc animated version of Santa.” “His nose looks like an infected thumb!”

THE SHANTY WHERE SANTY CLAUS LIVES (1933)

The Idea: A poor little boy live alone and in the cold, doomed to freeze on Christmas Eve. Luckily, he’s discovered by Santa, who takes him away to his own home, where the kid sees all sorts of wonders.

The Output: First thing’s first, the Santa Claus in this movie is rather horrific, one of the scariest of all the Santas in all of these movies, which is impressive for a cartoon. Despite being the title character, he only gets about a minute of screen time anyway. The rest is either the kid being depressed and cold or the kid watching yet another old-timey cartoon scenario where the toys just kind of do stuff and sing for several minutes until something resembling a plot happens at the end. In this case, the tree accidentally catches on fire and the boy has to help put it out.

The most striking thing about this short is the never-ending parade of racism. Lot of uncomfortable toys lounging in the shanty where Santy Claus lives.

“Ooooooh, I’m full grown, all right!” “Kids, if you ever hear someone say that in that voice, call the cops.”

MAGIC CHRISTMAS TREE (1964)

The Idea: A child befriends a witch around Halloween and is given a seed that will eventually sprout a magical Christmas tree. Not only does it talk, but it will also grant him three wishes! Unfortunately, the power goes to the boy’s head and his poor decisions put Christmas in some serious danger.

The Output: While it may not be the absolute best RiffTrax, it’s the best kind of bad movie for them to tackle. The movie is incredibly strange, but it gradually builds on it. In the beginning, it’s almost straightforward, but it gets more and more questionable as the minutes pass. For instance, there’s a scene where the main character’s family leaves to go Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve. The boy makes a wish to have ultimate power for a limited time (why a limited time? I don’t know) and uses his power to make it day and then goes around messing with people who are doing their usual daily routines, not at all aware that it’s supposed to be the night before Christmas.

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Movies

The Best Alternative Christmas movies

By Mark Harrison

Movies

Disney+ Christmas Movies for Kids: The Best Family Films to Watch this Holiday Season

By Alana Joli Abbott

By the end, we have a greed-loving giant living in the mountains showing up out of nowhere. What Christmas movie isn’t complete without a greed-loving giant living in the mountains showing up out of nowhere?

“And in the second place, ice cream break was over more than an hour ago!” “Ah, kids love it when furries have labor disputes.”

SANTA’S ENCHANTED VILLAGE (1964)

The Idea: As a sequel/extension of the Mexican Santa Claus movie (more on that later), we see a village where Santa’s various helpers get toys ready for the holiday season. Unfortunately, Stinky the Skunk would rather take extremely long breaks, much to the chagrin of his supervisor, the Ferocious Wolf.

The Output: By “sequel” I mainly mean that the guy who made this had the rights to the Santa Claus movie and would occasionally toss in clips from it. The original footage in this short (and the two that follow) are incredibly low-rent, mainly in the form of the mascot costume characters and their terrible voices. Most notable is how the Ferocious Wolf is accompanied by loud, obnoxious accordion noises whenever he walks around. Which is a lot.

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Movies

The Best Christmas Movie Soundtracks of All Time

By Ivan Radford

TV

The Best Christmas Movies Available on Netflix

By Alec Bojalad

One of the true highlights is when the Ferocious Wolf visits Santa’s office and rants about how Stinky the Skunk is such a bad employee. Santa’s reaction is to just sit there the entire time, nodding and laughing his ass off like a lunatic. Which reminds me, the Ferocious Wolf complaining about his ulcer is – I kid you not – his catchphrase.

“Hey! Right here at this moment, this officially became the craziest thing ever made by man.” “Seriously, Merry Christmas, everyone. Merry Christmas.”

SANTA CLAUS AND HIS HELPERS (1964)

The Idea: The Ferocious Wolf, Stinky the Skunk, and Puss’n Boots get in a big argument and Santa is none too pleased. Watching from space along with his good friend Merlin, Santa decides to go give his angry employees a visit and set them straight.

The Output: This installment of the Santa’s Village of Madness Trilogy is easily the least coherent. Seeing the costumed characters is complete bedlam and even the riffers give up in awe of the chaos. Not only is half of the footage of this short taken directly from Santa Claus, but a couple minutes are taken from Santa’s Enchanted Village! But hey, no angry accordion music this time, so that’s something.

“Whoa! He’s got a face like a squid’s anus!”

SANTA’S MAGIC KINGDOM (1966)

The Idea: Puss’n Boots is the head of security in Santa’s Village and he confronts a visitor. It turns out to be a princess on the run from a giant ogre that’s out to destroy Santa Claus and end Christmas! Puss needs to gather an army together to face this beast and save Christmas.

The Output: So this giant ogre? They never actually show him. Well, except for a shot of a lame dinosaur statue that we see for a second. I don’t know if that’s actually supposed to be the ogre. Whatever. Otherwise, the narrative is just another fever dream filmed with the tiniest budget. Merlin ends up being the one to challenge the big monster and what a fight it is! I think. They never actually show any of it. We just hear them off-screen while everyone else reacts. The elves couldn’t even do that right.

“Ladies and gentlemen, a third-string ballerina on painkillers.”

SANTA CLAUS AND THE FAIRY SNOW QUEEN (1951)

The Idea: A six-inch tall woman called the Snow Queen visits Santa on Christmas Eve, but is annoyed to see him sleeping in her presence. As a joke, she gives life to a handful of nearby toys. The various toys dance and laugh, but are reluctant to be given off to children as lifeless gifts. Not only have they taken to being alive, but they’ve also grown attached to each other. Whatever will Santa and the Snow Queen do?

The Output: This whole thing is incomprehensible and it doesn’t help that the Snow Queen has a really thick European accent that you can barely cut through. The real star of this short is the Candy Lion. See, while you have understandable, recognizable toys hanging around like a toy soldier, a ballerina, a ragdoll, a Jack-in-the-box, and so on, you also have the Candy Lion. Described as a half-mummified Chewbacca, the dead-eyed toy stands around in the background for the most part and gets one memorable line when he excitedly brags to Santa, “I can eat candy!”

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TV

13 Craziest Interpretations of Santa Claus to Ever Slide Down a Chimney

By Daniel Kurland

Culture

The Beatles Christmas Messages Were Carols to Be Played at Maximum Volume

By Tony Sokol

The Jack-in-the-box is easily one of the more annoying characters in RiffTrax history, though. Goddamn that repeating freak. This is all hosted by Snoopy, a high-pitched “brownie” (which appears to be no different than an elf) who I’m not sure if I’m repulsed by or attracted to.

“My finger isn’t tired!” “Oh, God! What is he about to do?!”

SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS (1964)

The Idea: On Mars, children have become joyless and robotic due to the planet’s lack of fun and insistence on constant studying and good behavior. The only thing that brings them any happiness is watching Earth programs, such as news on this Santa Claus character. Afraid for the future of his planet, Kimar and his crew visit Earth to kidnap Santa (and eventually two children) and bring him to Mars so that he can spread joy to their world…whether he wants to or not!

The Output: While this movie may be on the IMDB bottom 100, I consider it a guilty pleasure. As I discussed when speaking with Kevin Murphy, I think at its core, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is a great concept for a children’s movie. It has its own unique whimsy. Unfortunately, it’s hurt by bad, hammy acting and the kind of bad costuming and effects you’d expect from a movie like this.

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Movies

10 remarkable things: Santa Claus Conquers The Martians

By Ryan Lambie

TV

The Best Christmas Movies Available on Amazon Prime

By Alec Bojalad

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is the only RiffTrax movie to also be featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, Cinematic Titanic (the offshoot where the other MST3K cast members went off to), and RiffTrax, all with their own unique set of jokes. There’s a good reason for that. The movie is incredibly silly and ripe for mockery, yet at the same time completely and utterly watchable. The RiffTrax version features the movie in its entirety, rather than the abridged version from MST3K.

“Don’t you wish that your school bus looked like this?!” “Packed with bearded lunatics and flanked by grim clowns? No!”

FUN IN BALLOON LAND (1965)

The Idea: A little boy goes to sleep and dreams of a world of giant balloon people and other children to play with. After getting into a variety of adventures, he and a little girl watch a holiday parade filled with all sorts of balloon floats.

The Output: This 1960s nightmare is the perfect B-side to Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny. The first third of it is complete and utter nonsense. This little boy would just wander around a warehouse, stumble upon some kind of big balloon statue, someone would voice said statue by shouting from across the room off-screen, and then it would move on to a completely unrelated scene. There is a group of ballerinas who show up to dance for absolutely no reason. At one point the boy is inexplicably walking around in only a gold lamé diaper and Kevin wonders, “Is this movie even legal?” The boy proceeds to hit on mermaids and plays hide-and-seek with a lobster thing.

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Culture

25 Unsung Christmas Icons

By Gavin Jasper

TV

The Best Christmas Movies Available on Hulu

By Alec Bojalad

Then it becomes old footage of a holiday parade that lasts about a half hour and has more clowns and majorettes than I have ever seen in one place at one time. It’s pretty dry, but the woman narrating it is completely insane and the RiffTrax crew show absolutely no mercy in painting her as some kind of drunk lunatic. She ends the movie with a “guessing game” where she keeps changing the rules every three seconds and you don’t even know what the hell is going on.

“Still going? If this was a game of Ski Free, the Abominable Snowman would have gobbled them up hours ago.”

ZLATEH THE GOAT (1973)

The Idea: A boy named Aaron reluctantly has to bring his family’s prized goat Zlateh to the butcher in order to sell her. During the journey, the weather takes a horrible turn and Aaron and Zlateh are forced to hide out under a pile of hay for several days. The two form a bond that allows them to survive the ordeal.

The Output: This Hanukkah story is absolutely miserable. Despite being just a short, it feels like it goes on forever and pads itself out with many shots of the kid having to drag the goat through the snow. And you know how I just said that they form a bond that allows Aaron to survive? Yeah, that’s from him drinking milk directly from Zlateh. It’s nasty.

“It’s fun to make things of sugar. And they are good to eat.” “WHAT?!” “Just grab a slice of instant diabetes, kids!”

AT YOUR FINGERTIPS: SUGAR AND SPICE (1970)

The Idea: The At Your Fingertips series is all about arts and crafts using stuff around the house. Here, we see how you can use sugar to create festive Christmas ornaments. Through creativity and hard work, you can make decorating a blast!

The Output: The At Your Fingertips series is all about spending way too much time on ugly and insane crap that really looks far from fun. This Christmas-related one is no different. Things come off as less festive and more gross and unpleasant. And that’s before the children start eating pure sugar. Ugh.

“If she’s already sleeping, we might be able to see her dreams.” “We’re in, children. Let’s get ready to begin our Christmas inception. I won’t lie to you: we might have to shoot our way out.”

SANTA CLAUS (1959)

The Idea: In a Mexican adaptation of the Santa Claus myth, we see the jolly one as he spends the night delivering presents. Some children get extra focus for the movie, including a little boy whose parents don’t seem to have time for him and a poor, little girl who only wants a doll to play with. As Santa tries to make right by them, he’s vexed by Pitch, a devil sent to ruin Christmas for everyone.

The Output: This is another MST3K double-dip, but for good reason. It’s delightfully insane. See, Santa is already a nutty concept, but we get into Drunk History territory here where the people behind the movie don’t quite get it and his mythology gets even stranger in translation.

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Movies

The Strangest and Most Disturbing Santa Claus Movie of Them All

By Jim Knipfel

TV

The 12 Best SNL Holiday Sketches

By Chris Longo and 1 other

Did you know Santa is good friends with Merlin the Magician? Did you know that he has a burly blacksmith working for him? Or that Santa lives in space with little children from all around the world doing his bidding? Or that he regularly fights the minions of Satan?

The MST3K version might be better, but it is nice getting to see the full cut of the movie for once.

“Who and what are you?” “I am—“ “Meryl Streep. I am good in everything.”

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1952)

The Idea: The Alastair Sim version of A Christmas Carol, otherwise known as Scrooge, is considered an outright classic. Perhaps the greatest telling of the Charles Dickens story of a hateful rich man realizing his own humanity thanks to being visited by ghosts. Here, we get to see the movie in its abridged form and get through it in minutes.

The Output: Listen, A Christmas Carol has a pretty solidified structure. Scrooge is a dick, his dead friend warns him, he gets led around by three other ghosts, and he comes out of it a better person. Abridging it simply does not work. Basically, Marley introduces him to the Ghost of Christmas Present and that’s enough to make a change. Bridget puts it best: “They edited the Dickens out of the movie!”

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Movies

A Christmas Carol: The Best and Worst Adaptations

By Robert Keeling

TV

The Most Disturbing TV Christmas Specials

By Wesley Mead

This short is part of Have a Mary Jo Christmas and a Bridget New Year, which is done by Mary Jo Pehl and Bridget Nelson instead of the usual riffers. It features some non-riff stuff in-between this and the following short…

“Man, I wish I hadn’t gone commando today…”

THE LITTLE LAMB (1955)

The Idea: During storytime, a group of children ask to hear a story about an animal while one girl wants to hear a story about Jesus. Their mother figures to cover both by telling the story of Jesus’ birth from the point of view of three shepherds. While two of them brave strong winds to save a lost, little lamb, an angel appears to them to tell them about the birth of Christ. They and their curmudgeonly associate go off to find the new king.

The Output: Honestly, this one isn’t all that bad, really. It’s a pretty solid production and the only part that really gets a rise out of Mary Jo and Bridget is when they warm baby Jesus’ body by laying the lamb next to him. It’s not the most memorable little short, but it’s fine for what it is.

Plus I’m always distracted by how much the guy playing Joseph looks like CM Punk. It’s downright uncanny in some shots.

“A real child’s actual tears! I know I’m ready for Christmas!”

I BELIEVE IN SANTA CLAUS (1984)

The idea: Simon is a bullied child whose parents have been kidnapped by African soldiers. Desperate to get them back, he and a friend sneak off from a school field trip and board a plane in hopes to find where Santa Claus lives. Alongside a Christmas Fairy (who looks an awful lot like Simon’s kindly teacher), Santa goes to Africa to rescue the captives. Meanwhile, the children are captured by an ogre.

The Output: Did any of that sound lucid? Because this French film is out there, man. It’s cute, but it also decides that being a kid’s movie means it doesn’t have to be logically coherent. You know, even though there’s an entire plot thread about African warlords kidnapping people. Kids like that stuff, right?

You know that, “I’m the captain now!” part of Captain Phillips? Imagine Tom Hanks replaced with Santa in that scene and you’re just hitting the tip of the iceberg of how bizarre this Christmas film is.

“Monkeys, you know, are very much like human beings in many ways. And sometimes they do the very same things that we do.” “Why, here’s a monkey Black Friday stampede!”

SANTA CLAUS’ STORY (1945)

The Idea: It begins with Twas the Night Before Christmas and ends with the, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” speech. In-between, Santa tells two children about how monkeys also celebrate Christmas and have their very own Monkey Santa Claus.

The Output: Monkey Santa Claus. Really.

This short is barely being held together by a narrative. They basically have a bunch of footage of monkeys and chimps doing stuff and since this includes 20 seconds of a chimp wearing a horrifying Santa Claus mask and costume, they decide that there’s a Monkey Christmas and write everything around that.

Somehow, this was the sanest thing shown at the RiffTrax Live for Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny.

“Bricks on his face. Sure! He’s a dragon.” “All dragons have bricks on their face.”

THE TALE OF THE CUSTARD DRAGON (1965)

The Idea: Ogden Nash’s poem for children comes to life. A little girl has a pet dog, cat, mouse, and dragon. The dragon, named Custard, is a bit of a coward and only wants to be let alone. But then on one Christmas Eve, when his friends are attacked by an evil pirate, Custard has to stand up and save their presents.

The Output: The poem is acted out via a handful of kids in little Halloween costumes, including Custard being a dragon with a brick facemask. The short takes place in somebody’s den and aesthetically, the whole thing is a weird mess. Custard also straight-up murders the pirate, which makes sense on the page, but feels a bit off the reservation when we see a child viciously attacking an adult in a lame costume.

“AAAAAHHHH! Hannibal Lecter’s Christmas trees!” “Good God, he’s keeping them alive!”

THE CHRISTMAS TREE (1975)

The Idea: This short tells us the story of three pine trees who are cut down and go through the process of becoming Christmas trees. This means being sold, being decorated, enduring Christmas, and, sadly, being discarded. Shown in live-action, the trees are portrayed by mimes in tree costumes and facepaint.

The Output: It’s cute, but also bewildering. With zero dialogue, we watch these three guys mug at each other while Christmas stuff happens around them. As strange as it is by default, it loses its mind in the final minutes when we see the trees thrown in the garbage as they start to die. Not only do the trees-with-faces die, but we get to see their trees-with-faces ghosts fly up into the sky.

Tree ghosts. Yup.

“GAH! His face looks like a series of horrible wounds!” “That just started healing.” “What are the dots..?!”

SANTA’S CHRISTMAS CIRCUS (1966)

The Idea: Hey, kids! It’s time for Whizzo the Clown! This local TV clown has a special show in store for everyone as he and his audience of kids play around and pretend to be circus performers! Then they check out some motorized Christmas-based decorations before getting ready for the main event: riding a magic carpet and visiting Santa himself!

The Output: This one��s best summed up right after the opening credits end. As Whizzo walks out and mumbles loudly like he’s having an episode, Mike laughingly wonders if they’ve gone too far, knowing that the three of them are about to sit through some rough shit. While Whizzo certainly has energy and some kind of charisma, he’s also the poster boy for why people are frightened of clowns without having to go the easy serial killer route. No, he’s a friendly and jokey clown, but he’s also completely horrifying to look at.

This low-budget affair not only features Whizzo’s catchphrase of, “Now I have that to worry about,” but also the catchphrase of one girl in the audience loudly coughing throughout the hour. It’s incredibly uncomfortable to sit through.

“Yeah… Celebrate the nativity… That’s what daddy likes…”

GIFTS FROM THE AIR (1937)

The Idea: A poor boy wanders through the snow, enduring Christmas Eve without food, family, or toys. He comes across a toy store where a dancing toy soldier annoys the store owner enough to have him thrown out. The boy takes the soldier in to his humble home and his good deed is rewarded as the toy soldier happens to know how to summon Santa Claus himself!

The Output: Dancing toy cartoons with poor kids is nothing new for RiffTrax, but this one is certainly unique enough to be a must-watch. The moment Santa delivers the toys to the little boy, it becomes complete and utter madness. It’s a bunch of bizarre toys who talk like what appears to be 1930s celebrities. Like there’s a goat that sings like Bing Crosby, so even though I know who Bing Crosby is, that doesn’t make the toy goat make any more sense.

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Movies

MST3K Turkey Day: The Long History of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Thanksgiving

By Gavin Jasper

Culture

Best Holiday Gifts for Geeks in 2020

By Chris Cummins

The highlight is when a Santa Jack-in-the-box pops out and tells another toy something so indistinct that Mike notes, “‘How the hell are you, scramble puss? Smelly Christmas to you,’ is what I heard.”

“Well. This place looks cozy. I LIVE HERE NOW!”

SANTA CLAUS’ WORKSHOP (1930s)

The Idea: Once again, we get to see how Santa Claus performs his duties. From his home in the North Pole to the home of a nice middle-class family, we see Santa get letters from kids, fly on his sleigh, and deliver the presents themselves. We also get a look at the family in question, who celebrate the holidays via singing a lovely rendition of “O Come All Ye Faithful.”

The Output: It’s your usual fare on this one and not too much that sticks out. That’s not to say that it’s meant to be skipped, as Kevin singing “Pretty Woman” over “O Come All Ye Faithful” makes this worth the dollar.

The one part of the short that makes it seem off is the revelation towards the end that Santa doesn’t simply fly across the world to deliver presents in one go, but instead flies back and forth for every single household. I mean, Santa can only carry so many presents in that sack of his, right?

“And so, they started out together, not realizing they were being followed.” “Well, they were easy to track…thanks to a long trail of spunk.” “DAMN IT, KEVIN!” “(Sorry.)”

SPUNKY THE SNOWMAN (1958)

The Idea: When a group of children write a letter to Santa, it’s up to their newly-created snowman Spunky to deliver it to Santa himself. Spunky and the little dog Jeff go on a quest, only to be opposed by a fox, an owl, and a wolf. Each creature wants to steal that letter and bring it to Santa, figuring that they can then steal the gifts. Spunky and Jeff are soon aided by a bear, but can even he keep them safe?

The Output: The guy’s name is Spunky. You know exactly what kind of jokes you’re getting the second you see that title.

Otherwise, it’s an animated story that tries to be whimsical, but is really just nonsense. It takes a bunch of Christmas cliches like magic snowmen, letters to Santa, talking animals, and desire for Christmas trees and badly pastes it all together into a confusing package.

“When you’re not shaking that over our heads to make us work, you can hobble around on it and enjoy your sciatica!” “A zinger from TV’s Frank!”

BEYOND CHRISTMAS (1940)

The idea: Three old rich men feel lonely during Christmas night and one comes up with an idea of throwing wallets with $10 bills out onto the sidewalk and inviting anyone kind enough to return them to enjoy dinner with them. The gambit pays off and leads to a romance between a Texan with a golden voice and a schoolteacher. Unfortunately, tragedy strikes the old men and they have to help the couple out from beyond the grave.

The output: This movie (originally known as Beyond Tomorrow) is actually pretty damn good. It’s a little sluggish in the second half, but it’s original, has some likeable characters, and never really gets too stupid. Even Bridget and Mary Jo find themselves getting invested in what’s going on when they should be telling jokes. With them, it feels more like you’re watching a movie together rather than just watching them rip it apart.

Personally, I think it would make for a better Christmas movie if the first act took place during Thanksgiving and built towards an ending happening during Christmas. Might have made the supernatural and uplifting stuff pop more.

“Seriously, what the Hell is going on with the mitten tree?!”

CHRISTMAS CUSTOMS NEAR AND FAR (1955)

The idea: As some children prepare for a Christmas pageant, one asks their teacher about the origins of the Christmas tree. This leads to her explaining how children from different countries celebrate Christmas in varying ways.

The output: As we all know, different = funny. While some of the customs might be normal, it doesn’t help that most of them are depicted by children dressing up as foreigners while standing in front of a curtain. So it’s a Christmas pageant within a short about the attempt to rehearse a Christmas pageant. Crazy.

Through the short, we get to see a weird kid dancing around in an elf hat, a Christmas tree covered in mittens, and a thing about how kids in China do a big ceremony to celebrate the events of Christ’s birth.

“Whaddya know?! Armed and dangerous!” “None of my quips are funny but some…make very little sense!”

JACK FROST (1997)

The idea: Not to be confused with the Michael Keaton family film from the same time, Jack Frost deals with a serial killer who escapes captivity, only to be seemingly vaporized by a chemical spill. In actuality, he survives as living snow and uses his new form to attempt revenge on the police officer that arrested him in the first place. Even when the officer and his family know what they’re up against, they don’t even know if there’s a way to stop him.

The output: I remember renting this baby back in the late-90s and, hoo boy, it’s a lot worse than I remembered it being. As a horror villain, Jack Frost wants to be like Freddy Krueger or Chucky, where he kills his victims while belting out memorable one-liners. The problem is, everything he says falls flat or is complete nonsense. He constantly stumbles on his own attempts at charisma.

Read more

Movies

MST3K: The Landmark Episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000

By Gavin Jasper

TV

Doctor Who: The Weird Anomaly of the 1965 ‘Christmas Special’

By Andrew Blair

Despite taking place in a town in winter that’s supposed to support the existence of snowmen and sledding and the like, it’s obviously taking place in a hot and sunny area with weak attempts to hide it.

It’s still better than the sequel, which was one of those cringeworthy “intentionally bad” gems.

“God… Oh no, have they been hypnotized?” “I…I…I think it might be a cult. They’re quietly chanting to that tree right now.” “…I think the tree might be marrying them.” “This is horrible!”

A CHRISTMAS FANTASY (1962)

The Idea: Two children admire their Christmas tree before falling asleep on the couch. As they dream of trees in the winter, Santa Claus appears to deliver gifts. It’s only just over five minutes, so there isn’t much happening here.

The Output: Despite its short runtime, this one really meanders. The way the kids stare at the tree like they’re about to be murdered by the Blair Witch. The endless shots of trees with no leaves on them.

The money shot of this short is when Santa shows up. Rather than just get a guy to wear a beard and call it a day, they instead have him wear a mask. It seriously looks like Leatherface is pretending to be Santa here and it’s HORRIFYING. As the guys put it, even Krampus is freaked out by this Santa.

“Santa, I wrote you a new song!” “Oh, good! A song! That’ll get me hammered.”

A SONG FOR SANTA

The idea: A trio of lost boys find themselves in a church and sit down to enjoy the warmth and chorus. One child nods off from the music and finds himself in Santa’s domain, where he offers to create a new and original Christmas song to delight Santa and his angels.

The output: The first half is normal enough, despite little of interest happening. Right when the Santa stuff happens, things get weird and creepy. Instead of elves, Santa has little girls dressed as angels and disturbingly leers at them like there’s no good that can come out of whatever’s happening. The boy’s attempt to write Santa a new song goes nowhere, as he just sings him an old song with the justification that, “I didn’t know this song until now, so it must be new to you too.”

This is another one of those oddball shorts or movies where there’s a framing device that’s forgotten about. The boy never wakes up from his dream or anything. It just ends with him hanging out with creepy Santa and his underage harem.

“Spirit…tell me if Tiny Tim will live.” “I see an empty chair in the chimney corner.” “Oh, so he not only lives, he walks?!” “No!” “It’s a Christmas miracle!” “No, no!”

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1959)

The idea: I explained Christmas Carol earlier. Luckily, we finally have a version that’s the full story and not abridged like what Bridget and Mary Jo watched.

The output: This one’s by Coronet Films, meaning it’s old as hell and feels cheap. To its credit, despite running at just over 20 minutes, it tells the complete story without feeling rushed. It just feels a bit under budget, what with the limited quality in costumes and several sets being some props on a fog-filled sound stage.

Still, it’s A Christmas Carol and you have to go out of your way to do a bad job with that. This one’s still fairly watchable, even if the riffs are well-deserved.

“This isn’t so much A Miracle on 34th Street as it is A Horse Who Took a Dump on 34th Street.”

SANTA’S SUMMER HOUSE (2012)

The idea: A group of travelers get lost in a fog and end up at the doorstep of a kindly couple who allow them to stay in their mansion for a couple days. Little do these visitors realize that their hosts are none other than Santa Claus and his wife! The two try to use their wisdom and magic to improve the lives of these visitors and mend their relationships.

The output: This piece of shit is written and directed by the same guys who gave us A Talking Cat!?! It even takes place in the same house. At least with Talking Cat!?! there were two separate houses used. Here, it’s just the one.

It’s a hell of a lineup of actors. Mrs. Claus starred in RiffTrax target Honor and Glory. The egomaniac scientist guy in this movie is the JCVD knockoff from MST3K’s Future War. Santa himself is played by Robert Mitchum’s son. Even though he isn’t all that overweight and doesn’t have a beard, he’s still identified as looking a lot like Santa.

The movie is just bad dialogue said by bad actors, occasionally broken up by wipe edits featuring Christmas Clip-Art. It never reaches Talking Cat!?! levels of batshit, but it’s still stupid as a pile of rocks.

“They’re buying a brother?!”

CHARLIE’S CHRISTMAS SECRET (1984)

The idea: A young Seth Green plays Charlie, who feels that he’s outgrown Christmas. The commercialism does nothing for him and makes him feel hollow. At first, his instincts are vindicated when he comes across various others – a bitter, old woman, a poor single mother, and a scheming homeless man – but soon he realizes the meaning of Christmas by putting their needs first.

The output: Again, this one is halfway decent. All in all, it tells a really sweet story. It just happens to have a few awkward aspects to it. The whole thing has subtitles and they almost never match what’s actually being said, instead going for the simplest way of conveying whatever thoughts. Like instead of saying, “No thank you, I’m not hungry right now,” it would just say, “No.”

The most questionable part of this special, and something that I’m glad is called out by the riffers, is that Charlie apparently has to buy his own Christmas gifts. Part of the plot is that he has his eye on a stereo and instead of asking Santa for it or having his parents buy it for him, he has to save up the money from his paper route, get the stereo, and then have his mother wrap it and place it under the tree.

What the Hell?

“No. No way. There’s no such thing as Santa Claus. You’re just someone in a Santa suit.” “That’s why YOU never get anything for Christmas!” “Also, ’cause you made Feeders!”

FEEDERS 2: SLAY BELLS (1998)

The Idea: Previously, aliens invaded and feasted on a handful of confused and horrified Earthlings. Now a second UFO has arrived to conquer again, this time with its aliens creeping around and causing havoc through a suburban town. As one family gets ready for Christmas, they gradually come to realize how doomed they truly are.

The Output: RiffTrax was kind of slick on this one. On Halloween of 2019, they put out a riff for an utterly terrible low-budget piece of garbage called Feeders, which is about a bunch of laughable alien puppets invading Earth and killing some of the ugliest people to ever show up on film. Then, just a couple months later, they released a riff on its Christmas-themed sequel.

While I do suggest watching the first one, you won’t be too lost if you don’t. A survivor from the first movie goes about summarizing the first movie’s events in a series of loose framing devices that aren’t directly connected to the rest of the movie. It is pretty funny on its own, though, because a character who died in the first movie and is featured prominently in the flashbacks is played by the very same guy who is the protagonist of this movie.

Read more

Movies

The 16 Best Winter Horror Movies

By Daniel Kurland and 3 others

TV

The Twilight Zone Marathon: A History of a Holiday Tradition

By Arlen Schumer

Not only does the climax take place on Christmas Eve, but Santa gets involved! Santa, who for some reason sounds like Homsar from Homestar Runner, is attacked by aliens (who look even worse than in the first movie) and proceeds to be the secret weapon in saving the world. He’s up there with the over-the-top boss character and the silliest-looking dead cat special effect in reasons why you should watch this one.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

“And now I will read you this editorial.” “‘The Rent is Too Damn High!’ by Virginia O’Hanlon”

YES, VIRGINIA, THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS (1974)

The Idea: A young girl, teased by her classmates, wonders about the existence of Santa Claus. Various adults try to assure her of his existence despite admitting that they’ve never actually met him. She ends up writing to the newspaper and asks them. Egged on by an ambitious paperboy, the newspaper’s editor decides to publish his response for everyone to read.

The Output: Imagine watching a Peanuts special that features absolutely none of the Peanuts cast and is at about 75% the quality. That’s what this cartoon is. It’s also very dull, what with them trying to add a narrative to the whole newspaper editorial.

There is some real heart in it, but it doesn’t work as a whole. Probably my favorite part is when the “Yes, Virginia” editorial is read out loud. Despite the simplistic animation, the people’s reactions are emotional. Some kids seem humbled. Some adult couples embrace. Then all of the sudden, the local Irish cop character does a happy jig that probably cost them half the animation budget.

“All of this was in Dickens’ first draft, by the way. Even the goofy music.”

BANKS: THE MONEY MOVERS (1977)

The Idea: Due to his familiarity as a popular literary character, Ebenezer Scrooge (er, Arthur Scrooge?) is used as a window to help people learn about how banks work and why they are a worthwhile place to put your money. As a stand-in for the viewer, Scrooge learns about deposits, withdrawals, interest, loans, and other aspects of the business.

The Output: This is all explained via a version of Christmas Carol where Scrooge is taught a lesson by ghosts for being stingy with his money. Namely that he keeps it in his mattress. As Mike points out, it’s incredibly messed up that Marley is suffering eternal damnation because he never got a Wells Fargo account. I get trying to map your lesson onto a preexisting story, but think it through a little!

Also wild in this is how despite his old-timey appearance, Scrooge exists in modern times and is even seen using a check to buy a motor scooter. It’s completely inane, but at least the guy playing Scrooge seems like he’s having a fun time.

“The birth of Jesus Christ, ladies and gentlemen. That’s what it’s all about.”

ALIAS ST. NICK (1935)

The Idea: As a family of adorable mice get ready for Christmas, a scheming cat decides to get through their defenses by dressing up as Santa Claus, delivering their gifts, and then devouring them. His plan appears to be working extremely well, but there’s one mouse child who doesn’t believe in Santa and is quick to see through his disguise.

The Output: Although the guys don’t bring it up, it’s kind of odd that the kid who spends the whole cartoon being loudly and annoyingly skeptic about the existence of Santa Claus is absolutely 100% vindicated. There isn’t some kind of last-second evidence of Santa or something. It just ends.

Otherwise, this is just your average off-brand Looney Tunes cartoon. Probably the most bizarre moment is when the cat puts together his Santa costume and strips a doll naked to make his beard.

“And now the ancient tradition of giving a present to Tommy Lasorda.”

DECEMBER HOLIDAYS (1982)

The Idea: A narrator explains three of the bigger December holidays: Posadas, Chanukah, and Christmas. Through what appears to be fly on the wall footage, various families celebrate these holidays with their festive traditions. The narrator tries to educate the viewer on the families’ behavior and how it relates to the origins of the holidays.

The Output: I mean, that’s…pretty much it. There’s nothing wacky about this short. It’s pretty dull, but it’s a decent enough target for Mike, Bill, and Kevin. Sometimes you don’t need an Ice Cream Bunny to have a good time.

“When are you planning on going back to Florida?” “I think we’re going to wait until you have your baby. Just want to make sure you’re okay.” “And that you don’t give birth to a CGI vampire baby.”

BABY OF THE BRIDE (1991)

The Idea: A made-for-TV movie starring Rue McClanahan is actually the second in a trilogy about a dysfunctional, all-grown-up family filled with all kinds of interpersonal problems. In the previous movie, Margaret Becker married a much younger man and it took her children some time to adjust. Now things are getting crazy as not only is one of her daughters pregnant, but Margaret is pregnant too! She, her new husband, and her four kids all have to deal with a ton of drama, which all culminates at midnight mass!

The Output: This is another Bridget and Mary Jo installment and the two have a habit of tackling movies that aren’t so much the worst thing ever, but are too corny to ignore. That’s Baby of the Bride, pretty much. It’s very much a watchable movie, but it’s also a movie about Blanche from Golden Girls being pregnant, which is buried among all kinds of different subplots about how dysfunctional her family is. This family collectively gets divorced more than they get their cars’ oil checked.

The whole narrative is about eight months long because of the whole double pregnancy thing, but the climax is during Christmas Eve, so I guess it ultimately counts as a holiday movie. It just takes a long time to get there.

“I think this guy was a boss in Cuphead.”

THE SNOWMAN (1932)

The Idea: Somewhere in the arctic, an Inuit child and his animal friends enjoy their slightly-less-chilly summer by building a snowman. After happily putting it together and throwing snowballs at it, the snowman comes alive and goes on a rampage. Can the child destroy what he created before the malevolent snow beast goes too far?

The Output: This cartoon is all over the place and is one of the absolute best holiday shorts RiffTrax has commented on. So much crazy shit is compressed into this package. Snowman buttcracks? Check. Jimmy Durante impressions? Check. Penguin church? Check. I won’t even spoil how the snowman is defeated other than saying that it’s completely ridiculous and makes zero sense.

Still, it’s better than that Snowman movie with Harry Hole getting all the clues.

The post RiffTrax: A Guide to Christmas and Holiday Episodes appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[maddie-grove]

What Can You Do?

A really important part of advocating for any cause is sitting down and figuring out what you realistically can contribute. Making decisions on the fly or in the throes of emotion often leads to doing less than you intended (because you didn’t figure out how it would fit into your routine/budget) or more than you can handle (which leads to you needing to put out fires in other parts of your life, which in turn leads to you...doing less than you intended in the long run). Making a plan is its own step and deserves to be recognized as such. Do not worry that you’re wasting time by planning before you act. I’ve made that mistake before in many areas of my life, and it always led to a lot of unnecessary stress and made me less productive sooner rather than later.

The first thing you can do is think about the resources you have. For example:

Money: Can you afford to give $10 or $100 to charity a month? Or are you barely getting by?

Health: Are you pretty strong and healthy? Or do you have physical conditions that would make it particularly risky to catch coronavirus or be thrown in jail without your meds?

Time: Do you have a decent amount of free time? Or are you having to teach your three kids at home while working at the grocery store, and also you’re moving in two weeks?

Emotional Bandwidth: Do you have a pretty good handle on your stress and sadness? Or are you having a particularly hard time with trauma or mental illness or family issues or working in an emotionally demanding job?

Knowledge: Are you pretty familiar with the history of the people you’re trying to help or the problem you’re trying to solve? Or did you just hear the term “systemic racism” last week? 

Experience/Skills: Do you know how to organize a protest or annoy your representative into doing something or invoke your right to a lawyer? Or are you at a loss of how to apply your particular skills to any of this?

Power/Authority: Do you have a job or hold a volunteer position where you’re able to help the people you want to help? Or...not that?

Freedom: Are you free to decide how you expend your resources or express yourself without fear of violence or destitution? Or are you under the thumb of an abusive partner or caregiver?

None of this is to say that only the strongest, most self-actualized millionaires should be expected to help; it’s just that (a) everybody has to work with their actual circumstances and (b) everybody has strengths and weaknesses in what they have to give. 

If you have a little extra money but can’t watch the news or consume a lot of social media without crying yourself to sleep or having a panic attack? Buddy, no one needs you to watch the news that bad. Donate to the NAACP Legal Fund, ask a politically engaged friend what they’re writing their rep about, and get as much help for your anxiety issues as possible--not just so you’ll be a better advocate, but because you’re a human being and you deserve help.

If you work full-time as a nurse or a legal aid attorney or something else emotionally (and maybe physically) taxing where you help vulnerable people? The most important things you can do are almost certainly going to be related to work. Learn as much as you can about how the cause intersects with your work, and advocate for ways to make things better for your clients/patients, as well as your coworkers who don’t have the privileges you do. Then go home and rest. If you can go out and protest after all of that, you have my admiration, but you don’t have to run yourself ragged.

If you’re a college student, broke and stuck at home with not much to do now that classes have wrapped up? You don’t have to give up eating all protein and produce in order to donate to charity; you can instead take this time to inform yourself and get involved in organizations.

And if you’re truly not able to do anything, because you’re in the middle of a crisis or you’re living with controlling people who will hurt you for even reading the wrong thing? Get away, get safe, get better. Don’t wreck your life to help other people in the short term. At best, you’ll temporarily be in a position where it’s even harder to help others than before. At worst, you’re dead, and never able to help anyone again. Live to help people another day, when you’re stronger and can do more. You deserve a life where you are able to take care of yourself and help others. Everyone does.

Other things to keep in mind:

If you’re unsure whether you’re doing too much or too little, ask another person. I recommend someone who personally knows you and genuinely cares about you, but wouldn’t take your side in a dispute with a third party if you were being a real dick. 

Decide on what you’re going to give and stick to that for a set amount of time. Then you can assess if you are able to do more, or need to scale back.

Don’t worry if other people are doing more than you. If you admire them for what they do and you want to work up to that, that’s wonderful, but your contributions are not worthless just because they’re smaller.

If you’re worried about other people doing less than you (not actively doing harm or not participating because they don’t care or “want to remain neutral,” just doing less than you), channel that energy into helping other people do more. Do some people avoid helping out of bad faith? Of course. Do you always know who those people are and never end up making someone more vulnerable than you feel guilty instead? Nope. Send a petition or one of those streaming videos to your friend you don’t think is that poor, or recommend The Color of Law to your anxious friend whom you privately think should just buck up and get back on Facebook. 

Don’t focus so much on being a good person; focus on doing good things. These can include actions (donating to a mutual aid fund), words (challenging a racist comment), and introspection (reexamining beliefs). The Puritans spent a lot of time wondering whether they were good people, and they actually had some very good ideas about social justice, but they were also mentally exhausted all the time and once accused a one-eyed dude of fathering a one-eyed pig. (Just like in recent Star Wars fandom.) Also, most people, especially people you don’t know very well, put more value on how your actions affect them and those they care about than your overall character. Which is fair.

You can and should listen to people who have activism experience and/or are more marginalized than you are, but no one can be your brains for you. You have to come to an understanding on your own, and that’s okay. 

I’m not a Methodist anymore, but something John Wesley said still resonates with me:

Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.

This seems like a tall order on the surface, but what I like about it is that it doesn’t tell you how much good you need to do for it to matter. You should try to do more throughout your life, but what you can do always matters. 

[lolita-tips]

Where have I been?

I originally wrote this up as a script intended for a youtube video explaining where I’ve been and why I haven’t been keeping up with things very well but I haven’t been able to bring myself to get in front of a camera. I thought I would at least make it into a post to sort of give you all an idea of what’s going on. I’ll put it all under a read-more though since it turned out pretty long.

Hi, I’m Averie. I’m 26 years old and I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about my life lately. I’ve been running Lolita Tips for eight years now but in the last year or so I’ve been a bit removed from it, definitely more than I’d like to be and I sort of feel guilty about it. I keep trying to tell myself that I shouldn’t feel bad, but it’s important to me and there are a lot of people I feel like I’m letting down by not posting more regularly. I guess I just want to talk a bit about where I’ve been and what I’ve been going through. 

Last year I officially moved out of my parents’ place and into my boyfriend’s house. Really it was his parents’ house and for the first few months we actually lived here with them which was a bit of a nightmare for a while, but as of April we’ve officially taken on the mortgage and they moved to Florida. When I moved in I started my first ever full-time job and it has really tested me. It’s nowhere near what I’d like to be doing with my life but as they say, it puts food on the table. I’m a claims adjuster for an auto insurance company which means my job consists of sitting in a cubical making phone calls all day and paying people to fix their cars after accidents. This job has really been putting me under a lot of stress. First of all, I’ve always had pretty bad anxiety when it comes to making phone calls, and after over a year at this job, that still hasn’t changed. Having to spend most of my day doing something that makes me so anxious leaves me really drained by the end of it. Add to it the facts that a lot of the people I have to talk to are in a bad mood, often times I’m calling to give them bad news (“You’re at fault for this accident”, “Your car is a total loss,” etc.), and I’m handling over 100 claims at any given time. So most of the time all I want to do when I get home is lay on the couch and do nothing. I wish I was in a position right now to quit this job but I’ve searched up and down for something else and there’s just nothing close to me that would make any sort of financial sense.

When I do have days where I feel like I can actually get something done, a lot of my time is spent working on the house. As I said before, we bought this house from my boyfriend’s parents and it was pretty dated. I’m someone who likes old things, I collect antiques and often dress in vintage styles, but dingy carpet from the 80s and floral wallpaper that’s probably even older aren’t exactly our taste. So we’ve been taking on a lot of home improvement projects and a lot of the time we sort of feel like we’ve bitten off more than we can chew, particularly when it comes to our budget and stamina. As artsy as I may be, I’ve learned that I hate painting walls so even though we started in December, our living room is only about a third of the way painted. I’m also learning that one of the biggest struggles of being a homeowner is just keeping up with the mess, especially with a dog and two cats, all of whom shed like crazy. And it would be easier if we could do all of this together, but my boyfriend and I have such different work schedules that it’s rare for us to have a same day off to work together. It also just seems like this house has one problem after another. A few months ago we had a leak and had to replace the roof. Now our basement is flooding and we have to tear out the walls of what is supposed to become our craft room. It’s hard to make the house beautiful when you keep having to spend all your resources making it functional.

Everything that has been going on in my life has left me feeling very overwhelmed. It may not seem like a lot from the outside, but when your head is constantly full of “Paint this, sweep this, scrub this, shit I forgot to send that check, how many boxes do I still have to unpack? Is this ours or his parents? Did I schedule an appraiser to look at that car? Holy shit the garden is overgrown where did all these weeds come from I swear we just pulled them out a week ago!” It’s daunting. And it has really had a negative impact on my mental health. I thought my life was going to be grand when I moved out of my parents’ house! I was going to be close to a big city, living with the person I love, and finally feeling like a real adult. But this really is more than I bargained for. It feels like all I really did was trade in the stress and anxiety of a long-distance relationship for the stress of a terrible job and a house that still doesn’t feel like my own. People keep telling me things like “That’s life!” and “Welcome to adulthood!” but I know adulthood isn’t all suffering! I know plenty of adults who have jobs they love and free time to  do stuff that makes them happy, but I feel like I’m stuck in an endless cycle of five-day work weeks, evenings where I’m too depressed and tired to leave the couch, and weekends where I try to cram in as many chores as possible. And thinking about it makes me more depressed! I studied theatre in college, I wanted to be a playwright, I STILL want to be a playwright. I also want to own an antique store, make and sell clothes, travel the country working renaissance faires, any number of things would make me happy; but it feels like any time I have some time to work toward one of my dreams there’s always something more important. 

A few months ago I went to a convention in Pittsburgh. It was the first time I’ve worn Lolita in a long time and it was exciting because there were going to be some big Lolita guests. I told myself I was going to face my fears. I was going to introduce myself to members of my new local Lolita community for the first time since moving here, but I came to the con by myself and the longer it went on, the more alone I felt. I thought it would be great going to all the panels I wanted to see and not basing my schedule on anyone else, but seeing everyone with their friends having a good time brought all these ugly thoughts into my head. I thought, “I’ll never be able to have close Lolita friends like that”, “I’ll never be able to make a living doing the things I love like these designers and Youtubers”, “What kind of Lolita blogger am I if I can’t even go up to other lolitas and introduce myself?” At one point after a panel I went to the bathroom and I heard a group of lolitas whos voices and names I recognized come in. All at once my brain was flooded with “Not good enough”s. I’m not pretty enough, my coord isn’t cute enough, I can’t possibly go out there and interact with these queens. So I locked myself in the stall and waited until everyone left while I cried quietly.

A few hours later there was another lolita panel that was a lot of fun and I had a good laugh and actually sort of felt like I was part of something for a moment. But after that was the J-fashion social. I spent all day trying to convince myself to be brave and not let my anxiety get the better of me, but that was a battle that I quickly lost. I went out onto one of the balconies of the convention center, pacing back and forth while I tried to gather my courage, but the “not good enough”s just came flooding back and I cried harder than I had cried in a long time. The meetup came and went in a panel room behind me as I stared into the night sky of the city that didn’t know I existed. No friends to comfort me, boyfriend at another convention working a booth, and family hours away. I felt completely and utterly alone. But that night I told myself that I was going to make a change. Something, anything, to make my life better.

I know that I can’t cure my depression, or my anxiety. I know that there’s something wrong with my brain and that I’m always going to have bad days and good days, but I also know that I at least owe it to myself to try and turn things around. I may be depressed, but I’d rather be depressed and do things that I love than allow things to continue on the way they have been. After all, I’m the most important person in my life. Nobody will ever be more fundamental to my own happiness than myself.  

I can’t exactly say that I have a plan, but I can say that I’ve been trying. I’ve actually spent a lot of time lately rediscovering things that once brought me joy that I fell out of for one reason or another. For example, I’ve recently started listening to My Chemical Romance again. I remember listening to them as a moody teen who just wanted to seem dark and edgy but going back and listening to the same songs as an adult hits me in a different way. They’re so full of emotion and passion and words that my mind likes to cling to like “I am not afraid to keep on living.” I also recently started watching the Vlog Brothers again. Their channel and pretty much everything they were part of were huge influences on me in high school and early in college so I was really happy to see that they’re still doing stuff. They always help me to remember that even though the world may be a big dumpster fire right now, there are still good people doing good things and there are still a lot of things worth living for. I’ve been working a lot on bettering my life in a lot of ways; I’ve been trying to embrace the Konmari method while working on our house and I’ve been watching a lot of youtube channels about being better with money and spending a lot of time watching ASMR to just try and relax. 

I still have a long way to go, and I know I’m still going to struggle, but I’m thankful to those of you who have stuck with me and will continue to be with me on this journey. Whenever I get on tumblr and see that I still get messages in my inbox it helps me to remember that I am not entirely alone. I know this was sort of a lot, I’m not someone who normally pours my heart out like this, to be honest talking about my mental health makes me worry that I’ll come off as whiney and it makes me pretty nervous, but I felt that I owed it to all of you to explain what’s been going on and I felt that I owed it to myself to get it all out there. Thanks to all of you who have stuck with me through it all. I hope to start making changes in my life get back to making this blog something worth sticking around for.

[traincat]

I know you're not a fan of the red and black FFH suit, but what do you think of the all black suit? Personally, I think it looks fine. A little basic, and the fingerless gloves are weird to have, but I don't think it's too bad.

I don’t like it for a couple of reasons, and the first is that it’s clearly paramilitary inspired and I’m not here for Spider-Man dressed like a riot cop. I don’t like military-inspired superhero suits in general, especially if those superheroes are “approved” by the government in their own universes and those suits are created for them – it feels too close to the fact that it’s not uncommon for fascist governments to have designer military uniforms, like with the nazis and Hugo Boss. But also even at its base level, having military-esque superhero suits feels off to me because if we had faith in our military and in our police, we wouldn’t need the modern mythology that is superhero stories. We’re reaching for a symbol, something we can trust, and that is not the people who are actually in power, which is why we create these fantasy figures who, no matter what, defend those who are not in power and who cannot defend themselves. So we create these mythic figures who are these wonderful protectors … and then years later we’re tying them back down to this powerful force that was put in place to protect us and instead, as we can see through the military’s relationship with Hollywood, uses and abuses us. It’s a perversion of modern mythology.

It is very much the MCU’s style to have more “realistic” costumes and I understand and accept that, but personally I would 100% rather have hokey low budget Star Trek TOS-looking spandex costumes than outfits that are clearly drawing inspiration from military gear. There are times when this style of costuming is appropriate because of story reasons, like the first Captain America movie, but by and large these costumes just serve to remind me of the link between the movie industry and the US military. Personally that makes me very uncomfortable when it comes to financially supporting major motion pictures, especially when films are being made by Disney, who definitely does not need the financial support provided in exchange for cooperation. I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again: any time you see blatant product placement in a Disney-owned movie, no matter what it’s for, it’s wholly inappropriate, because they absolutely do not need that cash money. It’s a cash grab of the lowest level.

The second problem I have with it is the lack of Peter’s identity within it. I’ve already criticized Homecoming’s Spider-Man suit for this; in addition to the weird circuit-looking lines all over and the breaks in the shoulders of the pattern when that’s never been a motif in Peter’s Spider-Man suits (it is a thing in both Miles’ suit and Ben Reilly’s), the spider symbol is extremely small and blocky. It’s very electronic looking instead of organic, which I suppose is symbolic of the fact that Marvel Studios never intended to let this Spider-Man stand on his own – two solo movies down the line and the shadow of Iron Man still looms large in MCU Spider-Man. The spider itself has no place in story, and that’s reflected in the costume design. 

(ASM #539)

Unlike the comics black suit, the black suit of the movie has no spider insignia, and certainly not one as large as the 616 black suit’s – this often gets confused with the Venom symbiote, but there is a cloth version of the black suit and it turns up quite frequently, particularly when Peter is in the mood to send a message with its lack of bright colors. The MCU black suit is anonymous. It says nothing about Peter’s personal identity as a crimefighter. I don’t like that the spider in Spider-Man has been so completely lost – we’ve skipped the origin story, we’ve downplayed the weirdness, and now we’ve lost the spider from a costume. There’s nothing about the MCU’s black costume costume that couldn’t have been worn by any other Marvel hero in any other Marvel property. There’s nothing that brands it as belonging to Spider-Man. If I’m not offended by the paramilitary look, then I’m bored by the fact that it’s so, well, boring. 

I’ve had it suggested to me before that it’s a play on the Spider-Man Noir suit, but that, for me, ties into my first problem, which is that the Noir suit is in fact derived from a specific military uniform, but with a very purposeful message:

Noir!Peter makes his costume out of Uncle Ben’s old military uniform while noting that Ben was ashamed of his military service. He takes this symbol of Ben’s shame and makes it into something wholly personal, armor for his personal war against the gangs of New York that took his uncle from him. Even without the spider insignia, it’s a thoroughly personal and thoroughly Peter costume. It means something to him and therefore it means something to the reader, all while being blatantly critical of military service as Spider-Man should be. (When Flash Thompson was drafted in the Vietnam war, as he originally was in comics, the comics themselves took a distinctly anti-war stance with Flash upon his return at one point wondering if his own death would in anyway make up for what the US did to Vietnam. 

ASM #109 – So that’s something to think about next time someone says comics these days are too political.)

The third problem I have with it is something you mentioned yourself, anon, which is the fingerless gloves. Honestly, I’m a bit baffled by this – I’m assuming there’s an explanation for them in the movie, except there can’t be a sensible one, because Peter can wall crawl through his regular suit just fine so for the love of God, why? Why, in an all black stealth suit, would you have your hero leaving his dirty little fingerprints everywhere, touching everything all bare-fingered, just scattering evidence around? That is the exact opposite of stealth. When I look at it, all I can think about is the part in the Clone Saga where Peter is arrested for a series of murders he didn’t commit because his fingerprints were already on record from previous arrests and meanwhile his clone Kaine was gallivanting around America in torment, breaking, among other murders, a cop’s neck. (There is significantly more to this story. Read Spider-Man: The Lost Years! But I truly do love the Clone Saga.) Except, you know, that made sense, plot-wise, because it wasn’t Peter leaving his fingerprints every which crime scene. Please tell me there is a plot reason for this suit having fingerless gloves. Please, please tell me.

So yeah, basically, I personally really don’t like it.

[genderpunktheo]

this might be too personal so i completely understand if you don’t want to answer this fully or not answer at all, but i’ve recently been watching videos on ppl’s budgets etc but a lot of them are female american influencers and while it’s interesting and useful to see how they do, i don’t understand how $3000 is an averaged monthly budget. only if you’re comfortable sharing i was wondering what your monthly budget or monthly spending is like as a british student and someone out of that sphere?

Sure, I don’t mind sharing! 

So, as a student my tuition fees are covered by a government loan, I won’t bother including that cause it goes direct from the government to my uni and I never get to even see it. 

I also receive a maintenance loan from the government three times a year - each one is supposed to cover about three months (the last three months are over the summer, we don’t get one for that since we’re not at uni). 

My last payment for this was £1312 which sounds like it would be a lot but that basically covers my rent for the term - in fact, the last term it didn’t even do that, I paid my landlord £1400 which was October, November, December rent so I had to sort out the remainder from my own money. That includes water, electricity etc. (unless we overuse it but we never have so far). Rent is so low because I live in a student house with three other people. 

These maintenance loans are means-tested based on how much your family earns - I get the lowest possible amount because the assumption is that my family earns enough to send me money to make up for it. However, because of various reasons (too private to share), my family aren’t able to do that so I just make do with what I’ve got (at least it pays my rent!! I’m very grateful for that).

In order to pay rent over the summer, I always aim to save £400 for July over the course of the year and then I pay £400 for August and £400 for September by having a summer job. 

Last year I worked for half of July which paid me £556 at the end of August. I then worked full-time hours for the whole of August and got paid £1330 at the end of September for that. 

Once summer rent was paid that then left me with £686, a large chunk of which went on my new camera for YouTube and the remainder I used to help pay for mine and my boyfriend’s anniversary trip to London. The camera was technically for work I suppose but still, I felt incredibly privileged to be in a position where I was able to do that - for the two years before, I would never have been able to make a purchase like that so it was pretty awesome!

So that rather long (sorry) explanation tells you how I sort out rent. As for everything else: 

Most students I know pay for rent out of their loans and then pay for anything else with one of three things: 

They have a really high loan amount and can live entirely off of that 

Their families send them money 

Or (the most common) they have to get a part-time job while at uni

So I’m I guess sort of in the part-time job crowd? But I’m unusual in that rather than working retail or something, I do create content and fund myself as best I can through that. 

I make about £30 a month from Patreon which I am incredibly incredibly grateful for. Sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on how many new and deleted pledges happen that month. 

I also get money from sales of X MARKS THE SPOT which again, varies a great deal. Usually, it’s £70 to £120 a month. 

I do some freelance work here and there. The type I’ve been doing up until now was on sites like UpWork where you write something for a client on the site - usually CVs and things like that, or content for very small websites. I’m starting to get to the point now where I feel more confident pitching to more reputable sites and making a proper go of it but I haven’t got far with that yet. Freelance is the most variable thing I do. In good months I might get £200, in the worst months, I get nothing. 

If you’re wondering whether I get money from YouTube - the answer is no, lmao. I did recently get monetised but so far that has yielded between £3 and £9 a month. You need a total of £80 to get a payout, so I still very much make videos just because I care about it! 

So all of those things together amount to between £100 and £350 a month, after rent payments. Not very much at all - I could definitely have more if I got a more traditional part-time job but I choose to make do with less money because otherwise I wouldn’t have time to make this content and I do feel that what I do is important. 

Because the amount is so varied, I make a big effort to save money during good months so that I don’t run into trouble during the bad months. Sometimes this still falls through and that’s when you’ll see me ask for some help on here - like when some lovely people sorted out for me to get a new binder (thank you!)

What I’m very good at is budgeting food. In my first year of uni I could manage £10-£15 a week during the months when I made the least (I had even less then). Now I live with my boyfriend so we haven’t had to worry so much until he lost his job last month. We spend between £25-£50 a week on food for the two of us depending on how well we’re doing and if we’ve run out of longer-lasting things. 

I have a couple of extra bills per month £10 for Spotify, £4 for a NYT subscription and one I just started - £12 for a stock media site. 

Anything else either goes into savings, pays for new clothes, snacks, occasionally going out with friends or other miscellaneous things. 

I hope this is helpful/interesting! Sorry for rambling so much haha.

[confessionsfromachristian]

As a millennial myself, I’m not particularly surprised by this.

Organized religion increasingly feels hollow and insincere in a world where religious leaders play politics both within and without the church, literally everything important turns into another power struggle, and no one seems interested in discussing the important questions.

Pretty much every public religious figure treats their religious text of choice as if they, and they alone, definitely have it all figured out. And if their interpretation (which is definitely, 100% correct, mind you) happens to benefit their interests at the expense of other people, then that’s fine, because it’s religion and therefore it’s good. Televangelists are what most people see of organized religion, and frankly most televangelists seem to be interested first and foremost in what you and God can do for them.

Which isn’t what religion is supposed to be, or what it has to be, but it’s often what it looks like in the here and now.

On a personal level, organized religion is designed astonishingly well to break faithful hearts. If I didn’t have someone to pull me back into church (someone whom I care about deeply, and want to support), I probably wouldn’t ever attend church, between the heartache religion has inflicted on me on a personal level and the disgust I get watching it on an organizational level.

(Story under the cut, because it’s rambling and still fueled by a lot of pain. TW: parent death)

I grew up Catholic, and I left the Catholic church in college because, increasingly, Catholic doctrine started having more holes than substance (at least, to me and my reading of the Bible) and none of the priests I reached out to were willing to give me anything more substantial than “the Bible says so,” even when I couldn’t find where the Bible actually said anything about the matter at hand.

Add on the longstanding problems in the Catholic church (where priests’ jobs have been repeatedly placed ahead of innocent children’s physical and psychological wellbeing, and the few authority figures who try to take local action keep getting told to wait for a comprehensive plan), and, well… I realized that I was getting more stress than fulfillment, and I felt like an outsider every time I went to Mass, so I stopped going.

So I turned to Methodism, because I was raised to be a Good Christian Girl™ and not going to church just wasn’t really an option. I ended up really involved in the Methodist Church in the mid-2010’s, and particularly in the children’s program at my own small church. And that was great for a while.

My conversion to Protestantism was always a sticking point between me and my mother, and I will always regret that a difference of religion meant that many of the times I saw her in the last months of her life were filled with bitter, frustrated arguments.

The day I finished the long process of writing and defending my undergraduate thesis, I drove 3 hours to my hometown with my roommate (a friend from my pre-college years), and didn’t go home because I was too proud of my pro-same-sex-marriage thesis (this was pre-Obergefell) and too tired to put up with another argument about my Protestantism, my liberal views, and my different interpretation of the Bible from the priest at my former church. I called her, told her I was done, that I’d done well, and that I’d see her the next evening, but I was going to crash with my roommate at her parents’ house.

My mother died the next afternoon, before I could call her again. I missed my last chance to see her because I feared another fight about religion. I would give anything to take that decision back.

My father was not thrilled at my conversion, but he’s come around since my mom passed away; he supports me finding a place where I feel spiritually filled, I think more or less because he’s lonely and he’s afraid to lose me (but I won’t ever let a difference of religion come between us). He volunteers at the church I went to as a child, and, up until the events that led to me leaving my small church, he always supported our kids’ programs to.

Although my church always had problems that left me frustrated, I got a lot of fulfillment out of teaching the kids in the church. But then, in 2016, I ended up as an Annual Conference delegate, and I think that’s where things started to spiral, happy as I was to go at the time.

AC was great, and I’m a law-brained sorta person, so all that legislation was wonderful. But I also had the opportunity to see the gritty reality of a world where religion is designed to make money, not just to fill spirits. Churches that don’t make money - even if they don’t lose any - can be closed, regardless of the negative effects, if someone in power thinks that a different kind of church can be more profitable. And if people at AC express dismay over the results? They’re probably good Christians, or they wouldn’t be at AC. Call for a prayer so they’ll shut up and you can move on.

But, you know, power corrupts. So I went back to my small church to try and fix everything I could on a local level, because I while I couldn’t fix the United Methodist Church, I could fix MY church. And, as an AC delegate, I had a spot on the Church Council to help with that goal. But, as it turns out, sometimes even people on a local level really just want the church to make more money. My dream (shared with a couple other church members, admittedly, but by no means all) was to use our children’s program to reach unchurched and underserved kids and bring them to Jesus. That, unfortunately, is not a financially profitable dream. Kids cost money, and unchurched kids are usually not rich ones. And their families often don’t come for more than the children’s events - and they only come for the children’s events because it’s free babysitting.

So every step was like clawing my way out of quicksand. Getting volunteers was like pulling teeth. Getting supplies was usually a matter of “do what you can with the church budget, and donate the rest.” Without volunteers, setup became “work until you’re about to pass out, go home, sleep two hours, then come back and finish before the kids get here.” Meanwhile, programs meant to draw in rich retirees from our community (so that they could give donations while they were in the building, of course) had more volunteers than they needed, and no one questioned whether practically every single man in the church was going to stay after on Sunday to help set up.

And the pastor at the time really was great. But they were a peacekeeper; any problems that arose always had two sides, and always ended in whatever decision kept the status quo because the status quo was safe, and easy.

But then the next AC came, and my pastor retired. The pastor that replaced them had wanted to retire, but had been encouraged by the district superintendent to take on our church instead, as a “part-time full-time assignment.” And I hoped and prayed that they’d bring with them change, but I should’ve been more careful with what I wished for.

They cannot tell the truth to save their life. They would approach me about an issue that was “very important” to them. We’d talk, and come up with a solution. At Church Council, without fail, the pastor would come in and insist that, in fact, we had decided on some entirely different plan. The pastor rarely showed up at children’s ministry events, so getting volunteers got even harder (why care about VBS if the pastor doesn’t?). Slowly, but surely, the church eroded every program I had helped put in place, watering it down or trying to monetize it. So, the Book of Discipline actually mandates a YA representative have a spot on the Church Council. For a while, I and one other millennial (also an AC delegate) fulfilled that role. But the pastor felt it was more important to send the church treasurer, so he could learn to make more money for the church. And that was fine; I and the other millennial approached the pastor at the end of the year about having a YA rep on the council either way (I’d always gone as an at-large delegate; our church was small enough that we only needed 1 lay delegate), and he more or less told us that the Book of Discipline didn’t apply when it was inconvenient for the church.

That’s where I realized that the bridge I was standing on would, inevitably, crumble. But I told myself it was worth trying to fix what was wrong. So I tried. And for a short time, I thought my biggest problem was going to be ensuring that the 2019 General Conference decision didn’t change the way my church embraced its LGBT members.

This new year had brought someone I’d always viewed as a friend into a position of authority in the church. I was excited for her, and I really hoped and prayed that she could do good for the church, and that we could work together to build an inclusive church with a healthy outreach to the underserved and unchurched, things I had always thought she agreed with me about (because she’d told me to my face that she did).

But no sooner did she take the reins than she implemented the volunteer dress code. Which was a far worse thing than it sounds.

We live in Texas. The dress code? No tank tops, no shorts. Ever. Apparently, some anonymous complainer had, at some point, seen an underwear slip or a bra strap. And rather than talk to the volunteers, they wrote a policy. Side note, apparently skirts of any length were fine for women.

Goodbye VBS. I can’t in good conscience ask anyone to monitor children outside, in June, in Texas, in full-length jeans and a t-shirt.

Also, no going barefoot in the sanctuary, ever, for any reason. I was one of two people who regularly shed my shoes during kids’ events where we used the sanctuary. But rather than talk to me about it, it was better to make a policy about it that literally everyone I spoke to knew was a rebuke.

Then, in one of the brand-new children’s oversight committee meetings, they decided to dismantle the children’s program bit by bit. Children’s church? Cancelled. Apparently, we were running a renegade program without pastoral approval anyway.

VBS? “If we can’t charge for it, let’s just cancel it. Add on a few lies about how poorly it was run (by me, in part) to make it seem like a logistical problem.” The children’s director objects to a sexist-worded dress code and refuses to impose it on those under her? “Fire her, no need to look at whether there’s a problem. Make the volunteers (including me) sign the policy before you’ll let them teach the kids on Sunday. Remind them explicitly that this is a prerequisite to working with the kids, so that they don’t feel they have any choice if they want to say goodbye, because they already know that it’s over and they don’t want to blindside the kids.”

I posted about it on Facebook in my frustration and pain at watching them tear apart everything I’ve tried to do for kids that I love like they were my family. I received a termination letter in my e-mail the next day. They proceeded to send a newsletter to the entire church (except me and my family) informing the church that I had been removed as a volunteer for lying on Facebook. No goodbye for the kids. No warning. They couldn’t handle public dissent.

I hadn’t told a single lie. I dared the person who drafted the newsletter to tell me where I lied. No answer.

Of course I left. And it still hurts to walk into a church building. It still hurts to see the kids on my FB feed. I’m still friends with a few of the moms, because I still love their kids. And it will keep hurting me, because I trusted my church. And even though I still go to church now and then, I know damn well not to trust anyone inside.

[nh0betsm-blog]

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[sandrachile]

A Zero Waste Wedding in Pittsburgh

If you have been on Facebook lately, you have probably seen videos of turtles tangled in plastic, birds whose stomachs are full of plastic, and reports about Global Warming.

Whether your political inclinations deny or are against global warming, the truth is, our planet is polluted, and right now, you are either part of the solution or part of the problem, there is no middle ground.

But the problem is that when it comes to bringing environmentalist values to wedding planning, if you are not in California, or don’t have a 6 digit budget, it becomes a little hard, and you might end up giving up for the sake of the circumstances.

So I want to show you, where you should be focusing your energy and resources, but first, let me introduce you to the “Buyerarchy of needs” which will be inspiring our whole journey, and I hope you look at this, read it, meditate on it, and then apply it.

1: Focus on the things that don’t cost you anything, pick a vibe, a feeling as the guidance for your wedding day. 

If you look around for wedding day inspiration, everything is based on color palettes, flowers, or decor. However, since we are trying to be intentional and not use as many material things during the wedding day, it is better to base your inspiration on intangible things rather than material things, instead choose to get inspired by feelings, or the vibe you want your wedding to have. For example, the vibe for the image below was: contemporary, artsy, and fresh.

2: Focus on finding the core vendors for your wedding

(Yes, before setting up a date or even the location). Once you pick the vibe, you will need to gather the elements that will bring your vision together. But Unless you are working with the proper people, translating a concept to reality within a budget, can be hard. So, before even selecting the date for your event or the location, we highly encourage you to select the group of humans that will bring this to life. The core vendors are: Wedding Planner Venue Caterer Officiant Photographer Since the “ethical” journey begins before the wedding day itself, when reaching out to vendors, ask them upfront about what environmental practices they have in place. 

Asking this up front will set the tone for the rest of the planning process, and if this is something that is not present in their practices, your question will surely push them in the right direction.

3: Where and When?:

Choose the date and the venue.

Whether you decide to marry at home, or in a big space, there are some things that you need to take into consideration, such as accessibility for your guest, location of your party hub, weather, and of course, environmental practices. 

If you go for the most popular choice, a venue, ask them and yourself the following questions:

Does your venue send all the garbage to a landfill, or does it have any recycling practices in place? Do they offer furniture, or do you have to rent these items separately? Does the venue have decorative elements, or is it a plain room that needs a lot of stuff to look good? Does it offer in house booze/catering, or can you bring your own?

So many questions, right?

From the low waste perspective, it is a priority to choose a space that offers dishes, cups, and straws that are not plastic. 

(I doubt you want a turtle in the Caribbean to swim among the straws from your wedding day, right? … #justsayin)

4: Let’s tell the world: The stationery (Oh poop! When things get real)

Although an online invitation is often times more eco-friendly, in practice, not everybody is a fan of receiving an email, and being inclusive of older generations who are less e-literate, is a good way to honor them. So when it comes to papers, what alternatives are low waste?

The invitation is the first thing your guests see, it sets the mood for the day, it tells your guests whether joining is going to be worth it, and it announces what kind of party this is going to be. Once the invitations are sent, things get real, and telling your guest that this is an environmentally friendly kinda day deserves to be announced in an environmentally conscious way. Here is where the value of a designer that can custom work for you is a thousand times better than printing some DIY, but make sure the designer is open to working with eco-friendly papers. 

Have you heard about paper made out of elephant poop?

When it comes to being low waste, there is nothing better than options that ethically made, creative, and contribute to giving opportunities to economically and socially marginalized groups. So do your research in regards to papers, and if you are feeling like DIYing, you can DIY the envelopes from the newspapers at your grandma’s house.

PS: Oh! And forget about RSVPs! Nowadays everybody texts, so you can use an automated text message RSVP service which is the easiest way to gather replies from your guests, and automatically organizes and counts for you. SCORE!

(If you never saw paper made of poop, now you did | Stationary by the kick ass: Fresh Cut Prints )

5. Creating a wedding atmosphere: Decorations

One of the things about low waste, is that sometimes it might be a little on the plain side, so for a wedding, which we want to look special, we really have to put thought into what we bring in. 

Using what we have, or what you can realistically keep afterward is key. So, first, my biggest and probably most overlooked decoration element that is also functional is: LIGHTS!!! I’m not talking about regular light bulbs, but lighting can make an amazing decoration, which afterward leaves zero trace.

Another suggestion is to use real plants as a decorative item. Not only they will give you a decoration the day of your wedding, but will decorate your house for the years to come, and imagine having the same plants that witnessed you saying “I do”, witnessing your anniversary year after year!

"Did you know that glass can be recycled forever and ever?"  -- FUN FACT

Another element that is overlooked but it is quite easy to make, and to compost afterward is dry flowers. You can actually invest time in planting your own and meticulously dry. Finally, for any other need, hit your local thrift store! You would be surprised to see the amounts of linen available there.

Oh! And also… keep an eye on the dumpster! Someone else’s garbage always has the potential to be your treasure.

5. Time to get pretty

An element of your wedding that takes a lot of mental energy, a big chunk of your money, and it makes a massive statement in regards to the environment is fashion. And if you want to make a statement, the options for your outfit are: Ethically sourced. Wear your own. Make your own outfit. Or Vintage. This groom decided to wear his own clothes, and the bride opted for the vintage.

The statement piece for the bride was her earrings, which were upcycled. Altogether their outfits were around $30, which allowed more $$ to be allocated for other services.

As you can see, going this route is a great way to maximize your budget, but if you feel uncomfortable with the idea of wearing a vintage style of clothing, you can always purchase vintage garments and budget for the services of a seamstress that can transform your vintage piece and gives it a modern twist.

6. Beauty

I have to be the first in recognizing that zero/low waste and the beauty industry are not the best of friends. Beauty is perhaps one of the most forgotten subjects when it comes to thinking low waste wedding, maybe, because it is not you using that bottle of shampoo that will end up in a landfill, you don’t think much about it. Nowadays there are many makeup products companies using cruelty-free and vegan options (yay). But I learned from Becky, owner of the hair salon that does my hair, Tula Organics, that certain brands go to the extent of manufacturing products with 100% wind power, and they purchase carbon offset credits to balance any climate impact of their aerosol hairsprays.

She also told me about Dragon Master Foundation, a charity organization fighting to find a cure for cancer, and to whom you can send personal care and beauty containers to be recycled. This is an amazing initiative, to make the world greener and fight cancer at the same time.!

In summary:

A low impact, environmentally wedding is not unrealistic. Even if you don’t live in California, it is totally possible right here in Pittsburgh, and even with a small budget. All you might need, is to think through and plan with time, along with a good group of ethically minded wedding vendors.

Supporting Cast: Planner & Aesthetic designer: Devoted To You Events @devotedtoyouevents Florals: greenSinner @greensinner HMUA: Tula Organic @tulaorganic Venue: Kingfly Spirits @kingflyspirits Lightning: EF Lighting @eflighting Plants + Greenery: City Grows @citygrows Photographer: Sandrachile @sandrachilep Invitation Fresh Cut Prints @freshcutprints Paper Mr Ellie Pooh @mr.elliepooh Cake: Mediterra Cake House @mediterracakehouse Jewelry/Accessories Adaptive Reuse @christineterrell Calligrapher- Scarlet Day Calligraphy @scarletdaycalligraphy

[jasminewaliaposts-blog]

My Journey as a Maid of Honor

Since summer is approaching us, do you know what that means? Wedding Season. A whole a lot of spending your money on clothes that you will probably never wear again, OH and dealing with bridezillas.

Last year of November, my best friend surprised me and some of her other friends by popping the BIG QUESTION, “Will you be my Maid of Honor.” Obviously, I was going to say yes without realizing the amount of annoyance I was about to be faced with. With joy I accepted her box full of treats she gave as a present to me. In the box were pictures from our childhood, a PJ set, a wine bottle, a hand mirror, and a heart filled personalized card. In the card she wrote why she chose me to me the maid of honor, and the date of the wedding which was only revealed to me. Obviously, it was on the same weekend of my birthday. But oh well, it’s just a birthday, I guess…

Two weeks later, my other best friend announced that she would have her wedding 3 weeks before my other best friend (end of June), and my cousin announced that she would have her wedding the same weekend as well.

Tip: Breath and create a calendar with all the main events

So just in case you feel lost, let me draw this out for you. I am a Maid of Honor for a wedding taking place on July 20thand a bridesmaid for a wedding taking place on June 30thand on the same weekend my cousin is getting married.

Now the problem is not the actual weddings, is it the 10 events which happen leading up to the wedding. As well as the thousands of dollars that are spent on clothing, hair and makeup. Being Indian means, we have a lot of traditions and celebrations, which don’t get me wrong, are tons of fun. It involves a whole a lot of color, beautiful outfits, outrageous décor, a lot of dancing and BOOZE. The image below is an example of how décor typically looks like at an Indian wedding ceremony.

Tip: Always create a budget break-down for yourself in terms of how much you will end up spending for each event. This includes the cost of your outfit, makeup, bachelorette/bachelor party, gift(s) to the brides, etc.

As I am processing this, I just realized that I still have one more semester of school left, and this is where I start PANICKING. How am I going to handle school, whilst helping plan three important weddings? Plus, all these food festivals which I do not want to miss out on. Like how can anyone miss out on poutine festival or taco fest?

Anyways, in December my best friend approached me to ask me if I can plan the bachelorette and bridal shower for her. As a Maid of Honor, I had to say yes. Listen, I love my best friend and I would do anything for her, but this is a busy time for me since I am trying to manage school and work on all these wedding shenanigans.

To make things more complicated, she decided to invite her fiancé and his friends to the bachelorette party. So essentially it would be both a bachelorette and a bachelor party. For anyone who has ever experienced this, they would know how complicated things can get when you add a bunch of guys to the mix.

So, the first thing I did was reach out to my best friend’s sister, Bianca, and created a WhatsApp group with all the bridesmaids, and to inform them that the destination we have chosen is Vegas. Now come the outpouring suggestions and recommendations of where we should stay, and how much our budget should be blah blah.

So, complication #5393458 is that everyone in the group are of different age and have different things going on in their lives. Some were students, some are businesswomen, and some are married and have kids. So, their interests and budgets are entirely different from one another.

Some wanted to spend their money on a luxurious hotel, and some would rather spend their money at pool parties and clubs. Long story short, it took me about 3 months to decide on what hotel we should stay at. Once we finalized the hotel, I decided to get touch with the groom and his best man(s) who were planning the bachelor party and let’s just say they were not happy with the hotel we decided to stay at. At this point I told them I don’t really give a s*** about their opinion and we are going ahead with that hotel.

Tip: Create an excel sheet with a budget breakdown so people can see where their money will be going. For people who are on a tight budget, seeing a number visually will ease the process. Below is an example of how this can look like.

The next headache was coming up with an itinerary. This trip is supposed to be 3 nights and 4 days long (Friday- Monday). For Friday, the bride and groom decided that both the guys and girls should spend it together, GREAT! (rolling my eyes). Now this is where things get really COMPLICATED. I had booked all of the girls for an event where Calvin Harris was performing, and of course the best man(s) had to oppose to it, because the cost of them getting a booth there was “too expensive” (FYI: only $100 difference shared amongst 28 people). So anyways, they decided we should go to a “cheaper” event with a less interesting artist. Ok so they literally ruined our wonderful plan, but we were okay with that.

For that same day we had decided that we will get a private dining room for all the girls and guys as a surprise for both the groom and bride. At this point I had already booked a private chef, and here come along the groom’s men opposing to the idea once again. They wanted to do a $100 USD buffet. Why would anyone spend that much on a buffet? Once again, I agreed to it.

Now that the bachelorette party was somewhat coming together, it was time to plan the bridal shower. Let me tell you, this was not fun at all. The bride told us she wanted us to plan an Aladdin themed bridal shower, and once again she wanted us to surprise her so that meant we had to come up with the guest list, find a venue and a caterer, etc.

As I started planning this, I decided to use a technique I learnt when doing group work in the Master of Marketing program, and that is to DELEGATE! Instead of taking on all the responsibilities and trying to plan every single detail, I decided to come up with a list of duties and assign a task to all the bridesmaids.  I simply created a google doc and listed all the responsibilities and put a bunch of names down and shared it with everyone.

Tip: Create a Google Doc and share it with the people who will be participating in the planning process, like the one below.

The planning led all the way to April, which also meant exam time. Since there was only two weeks left till Vegas, this meant CRUNCH time.

Amidst all this, I had to deal with coordinating bridesmaid’s outfits. DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TRYING TO GET 13 BRIDESMAIDS to send their correct measurements?! Anyways, once I got the measurements, I decided to order the outfits.

Tip: Ladies and Gents, whenever you are placing a bulk order for clothes, always make sure you get a sample outfit from the designer

The outfits were being made in India. It is a beautiful white skirt and crop top with gold embroidery. The cost of each outfit is $300 CAD, and each bridesmaid has to pay out of her pocket which made it more nerve wracking in terms of getting these outfits down to perfection.

Three weeks later, we received a box with all these outfits, and what happens? NONE OF THEM FIT. I called the designer and yelled at him for sending me the wrong sizes and since these are custom made, none of them are refundable nor returnable. I told the bridesmaids to re-measure themselves so I can find a seamstress to fix all of them, and turns out, they all measured themselves wrong.

Tip: Always find someone professional to get you measured

So, since it was their fault, I told them that it was their responsibility to get their own outfits fixed. Remember guys, always delegate.

Now its exam time, and I am both stressed and excited for Vegas (not really excited for my exams haha). After I finished my exams, it was crunch time for the trip, so this meant buying the decorations for our hotel and custom making our t-shirts and making any last-minute reservations. This also meant hitting the gym every single day in the hopes I would have a 6-pac for my trip.

Amidst all this chaos, I totally forgot to order outfits for my trip. So, I quickly went onto Fashion Nova, which is a famous online store for both men and women. I quickly placed an order in hopes I would get my order in time and hopefully all the outfits would fit. Fast forward a week later (I now only have 6 days left till my trip) I receive my order from Fashion Nova, AND EVERYTHING IS TOO SMALL on me. When I mean I started crying, I mean it! I called my best friend and started crying because nothing fit me and I had spent so much money on these outfits and none of it was refundable, oh and they also sent me 3 of the wrong outfits.

So, at this point my only option was to go to the mall and try to find 3 outfits for a night out, 2 for a pool party and at least 2 for a fancy dinner and lunch. So, I went to at least 3 malls, and FOUND NOTHING!

Did I mention how unnecessarily expensive stores are? I wasn’t going to spend $100 on just one dress. At this point I made a decision to go onto another online store called Pretty Little Thing. I decided to order 4 dresses, confident that they will all fit since I ordered from them before. Since I needed it expediated, I had to pay $20 USD for express shipping. 2 days later, I get my package, and as I’m furiously opening it, I try on my first out and guess what? The dresses are too big. At this point I was not even mad; I was just laughing at myself for even trying.

Tip: Never order dresses from any online shops until reading reviews on both Instagram and on Google. Try to find the exact outfit on the company’s Instagram page and see the reviews for that exact outfit. See what people say about the sizing and quality.

I come downstairs, and my mom asks me “how are the dresses?” I told her that I am just going to end up wearing my old dresses because this whole online ordering business is not working out for me. She took a look at the dresses and said that she can take me to a seamstress and just get them fixed. How genius is my mother… The same day I decide to visit my seamstress and she quotes me $50 just to get them fixed, without hesitation I gave it to her and told her I will pick them up the next day. Anyways, so that whole situation worked out somehow. I went to Post Canada to return all my Fashion Nova dresses. As we know I was already frustrated with their return policy, and then I was told I would have to pay $30 in return shipping, WHEN IT WAS NOT EVEN MY FAULT. I emailed Fashion Nova, and let’s just say I sent a very threatening message to them on both Facebook and email.

Tip: Always send customer service an email about your complaint/ experience. If you do not like their response via email, try contacting them on social media. These companies care about their reputation and the last thing they want is a bad review on their page.

Finally came the day to leave for VEGAS! Our flight departed at 9 p.m. from Toronto, so we decided to go to the airport to sit at the Air Canada Lounge to eat and drink. We then decided to stop by the duty free to pick up some alcohol since everyone who has been to Vegas knows how expensive food and alcohol can be there.

Tip: Never buy alcohol from Vegas, always get it from the airport when departing.

We all finally arrive and set-up our suite with decorations and gifts for all the bridesmaids. And let’s just say after that, the trip was a blur.

After recovering from the trip, now it was time to finalise everything for the bridal shower. This was a breeze since we hired people to decorate the venue and make all the deserts. Below is a picture of the beautiful Aladdin cake.

Today is May 26th, 2019, and within the next 3 weeks it is both my cousins and my other best friend’s bridal showers and bachelorette parties. (WISH ME LUCK)!

This story will be continued, if I make it out alive after this summer….

[amysubmits]

Hi :) I am going to tell my guy that I want more spanking, we have it a little bit, sometimes. But I want to ask if we can incorporate it more into our sex life as well as possibly as DD. I’m having trouble with the wording though.. How did you approach the subject with CD? Do you have any tips on how to say something like that without feeling like an idiot? 🙈

Hi!

AAAAAAAAAAH just reading this took me back to all those feelings I had when trying to tell CD. My belly feels funny. 

With you already doing some fun spanking, asking for it more often is rather likely to be a yes I would guess. If you decide to ask for this but not to ask for domestic discipline yet, then maybe consider that instead of just asking for ‘more’ maybe consider admitting how big of an element it is in your sexuality. I think if I would have been able to tell CD that spanking was my primary fetish, or that I liked spanking because I liked feeling like he was in control, he would have started to understand so much more about me than he did based on me simply asking for spanking. 

Like you’ve done, I started out by telling CD that I liked spanking. His reaction to that was mostly excitement. If I’m being really honest, I think it was his first clue that perhaps I wasn’t 100% vanilla sexually and that was what excited him more so than the spanking itself. But, all I said was I liked spanking, so he assumed I wanted him to smack my ass during sex which is not my jam. When I realized that just a few slaps on the ass during sex didn’t excite me - that I didn’t “really”  like spanking. That I just liked the idea or fantasy of it. Which in the end, did not end up being true - but I believed that for a long time. So, that kept me from bringing up spanking again for a long time. At some point, I recognized that when fantasizing about spanking it was never about being spanked during sex. In my head, the fantasies were always being spanked ‘for real’. I still didn’t know what domestic discipline was, so I think at some point I tried explaining to CD that the reason the ‘during sex’ swats weren’t working for me was how they didn’t feel ‘real’. He suggested role play to make it seem ‘real’ and we tried it once but I was way too shy and awkward and..yeah. No. Not for me. So then we were both thinking that I just liked the idea of spanking and not the reality of it. So we were just stuck for a long time. As in, literally a few years of 0 progress. 😂 In the end, what I learned was that if he just playfully swats my ass during sex, I don’t feel particularly dominated. Of course, this is not true for everyone, it’s just me. For me, if he is just swatting my ass during sex to turn me on, well it just doesn’t feel like he is ‘in charge’ really and I need it to feel like he’s got consensual, but serious, not playful, control over me for it to make me feel submissive. 

Unfortunately, I don’t remember any real specifics on that first DD conversation, but I can share the gist of it. We wound up having a few talks about DD within a few months span so I may be confusing what we talked about, when. So if this slightly contradicts old blog posts I promise I’m not trying to lie in either post I just am too old to remember all the details perfectly. 😂

It was about 4 years ago. I know that I admitted to him that I had found forums for domestic discipline and that it felt ‘right’ to me. I may have tried to explain how I thought it may be the answer to getting spanking to be real and therefore work for me instead of feeling fake. Understandably, he was really confused. He thought that on one hand, I was asking him to be my disciplinarian “for real” (I was!). Yet because I had brought it up in connection to how our past erotic spanking and attempts at role-play had failed - he thought this was just a really complicated way to roleplay without it feeling like role play. He is really not into the idea of bratting, in the sense of breaking rules on purpose to get punished. To the point where even from this very first conversation he explained that he had zero interest in creating rules that would be set up just for me to break. He explained that he wasn’t opposed to the idea of truly disciplining me, but that it was going to be taken seriously if we did this. I tried explaining to him that I thought that was my goal, too. I didn’t want to create rules just to break them, either. I wanted to please him. He explained how he worried that it just wouldn’t work out that way - he thought knowing I could get spanked for breaking the rules would encourage me to break the rules because I like the idea of spanking. He asked me what types of rules I thought might work. I threw out two that I had seen over and over on DD forums - a spending limit/budget, and a rule about not lying to him. This was my biggest mistake in the whole conversation, I think. The reason being that I’ve never had a problem with overspending or lying. So in his mind, me suggesting this rules made him think that I really was just looking for rules to break, and he already had that suspicion, so it just confirmed it in his mind. He had NO interest in me lying to him or wasting money (of course!) so he refused those rules and asked for others. I wasn’t able to think of any and neither was he so we just left the conversation there. I kind of felt like the conversation was both a win and a loss. My biggest fear going into the conversation was that he would be judgemental and feel like I was a freak for wanting rules and punishments. He seemed generally open to it, which was a big relief and felt like a win. On the other hand, I felt like he was almost open to DD in general, but not really with me, because of my spanking fetish. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to convince him that I would take DD seriously, but I strongly believed I would. Seems how he did not reject the idea, we would talk about it here and there from then on. Maybe 3 other conversations in 6 months following that first one? 

I know we talked at some point about how we both recognized that I was always eager to please him. I explained how women in the domestic discipline forums explained that being taken in hand for punishment felt bad because it displeased their HoH (aka Dom) and how I thought displeasing him would make me feel guilty enough to ‘ruin’ the excitement of spanking for me. We also talked about how my pain tolerance was low, so I thought he could pretty easily spank me too hard for it to be enjoyable. We continued to circle around the “problem” of not knowing what rules would work for me because all the ones I saw on DD forums were for things i did not do - lying, wasting money, speeding, getting poor grades, being late to work, and so on. Just for the record, during this time, he seriously, I swear, said “You are too good already. You don’t need any rules.” I like to remind him of that now.  😇

But seriously, what he meant was - I wasn’t doing anything that was obviously damaging to myself or our relationship. He did not think I was ‘bad’. So about six months passed, and then we started DD, suddenly - at his request, because he realized I could have a rule to improve myself, even if wasn’t exactly ‘bad’.  I lost my debit card one day, which was something I did often. We found the card in one of my pants pockets in the hamper. Again, a common experience because I forget that I left a card in my pants and just take them off. So he just came to me and said that was going to be a rule - that I had to return my debit card and ID to my wallet as soon as I was done using them. If I lost my cards or if I left them in a coat or jeans pocket I would be punished. 

Honestly, some part of my brain kind of yelled ‘That’s so weird! That isn’t a DD rule..’ but I was so excited that he was on board with starting DD that I couldn’t care too much. In hindsight, I’m so glad I just went with it. I feel like it’s important to let him lead in the ways that he feels called to, not just to push him to lead in the way that I envision. 

After giving me that new rule, he made it clear that we were trying DD. He was not saying we were definitely going to do this longterm. He was still worried that I would break the rules on purpose to get spanked, and I knew that he would call it quits if he felt like it was just a game. I remember being in the store together, and him watching me carefully put my cards back into my wallet as soon as the cashier gave them to me and him having this satisfied expression on his face. I could tell he really enjoyed seeing me work on correcting a bad habit, to be good, to please him. Of course, eventually I forgot and was punished for that rule but it took long enough that he had already seen that I was clearing putting effort into correcting the bad habit so that largely helped erase the fears of DD being a game. 

Whew. So I guess, my advice is to try to explain your motives as clearly as you can. If you want DD to be a way to truly correct your behavior and not something you do for kinky fun, make sure he understands that. Perhaps have some blog posts printed or send him links so he can read some examples of how it works for other couples. But, keep in mind that he is his own person and you want him to be his own type of Dominant so while it’s okay (and good!) to let him know what you like, make sure you aren’t expecting him to be some character you’ve read in a book or some other Dominant you’ve read about online. In my opinion, it’s actually a good thing if he refuses to do some of the things you like because it means he’s standing up for being himself and not letting himself be pushed into your exact idea of a Dominant. You don’t really want him to turn into someone else, you want to find a way to blend DD into the relationship you already have, so that you maintain your personalities and the connection you’ve already had, and just blend DD into that. I know sometimes that’s a problem early on in D/s or DD, is the person who did not bring up the idea feels like they are being pushed to be something they aren’t. So try to make it clear to him that you feel like he is dominant already (give examples of how you see natural dominance/leadership in him or in your relationship already if possible), and that you just want to help that blossom, but that you like who is already is and you aren’t trying to really change him. 

Also, try not to sweat over getting a specific ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in a single conversation, necessarily. It’s okay if he has questions and concerns and needs time to process and read and learn. It took CD about six months to come around on it, which I thought was a bad sign during that six months, but of course, I don’t feel that way now. You’ve read about DD so it doesn’t seem like a brand-new concept to you, but it will to him - so if he needs time to read and process and understand, that isn’t necessarily a sign that it’s not for him. It’s also not necessarily a bad sign if he says yes to some of your ideas and no to others, as long as the ‘no’s are to things that you dont’ find truly essential to your idea of DD. It’s a very good thing to negotiate and find a style that is meaningful to both of you. 

I don’t remember a whole lot of the specifics of what I said, unfortunately. But I do know that my communication was imperfect in multiple ways, which is part of why we had to have a few conversations to work out details (like the rule problem). So I think that goes to show that even if your wording is imperfect, or there is some miscommunication, you can have additional conversations in the future to help clarify and find solutions to problems or concerns together. I don’t think the perfecting wording could make someone who isn’t cut out for DD like it, and bad wording won’t prevent it from happening if it’s right for you both. I know it’s easier said than done, but try not to sweat every word. :) 

Another common thing I hear in general is discomfort and/or worry on the D side that they are being asked to be ‘mean’ or aggressive. If you use words like Dominance when talking to him, I would recommend explaining that you aren’t looking for a sadist from a porno - especially if you are talking about this as a full-time “lifestyle”. Many will worry that they are expected to be an asshole all the time if you want a full-time Dom. Assuming that he doesn’t enjoy being an asshole, that may concern him so try to explain what kind of dominance you like and how he fits into that vision of dominance already, as he naturally is. 

Some blog posts of mine that you may find helpful:

Leading His Way

Not A Game

Beyond Punishment

Hearing Her Cry (This is Cd’s)

Night And Day

Erotica & Consent (or my vision of DD before I lived it)

Also our first podcast episode covers the beginning of us dating through when we started these blogs so about a year or two into DD. So it covers how we started DD. 

https://soundcloud.com/overtheknee/how-we-got-here.

Also this tag on my blog is for blog posts from anyone I’ve reblogged that I think may interest people who are working to transition from “vanilla” to D/s (at least in the sense of not intentionally/purposefully having D/s) to intentional D/s . 

http://amysubmits.tumblr.com/tagged/vanilla-to-d%2Fs

Good luck! I’d love it if you’d update me on how it goes.  😊

[danilanidingdong]

My partner was targeted by a predator - a small NYC director.

Please be aware that the following writing discusses kink, LGBTQ+ issues, assault, misgendering, and other topics that are generally not feel good issues. It is in regards to how my partner was treated. She’s read this and given their stamp of approval on posting this. Not because we want folks to feel bad, but because we legitimately want to warn people about a predator.

I’d like to start this off with some personal information. Typically in a situation like this, individual details aren’t necessary, but in this case, I believe it’s important to form a foundation.

My partner and I live quite happily and openly under the queer umbrella. We also function very vocally in kink circles. We don’t believe in kink shaming. We have no qualms with strange kinks. As long as everyone involved consents, we have zero issues.

It’s the consent thing that was recently violated when my partner was assaulted by a so-called director for a short film.

My partner was using a casting website with a very professional reputation (Netflix and Stars have used this site), and she was contacted by a small production company in response to seeing her resume.

The short of it was that this director was looking for LGBTQ+ folks for his social commentary werewolf short films. My partner was so excited, showing me everything that this director sent her. What I was shown was short, but seemed fine. It appeared to be a small budget production company, and the script was nothing to write home about, but honestly it didn’t seem like a bad start. And it paid! The casting website even gave him a neat little verified check to assure performers that they’d been vetted by the site.

The more she talked to the director, the more excited she got. Finally! Someone that wanted to make awesome werewolf content that focused on queer communities! She was excited to show the director what she already had from her costume closet for werewolf makeup and fangs, and he seemed excited to work with her. He suggested possibly using contact lenses, along with some minimal makeup and light use of prosthetics.

When she arrived at the shoot, though. She was met with only the director. No team. In his parent’s empty apartment. Instead of the fake nails that he had explained to her in the interview, he informed her that they would be going to a salon and getting acrylic nails put on. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but anyone who’s had acrylic nails applied knows how difficult (read: impossible) they are to get off quickly. Fake stick-on nails (which he said would be used) are cheaper, and in an emergency, can pop off rather quickly. Acrylic nails are typically an investment of both time and money. Seriously, if you’ve never had them, ask someone who has. Those suckers don’t budge.

But the director didn’t make a big deal out of it. My partner wasn’t very experienced in the film industry, so she took his word for granted.

My partner then spent two hours at a nail salon near the apartment, and while everyone around her was getting French tips, she couldn’t help but be a little embarrassed by the six inch claws that the nail technician was crafting. When some of the other salon customers asked, she proudly informed them “It’s for a werewolf movie!” - in an attempt to save herself from some embarrassment. But the director cut her off, and said “No, don’t tell them that.”

Once the nails were on, she realized that she couldn’t use her hands for anything. Her dexterity was destroyed with these huge, thick claws, and she relied entirely on the director for any fine motor skills.

Still, nothing seemed off. She would film this short scene and be done. When they returned to the apartment, he told her to put contacts in. She expressed discomfort. It was already very difficult for her to function with the nails, would it be possible to try filming without the contacts? 

No. She had to wear contacts.

They had this conversation in his bathroom, where he blocked her with his body from leaving the bathroom until she agreed to wear the contacts.

Because of her nails, the director had to put the lenses in for her, and once they were in, she noticed something else that was a little off.

She could not see with the contacts in.

She now relied entirely on this director for even basic functions, but even then he did not provide her with what she needed. She was not given water at any time during the entire 8 hour filming.

He started asking extremely uncomfortable questions as soon as she was physically unable to leave.

He noted that her resume indicated “nonbinary” as her gender, so he asked plainly, “So that means you have both right? Both sets?”

She was taken aback, and he was rather crestfallen when she explained what nonbinary meant, and she steered the incredibly inappropriate conversation away from her genitalia.

Which he kept bringing up. Repeatedly.

He talked frequently about the character that she was playing, and made her very aware that after her werewolf transformation, her character had “both sets of genitals”. Information that would be important for an actor, sure, but the way he brought it up and discussed it was entirely sexual.

He told her “Let’s just do some improv, no script.”

When he started asking her to touch him with her nails, she realized that she was filming a fetish video.

That was when she shifted into survival mode. He continued trying to make sexual conversation while they filmed, but she would shut down his advances in any attempt to get out of the vision blocking contacts quicker. She felt trapped, unable to leave due to her inability to see or hold anything.

The director mentioned, while filming, that the concept of my partner growing a penis during her werewolf transformation was “getting him hard”, and he kept insinuating that her actions were causing him sexual arousal. She mentioned having a partner as a defense strategy, and he asked if she (in other words: me) would be interested in bringing that partner around in order to shoot a lesbian scene.

In addition to this, he openly spoke of his work with other performers, and it became clear that he was using this casting site to find LGBTQ+ performers in order to find very specific people for his fetish work. It was only then that it became clear that he was looking for trans folks for his performances, in order to act out his fetish. He kept the information quiet during the talent scouting phase, but specifically sought out individuals under the LGBTQ+ umbrella for sexual reasons only, not actual inclusivity. It was only driven home by the near constant misgendering of his previous performers that he frequently spoke about. He told my partner he was trying to create inclusive media. He spoke at length regarding his obsession and sexual fetish for women with penises. The wording he used was dated at best, and offensive at worst.

There was so much, little pieces that my partner remembers from that day as she recovers, things like how he mentioned stopping people on the street to take pictures of their nails, how he worked with a lot of adult entertainers (and misgendered them frequently), and worryingly, minors. Things that on their own wouldn’t raise eyebrows, but when put together becomes a rather disturbing depiction of a predator.

Had she not been on her toes and aware of the situation, my partner doesn’t doubt that this director would have tried to push her boundaries further. He asked her to sensually touch her chest with her nails, and focused on the importance of the ASMR - or the sound the nails made. She skirted the sexuality as best as she could, keeping things professional until she could leave - not that he had earned professionalism after lying to her, but she was simply trying to get him to remove the nails and contacts as quickly as possible.

Afterwards, he requested an exit interview. Desperate to leave, she wondered if she could film it at home and send it to him. He refused, and added that he would only clip the end of her nails so she could leave if she did this exit interview. When he deemed the interview over, he forced her to behave in a bizarre perky way before he would clip each nail, even when he was told that the force of the nail clipping was painful. What was left behind were jagged, thick acrylic stubs that were still difficult to use, but not as difficult as the full nails.

Now, let it be said, neither of us have any issues with fetish videos. So long as everyone involved consents. However, my partner was utterly unable to consent. She was lied to about the project itself, and everything involved with it. This wasn’t a production team, it was a solitary director with a camera who wanted to film sexual gratification videos. 

And the pay?

Well, the nail technician who applied the nails got a total of $145, including tip.

My partner received $100, and as she left he put in an additional $20 for her to “get the nails removed at a salon”. 

Not only was my partner lied to, but she was then physically kept under this director’s control with the nails and contacts that he made her wear. She was unable to leave, and continuously harassed and asked wildly inappropriate questions by someone who was claiming to be an ally, when in reality, he was a predator. He seeks out LGBTQ+ performers in order to film them for his own sexual exploits under the guise of creating inclusive characters and stories.

The lies are where consent is no longer possible. Because of this, my partner filed a complaint and he was removed from the casting website. That being said, we’re still concerned that he won’t stop at that, and will only move to other spaces. He already admitted to using OnlyFans to find performers, and his open conversation about hiring minors has left it hard to sleep at night. Again, absolutely nothing is wrong with minors in film, but judging by the way that this man refused to be open about the nature of his work, it’s a parallel that I’m uncomfortable just leaving without an attempt to stop it.

Part of the healing process has been going public with this experience. I’m never one to speak on behalf of someone, but writing clearly about your own trauma can be harrowing, which is why I offered to write this on behalf of my partner. 

If this production company continues to hire performers, they need to be transparent with their intentions. Not another human being should feel so manipulated and helpless after being assured that they would be doing something positive for the queer community.

Please share this. Please spread this. Please do not let another individual suffer the way that my partner unfortunately has. The production company is called Exiram Productions. They’re easy enough to find on youtube, but I cannot stress enough that what is available there is not at all any indication of what was actually filmed the day my partner experienced this harassment. His secondary company that he works under is called Were-Creature Videos. That particular production company is what my partner filmed for, but she was originally approached by Exiram Productions, and was given absolutely no indication about the sexual nature of filming.

If you’re in the NYC area, please be careful of this person who is seeking out the queer community in order to fetishize them without their consent.

Happy Pride.

Eat a brick, Alexis. 

[davina-wolfthorne]

So let me tell you about my Monday

WARNING; below the line is a mini story about my Monday. It contains strong language, some humor, a handsome albino bunny, and freaking newborn kittens.

Mondays are the very bane of everyone’s existence. I have yet to meet someone who actually enjoys Mondays, and if you are one of those people you’re nuts! I digress though. It is the day that marks the first of many days in work hell. My Monday was actually a Wednesday two weeks ago. I’ve been going non-stop for two weeks. Barely at my desk or in my comfort zone. Running errands, and taking care of responsibilities. Even on the weekends! It’s been endless. Well yesterday (Monday) was ‘suppose’ to be my day off.....

I end up having to run to the local gas station, because money came in and I had to withdraw some cash. Okay well that wasn’t so bad right? My Monday doesn’t stop there. Three days ago the squatters that lived off the to the left of my house finally was forced to move out. Friday they apparently released their pet albino bunny onto the street and tried to chase it up the road! So this bunny has been outside, and neglected for three days. I invest myself in this bunny’s life. I grab the head of lettuce out of my fridge, and my neighbor brings over a dish of water. It’s in the fenced yard next door (where the squatters and it lived) I’d like to take a moment to point out that these people weren’t even allowed to have pets according to the Humane Society in my area. So this pieces of shit not only were ordered not to have animals (they use to own a shit ton of dogs and cats, and kept them all in the house. Never let the animals out to piss or shit. So they were ordered to not have pets anymore) but dumped this poor defenseless bunny outside. What happens to white animals then they’re born in the wild, and don’t live in winter regions? They typically are abandoned because their white coat is a risk. They have no camouflage to protect them. So this little guy has had a rough three days. His back right foot is swollen to three times its usual size. I’m not vet, but I think it was broken because when he walked he would lean all his weight on the left foot and tuck the wounded one against him. We have a lot of stray cats in our neighborhood. How he managed to survive three days with a wounded foot in a cat heavy area is beyond me, but he has a strong spirit.

I call the humane society in my area. Let me start off by saying this place is a piece of fucking shit. They never help stray animals that aren’t dogs, and they refuse to take in an animal if it is sick or wounded. We’ve called them in the past about stray cats needing medical attention, and they always ignore it. But when we call about dog neglect they jump on it. In my city you will see a lot of cats but NEVER a stray dog. Now I don’t know if other cities are like this, but I know that it is fucked up for them not to take care of all strays. Anyway I call them, and this woman answers. I won’t use her real name so I’ll just call her bitch #1, and yes I am using the term bitch, because she was rude. I ask if they can send a humane officer to come get him. She speaks in a snooty voice ‘I’ll give the information to them’. So we hang up, and I had forgot to mention to bitch #1 that the bunny is injured and needs care. So I call back and the same woman picks up. ‘He’s wounded. His back right foot is really swelled and he doesn’t put any weight on it. I think that it might be broken.’ and she sounded rude when she gave her reply. Like I was bothering her by calling her. We hang up again.

So we pick him up and carry him to our front porch to guard him for the time being. Let me tell you that he is the sweetest bunny ever. He was so passive and docile. He let us hold him. Not once did he thrash or try to nip/get away. Just the biggest sweet heart. How anyone could ever want to harm an animal is beyond me. Especially something this pure. I call the humane office back, and inquire as to if they’ll be able to pick him up because it’s been a while. A new lady picks up, and I’m going to call her Susan because she actually wasn’t that bad to deal with. I gave her the run down since she doesn’t know what’s going on. She informs me that they cannot come out and pick up the bunny. I ask her ‘if I can get a friend to take me to the humane society will you accept him?’ She instructs me to hold on, and that she has to ask. Bitch #2, a new bitch look at that, picks up the phone. In a rather flat, and uncaring tone, she proceeds to tell me that they cannot help this bunny at all. Despite being a humane society [A humane society is a group that aims to stop human or animal suffering due to cruelty or other reasons. In many countries, the term is used mostly for societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals] they cannot help him. Nor can they seem to help other animals (a good friend of mine informed me she’s called them in the past numerous times about animal neglect and they never came out. In the past she also wanted them to take a wounded stray cat and they told her and I quote ‘You can bring it in and use our vet and pay for it, but we won’t take it after’ The fuck?) Here is how she proceeded;

Bitch #2 - Just so you know all our humane officers have full time jobs so we don’t even know when they’ll come out to get it. There are many sad cases out there before yours. If you’re that worried about it take it to the vet, but good luck finding a vet that will take a bunny. You should try a rescue that will take it.

Okay so I hang up with Bitch #2 after basically coming to the conclusion that they don’t want this bunny. It’s not that they can’t take it, because I know of other humane societies that take all types of animals. After some Googling I find this place called Rabbit Wranglers in Pittsburgh PA. I called, but got an answering machine. So I left them a message of my name, number, and telling them about the bunny. I begged them to call me even if they can’t take him. The owner, Suaz, calls back and asks me some things about him. She tells me she has to go check to see if someone can pick him up. We hang up and two hours later, full of worrying, she calls back. Fantastic news! She told me that if she couldn’t find a volunteer to drive out that she’d come out and get him. GREAT! That means this little sweet heart can get medical attention, and find a loving home. But something happened between that two hour window.

As if my Monday wasn’t stressful enough trying to find a place to rescue the bunny (thank goodness for R.W and Suaz) this little girl decides to add to the list. Meet Bear, a stray tabby we rescued back in October. I know I don’t often talk about my animals because I don’t want to spam people with them (and I would spam so much because ya know...cats) This March we had set up an appointment for her to be fixed, and guess what happened two days before her appointment? She slips out and comes home pregnant. Bear only managed to escape because this woman came to see someone in my house, and was informed that we would have to get the person to wake up. She wouldn’t let us close the front door and Bear slipped right out. 

ANYWAY so this little hussy comes home pregnant. Two months later, and on the already chaotic Monday, she goes into labor....IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LIVING ROOM AND JUST FUCKING PLOPS ONE RIGHT OUT THEN AND THERE. Like blood and fluid THEN BOOM BABY. Unfortunately it was born stillborn. We tried CPR and gentle compression’s on its chest, but it couldn’t be saved. It was so small, and it wasn’t even fully formed. She gets scared of what is happening to her, and runs under the couch. Guess who had to make love to the couch with her face to fetch the expecting mother? This girl right here. Yes I am pointing to myself....

I pick her up and rush her into the bathroom. We already had her birthing blanket, and area ready. We even laid down bed pee pads (they’re like puppy pads but for people to use on their bed) on the ground to soak up any fluids. I got into the bathroom with my mother (Yes I live with my mother. Back into 2000 she was in a bad car accident and it left her disabled. So I live with her to help take care of her.) and we sit there with Bear while she’s having contractions. This little girl knows what happened to her first baby. She lays down on her side, and this expression of depression just settles on her sweet dainty face. Her wide eyes just look so hollow and empty as she stares at her blanket. It is the most heart wrenching things I’ve ever seen. It crushed my heart. She soon goes into another contraction, and ends up having a second baby. I’m too afraid to know its fate because at this moment in time we already had one stillborn, and we were still waiting to hear back from Rabbit Wranglers. So I didn’t even know the bunny’s fate. Let me clarify for a moment that we would love to take the bunny in, and give him a home, but two reasons why we can’t. 1) Bunnies and rabbits are very expensive pets. V’lerie ( @warqote-val ) said that they can cost from 100 to 150 USD a month. Hell she said that number may not even be fully accurate. We’re on a tight budget, and have three cats to take care of with more on the way. We cannot afford a bunny. 2) We have cats. That right there is the biggest reason for me. Skeeter, our male tabby, is a natural born hunter. Gothy, our black cat, is a lazy turd bird and doesn’t hunt. Skeeter does. He’s caught and cornered things in the past. He is a hunter to his core. I don’t want a bunny being subjected to the stress of sharing a house with cats. The very predators that have been stalking it now for days. 

When I leave the bathroom I get a call from Suaz. She tells me she’ll try to get a volunteer to come out, and if she couldn’t then she would drive herself. Now to give you a relative idea as to why this is such a big deal; Pittsburgh is forty-five minutes to an hour away from my city. The worry that she may say no because of distance was a big factor in my mind. Thankfully though she said they’ll come out ans rescue him. THANK GOD OR WHATEVER DIVINE BEINGS THERE ARE! The first silver lining animal related of the day. Someone will come get him, and he’ll finally be safe. His suffering will be over, and he can get the care of love he has always deserved. Suaz tells us to put him in a cat carrier until she can make it over to us. So I usher him into the carrier so he can’t roam off, and for his safety because the strays have began searching for him. I am charged with the task of sitting outside with him while we wait for Suaz.

Meanwhile my mother has been with Bear during all of this. She comes outside every now and again for a smoke break, and to give me updates. The second kitten that she had, the one she gave birth to when I was running out of the bathroom like the little bitch I am, is stillborn. That makes two still born with more on the way. Needless to say my hopes weren’t very high for this litter. It looked really grim. I remain on the porch to wait with the bunny (whom at this point I named Roger. Shuddup I’m fucking corny and punny like that). 

While I am on the porch waiting guess who calls? The local humane society that refused to help the bunny. Bitch #3 tells me rather flippantly that all the officers are busy and cannot make it out. Um okay? Do y’all not talk to each other, because Bitch #2 informed me that you don’t take rabbits and bunnies and couldn’t send anyone out. I say don’t worry and tell Bitch #3 that I took their advice and called Rabbit Wranglers. Informing her that he’ll be rescued by then. She turned up her bitch dial and got incredibly rude. Then asked if we had put him in a carrier. I tell the truth and say yes because that’s what we were told to do. Bitch #3 goes, and I quote, “well it’s your responsibility now since you put him in a carrier. He’s your problem to deal with.” Okay get off your soap box bitch before I knock your ass off. Y’all had no intention to help the bunny, and now you’re getting pissed that I made other arrangements like I was fucking told to do. Nah bitch sit the hell down and shut up. I hang up, and wash my hands of them. They’re a shitty humane society, and don’t deserve the right to carry that title.

After that frustrating encounter some good news came! Bear had her third baby, and it’s alive! THE FIRST LIVE ONE! I’m fucking ecstatic like you would not believe. So I rush into the bathroom, and sure enough it is a tuxedo kitten. So fresh to this world and so fucking precious. It was squirming and nuzzling up to feed while Bear was licking it to dry the wee thing off. 

I go outside to wait with the bunny so mom can be with her cat. Over the course of three hours I chilled with the bunny. Feeding him lettuce and keeping him company. Over this time mom keeps me updated on Bear. She’s doing splendidly and is giving birth like a mother fucking champ. So far by the time 8pm rolls around she has had five babies. Two stillborn, but three are alive and nursing eagerly. She’s still in labor.

8pm comes, and Suaz arrives at my home. She’s such a nice woman with a kind soul. She actually thanks my mother and I over and over for saving the bunny, and calling her. I give her some money for gas to show my way of thanks and gratitude. Y’all she didn’t need to do this. She could have told us that it was too far out of their reach to help him, but she didn’t. She drove all that way, came and picked him up, and she probably didn’t get back home until around 10pm. Suaz tells us that she’s going to take great care of him. When she gets him home he’ll get some pain killers for his wounded foot, and that tomorrow (now today) he’ll be seeing the vet to see what they can do about his injury. That is a major weight off my fucking chest. She actually encouraged us to call her and ask for updates on him! Which I fully intend to do.

Finally at 9pm I walk in through the front door, and go check on the new mother. She has three kittens nuzzling to her, and doesn’t seem to be having anymore contractions. So I make myself some dinner, and sit down to relax. Well around 11 I go downstairs to check up on them and my mom to see if she needs anything to drink. We go outside for a few minutes, and when we come back in we check up on Bear. There’s blood on the pee pads. Mom is under the impression that it was just the afterbirth. I go closer, and inspect, and sure enough there is another kitten! This makes kitten number six and makes the fourth living one. She took care of it all by herself! I want to mention that with the fifth born my mother had to do CPR on it, and brought it back to life. This one Bear took care of when no one was around. We breathe a sigh of relief because mama and the babies are doing well. She looks finished and is finally resting with the newborns.

We go to bed.

5am rolls around and I wake up for about the third time over night because I couldn’t sleep well. I made sure each time I woke up to go downstairs and check on them. Each time they’re doing fine! Well around 7am I am awake enough to where we make a whelping box for her. We hadn’t at this point because when Gothy had given birth seven years ago we made her a whelping box and she didn’t use it at all. I wanted Bear to feel like she wasn’t confined or cramped. We make this box and lay down a fresh blanket. We load them all up into the box, and when we rummage through the folds of the birthing blanket we find a seventh kitten! Overnight she had one more, and this one had ventured off, Bear is such a good mother she actually doesn’t want to leave the other living four to pick it up and put it back with her. The seventh is alive and doing well! I place it back with her and Bear happily accepts it. 

So these are the tiny jelly beans that consumed most of my day/evening yesterday. Two tuxedos, and three tabbies. The tabby on the bottom right is the one who had lost its way from Bear. 

[jukeboxgraduate]

SPRINGSTEEN ON BROADWAY: Some Common Sense

Disclaimer: Yes, I got tickets. I am really effing lucky.

When the rumor of this engagement first surfaced, my first thought was “Oh no.” Not because I don’t want to see Bruce in a small theater or doing a Storytellers/Somerville/Christic for the masses, but because 1) There would be no way to go every night, which would mean that Bruce is playing in my city and I can’t be there, and 2) It was going to be expensive.

Before they even announced a price range, I looked at my budget and decided what I could afford/what I would forgo to buy a ticket and determined a price range. I discussed this avidly with friends, some of whom decided they would just go for the highest priced ticket because they felt there would be less competition. Other friends were at the other end of the spectrum and could only afford the lowest priced ticket. And yet other friends made the call that they were going to sit this out and hope for a tape, that the combination of what would undoubtedly be a high priced event plus travel and hotel was something they could not do or were unwilling to do.

I asked every friend I knew if they weren’t going to please sign up for Verified Fan in case I did not get a code. (No one did, fwiw.) I also connected with my Bruce peeps (as the kids say) and had a reasonable sense of confidence that if someone in that circle got a code and I didn’t, I would get offered something at some point during the run (which happened, a friend offered me his second before offering it to his wife, who is a big fan but not a crazy fan). And as a backup, I do live in NYC and have the advantage that I could invest some time into looking for a miracle if I got shut out. There might be drops; there are always people whose companion gets sick. There are ways.

But I didn’t just expect to get a code and do nothing to plan around the possibility that I might not get one, which seems to be what many people yelling on the Internet did (or didn’t, rather.)

The Actual On Sale

If you are not constantly buying tickets for concerts, you do not have a barometer as to what is a disaster and what is just a tough on sale. I know people think that the Broadway sale was a disaster but the fact is that it was not. It was just a tough sale.

I have done Verified Fan five times now. With the first three, something major went wrong: I didn’t get the code and had to find it on the registration website, the code didn’t work, there was no place on the website to input the code.

This is why I did a practice run for Verified Fan for the latest batch of Hamilton tickets that were put on sale for the NYC production, because I felt like this would be a VF sale that Ticketmaster would not want to fuck up. (I would have liked to see the show again but that $250 was needed for my Springsteen ticket budget.)

The behavior of the website during the Hamilton Verified Fan was equal to the behavior of the website during the Springsteen sale. Even with that practice, during the Bruce on sale I panicked and ended up buying what was supposed to be a backup pull on my phone and now have to sell tickets to another concert because I picked a random date and forgot I already had a show that night. And I buy tickets all the time to shows of all different sizes at all different venues with varying levels of urgency.

If you weren’t successful buying tickets, ask yourself:  how often you do this? Ask yourself, were you absolutely ready for the sale? Did you have the code already copied into notepad? Did you have your phone on Do Not Disturb so your mom didn’t text you in the middle of the sale? Did you run a speed test on your internet connection to make sure you had the amount of bandwidth that you pay for? Did you reboot your router the night before? I don’t want to be “Maybe y’all don’t know how to buy tickets” but based on a lot of the complaints I saw online, I think some people do not know how to buy tickets for a high pressure event and were woefully unprepared. People complained that they couldn’t afford the tickets they were offered but how many people threw them back and tried again? (Because that worked.)

“Verified Fan is Bullshit and didn’t work!!!111”

This statement is just plain wrong. Right now, on Stub Hub, there are on average only 2% of the house available on a per-night basis. That doesn’t account for what already sold on StubHub, but the ratio is consistent enough across the entire run that it can’t be some kind of coincidence. There were roughly 77k tickets available for the entire run (without accounting for VIP or lottery).

This is a very good ratio. It is not suddenly mathematically invalid because you couldn’t afford what was offered or you didn’t win the initial lottery selection to be able to purchase. (I’ll get to the price point later.)

The fact that you did not get a code to buy tickets does not mean that this was a disaster. It is exactly the same as not getting tickets during an onsale. You just got eliminated before the ticket purchasing part of the process. This is what we are not used to. But being unaccustomed to a new process does not mean the process did not work.

But why couldn’t they just send everyone codes???111

Because they did not have enough inventory and all it would have done is created a situation. One of the critical things Verified Fan accomplishes is creating a firewall-type effect that prevents the bots from flooding the servers so that they can buy all the tickets in the first 10 minutes. This is the kind of thing that happened when U2 played Madison Square Garden in 2015. Those shows were genuine on-sale disasters because no one could get through, period.

(And please do not hold up U2 as a thing that Bruce should do [setting aside his vocal dislike of fan clubs] because for the most recent tour if you weren’t a fan club member, Ticketmaster was upselling fan club memberships on the sale page for each show--”Do you want to buy tickets ahead of everyone! Just join the fan club right now!” And it is too late for Bruce to take on the Ten Club model.)

What Ticketmaster undoubtedly did was hand out codes in the quantity that matched the amount of tickets that were available. When there were still tickets left (probably because people rejected the price or the location, or only bought one ticket) they then released additional codes to standbys.

The fact that you could still pull tickets in a 975-capacity theater one hour into the on sale means that Verified Fan worked.

A limited inventory of 77,025 tickets in total (and that’s without deducting for VIP or lottery) doesn’t even come close to covering the Springsteen fanbase in the Tri-state area, let alone extended areas (Boston/Philly), the rest of the US, and definitely was never going to include Europe. (Also, Europeans, if you haven’t stopped to consider that this might be coming over to you, you are not thinking clearly, given that Bruce makes exponentially more money in Europe than he does in the US.)

There was no way on God’s green earth that everyone in the core fan base was going to get tickets! A lot of people were going to get shut out. There was simply insufficient stock. Period.

Pricing

I grew up on musical theater. I was a drama club kid. But I also remember the point at which I realized that I had to choose between going to the theater and going to concerts because the theater was insanely expensive, and the work to get the cheap tickets required more time than I was willing to devote to the pursuit.

Theater tickets for productions that are in-demand are not cheap; small show runs are not cheap. The Walter Kerr holds 975. (The Richard Rogers, where Hamilton is playing, holds 1300.)

Given that $75 balcony tickets are selling -- and they are selling --- on StubHub for $1000 a seat, Jon Landau and Bruce and whoever helped them price this run were 100% on target. In fact, to be perfectly honest, looking at the secondary market action, they probably underpriced the seats.

I am not thrilled with an $850 ticket price point. I am not thrilled with a $400 price point. But there is zero doubt that Bruce Springsteen can command that level of ticket price, and I would rather see him pocket the cash than a ticket broker. Don’t throw “Well so much for his image as the advocate of the working man” at me. If that was true he would’ve had $25 seats in the upper level for years instead of pricing every seat the same. I can argue this point until the cows come home. There are so many things that could have been done over the years to make the shows more affordable to a wider range of people, but no one cared about that until they suddenly couldn’t afford a ticket. 

The argument “How much money does he need?” is invalid. I don’t like someone telling me how much I should be making, and if you’ve read Born To Run, you will understand...a few things. 

The argument “WELL ONLY HIS RICH FANS WILL GO TO SEE THIS THEN” is farcical coming from people who regularly see multiple shows on a tour. If you can’t afford it, well, you can’t afford it. I know it sucks to not be able to afford something you usually can afford. There is a larger conversation here about economic inequities and the availability of entertainment, but that’s why I know people who will never go see a concert in an arena or a stadium. That conversation, while valid, is not specific to Bruce Springsteen or this engagement.

The plain and simple fact is that Bruce Springsteen has underpriced his seats since the Reunion tour. His peers have been commanding more for decades now. Bruce never went the Irving Azoff/Eagles route where they create a carefully crafted maze of multiple levels of VIP seating designed to maximize profits. Bruce never did Golden Circle the way most legacy artists do these days. For years, they left so much money on the table, while the secondary market cleaned up. They tried to battle the scalpers with the jailbait seats and then by going GA floor. The price crept up on the last tour, but so has gas / insurance / salaries / production and the like. And, again, it was still drastically underpriced.

Have you bought tickets to the Rolling Stones? To Paul McCartney? The Who? Madonna? And these are people playing stadiums and arenas, not 975 seat theaters. Those are not cheap tickets. (Please do not start with ‘They cannot hold a candle to Bruce Springsteen!!!111” because that is just such a basic argument.)

I know these prices seem crazy compared to what we are used to paying, but they are not crazy for what this is. Yes, only Hamilton is this crazy, but this is better than Hamilton (with apologies to Lin-Manuel Miranda).

I need to point out: I was flat broke during the Seeger Sessions tour. I saw one show as a result. That was what I could afford to do. I was also in a precarious financial position when the GOTJ shows were announced and only saw two shows (and only saw that second because someone offered to drive me). It sucks to not be able to afford things you used to be able to afford. I offer this because of all the dudes sliding into my TL yammering about rich people.

Things That Could Have Been Done Better

Communication: This is not anywhere near Ticketmaster’s first Verified Fan sale and they could have done a much much better job in communicating clearly about the process. They didn’t tell you what to do if you were verified but didn’t get a code, for example, until people started to complain on Twitter. They could have been more precise in telling people when the code would arrive--e.g. “You should have the code when you wake up on Wednesday and if you don’t, contact us at this address.”

The language in the emails for people on Standby was vague and ambiguous, and created a great deal of uncertainty. I’m not sure that they needed to say “we were unable to verify you” because I’m not sure that actually happened. I think the standby people just didn’t get randomly selected and saying “Sorry, you weren’t chosen as part of our random selection process but you are on standby and if more tickets open up you will be notified” would have been clearer and more accurate and stopped the childish tantrums from grown ass adults about “how dare you say I’m not a real fan.”

Second Run of Shows: It is a very very common practice to hold back dates to see what demand is, and also to thwart resellers, so the whining that all the dates weren’t announced at once is just that, whining. This is an area, however, where Ticketmaster just made a huge mess of things. They should have put the tickets on sale right away and opened it up to everyone who had already registered and didn’t get tickets. Holding it off by a week just gave the scalpers time to regroup.

They also did not make it clear if you needed to register again -- I saw one FAQ saying you didn’t, and another saying you did -- and while it was not exactly fair that it was an open playing field to everyone again, once they delayed it by a week they had to let everyone in. But I’m still not clear about what actually happened here and who was eligible for the second run.

This part of it was messy, but I don’t know of a lot of people who got selected for the first batch who made the cut for the second batch, and I do know many people who were on standby for #1 who got picked for #2.

For this I’m willing to declare the communication botched but the sales went okay, especially since the scalpers were bitching they couldn’t get tickets, and if you look on StubHub, there are less tickets available for the second batch than the first one, so that seems to back that up.

Codes For The First Sale Weren’t Linked To Accounts: One of the keys to the Verified Fan system is that the code you receive is both linked to the URL that you are sent to (which I suspect points to a batch of servers outside the regular TM infrastructure, but I don’t know that for sure) and to your Ticketmaster account. This way, you can’t just create 300 accounts and hand off codes to whomever. Ticketmaster fixed this for the second sale but it is, apparently, how so many scalpers got tickets to the first run. (This information comes from a scalper who had an open conversation with Chris Phillips of Backstreets on Twitter, and also maps to what I heard from other sale participants.)

Purchase Restrictions: Everyone is screaming about the lack of restrictions on these tickets but you’re not thinking this through.

Thanks to scalpers lobbying the state legislature, paperless tickets are not allowed in New York. Yes, I know there is discussion about changing that law, but right now that is the law on the books, and it doesn’t just change because it’s Bruce Springsteen. (Write letters to your elected representatives if you are a New York State voter.)

The problem when you make an $850 purchase non-transferrable is that it’s a lot of money to ask someone to just throw away when their kid gets sick. There are many unforeseen situations in which someone needs to be able to sell a ticket to someone else. It really, really sucks to eat the price of a ticket because you have a legitimate reason to not make the show and can’t transfer the ticket to someone else.

Names on tickets do not mean anything. Scalpers will buy a pair, sell a single, and escort the buyer in. And, again, you can’t make an $850 ticket non-transferrable.

There are scenarios in which it is reasonable to make tickets will-call only and that you must enter the venue immediately upon picking up the ticket. While you can do that for a small surprise one-off club or theater show, enforcing that for every single night of a multi-week Broadway run is simply not that kind of situation where that requirement will be practical. It puts a unnecessarily high burden on the venue and on the attendees. (C’mon, the FAQ for the shows has to mention that there will be snacks available. Somehow this was not the first question I had.)

Allow resale at face value only: There is precedent for this in the marketplace. The Newport Folk Festival, for example, doesn’t send out passes until right before the event to cut down on the secondary market, but provides a face-value resale system where you in effect sell your tickets to the ticketing company and they resell the pass. I spent $250 to go to Newport, I couldn’t go, I resold my pass for what I paid for it, someone else got to go. This is a thing that JLM could have done. Ticketmaster is not incented to do this because they make money off of reselling. There is a major conflict of interest here. There was weight that could have been thrown around here if someone had thought to do it. (Or, they thought about doing it and didn’t bother.)

No One Deserves A Ticket

If I had not gotten a ticket I would have started hustling. Period. I’m not entitled to a ticket any more than you are, or vice versa. I don’t care how many times you’ve seen Bruce. I don’t care how long you’ve been a fan. There is no purity test. This is a lame argument and also is not going to get you a ticket. In fact the number of times you have seen him should actually disqualify you. Give someone else a shot.

AND DON’T BRING YOUR KIDS TO THIS PERFORMANCE. FFS.

You Always Have The Option To Sit This One Out

This is actually a corollary of #5. Just because your favorite artist is doing a thing doesn’t mean you have to go if you can’t get there / can’t afford it / can’t get time off work / your kids have a thing / your Dad isn’t well / you just got a promotion. I know what it feels like to have to pass up what seems like something amazing, but you can’t go to every show (a thing I’m fond of reminding friends, as well as myself) and you will just make yourself crazy. It is okay to say, I can’t afford it, it’s too much money. It doesn’t make you less of a fan.

Well, What Should I Do?

Start asking everyone you know. Network your Springsteen friends. Network anyone who might have a connection. Put a post on BTX or your Facebook group. Keep apprised of what’s going on so you know if there’s a drop or a lottery type situation (which it looks like there is going to be). Can you get to NYC any weeknight and look for a miracle? Look on the secondary market for something (that’s how I finally got to see Hamilton, fwiw). There will be honest people who can’t go who are reselling for face, but the scalpers watch StubHub for those too.

Beware of fake listings on resale sites. Do not let your drive to get into this show get you ripped off. It can happen to the best of us. During the U2 MSG run in 2015, so many people got hoodwinked by fake floor tickets being sold by dudes on Craigslist. Do not buy on the street. Buy from a site with a guarantee, use a credit card that has some kind of consumer protection as a benefit, and if it seems too good to be true it probably is. StubHub is safer than most because they require a credit card to list and they put a hold on that credit card for the price of the sale, but this is not an endorsement, this is a statement of fact. Caveat emptor.

[NO I AM NOT GOING TO SAY ‘FAITH WILL BE REWARDED’]

[tepid-tea]

Hello Drama; its been a while..

I don’t think I’ve posted personal drama in a while but I feel like I need to get this off my chest. Cause this didn’t just effect me but it has pretty much torn up my little group of friends which was not the intent.

Heres some background before we start…

Emerald City Comic Con for those who have followed my little slice of tumblr knows is a yearly nerd pilgrimage my friends and I do every year. We all arrange rides and drive down from Vancouver, BC to Seattle, WA for a 4-5 day where we eat, drink and buy way too much stuff at the convention.  We’ve all gone pretty much as a group for the last… shit 4 or five years? Possibly more? Now last year I spent waaaay to much money as the Canadian Dollar was in the tank ( still is pretty much lol)  and I went a little over board. Now Hotel prices have steadily been going up  etc etc so even without the spending I was already over budget. Now early on this year I had decided that I wasn’t going to go to ECCC in 2018 due to how much hotel and such costs. The tickets themselves aren’t so bad but if you’re not a local in Seattle or don’t have a friends couch to sleep on we’re talking close to $1000 CAD for 4 nights in a hotel even with the Convention discount.  That includes parking but still…. Yikes right? I went to Disneyland (flight & Hotel) for only like $30 more than that. That’ $1000 doesn’t even include my convention pass! So needless to say I wasn’t going since my family is planning on doing like  a week plus in Disneyland next summer so that was what I was going to save up for instead. It bummed me out because ALL of my friends were going to this (except maybe one but we will get to that shortly) and it was my first time not going to be able to join them. But it was my decision and I was going to stick with it. Now fast forward too maybe a week or so ago right before the tickets went on sale everyone was excited and stuff and I was pretty much over it at this point when  my friend who hadn’t planned on going either cause he kept saying how much it sucked, (we’ll call him R) texted me and asked if I wanted to just go for the Saturday. Now a part of me was unsure because we would have to get up at the crack ass of dawn to drive the 2 and a half hours to Seattle, find expensive Downtown parking and get our passes, walk around all day only to have to drive the 3 and a half ours back. Now my friend R doesn’t drive. Doesn’t know how; takes transit or bums rides from our friends who drive all the time.  So I would have to do all of this driving.  I’m unsure but he ramps it and says he’ll split gas and parking so without really thinking it through ( probably out of desperation of wanting to go even at a small scale) I agree. Everyone I tell that we’re going for just the day say I’m fucking looney cause I’m pretty much doing all the work here.  It’s not like if I get tired I can trade off with someone to drive. 2 and a half hours isn’t really long but… I mean when you’re that tired it can feel like a super long time. Also I’d have to drive him home, which he lives like a half an hour the opposite direction of my house so that’s adding another hour onto my drive time.  But I’m like cool sure. Then we never talk about it again. Until yesterday morning. 

My friend K texts me and says she’s accidentally ordered 1 too many Vendor passes. She got her table this year in Artist alley and wanted to know if I could come with and help her and her boyfriend ( who happens to be my best friend) run her booth. Now I’ve helped run her booth for conventions off and on for the past couple years. At Local ones and for the three years at ECCC ( except 2017’s convention, she didn’t get chosen and thus didn’t come with us) so I’ve got experience in how she likes to run shit. At first I tell her no, I’m doing the one day thing and I can’t afford the hotel alone plus everything's probably all booked by now even if I could find someone.  But then she says to ask our friend J as she and like 3 of our other friends are sharing a room ( Like every year) and could possible have space for me too? 

 She said to let her know by Friday so if I don’t go she can try and e-mail the convention ppl to try and get a refund ( tickets like $125 usd) because she can’t sell it like a normal ticket. So I go to work and not really think about it again till like later in the evening. I’m having dinner with C ( K’s bf and my best friend ANNND R’s best friend)  and the ticket offer comes up during our conversation. He says to give our friend J a text about their hotel situation, prices and what not because if it’s cheap, why not? He knew I was pretty bummed about not going the full weekend and wasn’t too stoked about driving so much ( he wasn’t too happy about it on my behalf it seemed either. he’s an overprotective puppy). So I ask J and their  5th person they were going to have in their room bailed and they had space. I’d get a blow up mattress and  it would be $150 USD for  3 nights for my half of the hotel ( roughly as taxes/hotel parking etc). So thats $275.00 USD  AND they offered to drive me there and back, provide the air mattress etc.  I tell C and its like how can you say no to that? He says do it. Now first thing I worry is how R is going to take it. He gets upset easy and yeah I’m being kind of a dick on bailing on him.  The Con is in 4 months as in that time we could figure out a way for him to either get there without me driving him or help him sell the tickets. However even without committing to it 100% at the time I feel bad, I hate bailing on people like that.  

So this morning I send this huge text to R explaining the situation and apologise for the whole thing but offer to help him work out how to either sell them or figure a way there and back.  R loses his absolute shit, says I’m the worst friend ever. Says this is the worst possible thing I could ever do to him and this is basically ending our friendship.  I then ask him how could something like this be a friendship ender  ( I’ve forgiven him him for FAR worse offences on shit he’s pulled on me but THAT'S a whole other traumatizing thing that we don’t talk about anymore because it almost gives me a panic attack thinking of it) then offer again to help make other arrangements for him to either come along or sell the tickets. He then accuses me of going behind his back and plotting with our other friends to screw him over ( not true like wtf?) then proceeds to block my phone number and blocks me on all social media before we can work anything out. ( there are 6 texts in total, two from me and the rest are him freaking at me) In the end he ends up blocking 5 different friends of ours ( though he’s re-added K I later find out) and proceeds to shit talk me on FB where I can’t see and blocks anyone who tries to stick up for me ( Thus the 4 friends still blocked). I mean I understand he’s upset but we are in our mid 30’s for fuck sakes! We’re fucking adults! Why can’t we have a fucking adult conversation and work something out? I admit it was shitty to bail on him however I offered to help him find another solution to get there, to help sell them both and even offer to just straight pay for my half to compensate. However none of these offers were taken because he didn’t get his own way and would rather flip his shit. 

Needless to say my whole day was fucked.  I felt horrible but the more nasty shit he posted on FB that I got told about and shit he’s been pulling on everyone else, I started to feel less bad for the whole thing. There was no grand plot to screw him over; I simply took advantage of an opportunity only for it to fuck everything up.  I tried to keep it just between the two of us to keep damage to a minimum cause we share best friends and it's not fair to drag C into the middle of this or any of our other friends for that matter but he insisted on it. So about an hour after I started this text rant K texted and asked if she could call me; which of course I say yes.  After an hour and a half talk  I go over my side on what's happened and what we can do to fix it and keep C out of it.  K and I both love C ( in very different ways mind you LOL) and her and I are going to do our hardest to keep him out of it.  Her and I have both agreed not to talk about the situation in front of him and try to keep the others from doing so as well ( god knows what R has sent him).  C doesn’t take conflict really well (Neither does myself and K to be honest but C more so) and I told K I really don’t want C to be dragged into it…. 

Like fuck I didn’t want anyone to get dragged into it but R is a drama queen and I’m the villain.

SO YA! Fuck my life!

Anyone want to go see the New Star Wars Movie with me? Cause R is selling off my first showing ticket for that. Anyone want to see a movie with a shitty villainous person?